Molly carried a six-gun, and now she dragged it up and pointed it at the young man’s chest. “No, you didn’t,” she said, cocking back the hammer. “You must have stole it from Marshal Custis Long of Denver. Now, where is he?”
Bert’s eyes widened with fear and his hands shot up over his head. “Are you the ones that he warned me about?”
“No,” Molly said with disgust, “but I mean business, that’s for damned sure. Now where is the marshal?”
Before Bert could answer, Sophie twisted around in her saddle and spied the fresh graves. “Look, Molly. Over in that dead cornfield you can see where the dirt has just been turned.”
“Four graves,” Molly said, looking back at the man now quaking in fear on the seat of the medicine wagon. “Mister, you had just damn well better start talking fast.”
“Don’t shoot!” he cried. “I’m the marshal’s friend! He asked me to bury them four and, in return, he paid me a dollar and this wagon.”
“Liar!” Molly cried. “He wouldn’t give you that wagon for nothing but a measly dollar!”
“And what,” Sophie demanded as she produced her derringer and also pointed it at the now thoroughly frightened homesteader, “happened to that ornery, murdering sonofabitch Ford Oakley?”
“I’ll tell you everything!” Bert said. “Just please don’t shoot.”
“Then quit shaking and start giving us some answers,” Molly ordered as she lowered the gun.
Bert managed to calm himself down. He told them everything—everything, that is, except about Longarm’s note and the fact that he had probably struck it rich up behind his log cabin.
When he was finished, Molly said, “You got any way to prove what you’re telling us is the truth?”
Bert took a deep breath and said, “You could dig up those graves and you’d see that the deputy from Gold Mountain is lying in one of them and that the others are filled with bad-looking men instead of Marshal Long or his prisoner.”
“Yeah,” Sophie said, wrinkling her nose because the idea was so objectionable, “I suppose that we could do that.”
“No,” Molly decided, “that would take up too much time. We have to get out of here, remember?”
Sophie looked back over her shoulder and nodded with understanding. “You’re right.”
Bert followed their gaze. “Ladies, is there somebody following you? Someone that I should know about?”
“Yes,” Molly said, deciding to tell this young man the truth. “We are being followed by some of Ford Oakley’s friends and they are killers.”
Bert paled a little. “Killers?”
“Absolutely,” Sophie said.
“But why would they kill any of us?” Bert asked. “We don’t have their friend in custody.”
“No, but you helped the marshal and they know that Sophie and me would like to kill their friend. Those are a couple of the reasons that first come to mind. They also just like to see people suffer and then die.”
“Oh, my Gawd,” Bert said, wiping his face. “This sounds even worse than the marshal said it could be.”
“It could get real bad,” Sophie agreed.
Bert gulped. “So … so what are we going to do?”
Molly took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “I think,” she said, “the best thing we can do is to lead them off on a wild-goose chase after that medicine wagon.”
“Are you crazy!” Sophie exclaimed, forgetting herself and staring at her friend.
“Only for a few miles,” Molly said, “and then we can abandon the wagon and stampede the mules so that there are tracks going off into the forest in two directions.”
“No!” Bert cried. “I can’t leave the wagon and I won’t give up my mules either!”
“The mules I can understand because they look to be a fine pair,” Molly said. “But why do you want to keep the medicine wagon?”
He couldn’t dare tell them that it was loaded with his precious gold-bearing quartz rock. “It … it’s valuable,” he finally stuttered.
“No, it isn’t!” Molly argued. “It’s not worth much at all, and you can be sure that the Kane brothers won’t take it with them. They want Ford! Not the wagon.”
Bert squirmed under their intense scrutiny. “But … but you just don’t understand!”
“What don’t we understand?” Molly demanded.
“The wagon is carrying …” Bert heaved a sigh. He was trapped and time was running out. “The wagon is carrying my gold ore!“What!” Sophie shouted.
“It’s true,” Bert confessed, dragging out Longarm’s hurried note. “Read this and it’ll prove that I’ve been telling you the truth from the start.”
“Except for one very important omission about the gold,” Sophie observed. “Is it high-grade stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Bert admitted, climbing down from his wagon and going to the back to unlock the door, “but I promise you that it’s not going to fall into the hands of those outlaws.”
Sophie looked at Molly. “Instead of running, I say just go into that cabin, wait, and ambush the Kane brothers, then share his gold mine.”
