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didn’t bring him and his people, they would search for the valley themselves.”
    Fargo frowned. Winston hadn’t told him that. “The damned fool.”
    “So you can see I’m not entirely to blame. I hope to sneak them in without the Nez Perce noticing. After that, they are on their own. I’ve made it clear their fate is on their shoulders, not mine.”
    “Tell me something.” Fargo had decided to come right out with it. “Have you ever run into a family by the name of O’Flynn?”
    Gore seemed genuinely puzzled. “The who? They’re not with Winston, are they?”
    “No. They came west about three months ago and vanished. They were last seen at Fort Bridger. The father of the wife hired me to find them.”
    “Oh. I was still in St. Louis then. Maybe they went on to Oregon or California and just haven’t written to him. Or perhaps they decided to settle somewhere along the way, like Winston and his people are doing.”
    Both were possible, Fargo supposed. The sutler at Fort Bridger had told him a family that sounded like the O’Flynns had made it that far. Where they went after they left, the sutler couldn’t say.
    “I guess you’ll be on your way now,” Victor Gore said. “But you’re welcome to stay for supper if you’d like, as a token of my appreciation for you helping us.”
    After what Fargo had overheard Perkins and Slag saying, he intended to hang around longer than that. But he nodded and said, “I’d be obliged.”
    The others weren’t happy about it. Rinson shot him a dark glance. Slag scowled. Perkins fingered the hilt of his knife.
    “Come join us,” Victor Gore requested, and reined his dun toward the covered wagons.
    Fargo gigged the Ovaro up next to the dun. “If you want, I’ll try to talk the farmers into going on to Oregon.”
    “That would be wonderful. Lord knows, I’ve tried. But they’re determined to settle the Payette River Valley.” Gore shook his head. “People can be so stubborn.”
    Rachel was in the back of the wagon, and she smiled as Fargo rode past. He touched his hat brim to her and she did what he expected: she blushed.
    Lester Winston and most of the other farmers came to meet him. Fargo told them about the hunting party. He left out the part about being captured and bound, and the part about the mother bear.
    “So you see?” Victor Gore said. “All is well. Now why don’t we get under way? We can cover a lot more ground before dark.”
    Fargo made it a point to ride alongside the Winston wagon. “Is it true what Gore told me?” he asked Lester.
    “About what?”
    “That he tried to talk you out of going to the Payette River Valley?”
    Lester’s eyebrows puckered. “You must not have heard right. Didn’t I tell you? Mr. Gore was the one who told us about the valley. It was his idea we go there. And I have to say, after hearing how fertile the soil is, and how much game is about, I agree with him.”
    “I wanted to be sure,” Fargo said.
    “Some of my people didn’t like the idea. They were all for going on to Oregon. But Mr. Gore persuaded them to change their minds.”
    “A wonderful man,” Fargo said. And a marvelous liar.
    “He’s got a silver tongue, that Mr. Gore,” Lester declared. “My wife swears he could talk a patent medicine man into buying his own tonic.”
    Fargo agreed. It was the first thing that had struck him about Gore.
    “I happen to like him,” Lester had gone on. “If this valley turns out to be everything he claimed, he’ll have saved us weeks of travel and I’ll be forever in his debt.”
    “You don’t think he could be lying?”
    “To what end?” the big farmer demanded. “What purpose would it serve, him luring us off to the middle of nowhere? We hardly have any money and little else of value save our possessions and our wagons. I can’t see anyone doing us harm over that. It’s not worth the bother.”
    Lester had a point, Fargo reflected. But if Gore wasn’t out to rob them, what was he up