New Gods of North America.

Chapter 225 Chance Encounter
The journey to the nearby town was barely "on the way".
The bartender had previously told Wayne that the next possible crime scene for their gang, called "Gary Adventure," was actually in the other direction of the town's border.

The town's sheriff called himself "Mr. Daggett". He was about forty years old. Although his physique was similar to that of a corpse, he was not dead. Moreover, he was considered to be quite "young and strong" and "strong in military strength" among the sheriffs. He was followed by several people and seemed to have a small team under him.
Perhaps because of the poor local security, Mr. Daggett was a rather strong and difficult person to talk to. When Wayne and his companions entered the town to report the case, they were ordered to surrender their weapons first.

So Wayne handed his weapon to Inissa and asked the others to wait outside the town.
He took Lina and Doug and followed the sheriff into the police station.

Nowadays, people with police badges are not necessarily the sheriff himself, but may be "agents" who are temporarily assigned tasks by the sheriff.
Mr. Daggett seemed to take this case very seriously. After roughly understanding the situation at the scene, he asked about a lot of details and said that he would definitely get to the bottom of the case.

By the way, he also asked about Wayne and his friends' origins.

There was no need to conceal the actions of the detective agency, so Wayne generally told the truth and told the other party that he was a detective commissioned by the steam train company to arrest the criminals.

"Bounty hunters..." Mr. Daggett said with a look of understanding. "Since you are here to report a crime, I will not expel you this time. But you should also remember that strangers are not welcome in our town, especially those bounty hunters who do things without any regard for the consequences."

Well……

It's not wrong to think that the commission from the detective agency is a bounty hunter.

And every town has its own temperament, so Wayne didn't care about it. He updated the wanted poster here and then left.

There seemed to be a lot of wanted posters left here, and it looked like they didn't deal with outsiders much.
After a conversation with Mr. Daggett, Wayne felt that as long as there was a choice, he would not choose to come here when he wanted to exchange the bounty.

There are still inns on the main road outside the town that accommodate travelers and merchants.
In comparison, the hotel owner was much easier to communicate with.

The boss also secretly told Wayne that in fact many townspeople secretly called the sheriff Mr. Daggett a "tyrant".

Mr. Daggett is not only cruel when dealing with criminals, basically only having one option: to kill them or bring them back, but he is also quite strong when dealing with the townspeople, and usually has a kind of "what he says is what he means" overbearing.

But this sheriff is not a bad person. At least he does a good job in "protecting the town", even a little too good. Therefore, the townspeople can only regard him as an overbearing parent. They can't say they like him, but they dare not disobey him.

This is easy to understand. Even among sheriffs in the West, there are many different types.
Some are elected, some are forced into the position, some "cannot escape the expectations and responsibilities", and some "cannot be replaced once they take office".

After all, it was someone else's business, so Wayne just listened to it, collected more and commented less.

The next day, we set out again after dawn.
It took Wayne and his friends almost a whole day to reach the place the bartender had mentioned.

This is a valley between two mountains. The steam train line passes through the flat terrain. There is a not-too-high wooden "railway bridge" over the stream in the middle.
If you look further, you will see that the surrounding area is all mountains and forests, and the nearby towns are not too big, leaving a relatively well-connected unincorporated area, and the boundary is divided into two counties. On Wayne's own map, this is also an area with a relatively high incidence of cases.

However, if you mark the route of the steam train all the way, a bunch of "little red dots" will appear on the entire map, making it difficult to tell where the big fish will appear.
The whole book is filled with key points, but it is almost the same as having no key points.

The bartender who bought the news for Wayne in Clarisburg turned out to be a "wholesaler" of news.
When Wayne and his companions arrived here, they saw that there was already a group of people lurking here. They were not strangers but Chris Mannix, who had just talked about "cooperation" with Wayne a few days ago.

Unlike in towns, bounty hunters tend to be more cautious when they encounter their peers in the wild.

Therefore, Wayne was unable to enter their camp, but only exchanged some information with Chris on the outskirts.

Chris said that their team was the third group to arrive here in the past few days. There were two other groups before them, and now they could no longer hold back and went to the surrounding forests, intending to capture the bandits first.

By the way, Chris mentioned the issue of teamwork again, because among the teams that had left, there was a relatively large one, estimated to be around 20 people,
Chris and his friends didn't want to encounter any unexpected situations in the mountains, so they were waiting here for the other party to leave first.

The number of people in the detective agency is only about twice that of Chris and his team. Although they are still relatively weak, they are not completely powerless.
So whether it is out of competition or safety considerations, Chris feels that cooperating with Wayne and others is a win-win situation.

Wayne has no such plan yet.

Since the detective agency had fallen behind for a day or two, they were no longer in a hurry. They chose a relatively secluded and convenient spot by the stream. Before sunset, they set up a temporary camp and did a preliminary check of the surroundings.
After confirming that no signs have been found nearby, we can only stay on guard on the spot for the time being and continue the investigation after daybreak.

If the situation is ideal, it would be best to go to the enemy's door and catch them by surprise.
Otherwise, if you encounter a gang in active form, you will have to fight them head-on.

As for being taken advantage of by others, there is nothing that can be done about it. After all, there is no one's name written on the faces of the bandits. Whoever hits the victim first gets the property.

As a result, this area has been really lively recently.

When night fell but it was not yet late, Wayne and his team encountered another group of people.

There were about seven or eight people in this group, but they were not bounty hunters. The leader among them, wearing a six-pointed star-shaped police badge, was Mr. Daggett, the sheriff of the nearby town.

(End of this chapter)