New Gods of North America

The next day, after saying goodbye to the mounted police, Wayne accompanied them for a short distance, and then they crossed the county line and passed through two small towns along the steam train route.

After finding out that this area seemed to have been preliminarily "swept" by other teams, Wayne and his team simply changed direction.

Instead of following the steam train route, they followed the "two points and one line" on the map and headed straight for the stronghold of the "Thin Gang" in the intelligence.

Although it is said to be "straight ahead", the actual route is not that "straight".

On the one hand, the area from western Virginia to Ohio is still mostly mountainous, so you have to take a detour. You can't just go straight over the mountains and valleys.

On the other hand, I want to avoid some small towns that may have "problems". I can't be afraid of trouble when I go out, but it is always better to have less trouble than more.

——Positions such as mayors, town council members, or sheriffs are all elected by the townspeople. To truly deal with them, you need to first obtain evidence and convince the townspeople or state and county judges to remove or try them.

And unless they were selected by changing their names and concealing their identities, there is a high probability that they do not have their own wanted warrants now.

It's both troublesome and likely to do no good.

If your luck is even worse, maybe they are actually "following public opinion", which could mean you are "walking into a trap".

So Wayne and his team tried their best to stay on the borders of different towns and follow the relatively flat route towards the state border.

After traveling for about four days, they chose a relatively safe town to resupply.

At this point, Wayne and his team were relatively close to the state border. If they continued forward, there would only be one or two small towns between them and the state border.

If you miss this town, all the towns you will pass by next will be suspected "problem towns".

Since it is off the steam train route, no other bounty hunters have visited this place recently.

However, due to its relative remoteness, the town is also relatively closed and stable. The team of more than 30 people purchased some food and almost cleared out a batch of bread that had just been baked in the store. Originally, people planned to sell a batch of bread for at least a few days, but in the end, the store wanted to keep some inventory to deal with old customers in the next two days, so they didn't really move all the goods.

Dried meat is fine, but fresh meat, tobacco, alcohol, etc. are all in a similar situation.

Anyway, everyone can use their own money to save money, so as not to drive up prices, but if you are slow, you may run out of money.

When Wayne updated the wanted order from the police station and got some information,

Ryan and his team were reselling tobacco with a few guys who were not part of the detective agency but were considered colleagues.

It's not that the middlemen are making a profit from the price difference, but Ryan is relatively willing to spend money on this and has a strong smoking habit.

So when he got to the store and found that there were not many good quality cigarettes left, he had no choice but to buy up all the loose tobacco that was even slightly acceptable.

Other smokers can only discuss with their friends who have already bought tobacco, hoping to "even it out" a little.

Seeing the dire situation, Wayne and his friends hurried to the restaurant to have a quick hot meal.

Those who go early can choose some dishes made from fresh meat, as well as butter, toast and other foods.

If you go late, you may not go hungry, but apart from sliced ​​bacon, the only options are hard bread with various boiled beans, boiled corn, or "stewed potatoes".

In addition to communicating with their own teams, the leaders of several teams would also gather together more frequently during meals to discuss things.

At this time in the restaurant, Wayne, Inissa and Lina occupied a table by themselves. Emma and the other agents would not come over at this time. Chris and his friends arrived a little later, and then he came over from the bar with hard bread and potato and vegetable soup:

"Mr. Wayne, your detective agency seems to be paying well. We just went to a pub and saw that some of the good wines were bought up by your agents."

This is actually a bit of an exaggeration. Alcohol is durable in storage, and as long as the pub owner is willing, the inventory quantity of many types of alcohol may be "doubled on the spot" or "created out of nothing". It is not easy to clear out cheap alcohol.

So Wayne shrugged his shoulders and said, "Maybe it's just because we've been lucky recently and have made some small gains."

The chef is not cooking tonight. In principle, everyone in the town has to solve their own food problems.

Mr. Daggett's team came over later.

If you want to eat potato and vegetable soup now, you have to wait for the restaurant chef to cook a pot again.

Wayne has been secretly observing Mr. Daggett for a few days now, and asked tentatively:

"I heard from the trooper that Mr. Daggett also likes tobacco. He usually has a constant supply of tobacco. I wonder if he has bought any? If you missed it, I can ask our detectives to transfer some to you."

Mr. Daggett still looked difficult to talk to.

But after getting a little familiar with him, his current attitude is actually pretty good in comparison.

So Mr. Daggett readily agreed:

"Thank you. My stock has been cleared out a long time ago. I just went to the store and asked, and found out that they were all sold out. If I were in town, I would light up my pipe after dinner every day and never stop."

Wayne nodded, "We are just helping each other. After all, we are companions in destroying the gang together."

Good performance, but wrong answer.

Wayne had previously secretly confirmed with a mounted police officer who was familiar with Mr. Daggett that Mr. Daggett had a hobby of collecting pipes and would occasionally smoke some.

But in fact, he is not addicted to smoking. He is the kind of person who "accepts everyone" in social situations, but doesn't care if he doesn't have any.

Therefore, if there is no good tobacco, the more reasonable approach would be to not buy it if he doesn't like it. There is no reason to settle for cheap tobacco.

Just like some people like to hoard alcohol and look like alcoholics, but they actually don’t drink at all on a normal basis and only have a rare “drink” when they are in the mood.

People these days still don’t think tobacco is harmful to health. Although there is a term called “smoking addiction”, it is actually considered a “personal preference”.

Just like no ordinary person would inexplicably quit eating salt or dairy products in this era.

…

After dinner, Wayne and his two companions took Emma for a stroll in the town, planning to take a short walk and then return to the hotel in town to rest.

"That Mr. Daggett really might not be the real person? No wonder his figure is so similar to the corpse we found before."

Lina didn't seem particularly surprised by this incident. "But no one who knew him noticed anything unusual, and his face didn't look like he was disguised, unless he was a twin or a brother. Otherwise, could he be a Beyonder, or have some Beyonder item?"

Lina asked this, but her eyes were actually shining.

Inessa thought for a moment:

"If it is a Beyonder ability, there are many ways to achieve this effect, such as 'mimicry', 'mirror image', 'bionics', etc. There are many fields, but the principles of implementation are different. If it is indeed related to the previous corpse, then at least we can rule out 'parasitism' or 'replacement'."

Wayne still had some doubts, "But it is true that their town had a conflict with the 'Skinny Gang'. It is said that it was Mr. Daggett who took the initiative to defend himself and eliminated many members of the 'Skinny Gang'.

"If Mr. Daggett really has a new person, then judging by the timeline, the previous one should have been hostile to the 'Skinny Gang'. As for the current one, it's hard to guess."

Inissa thought about it and said, "He must have tasted the holy water before. If he is an enemy, it might be a little troublesome."