Page 37 of The Prospector's Only Prospect
“State your business,” Virgil called out. “Before we get nervous about your intentions.”
“You got a thief here. Stole my gold watch. I came to get it back,” one said. Virgil could tell he was the belligerent, trouble-making type.
“Who?”
“Don’t know his name, but I heard he came here from Horsefly a month ago.”
“Owen? Any of our men from Horsefly?” Virgil called out while keeping his gaze fixed on the men.
“Got a few. Is he French?” Owen called from off to Virgil’s left.
“Nah. Freckles and a chipped tooth.”
“That’d be Rufus,” Owen said in a lower voice to Virgil. “He wouldn’t be here if I thought he was a thief.”
“Get him,” Virgil said. “Tell him to bring the watch if he has it.”
As Owen galloped away and the strangers drew closer, Virgil said, “You two get down and introduce yourselves.”
“Most call me Sureshot,” the talker said, staying mounted. “This here is Wildfire Will.”
The sidekick looked nervous. There was definitely something shifty about them.
“You can call me Virgil Gardner, and everything you’ve heard about me is true.” Virgil kept the rifle barrel resting in the crook of his elbow as he scratched into his beard, deliberately drawing attention to his scar. “Get off your horse and tell me about the watch.”
The men exchanged sour looks and dismounted. They didn’t seem to have long guns, but each wore a holster with a pistol.
“It’s gold,” Sureshot said. “It has B.E. scratched onto the inside. That’s how you’ll know it’s mine.”
“Those your initials? Sureshot?”
“I won it at cards.”
’Course he did. Virgil would bet all the gold he’d ever touched that that was how he’d lost it, too. In his periphery, Virgil was aware men had stopped working and were peering out of the gulch to watch what was happening.
“I’ll tell you how we settle things here,” Virgil said. “A jury of miners will listen to both sides and decide. If you don’t like those terms, you can wait in town for Rufus and settle it there however you see fit.”
Sureshot curled his lip. Wildfire Will shrugged.
Gristle called out from the cookhouse, “We havin’ a trial, boss?”
“Call the men in, yeah.”
Gristle sent his ladle around the iron triangle with a clangetty-clang, this one less forceful than the alarm he’d sent up when the men had been spotted, more like the call of the dinner bell. Men left their work areas to amble in from all directions.
Which suited Virgil fine. Their men regarded the office as the bank since that’s where their earnings were kept. They would fight to protect it if it came to it.
This would be a really good time for Tom to turn up, but he was still escorting his family south and collecting news from that direction.
After a twenty-minute wait of kicking dust and fat chewing, Owen rode up with a scared-looking knot-head of a kid on the back of his horse, maybe twenty. The boy looked like a dog who’d lost a cat fight.
“Mrs. Davis give you a trim, son?” Virgil asked as the boy slid to the ground.
“Yes, sir.”
“Looks like a blowdown in the back woods,” someone said.
“That’s what I said. Looks like the cow got into the cornfield.”
