Longarm looked up at the cabin and, from what he could see through the doorway, it looked nearly empty. “Are you living all alone here?”
“Yes,” the man said with a defeated shrug of his thin shoulders. “Once, I had a wife here with me. Clara Belle was real pretty too. But when I lost the stock, she ran off with a cowboy that was passin’ through and heading for Utah. I miss her a lot. We planted that corn together and dug a well. Early this year, the damned well went dry.”
“I could guess that much. So, if the well went dry and your livestock were all slaughtered by predators, then why don’t you just pack up and leave?” Longarm asked. “There’s no future here for someone like YOU.”
The young man finally put his rifle down. He toed the earth and then he stuck his hand out. “My name is Bert. Bert Hollingsworth.”
“Mine is Custis. Custis Long. So, Bert, since this is such hard times, why don’t you leave?”
“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
