“I don’t think so,” Longarm said. “Besides, I’m not taking my eyes off my prisoner again.”
Bert nodded, looking very disappointed. “Well, at least let me show you a couple ore samples and then you can tell me how you think it’ll assay out.”
Longarm really didn’t want to be the one to tell this poor man he’d struck fool’s gold. “Listen, Bert,” he hedged, “I don’t know much about gold and …”
But Bert wasn’t listening, and sprinted into his cabin. A few moments later he appeared with a couple of small quartz samples. “What do you think?” he asked, handing them to Longarm. “They ain’t just pieces of fool’s gold, are they?”
Longarm wasn’t a mining man, and what he knew about gold and iron pyrite could be summed up in two or three sentences. But when he scraped the edge of his thumbnail into the bright yellow metal and his thick nail left a visible imprint, Longarm grinned because he was pretty sure that Bert had indeed found some gold shot through the quartz rock. Oakley was also straining to see the samples.
“Well,” Bert asked anxiously. “What do you think?”
Longarm glanced up at the outlaw, then furrowed his brow with disapproval because he wasn’t about to let Ford Oakley in on Bert’s secret. “Bert,” he said, “I’m afraid this ore is worthless iron pyrite.”
“No!” Bert cried, snatching back the samples, head wagging back and forth. “Marshal, you’re wrong!”
“I wish that I was,” Longarm said with a sad shake of his head. “But that’s not the case. Sorry.”
“You have to be wrong!” Bert cried, looking as if he was going to fall to pieces.
“I’m not,” Longarm said, climbing onto the lead horse and jamming his boots into the stirrups. “You’ve got a wagon, a few dollars, and two good weapons. So load up whatever you can, hitch those Missouri mules, and leave this lonesome country behind.”
Bert looked crushed and he sobbed, “But I … I was so sure that I’d struck it rich!”
“I’m sorry,” Longarm consoled. “But if it’s any help, I do have a friend in Elko that will give you a good price for that wagon and your livestock. Are you interested?”
“Guess so,” Bert mumbled, staring at his ore samples with a dazed expression. “Got a pencil and paper in that cabin?”
“Yeah.”
“Get them,” Longarm ordered.
When Bert staggered away, Oakley snorted, “What a gawddamn fool! I thought anyone knew the difference between real gold and fool’s gold.”
“Nope,” Longarm said, “apparently not.”
“He’s worthless,” Oakley snorted. “Just a cull.”
“I’m afraid so,” Longarm agreed.
“My men will probably put the fool out of his misery when they ride through here to kill you.”
Longarm didn’t say anything. He just waited until Bert shuffled back with a pencil and paper and then he scribbled a quick note:
To be on the safe side, leave at once for the next few weeks. Bert, you have found REAL gold! Good luck!
“Here,” Longarm said, “stuff this in your pocket and pack up everything you’ve got and then git!”
Bert nodded and, still in shock, wandered back into his cabin.
Longarm didn’t know how long it might be before the sad young homesteader happened to read his note. When Bert did read it, Longarm suspected the man might whoop and holler for joy. It would be safer for him if there was nobody about when that happened. What Bert did then was his own business. Longarm just hoped that the kid found a partner or someone he could really trust and that he’d not be cheated out of his good fortune.
But judging from what he’d seen of poor Bert, the odds were that he’d be skinned out of everything.
Chapter 13
Sophie and Molly caused quite a stir when they galloped into Lone Pine and began to search for the medicine wagon. And although the town was small and they looked everywhere, the distinctive wagon was nowhere to be found.
“Well,” Sophie said with mounting exasperation. “What do we do now?”
“There’s no law in this awful place,” Molly said, aware that dozens of hard-rock miners were ogling them with lust in their bloodshot eyes. “If we find the wagon, we find Marshal Long and that murdering Ford Oakley, so I say we had better start by finding out just where that wagon went.”
“Any suggestions how?”
Molly pointed to a young man in bib overalls who was gawking at them. “We might as well start by asking him.”
She rode over to the man, who pulled off his hat and then looked over both shoulders, certain that Molly was talking to someone behind him when she said, “Hi there, handsome!”
“Uh, who me?”
“That’s right. We’ve just arrived from Gold Mountain. We’re in town looking for a man that drove a medicine wagon in yesterday. Do you have any idea-“
“That’d be Marshal Long,” the man said, stepping eagerly forward. “Sure, I saw him! The whole town did. There was a big shootout and everything. Never saw so much blood and excitement.”
“Blood?” Sophie whispered.
