Longarm didn’t expect that to be necessary. Wheeler had told him that it would take three days for them to travel through the Ruby Mountains, and that the road was good because there were several little mining towns up in those mountains and a steady stream of supply and ore wagons to keep the road open. The first little settlement he was supposed to reach, in about eight hours, was called Lone Pine.
“Just water your horses and keep moving,” Wheeler had advised. “Lone Pine is a lawless mining camp and there are some real rough customers there. It’ll be best all around if they don’t know that you’re a lawman with Ford Oakley in your custody.”
That made good sense to Longarm. It also made sense that they should keep Oakley handcuffed and even his ankles tied whenever they were traveling. The prisoner would have a damned uncomfortable ride, but that wasn’t really much of a concern.
“Marshal Long?” the deputy croaked.
Longarm leaned back. There was a little window behind the seat so that he could look back to view the interior of the wagon, if it hadn’t been almost totally dark.
“Yeah?”
“Our prisoner is still bleeding.”
“It’ll stop after a while.”
“You must have really given him a pistol-whipping,” Trout said.
“That gash on his forehead is the result of getting hit with your boss’s handcuffs,” Longarm informed the deputy. “After that, I still had to pistol-whip him across the back of the head.”
“Maybe you damaged his brain and he’ll become as harmless as a baby,” Trout said hopefully. “I’ve seen men that suffered bad blows to the head turn simple.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Longarm said over his shoulder. “Oakley has a skull you could bust rocks on. He may be hurting right now, but he’ll snap out of it.”
“He’ll really be out to kill us both now,” Trout wheezed. “I sure don’t want to …”
Longarm pulled up the wagon so that he could turn and look at the window. “Deputy, if you want, I’ll drop you off right here and you can hike back to Gold Mountain. We’re not that far from town and I expect you could be there before daylight.”
Trout said nothing. He was thinking hard about it.
“What do you say?” Longarm asked. “I’m not going to cheat you out of your reward. It’ll be disbursed out of the federal courthouse and sent directly to Marshal Wheeler.”
“Maybe you feds have ways of skimming off some of it for yourself,” Trout said.
Longarm snorted with disgust. “You are a complete fool! In the first place, I have no way to even get the money. And in the second place, it’s illegal for a federal officer to lay any claim on a local reward.”
Trout looked skeptical. “For a fact?”
“That’s right, and it’s something that your boss is very much aware of.”
“He’s the one that told me you might try to cheat us out of the reward.”
“Then you’ve been hoodwinked. Sent off in the hopes that Oakley will somehow manage to kill you so that Marshal Wheeler can collect all of the reward.”
Trout’s jaw dropped. “Do you really think that he’d do that to his own deputy?”
“Hell,” Longarm replied. “You figure it out. Marshal Wheeler knows that I can’t stake any claim to the bounty. That being the case, what other reason would he have for lying so that he could send you off to maybe get shot?”
“I don’t know,” Trout said. “But maybe he just wants me to back up your play. Two guards are better than one.”
Longarm couldn’t help himself. “Not in this case.”
There was a long silence. Then Trout said, “You’re just one big, mean old sonofabitch, aren’t you.”
A smile creased Longarm’s lips. “In this business, a man has to be a sonofabitch sometimes,” he admitted. “It’s no game for soft or trusting hearts. And a hothead will get himself killed every time.”
“Well, I’m learning,” Trout groused. “And besides, did you ever have to deliver anyone as tough as Ford Oakley to a hangman?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Longarm said, “that I don’t know how smart or tough Oakley really is yet.”
“You saw what he tried to do to me back at the jail.”
“Yes, I did. He would have killed you, but then I would have killed him. He knew that and let you go. That tells me he values his life.”
“What man in his right mind doesn’t ?”
“The most dangerous kind of all.” Longarm scowled. “Listen, kid, do you want to get out of that wagon and walk back to Gold Mountain, or not?”
“I’m thinking on it,” Trout admitted. “My neck is paining me something awful, but I want to go to Denver and see this bastard hang. I want that in the worst way. And … and I think that, before all is said and done, you’re going to need my help.”
“If that proves to be the case, I’m in big, big trouble.”
Stung by this insult, Trout wheezed, “You ain’t seen me shoot yet! I’m fast and I hit what I aim at, Marshal Long. I’ll bet anything that I could beat you or Ford to the draw and kill you both before you even cleared leather. Marshal Wheeler says that I’m easily the fastest man he’s ever seen with a gun.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, it is. And before we reach Elko, I’m betting that I have a chance to prove it and you’ll be mighty grateful for my company.”
Longarm put the wagon back into motion. “I guess that means that you aren’t going to use good sense and that you intend to stick with me and the prisoner.”
“That’s exactly what it means,” Trout hissed.
“Suit yourself, but the next time you get careless, I might decide not to save your sorry bacon.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“Marshal Long, I just realized that you’re every bit as big a sonofabitch as Ford Oakley. The only difference is that you wear a badge.”
“Well,” Longarm said, “there is that and the fact that I never raped women, brained a man like Paul Smith so hard he can’t think right anymore, murdered or robbed innocent people. Other than those acts, I guess maybe we do share some common traits.”
Deputy Trout didn’t say anything more after that, which was fine with Longarm. He drove up into the foothills following the road and bathed in the glow of soft moonlight. Longarm could smell the perfume of the pines, and he was even looking forward to seeing a part of the country that he had not seen before. The Ruby Mountains weren’t big, but they were said to be cool in the summertime and quite handsome.
To keep his spirits up and his mind alert, Longarm began to whistle. The horses leaned into their harness and started to pull as the medicine wagon jounced and bounced up the long, straight road out of the sagebrush country and entered the mountains. A pair of coyotes somewhere off to the south heard Longarm’s whistling and began to howl in mournful accompaniment. All things considered, Longarm felt confident. He figured that he would have at least a fifty-mile head start on any of Ford Oakley’s friends and that it would be enough to get him on that train to Cheyenne and then Denver.
By the time the sun came up to reveal the pines surrounding him, Longarm was thirsting for a cup of hot, black coffee. He could hear both Trout and Oakley snoring, and after considerable debate, he decided that he had better stop the wagon and drag the sleeping deputy outside. Their dangerous prisoner was bound hand and foot, but if he was the first to awaken, he might still be able to find a way to kill the worthless town deputy.
“Whoa up,” Longarm said, drawing the four-horse team to a halt in the middle of a shallow and gurgling stream that crossed the road.
The horses were thirsty, and Longarm let them drink their fills as he wound the lines around the brake and climbed down. He waded around to the back of the wagon, and unlocked and opened the door.