“I’ll give you this medicine wagon.”
“What would I do with that!”
Longarm had already worked up his argument. “Well,” he began, “you’ll need a good wagon to haul your ore to the assayer’s office. I can see that your wagon has a broken axle. How are you going to transport all that gold and quartz to a stamping mill without a good, stout wagon like mine?”
Bert nodded. “I have been worried about that.”
“Well,” Longarm said, “now you have a solution. Your pair of Missouri mules will pull the wagon just fine. I’m telling you, for a couple of hours’work, you’ll get a good wagon.”
“Harness too?”
“Sure,” Longarm said. “But not the four horses. I’ve already promised them to a liveryman who saved my bacon back in Lone Pine.”
“I … I can’t touch the bodies,” Bert said, head wagging back and forth. “You’ll have to drive that wagon over to the graves and just dump ‘em in the holes I dig.”
Longarm tried to hide his exasperation. “I need to be on my way, Bert! I have to catch a train for Cheyenne and deliver this prisoner.”
Bert wrestled hard with his dilemma, but it was plain to see that he badly wanted the medicine wagon. “All right,” he said, “let’s tack on the shoe and you drive the wagon over to my cornfield. The corn crop is dying anyway so it’s already kind of like a cemetery. Besides, that’d be as good a place to bury them as any. It’s also got a real nice view with a good exposure to the morning sun.”
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate that, Bert.” Longarm shook his head, finding it difficult to believe this conversation. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”
“Well,” Bert admitted, “I’ve thought many a time since Clara Belle left that I wouldn’t mind being buried there myself.”
“You’re too young to be thinking about dying,” Longarm told the lonesome and troubled homesteader. “You just need to make a new start.”
“With all the gold I’m going to haul to Elko in that medicine wagon, I’ll be able to do that in grand style,” Bert said, perking up a little at the thought.
“That’s right,” Longarm said, “you will.”
“I’ll even make the four dead men grave markers,” Bert said. “Carve their names on a cross and everything … if you’ll throw in one of them extra Winchester rifles and shotguns I see resting up front in the wagon. With all my gold, I’m going to need something better than that old three-dollar flintlock to protect my interests.”
“That stands to reason,” Longarm said. “If you’ve got two old saddles to spare in that barn, then you’ve got yourself one Hell of a good deal.”
“I’ve got’em,” Bert said, looking quite pleased.
“Hey, kid!” Oakley called.
Bert twisted around. “Yeah?”
“You’d better dig your own damn grave!” Oakley hissed at the young man.
Bert paled, but Longarm quickly assured him, “Don’t worry, that man is not going to get away, and he’ll be resting in a Colorado grave within a few weeks.”
“I sure hope so,” Bert said, looking somewhat shaken. “He really seems to be an awful man.”
Bert went into his barn and got his hammer and some nails. It took him but a few minutes to tack on the loose shoe and check all the other horses’ feet. After that, he found a pick and a shovel before he hurried off to the clearing and began to dig the graves. The miserable cornfield was as rocky as flint, and it took Bert almost two hours of hard work to dig four graves. They weren’t deep, but they were sufficient. It was Longarm’s experience that a lot of good men and women often received a whole lot less of a grave.
“Dump’em in,” Bert said, turning his back on the bodies.
Longarm dragged the four bodies out of the wagon and rolled them into the graves. “So long, Deputy Trout,” he said. “I’ll notify Marshal Wheeler, and maybe he’ll be honorable enough to send your share of the reward to any of your next of kin.”
“What reward?” Bert asked suddenly.
“Never mind,” Longarm said. “Just cover ‘em up. I’ll unhitch these horses and saddle the lead pair. I need to get moving.”
“What’s your hurry, Marshal Long?”
Before Longarm could answer, Oakley shouted, “He’s in a big hurry because he knows that my men are coming and they’re going to torture you for helpin’him and then they’re going to set me free.”
Bert wiped his hand across his face. “Is that true?”
“No,” longarm said, “it is not. I gave his friends the slip way back in Gold Mountain.”
“You think you gave ‘em the slip!” Oakley crowed.
Bert began to shovel dirt in a hurry. “Maybe I’ll just cover these up and smooth things over so nobody will know about this burying business. I can do the grave markers later. No hurry, is there?”
“Nope,” Longarm said.
Longarm got the lead horses saddled, and then he needed Bert’s help to get the big outlaw on a horse.
“Don’t you even have time to come and look at my little gold mine?” Bert asked.
