This time, the situation was special. Before the normal deadline, Zhang Heng had completed the main mission ahead of time.
The quest to find the Lucky Horseshoe was automatically completed after he met Cook and Matthew, and the quest to settle in Lincoln County was successfully completed two weeks after he owned the ranch.
So now, there was no longer any pressure on him to complete the quest.
And his life in the west had just begun. After redeeming the extra 24 hours, his quest time was extended to 520 days. Soon after taming Bad Boy, he received his share of the bounty.
Cook provided him with ten thousand dollars, and he also killed a total of twenty robbers from the Cook Gang, which contributed another eight thousand dollars. So in total, he got a total of eighteen thousand dollars.
This was undoubtedly a huge sum of money in the United States in the 19th century.
After paying off the cost of building materials, he only spent less than 500 dollars. The remaining money was enough for Zhang Heng to live the rest of his life without a care in the world.
That day, the old sheriff and the drunk sheriff came together and brought back news of the remaining Cook bandits. Although the farmers and miners weren't very good at marksmanship, the sheriff and the young deputy sheriff were with them. After a night of pursuit, they killed several more bandits. In the end, only four of them managed to escape. Basically, they were no longer capable of committing any more crimes.
However, for the sake of safety, especially considering the safety of Matthew's family, Zhang Heng made another trip. It took him two months to find all four of them. Two of them were handed over to the local sheriff, and the other two were shot dead by him when they resisted.
At this point, the Cook Gang's matter had come to an end.
However, Zhang Heng did not stay idle after that. In fact, there were a lot of things he could learn from this western quest. In addition to horsemanship, he was also interested in bull herding and rapid shooting. Needless to say, he hoped to further improve his shooting skills through rapid shooting practice. Bull herding … was actually a technical job.
In particular, the use of the noose. A good cowboy could trap any prey. When a herd of cattle attacked, it tested the cowboy's skills and psychological quality. He had to catch up with the cow in the shortest time possible, throw the noose, and subdue it.
This trick could also be used on humans. Without the use of lethal weapons, a rope could be used to quickly incapacitate the target.
Other than that, Zhang Heng was also paying attention to the whereabouts of the game items in this round of the dungeon. Unfortunately, there was no news in this regard.
Zhang Heng now knew where the game items came from. Basically, every game item was related to a deity, just like how every quest had a corresponding deity. Quests were unique, but the deity might not only stay in one quest. According to the bartender lady, there might be a situation where there were no game items in a quest.
He did not know which god this quest corresponded to. The God of the West? The God of Cowboys? The God of Desolation and the Statue of Liberty seemed to make sense in this context. However, since the God of Desolation did not show up like the deities in the previous dungeons, it was clear that he did not want to communicate with Zhang Heng further.
Naturally, Zhang Heng would not provoke them for no reason.
However, his peaceful life of grazing did not last long. Half a year later, he was involved in the county war in Lincoln County. It was a war between Major Murphy, the most powerful man in Lincoln County, and the ranchers around the town. It lasted for five months. Of course, the early stages of the war were filled with harassment and assassinations.
It was not until the fifth month that the war broke out. After Zhang Heng joined the battle with a gun, the ranchers began to gain an overwhelming advantage. In the end, the two sides reached a new agreement. After Major Murphy's hired gunmen were killed and wounded, he promised to reduce the price of the goods he purchased from the east coast by half and never raise the price again. At the same time, he sold the two ranches in his hands and would no longer touch the livestock industry in Lincoln County.
At this point, the five-month Lincoln County War finally came to an end.
Zhang Heng's biggest gain in this county war was not buying one of Major Murphy's ranches at a low price. After all, he could not stay here forever. Money did not mean as much to him as it did to others.
What really interested him was a gunman named Billy Boy.
If Zhang Heng remembered correctly, this guy was the most frequently seen character in Western movies. There were many stories about him.
However, the real person was not as wild and unruly as in the movies. On the contrary, he was quite young and shy. He had recently arrived in Lincoln County and was employed by a rancher. He had also joined the Lincoln County Battle.
Zhang Heng and Billy Boy had fought side by side a few times. Billy Boy was not as amazing as he was portrayed to be in the movies, but his firing speed was indeed fast. Zhang Heng paid Billy Boy a glass of beer to teach him how to fire a gun at a rapid pace.
In the last two months, Zhang Heng basically did nothing but practice drawing and shooting. Finally, he upgraded his shooting skill to Lv.3. This way, whether it was long-range sniping or close-range rapid shooting, he would have no problem with it.
In addition, the two skills of horsemanship and cattle driving finally merged into one, becoming a Lv.2 skill called cowboy.
Before Zhang Heng left, he divided the remaining 15,000 yuan into two bags.
One bag was buried under the fence of Matthew's horse pen, and the other bag was buried under the fence of his own horse pen.
After that, he picked a day with good weather and went hunting with Wendy.
The two returned to the woods where Zhang Heng and the Cook Gang fought. Time had passed, and the place had returned to peace. The corpses that night had been taken away by the bailiff, and the hunter's cabin had been repaired and cleaned. The hunters who stayed at night had chopped firewood and placed it there.
The only thing left was probably the bullet mark on the door.
Zhang Heng and Wendy returned before sunset with the rabbits and deer they hunted. Zhang Heng started a fire and began to peel and cut the meat.
Wendy sat in front of the campfire and watched him get busy.
"You haven't told me where you came from yet."
"Is that important?" Zhang Heng asked without looking back.
"Well … if I tell my child your story in the future, how should I tell him where you came from, how you came here, how you met me, and how we embarked on this journey together?"
"It wasn't my origin that made us embark on this journey together, but your persistence at that time. You are the most stubborn kid I've ever met. You knocked on my door before dawn, and I wasn't awake at that time. But when I looked into your eyes, I knew that if I didn't agree to this brat's request, he would use all kinds of ways to pester me for the next week. He would annoy me to death, and I wouldn't be able to do anything."
"Well, was I that annoying at that time?" Wendy blushed.
"Ten thousand times more annoying than you can imagine." Zhang Heng reached out and touched her hair. "But that night, you saved your mother and father. That was really … a very brave move. Very brave. Although you are a girl, you are stronger than most men I've met."
Wendy seemed a little embarrassed by the compliment. "You saved our family that night."
"Yes, but if it weren't for the time you bought with the shotgun, I wouldn't have arrived before Cook killed your mother," Zhang Heng said. "So, you can say that you changed your fate, child."
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