Bounty Hunters, Map Makers Gold Miners | Page 7

on a hot summer day."
Galen turned and left before Maddox could reply.
Galen road off to Charlie's Cantina, one of Eureka's more wretched dives. It was where Galen usually went after collecting a bounty to celebrate. It was also where he went when he needed to find extra gunslingers to help him on a particular job. And when things went bad, it was the place where Galen went to drown his sorrows.
Galen drank three men under the table and threw two more out the front door before he settled down into a corner with a bottle to brood.
Most folk forgot he was even there. What exactly happened next, no one knows for sure. But half a dozen people who were closest to him say they saw Galen stagger to his feet with bloodshot eyes swaying like a pine in a cyclone, mumbling "guns and money ... guns and money ..." over and over to himself. Then all of a sudden his eyes widened and everyone heard him scream one word before he staggered out of the bar.
"Lawyers!"
Eureka only had but so many lawyers living within city limits. Unfortunately for Lantry Landon, his house happened to be closest to Charlie's Cantina. And Galen staggered down the street to pound on Lantry's door in the middle of the night.
"Now let me get this straight, Galen. You want to set up a trust fund where you'll contribute a part of your bounties and make that trust available to anyone willing to go collect on other bounties?"
"With the extra stipulation."
"Right. That anyone who takes from the trust to collect a bounty must donate to the trust a a percentage of their collected bounties as well."
"Yessir, exactly that."
Lantry looked at Galen a moment. "How much whiskey you got in you right now?"
"Look, you old cuss. I can shoot straighter now than you ever could."
"But it don't make sense, Galen."
"Why the hell not, damn it! Say you got some kid who's pretty sharp in the head, fast on the draw, and has a good sense for trouble. Say he's the kind of person who could collect on a bounty. But say he ain't got the money to do it. Maybe he ain't got no guns or ammo. Maybe he ain't got a horse of his own."
"Yeah, the setup I get, it's what follows that don't add up."
"So, say this kid can borrow some money from this trust fund to buy a horse. But he don't actually borrow it in the sense of ever having to pay it back directly. Say he gets to withdraw the money on the condition that if he does bring in a bad guy and collect a bounty, and say he used that horse to do it, then he has to give some of that bounty back to the trust."
"But how do you keep the lunkheads from bleeding you dry."
"I'll pick who gets the first loans. And of those, everyone who is successful, gets a bounty, and has to contribute to the trust, gets added to the trust as a voting member. And every time someone new wants to borrow money, all current members vote on whether to give it to him or not."
"OK, so you get this self-sustaining, possibly growing, trust fund going on for all eternity. The math adds up, I reckon. But there's still a part that just don't make sense to me."
"What's that?"
"Why would you do such a thing?"
"Because Irving and Maddox are milking Eureka dry, and that ain't right. And because I can't think of any other way of showing folks that they're being taken advantage of than to show that we can collect bounties for a lot less money."
Lantry was too tired to argue and just nodded.
The next morning, Lantry filled out all the paperwork and set up a trust account at the bank. He then dropped off copies with Galen.
Galen went down to Charlie's Cantina to find his first recruits. He had worked with many of the bounty hunters who hung out there. He explained the trust to each one of them. Some of them thought him crazy. Other's nodded their head with a "it's just crazy enough to work" look in their eyes.
Wyatt was the first to take him up on his offer. He wanted to get himself one of them new Winchester semiautomatic rifles with a scope. Wyatt went to Lantry who had him sign the paperwork and gave him his money. A month later, Wyatt brought in an outlaw by the name of Tillman and signed his reward over to the trust. The trust then paid him what was his due.
Galen's trust grew into a huge success. It grew to the point where people borrowing from and contributing back to the trust were regularly competing with IP Inc for the same bounties. Once