“Ain’t she a cannon, though?” Sherman said, obviously delighted with the weapon.
“That she is,” Longarm said. “But I think I’ll pass. Too big and heavy.”
“You can sell her in a minute down in Prescott for at least fifteen dollars,” Sherman argued. “I’ll guarantee that you can. And, in the meantime, this shotgun will give you a lot of peace of mind in case you have a chance to blow Hank Bass and his friends all over the sagebrush.”
“Yeah,” Longarm said. “I see what you mean. All right. How about ammunition?”
“It is hard to come by,” Sherman admitted. “But I do have a half dozen shells. Tell you what, I’ll throw ‘em in for an extra two dollars.”
Longarm nodded. Between his stage fare, the Winchester, this shotgun, fresh ammunition, meals and hotel bills, he was getting close to being broke. Billy Vail had damn sure better have his hundred dollars of expense money wired to Prescott, or there was going to be hard times ahead. If worse came to worse, he could point the shotgun at a forest and probably knock down a dozen or so deer along with trees, brush, and anything else that was in his line of fire.
“Thanks,” Longarm said, cramming ammunition in his pockets and grabbing the shotgun and the Winchester.
“Come back alive,” Sherman said. “And if you want to sell me back them weapons, I’ll make you a deal that won’t hurt you much.”
“I may do that.”
“Fact is, I am kind of fond of that old shotgun.”
“Then why’d you sell it so cheap?”
“Might blow up in your face,” Sherman drawled. “Better you find that out than me.”
Longarm hoped that the irascible gunsmith was making a little joke—but he wasn’t sure.
Chapter 6
When Longarm boarded the stagecoach for the roughly fifty-mile run south to Prescott, he quickly noted that there were two guards sitting on top of the stage with rifles.
“Expecting trouble?” Longarm asked the driver.
The man spat a long, brown stream of tobacco juice into the street. “Could happen,” he said. “We’ve got a strongbox full of gold and cash. Hank Bass has spies in Ash Fork so we’re taking no chances.”
“Good,” Longarm said. “As you can see, I’m pretty well armed myself.”
“For gawd sakes don’t shoot that damned shotgun off or it might blow us all to smithereens!” the driver exclaimed.
“I won’t unless I have to,” Longarm vowed, tossing his bags into the coach and then clambering inside. There were only two other passengers, a worried-looking couple in their late sixties who introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. George Buelton.
“I’m retired,” George said even before Longarm took his seat opposite them. “I was a bartender for over thirty- five years. Hated every gawd damned minute of it. People have a drink, they start to acting like animals. Me and the wife won’t touch a drop of the devil’s brew.”
“We raised four children,” Agnes Buelton added. “All of them boys turned out worthless. Just a bunch of drunks, horse thieves, and convicts.”
“Real sorry to hear that.”
“Not as sorry as we are,” Agnes answered. “We’re on our way to Prescott so I can be with our daughter-in-law who is having her first baby.”
“Well, at least that’s a happy occasion.”
“Not really,” George said glumly. “We can’t stand our daughter-in-law, and I doubt that the baby was fathered by our worthless son. He never accomplished a thing in his whole life, and it don’t seem possible that he could have pulled this off either.”
Longarm turned toward the window. He could already see that this was going to be a long, humorless trip. The Bueltons certainly weren’t good traveling company, and he didn’t care to hear all the sad details about the failure of their sons or the illegitimacy of their new grandchild.
“You look like a man that has been around some,” Agnes said after the coach had left Ash Fork. “You look as if you’ve had some hard miles.”
Longarm was becoming irritated. “Well, ma’am, you don’t look that all-fired wonderful to me either.”
“What do you do for a living?” George asked, his lips curling down at the corners.
“None of your business.”
“You might be one of Hank Bass’s men gonna pull a gun on us and help him rob this stage.”
“You have a better imagination than you have a sense of humor,” Longarm clipped with no small amount of sarcasm. “Now, why don’t we all just shut up and enjoy the views.”
“Seen ‘em about a hundred times before,” Agnes snapped. “Never seen you before, though.”
“And, after we get to Prescott, I don’t expect that you ever will again,” Longarm said, closing the conversation.
The coach rolled along and the ride was blessedly silent and uneventful all the rest of the way down to Prescott. When it arrived at that scenic and thriving town, Longarm jumped out and marched away, hearing Agnes say, “I still think he’s up to no damn good.”
