The big whore in the flowered dress actually spat into the dirt at Longarm’s feet. “You’ve sure got your nerve, Marshal! And by God, we just don’t much like lawmen in Lone Pine! Fact is, we run the last man that wore a badge on our streets right out of Lone Pine. We got a vigilante committee here and we handle our own problems our own way.”
“Well,” Longarm said, “this isn’t your problem so back off and go about your business. We’ll be out of here in an hour if your blacksmith is worth anything.”
“Here he comes now!” someone in the crowd hollered.
Everyone turned to see the blacksmith come stomping up the street. He was a big man in his forties with a shock of unruly white hair and thick, sinewy forearms. He wore a leather apron, and was pushing a wagon wheel along much as a kid would a hoop. It appeared to Longarm to be the same diameter as the one that was broken.
Without saying a word to anyone, he took one look at the hub and growled at Longarm, “Don’t any of you dumb people know that a hub is supposed to be greased every now and then?”
“It’s not my medicine wagon.”
“Well it’s not mine either,” the blacksmith declared, spitting a thick brown stream of tobacco into the dirt. “This replacement wheel will fit. Came off a hearse wagon about the size of this one. Cost you ten dollars and take an hour.”
“Ten dollars!”
“That’s right,” the blacksmith said. “Everything is high-priced in Lone Pine … everything, that is, except a man’s life, which we don’t put much value on atall.”
Longarm shook his head. “I can sure see that’s true,” he grumbled. “All right, ten dollars.”
The blacksmith dropped the wheel beside the wagon. “Anyone inside?”
“Yes, two men.”
“I’m gonna have to jack up this wagon and set the wheel proper. You’re gonna have to get them men out.”
Longarm didn’t like any of this, but he could see that he had no choice. “Deputy Trout, come on outside.”
Trout eased out of the wagon, blinking in the sudden brightness of day. When he saw the large and angry crowd, he gulped and whispered, “This isn’t a bit good.”
“Oakley can stay inside,” Longarm said. “He’s … he’s asleep.”
The blacksmith started to protest, but Longarm’s eyes changed his mind and the man muttered, “Well, as long as he stays still and don’t shift the wagon, I guess it’ll be all right.”
“I thought it would be, and he isn’t about to move,” Longarm said, wondering if the young deputy had struck Oakley so hard that the man was seriously injured.
“Be easier if we could get this wagon over to my shop. Maybe some of these people could kind of support the back end and you could drive.”
“Ain’t nobody better help a damned federal marshal,” the whore said, bloodshot eyes raking the crowd.
When everyone nodded in agreement, Longarm shrugged and said to the blacksmith, “I guess you’ll just have to work that wheel on right where the wagon stands.”
“I can do that,” the blacksmith said, “but I’ll need to go back and get my tools.”
“Just make sure that you come back.”
The blacksmith didn’t like the warning, but he seemed to understand that Longarm meant business. “Only take a few minutes to get what I need,” he said, turning on his heel.
“You better get out of here as soon as that wheel is fixed,” the whore said, hands resting on her big hips. “Ford Oakley has a lot of friends in these parts and I consider myself to be one of them.”
“Well,” Longarm said, “if you have no better taste in friends than that, it’s your problem and none of my own.”
The whore snorted, turned, and marched off with her butt swinging like a big bucket. Soon the crowd began to drift off, but they kept glancing back over their shoulders and all of them looked as if they hated Longarm’s guts.
“Would you really have opened up with that scattergun and nailed a bunch of ‘em?” Trout asked, wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers. “My God, Marshal, those that were left would have torn us both to pieces!”
“Probably,” Longarm said, eyes shifting back and forth over the crowd in case someone was drunk or stupid enough to go for his gun. “But what else was there to do?”
“Reward or not,” Trout said, “I’d probably have handed Oakley over and hoped to live to arrest him some other day.”
“If that is your attitude,” Longarm said, “then you don’t deserve to be a lawman.”
Trout’s eyes fell to his boots. “I’m no coward,” he whispered, “but I don’t want to die.”
“Then take one of the horses and ride back to Gold Mountain,” Longarm said. “Because from the way things are unfolding, I’d say it’s almost dead certain that bullets are going to fly long before we ever reach Elko.”
“What makes you say that?”
Longarm pushed the shotgun back into the wagon and climbed inside to check Oakley’s pulse. “Good thing he’s still alive,” Longarm said.
“I need that reward money.”
“Otherwise,” Longarm said, “you’d have killed him?”
“Damn right I would!”
“That’s what I figured,” Longarm said as he pushed the brim of his hat back and wondered if he dared to head for a little cafe across the street and order a meal and a big pot of strong, hot coffee.
“Trout?”
“Yes.”
“Go get us some food and some coffee.”
“We got food inside the wagon.”
“Cold food and no coffee,” Longarm said. “Just do as I say. I’m tired, hungry, and out of patience.”
Deputy Trout said, “You got any money for eats?”
“Here,” Longarm replied, dragging out a few dollars. “This ought to do it.”
“What about Oakley?”
Longarm twisted around and gazed into the wagon at the unconscious man. “Are you hungry?”
Then Longarm turned back to the deputy. “I guess he’s not hungry or he would have said so. Now quit jawing and go get something for us to eat.”
Trout just took the money. Then he said, “Damn! You really are one hard-assed sonofabitch!”
Longarm spotted a Winchester rifle in the wagon, and decided that it might prove useful if some fool decided to take a potshot at him from a rooftop. He got the rifle, and only then did he drawl, “So I’ve been told, Trout. So I’ve often been told.”
Chapter 8
Longarm was in a damned poor frame of mind while he waited for Deputy Trout to return with some food and some coffee. It didn’t help things any that people were glaring at him from all up and down the street. It was as if he and not Ford Oakley was the outlaw.
“Bunch of fools is what they are,” Longarm groused.
The blacksmith appeared with his tools. “It’s going to cost you ten dollars before I lift a hand.”
“I still say that’s damn high just for putting on a wheel.”
“Take it or leave it,” the blacksmith said. “I got other things to do if you don’t want to pay in cash.”
Longarm paid the man, who immediately began to jack up the hanging hub of the wagon and then to apply grease. “You ain’t a very popular fella in Lone Pine,” the blacksmith said, looking up from his work.
“If I cared about popularity, I’d never have gone into this work,” Longarm replied. “So why is a good blacksmith like you staying in a hellhole like this?”
“For the money, same as everyone else,” the blacksmith said. “I figure I make more money here in three months than I did in Elko in six months.”
“Boom town, huh?”
“That’s right. There’s a lot of gold and silver in these hills.”
“It won’t last.”
“Never does,” the blacksmith said, grunting as he worked to jack up the axle high enough to slip the wheel over the hub. “But as you can clearly see I’m not a young man anymore. I’ve only got maybe ten years of this hard work left in me at best, and then I’ve got to have enough to retire.”