BIG SOUTHERN (PART 5)

1863

ED LONG

"He's not goin' to say," Deputy Hokansen tells the sheriff.

"Still goin' on about the Mormon family?" Adams asks.

Hokansen nods. "'When you get them to say where they took theirs, I'll tell you where I put mine.' That's about his words, exactly."

"He gonna live?"

"He'll be fine. He's just beat up worse than you'd wanna be. That and a finger shot off."

Hokansen had shot and killed Ed Long's partner, Jake Willoughby, when he tried to make a run at Almo. The only place he could go would be further into the rocks, but escape was on Jake's mind—he'd seen prison before and didn't want to see it again—and he was easy enough to pick off from the posse's position. Long stayed put, knowing it was just him now and no one would be shooting so long as they didn't know where the gold was. He came out with his hands up, smile on his face, not so much defiant as knowing he held a good hand of cards.

"What do you make of the Mormon story?"

Hokansen gave a pause, considered the question. "Well, if it's true, if they did take some of Long's gold—which wasn't his in the first place—they couldn't have gotten that much, could they?"

Adams shrugged. He opened his palms, lifted one arm then the other. "Without nothing to see, there's no way of knowin'. Don't take much gold, anyways, to be worthwhile. Goes a long way."

"I hope it's true. Makes a good story to tell. Mormons thievin' from a thief. Might tell it even if it ain't true."

Long insisted he and Willoughby had been divested of part of their haul at the wreckage that was Fort Hall, by a Mormon man and his wife. The couple had shared a meal with them. Long described them, but it just sounded like another Mormon family, though two sick girls in a wagon would be a good clue. Long and Willoughby had shortcut it from the Virginia City-Salt Lake stage route and headed northwesterly, had ridden their ponies hard the first spell, needed a break when they met the Mormons, who were 'poor as you might figure'. They'd not divulged their true identities, Long assumed. He'd provided the Mormons an honest, if brief, description of the way to Wood River or the Lost, whichever way was the same, one just a little longer, a set of hills further. His description, Long said, was really more of a warning—'a discouragement'—for they didn't look equipped to make a journey of that sort, being ragged already from their trek from Utah.

Long and Willoughby didn't check their load, Long said, until they got to the spot they buried the gold—120 pounds of it, split between the two horses, when they loaded it, they had only 100 when they went to burying it. "We didn't drop it on the way," Long said. "If you're thinkin' that."

There's a silence. It lasts, longer than normal. Adams lifts his hat, sweeps his hand across his forehead. "I don't know if it's worth worrying the law about up to Wood River. Not that there's a helluva lot of law there."

"I can relate the story when I take the stage down to Corinne, they can let the mines in Montana do what they will with it, it's their gold," Hokansen says. He looks at Adams. "We're not going to dig for it, are we?"

Adams throws him a glare. "Just where in the hell do you think we would we start digging?"