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.
