Read Online Legend With a Six-gun (9781101601839) by Tabor Evans - Free Book Online

ask the purser if there’s a doctor on board.”
    Longarm shook his head and said, “I’ll just go to my stateroom and flatten out. If I ain’t dead by the time we make Sacramento, I likely threw up whatever it was.”
    He brushed past the amused deckhand and staggered to his stateroom, where he stripped without lighting the lamp, tore open the bottom bunk, and flopped face down on it, feeling as though he’d been run over by a Conestoga wagon. He ached all over, and though the California nights were cooler than he’d expected, he was sweating like a pig shoveling coal.
    How in thunder had they done it? He hadn’t had a thing to eat or drink at the whorehouse. The Boston gal hadn’t been wearing any rings big enough to play a Borgia trick on him. It hardly seemed likely that the steamboat company had poisoned him. Could it have been those oysters he’d eaten for breakfast at the hotel?
    He started feeling a little better. He’d most likely thrown up whatever it was, and it was time to reconsider living long enough to collect his pension.
    Longarm got up, lurched over to the gunbelt he’d hung on a rusty nail, and drew the Colt he’d bought in San Francisco to replace the one the Manzanita constable had stolen from him. He hadn’t had time to shorten the barrel or file off the front sight, but he thought he could manage a fast enough draw from under his pillow. The door to the deck outside was a flimsy-looking thing with jalousie slats for ventilation, but anyone busting through it would have to make some noise. Gun in hand, he walked naked to the door to slide the bolt in place.
    The door opened before he could reach it.
    Longarm whipped the muzzle of the gun up, trained it on the slim figure outlined in the moonlight, and snapped, “Freeze, you son of a bitch!”
    Then he saw that it was Sylvia Baxter. She looked startled, which sort of made sense, even if nothing else did. Suddenly aware of his nakedness, he placed his free hand in front of his crotch and asked, “Don’t folks knock in Boston, sis?”
    â€œI did knock! What on earth is
wrong
with you, sir?”
    â€œI’ve been shot at, thrown in jail, beat up, and poisoned. Now let’s hear what’s wrong with you. Are you in the habit of leaping at a person wearing nothing but his birthday suit?”
    â€œWould you please stop pointing that gun at me? I only came to your cabin because you played a dirty trick on me back there in the dining salon. I had to pay for both of our dinners!”
    He lowered the Colt, still covering his privates as he stepped back and said, “Come on in. My pants are hanging over there. You’ll have to fish out my wallet and help yourself, because I’ve only got two hands.”
    She laughed nervously and said, “I know, but it’s a little late now.” Then she added, “Don’t worry about it. I studied medicine for two years before they forced me out of it. I’ve seen naked men before.”
    He backed to the bunk and sat down, pulling the edge of the blanket over his thighs as she turned her back on him to go through his pockets. He was grateful that it was almost dark in the room, for he knew he must be beet-red. He said, “It’s too bad you didn’t graduate. I could use a doctor right now—even a female one.”
    She turned around and handed him his wallet, saying, “You owe me seventy-five cents plus the extra dime I tipped the waiter. I might have known you’d be like all the other men. Damn it, I would have been a
good
doctor! You men just don’t seem to understand that a woman has a brain, too.”
    He put the gun under the pillow and took out a bill, saying, “I’ll give you a whole dollar and we’ll call it square. As to your brain, I ain’t actually seen it, so I can’t say whether you’ve got one or not.”
    She snatched the bill from him angrily and