New Gods of North America

After the meeting became lively, Wayne remained silent.

Mainly, I want to hear the opinions of my peers first.

The steam train line in which Mr. Russell owns shares is located in the "central and eastern" region of the Commonwealth of America. In terms of public security, it is definitely not comparable to the west.

So even if there are robbers, the scale and frequency of crimes should be relatively "average".

Then Wayne slowly discovered that this matter was quite complicated.

For example, the person on Wayne's left means that he is more familiar with the police in some of the cities he passes through, which makes it easier for him to deal with some gangsters who are in collusion with local forces. This segmented division will limit the use of personal connections.

The person to Wayne's right said that robbers who committed crimes in the eastern region were often more professional and better at escaping and hiding their identities. If Mr. Russell also divided the area, then if someone spent a lot of effort to fight the robbers, but the robbers ran to someone else's territory with injuries and were arrested, it would be difficult to divide the reward.

There are also some other scattered opinions, such as "different teams have different strengths", "different costs depending on the distance", etc.

Wayne listened for a while.

In addition to understanding that the robbers are still active today, perhaps they have their own reasons.

I also felt that my colleagues present were all “adults” and they all thought, “I don’t want to make a choice, I want them all.”

So Wayne saw Mr. Russell's expression getting darker, so he came out to smooth things over:

“I think what you all said makes sense, and your views seem to be relatively consistent. Mr. Russell, maybe you could consider letting everyone compete freely.

“For example, there should be robbers who are wanted now, and the freight value of each steam train can be roughly estimated. Then, Mr. Russell, you can set a deadline and make statistics based on the bounty for the robbers arrested, or the losses avoided by preventing accidents.

“Finally, the team with the best results will be responsible for the security of the entire route, or will have priority in deciding the selection of route sections.”

As expected, everyone was more interested in the "winner takes all" plan, and two of them agreed directly.

After listening to this, Mr. Russell seemed to be considering Wayne's suggestion.

The gentleman on Wayne's left nodded first, then looked at Wayne with a smile, and then turned to the others:

"Fighting the robbers along the steam train route will pass through many difficult-to-govern areas, which is quite dangerous. I suggest that teams with insufficient strength withdraw from the competition in time to avoid unnecessary sacrifices. Everyone knows that bullets have no eyes, and even among us, accidental injuries are inevitable."

The gentleman on Wayne's right actually looked more like a bounty hunter. He put out his cigarette in his wine glass and looked back:

"If this gentleman is afraid, he can quit now. Some people may just be lucky and not appear on the wanted list yet, but the judgment of bullets does not depend on wanted lists."

Then there was a lot of hidden needles and hidden knives in cotton and smiles.

Wayne was sandwiched between them and felt like he should trade seats with one of them.

Finally, Mr. Russell whispered to the two men in formal suits beside him.

Agreed to the free competition plan:

"In that case, let's execute the plan we have discussed.

"We are currently planning to limit this to three months. During this time, any team invited by our company will be rewarded 20% of the reward according to the wanted notice as long as they arrest a wanted criminal who has committed or is currently committing a crime on our steam train line. If they stop the crime from happening and avoid us from suffering major economic losses, we will also pay a certain fee after evaluation.

"After the deadline, we will gather you all again to discuss the follow-up plan. Do you have any objections?"

Three months...

By the time we were done, school was about to start.

Wayne led the applause here, "I completely agree with Mr. Russell's opinion."

However, no one responded at the scene. Everyone was so indifferent. Some people were smoking and drinking while watching.

So Wayne took a few shots and then stopped.

Fortunately, no one objected, so after Mr. Russell asked again, the matter was settled.

Then there were lawyers on the scene drafting the corresponding contracts.

Have everyone sign on it.

Wayne took a look at it after receiving it. It was basically the exemption clauses of the steam train company and the restrictive clauses for everyone.

There is actually no clear plan for calculating the reward for "stopping a crime from happening". There is only a minimum price of "no less than US$100 each time if more than three robbers are killed on the spot". The 20% on the wanted order is relatively reliable.

Compared to the sheriff in a western town, this contract does not actually add any new obligations.

We just hope that bounty hunters can ensure the safety of passengers as much as possible and help them reduce property losses as much as possible.

But the steam locomotive company is not a government agency. At most, it can remove some teams that allow criminals to commit crimes and act too recklessly from the "invitation" list.

Wayne had no problem with this, since that's what he did when he was sheriff.

So he signed the contract first and handed it back to the lawyer.

Other team leaders,

Some were still reading the terms carefully, while others did not even look at them, just waiting to see if anyone would find any problems.

Finally, everyone signed the contract and received a copy.

Because everyone was a competitor at this time, Wayne did not talk to Mr. Russell alone. Anyway, he just had to follow the contract.

Mr. Russell did not invite everyone to dinner, and everyone went home after that.

…

After waiting for a while at the gathering place, the detective agency staff came back one after another.

Not to mention that the heavy cargo carriages couldn't run fast at this moment, even the carriages for passengers were crammed with a lot of things.

However, many of the items were what Chef Parker wanted to purchase, and no one had any objection to that.

The carriage gradually drove away from Richmond,

At first, everything was fine within the urban area, but once they left the city, everyone soon noticed that there seemed to be a carriage following them.

Lina looked into the distance from the back of the carriage, "There seems to be only one carriage on the opposite side, there shouldn't be many people, should we deal with it first?"

Wayne threw a chestnut over:

"This is Virginia, not the West. They shouldn't dare to do anything. I guess it's probably the bounty hunters hired by Mr. Russell who want to investigate their competitors. Don't worry about them.

"Unless they illegally invade our detective agency."