“Is that a fact?”
“Yep. Sutter was a good man, but his downfall began the day that he and John Marshal discovered gold beside their new sawmill on the American River. After that, everything he touched turned to dust. The Forty-Niners swarmed over his lands like famished locusts, and they cleaned him out. All his hired help ran off to get rich in the rivers, and Sutter had no one to help him protect his property. And then too, I hate to say it, but the man was a slave to drink.”
“When did you leave the California gold fields and come to Colorado?”
“I arrived in 1858 with about fifty thousand other miners stampeding to the Pikes Peak gold rush. Went to Central City and worked in the mines for a couple of years. When I wasn’t down in a mine, I panned the streams, but I spent my gold dust faster’n I could pan it. Prices went crazy. You never seen such a bad collection of thieves as was in Central City! And there were the usual cold-hearted whores, gamblers, pickpockets, and cutthroats. Worst bunch of scum that ever collected anywhere on Earth, and I was right smack in the middle of ‘em all. Got fed up with it and got tired of eatin’ irregular.”
“Mining is a hard life,” Longarm agreed.
“It’s a man-killer.”
“So what did you do next?”
“Got me a job as a mule skinner driving ore wagons, but I just hated them stubborn bastards.”
“They can be ornery.”
“Oh, hell, yes, they can! Now a horse, they can be mean, but they’re not smart so they don’t get the drop on you very often. But an ornery mule will plot his revenge over some little thing you might have done like tanning his backside. He’ll wait and wait and then, when you’re least expecting it, he’ll nail you to the barn door with his hooves or his teeth! One did that to me and I shot the sneaky bastard. Blasted a hole in his ass!”
Longarm could not help but grin. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” Charley said, looking pained, “but for the rest of his years he walked with a hitch in his giddy-up! I would have killed him for sure, but his owner bashed me across the back of the head with a two-by-four. I was knocked out cold for two hours. When I woke up, I was fired, of course.”
“Of course,” Longarm said. “Well, you are a topnotch driver of a stagecoach team.”
“Thank you! I hope that you can use a gun and a rifle as well as I can drive. We just might need to fight our way into Durango.”
“Where is this gang in the habit of striking?”
“Oh, they got so much country to do it in that they’re impossible to predict. The only good thing about it is that they’re decent enough to give us warning instead of just blowing us off the top of this coach.”
“That’s what I was told.”
“You’ve probably killed a lot of men before, haven’t you, Marshal?”
“Yes, but I take no satisfaction in it. Every man that I’ve ever killed left me no choice. I try to arrest outlaws, not execute them.”
“Try to execute this bunch,” Charley suggested.
“Cause they’re just begging for it. The shotgun guard they shot was a friend of mine. Crippled for life, and with a pretty little gal at home and two small children.”
“Did you ever marry, Charley?”
“Just that Pomo girl. Ever since then, I’ve been chasin’ rainbows and gold nuggets, and I still pan every chance that I get. Wherever there is a clear stream or a river nearby, you’ll find me with my gold pan. Someday, I’m going to find a nugget about the size of a goose egg and that’ll be my retirement. I’ll buy a little house in Durango and marry a sweet widow woman to feed and keep me warm in the winter. I already got my eye on a feisty old gal. She ain’t much on looks, but the truth of it is that I’m no prize either.”
“That sounds like a good idea.”
“Marshal,” Charley said, “You sure married a looker! Whoo-wee! She is beautiful!”
Longarm was flattered, even though he wasn’t really married. “You think Miranda is a catch, huh?”
“Hell, yes! Why, if I were young again and she was on the loose, I’d be howling like a Kentucky hound dog in the moonlight and then barkin’ up her tree!”
Longarm had a good belly laugh over that. “Well,” he finally said, “I have to admit that Miranda is quite a girl.”
“You’re on your honeymoon, or so I’ve heard.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Longarm said, “but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone that I was a federal officer. I’ve already asked the Roes not to mention the fact. I know a couple of folks in Durango, but not many. I know almost no one in Cortez.”
“So,” Charley said, “if I read you right, this trip is more than just a honeymoon?”
“That’s right.”
“Bet the government sent you down here and on this coach just to capture this outlaw gang! Ain’t that the truth?”
“You’re as sharp as they come, Charley.” The old driver chuckled. “Yeah, I’m a lot smarter than I appear. Why, if I’d used my brains instead of my poor aching back, I might have amounted to something more than run-down stage driver.”
“You seem to like your job.”
“Oh, I do! I like it aplenty, but I don’t want to get shot to death.”
“Don’t worry,” Longarm said. “As long as this bunch doesn’t shoot first and ask questions later, we’ll be fine. Just don’t fly off the handle and start blazing away with that hog-leg on your hip or that old rifle.”
“You’re telling me to let you take the lead if there is trouble.”
“That’s right. With the women and the greenhorn down below, I want to reach Durango without any trouble, but I’m prepared if it comes.”
“I saw you showin’ the kid how to shoot last night after supper. He gonna be any help if we need him?”
“I think so,” Longarm answered. “Trent doesn’t know much, but he strikes me as having pluck.”
“He’d better have pluck if he plans to be a newspaperman. It’s not uncommon for reporters to get shot for what they write about in this part of the country. Why do you think there is a job in Durango?”
“I dunno,” Longarm replied. “I figured that someone moved on, or the paper is expanding, or something like that.
“Nope. The last reporter was ambushed one night.”
“Did they catch his murderer?”
“Nope. The thing of it was, the reporter had written so many bad things about so many of the town folks that there were too many suspects to narrow it down to any one person. People are tetchy out here. You write about them in a bad light, they’d just as soon as shoot you in the gizzard as spit in your eye.”
“I’d better have a talk about that with Trent,” Longarm said with a frown. “I don’t want him to make the same mistake as his predecessor.”
“His who?”
“The reporter who was killed.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, my advice would be to give that young greenhorn all the shooting lessons you can before we get to Durango and then trust that the Good Lord will give him enough wisdom not to insult the wrong people.”
That evening they stopped at a high mountain lodge, where a couple named Phil and Lola Jemson put on a good feed and clean bedding for the passengers at a reasonable price. Longarm took Trent outside, where they could talk privately, and then told him about the conversation that he’d had with Charley.
“Holy smoke!” Trent cried. “The editor in Durango never bothered to mention that the fella I was replacing had been gunned down!”
“Well, he was,” Longarm said. “So be careful.”
“You think that I ought to get a new pistol?”
“Yes. A cartridge revolver as well as a shotgun. Keep the shotgun in your room. It will give you and your pretty young wife some valuable peace of mind.”
“Why a shotgun?”