“Well, then I would say you have two or three hundred dollars here. In fact, I’ll give you three hundred dollars for the entire bag, right now.”
Matt put the rocks back in the bag. “Would you now?”
“In cash,” Montgomery said.
“You always cheat your customers like that?” Matt asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“What I have here is worth two thousand dollars if it is worth a cent,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. Montgomery, but I believe I’ll take my business somewhere else.”
“I’m the only assayer in town.”
“Perhaps. But Swan isn’t the only town,” Matt said as he left the office.
Up the street from the assayer’s office Matt saw a sign that read HAIRCUTS, SHAVES, BATHS.
“Tell you what, Spirit, you’ve had to put up with my stink long enough,” Matt said, speaking to his horse. “I think I’ll get myself cleaned up before I go looking for Smoke.”
Dismounting in front of the building, Matt lifted his bag of ore from the horse, then went inside. Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in a tub of warm water, scrubbing himself with a big piece of lye soap.
“Don’t know if there is enough lye soap in all of Wyoming to get that carcass clean,” a voice teased.
“Smoke!” Matt said, a big smile spreading across his face. He started to stand.
“No, no need to stand,” Smoke said, holding his hand out, palm forward, to stop him. “You think I want to see that?”
Matt laughed. “How did you know I was in here?”
“We did say we were going to meet in Swan today, didn’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“I saw Spirit tied up out front. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize him? He used to be my horse, remember?”
“I remember,” Matt said.
“How did you do?” Smoke asked.
“See that bag there? It’s full of ore. At least two thousand dollars worth, I would guess.”
Smoke whistled. “That is good,” he said.
“Tell you what, I’ll be finished here in a bit. What do you say we go get us a beer? I haven’t had a beer in two months.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ll go get us a table, and I’ll even let you buy the beer, seein’ as you had such a good outing,” Smoke said.
A few minutes after Smoke left, Matt was out of the tub, had his shirt and trousers on, and had just strapped on his gun belt when three men burst, unexpectedly, into the room. All three had pistols in their hands.
“We’ll take that bag of ore, mister,” one of them shouted.
“Who are you?” Matt asked.
“We’re the folks you’re goin’ to give that bag of ore to,” one of the three said, and they all laughed.
While the three men were laughing, Matt was drawing his pistol, and while they were reacting to him drawing his pistol, Matt was shooting.
The pistol shots sounded exceptionally loud in the closed room as Matt and the three men exchanged gunfire. When the shooting stopped Matt had not a scratch, but the three would-be robbers lay dead on the floor.
Matt was examining the bodies when four more men came bursting into the room. Three of them were carrying sawed-off shotguns. They were also wearing badges.
The fourth man with them was the assayer.
“There he is, Sheriff! He is the one who stole the bag of ore!” Montgomery shouted, pointing at Matt.
“What?” Matt asked. “What are you talking about? I didn’t steal any ore from you!”
“He come into the office a little while ago,” Montgomery said. “He had a bag of worthless rocks, usin’ it as a way o’ getting my attention. While I was looking at his rocks, he stole a bag of genuine ore. I didn’t have no choice but to send my brother and two cousins to get the ore back. Didn’t know it would come to this, though.”
Montgomery looked down at the three dead bodies, then shook his head sadly. “If I had known they was goin’ to be murdered like this, I never woulda sent ’em over here. A bag plumb full of gold nuggets isn’t worth getting three good men killed.”
“Come along, mister,” the sheriff said, waving his shotgun menacingly at Matt. “You are about to learn that folks don’t come into my town to steal and murder and get away with it.”
“Sheriff, this man is lying,” Matt said. “I brought some ore in for him to assay. He tried to cheat me out of it so I told him I would go somewhere else. You think I would stop to take a bath if I stole anything in this town?”
“I don’t know what you would do, mister,” the sheriff said. “But the thing is, I know Montgomery and I don’t know you. So I reckon we’ll let the judge sort it all out.”
Matt looked at the three shotguns leveled at him. He was holding a pistol and he had a notion, but declined. He might be able to kill the sheriff and both his deputies before they realized what was happening, but then, he might
