“Can I trust you to keep a secret?”
“Sure.”
“There’s gold in these hills,” Bert confessed. “I wouldn’t tell anybody but… but since You’re a marshal, I guess it’s safe.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said, “it’s safe. I have no interest in working another gold mine.”
A strange light crept into Bert’s eyes. Longarm recognized it because he’d seen it all too often among lonely prospectors and miners. It was a light caused by a fever—gold fever.
“Well,” Bert whispered, as if someone could be overhearing them out in these lonely mountains, “the truth of it is, I found a vein of pure quartz just up the hill a ways and into the timber.”
Longarm wasn’t impressed. “For a fact?”
“Yep!”
“Well,” Longarm said, not wanting to dampen the young man’s enthusiasm but not wanting him to be living a poor man’s fantasy, “while even I know that gold is often found among quartz deposits, you have to understand that there’s certainly no guarantee of that happening.”
“Yeah, but I found some gold in that quartz!”
Longarm smiled with relief because this young man definitely needed some help. “Good for you!”
The kid was getting all excited. “Marshal Long, do you want to see it?”
“I need to water these horses and get that shoe tacked on tight,” Longarm said. “Then, if it wouldn’t take much time, I’d be happy to see it.”
“Sure, Marshal. There’s a little spring up behind the cabin. I use a couple of old tin buckets to haul water down to my livestock and for myself.”
“I’ll help you,” Longarm offered.
“No need,” Bert assured him. “I got two buckets and two good hands, so there’s no sense of you hikin’ up there too.”
“That suits me fine.”
Bert hurried away, and soon reappeared with two sloshing buckets of water. As soon as Longarm’s wheel horses had drunk, Bert hurried back up behind the cabin and returned with two more. The lead horses emptied those in just a few minutes.
“They’re pretty damned thirsty, ain’t they,” Bert said, his forehead covered with sweat. “Looks like I’d better get a few more bucketsful.”
“Maybe so,” Longarm said, remembering that he was paying this man a dollar for this spring water.
“Say, Marshal,” Bert said just as he was about to head back up the Mountainside, “what’s that awful smell comin’from inside the wagon?”
It was the dead men, but Longarm decided not to spook Bert, so he hedged and said, “Ah … medicines. That’s what it must be—medicines left inside from the fella who owned it before me.”
“Huh.” Bert wrinkled his nose. “Rotten-smellin’ medicine, if you ask me. How’d a medicine peddler ever sell anything that smells so ripe?”
“Beats me,” Longarm said, deciding he should probably get his horses watered and that loose shoe fixed before he moved on to the next order of business, that being the burial of the four dead men in his wagon.
When Bert shuffled back up the hill with his empty water buckets, Longarm went around to the back of the wagon and opened the door.
“Ahhh!” Ford Oakley shouted.
Longarm fell down with Oakley leaping at him with a knife clenched in his manacled fists. Ford landed on him, the pocket knife he’d taken from one of the corpses diving straight for Longarm’s throat. Longarm threw up his hand in an instinctive movement, and was lucky enough to catch the chain that linked the handcuffs.
“You sonofabitch!” Oakley grated, bearing down on the knife, which now shivered just inches above his throat. “You’re finished now!”
The two powerful men strained and grunted, and the point of the knife crept downward until it pricked his neck and brought a fresh trickle of blood.
“I’ll kill YOU!” Ford screamed. Longarm had to admit that Ford just might succeed. He was as strong as a horse even though he was badly battered and suffering from lack of food and water. In an act of desperation Longarm kicked his legs up, and managed to get his heels locked around Oakley’s hate-filled face. Using his powerful leg muscles, he bent back Oakley’s head and managed to push the knife upward until, at last, Oakley cursed and was toppled over backward.
Longarm jumped to his feet and scrambled away before the killer could recover and lunge at him with the knife again. He drew his gun and shouted, “Put it down!”
“No,” Oakley swore. “This time, you’ll have to take it from me, by Gawd!”
Longarm cocked the hammer of his gun, took aim on the man’s kneecap, and said, “Put it down or you’ll crawl up the gallows stairs. Your choice.”
Oakley’s face turned purple with rage, but he didn’t want his kneecap blown to smithereens, so he finally dropped the knife.
“Now,” Longarm ordered, “just move away. Nice and easy-“
“Hey!” Bert cried, dropping both buckets and staring. “What’s going on here!”
“Stay back,” Longarm ordered. “This man is my prisoner and he’s a killer.”
“Don’t listen to him, kid. I been wrongly accused. I heard you talking out here and I’m the real federal marshal. This man got the drop on me and took my gun and my badge. He killed a bunch of men and they’re all stuffed inside. One of ‘em is a deputy marshal.”
Bert bit his lower lip again. “Jeez,” he whispered, eyes shifting back and forth. “Is that true, Custis?”
“Hell, no! This is Ford Oakley and he’s wearing the handcuffs, not me. Have you ever heard of him?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Well,” Longarm said, “he’s cunning and I want you to stay out of harm’s way until I finish this business.”
Bert retreated, and Longarm returned all his attention to his prisoner. “All right, Oakley, lay down and stretch your hands above your head.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll put a hole through your kneecap and then I’ll brain you again. Is that what you want?”
“Bastard!” Oakley spat as he knelt in the yard and then flopped forward, throwing his hands overhead.
Longarm put a knee to Oakley’s back and the barrel of his six-gun against the outlaw’s head. He looked over at Bert and said, “Do you have any rope? Good strong rope?”
“Yeah, but … but I need it!”
“So do I, dammit!” Longarm stormed. “Get the rope and I’ll pay you for that too.”
Bert hurried off, and Oakley turned his ugly face and said, “Maybe that fool really has struck gold, huh?”
“I sure as hell doubt it. Anyway, what business would that be of yours?”
“We could make a deal,” Oakley suggested. “We could kill the fool and get rich!”
“Shut up!”
But Oakley couldn’t shut up. “Listen, Marshal, if we don’t take his gold, then someone else sure as hell will. He’s a trusting fool and so we might as well …”
Longarm grabbed Oakley’s hair and yanked back his head until the man’s mouth was hanging open. “I don’t want to hear anything more, you understand?”
“Bastard!”
When Bert returned with the rope, Longarm bound the outlaw up like a mummy. Oakley cried, “I gotta eat and drink something, Marshal! Otherwise, I’m gonna die!”
“He does look pretty bad,” Bert said.
“So do we,” Longarm snapped. “All right, give me a dipper and I’ll give him some water.”
“I ain’t got a dipper.”
“Fine,” Longarm said, rolling the killer over onto his back and grabbing the bucket. “Open your mouth, Ford!”
Ford opened his mouth and Longarm slowly poured most of the bucket into the man’s face. Ford began to sputter and cough. He rolled over onto his belly and choked, “Gawddammit, you’re trying to drown me!”
Longarm took his own drink. He looked at the cabin and then said, “Bert, let’s get that shoe tacked on and then I have another proposition for you.”
Bert appeared shaken. “You’re sure that you’re the real marshal?”