Showdown at Dead End Canyon

by Robert Vaughan

  “What sort of question is that? Of course they did something to me. They kidnapped me, then they tied me up and gagged me. You don’t think I came here of my own accord, do you?”

  “No, I mean did they do anything…else?”

  “I wasn’t raped, if that is what you mean.”

  By now Hawke had pulled a knife from his belt and was cutting through the ropes that bound her ankles. After that, he cut the ropes from her wrists.

  “Did my father send you?” the girl asked as she gingerly rubbed her wrists. “I was sure that he wouldn’t pay the ransom. It’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing. And my father is nothing if he is not a man of principle.”

  Finished with her wrists, she leaned forward and began massaging her rope-burned ankles.

  “Your father didn’t send me,” Hawke said.

  The girl looked up in surprise. “He didn’t?” Her resultant laughter was genuine, and totally unexpected. “No doubt he will be amused to learn that one solitary knight dressed, not in shining armor, but blue jeans and a red and green plaid shirt, succeeded where his army failed.”

  “Army?”

  “Figuratively speaking,” the woman said. “I’m sure that the moment he learned I was missing, he dispatched a veritable army of his employees in the field, looking for me.”

  “Could I ask you a question?”

  “You’ve just saved my life. That certainly should earn you the right to ask a question.”

  “Why are wearing a nightgown?”

  “I’m wearing a nightgown because I was asleep in my berth on the train when they took me.”

  “The train? You were taken from a train?”

  “I can’t believe that news of my capture wasn’t in all the papers.”

  “It may well have been,” Hawke replied. “I’ve been on the trail for some time. I’m afraid I haven’t read many papers lately.”

  “I’m sorry. I know that was very vain of me.”

  “Do you have any other clothes with you?”

  The girl shook her head. “This is it, I’m afraid.”

  Sighing, Hawke opened his saddle bag, removed a waterproof pouch, and took a pair of jeans and a gray flannel shirt from it.

  “These will be too big for you,” he said. “But it will be better than wearing a nightgown.”

  “Thank you,” Pamela said. “Might I inquire as to your name, sir?”

  “The name is Hawke. Mason Hawke.”

  “I’m exceptionally pleased to meet you, Mr. Mason Hawke. My name is Pamela Dorchester.”

  “It is good to meet you, Miss Dorchester.”

  “The name Dorchester doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

  “I must say, Mr. Hawke, meeting you has certainly been ego-deflating.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t intend to be.”

  “Nonsense, don’t be sorry. I’m sure it’s quite good for me…character building or some such thing.”

  Pamela made a circular motion with her fingers. “Would you please present me with your backside, Mr. Hawke?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Turn around, please, so that I may have some privacy while I get dressed.” In the way of the British, she used the short i when she said the word privacy.

  “Oh, yes, all right,” Hawke said, complying with her request. “Do you have any shoes?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll make you some.”

  “You are going to make me some shoes?”

  “Moccasins, anyway,” Hawke said.

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’ll look around until I find something,” Hawke said, and poked through the cabin until he found some saddlebags. “This will do,” he told her, still keeping his back turned.

  He dumped the contents out—a couple of dirty shirts and even dirtier socks—then, using his knife, he began to carve out the components of a pair of moccasins.

  Meanwhile, Pamela put on the clothes he’d given her. “You can look now,” she said.

  Hawke turned around and smiled. The bottom of the pants legs were rolled up several turns. “You look better in my clothes than I do,” he said. “Even if they are too big. Hold up your foot.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Hold up your foot, I need an idea of how big it is.”

  Pamela held up her foot, and Hawke measured it by making a fist then extending his thumb and little finger. Satisfied, he went back to work.

  “Oh, my,” Pamela said, pointing to the clothes Hawke had dumped. “I must say, you keep cleaner clothes in your satchel than they did.”

  “I like to keep a clean change of clothes all the time,” he replied. Looking up, he smiled at her. “After all, you never can tell when you might run into a pretty young woman.”

  “And tell me, Mr. Hawke, do you put your clothes on every woman that you meet?”

  “No,” Hawke replied. “On the other hand, I don’t run into that many women who are wearing only their sleeping gown.”

  “Touché,” Pamela said.

  “Give me your foot,” Hawke said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Give me your foot. I want to see if this will work.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  Pamela extended her foot, and Hawke slipped the moccasin on and tied it in place with a strip of rawhide cut from the saddlebag.

  “How does that feel?”

  “Quite comfortable, actually.”

  “I’ll have the other one done in a couple of minutes.”

  Resuming work, he said, “You say these two men actually took you off the train?”

  “Yes, in the middle of the night, when we were stopped to take on water.”

  “That sounds like a well-thought-out operation. I wouldn’t have given those two credit for that much intelligence.”

  “Oh, they didn’t come up with it by themselves.”

  Hawke looked up. “They didn’t?”

  “According to Poke, it was all ‘thunk up’ for them.”

  “Do you have any idea who that would be? Who would be behind such a thing?” Hawke asked.

  “No. Oh!” she said suddenly. “If there is someone else, they may be coming here.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then we must get out of here. Mr. Hawke, would you please take me back to Northumbria? I’m sure my father would be quite generous with his reward.”

  “Northumbria? Is that a town near here?”

  “Northumbria is my father’s estate…uh, ranch. It’s near Green River.”

  “I’m not familiar with this area. How far is Green River?”

  “It’s about forty miles, I would think.”

  “I’ll get you home, Miss Dorchester, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a few days.”

  “Why is that?”

  Hawke took his hat off and ran his hand through his trail-length ash-blond hair. “Unfortunately, the horses are dead.”

  Pamela looked at him incredulously. “The horses are dead? All of them?”

  “They shot my horse and I shot both of theirs.”

  “That seems unnecessarily cruel of you,” she said. “Those poor beasts certainly had nothing to do with any of this.”

  “It was an accident,” Hawke explained. “I didn’t intend to shoot them. Here. Put this on.”

  “Oh, so then it becomes less a matter of cruelty and more a matter of extreme clumsiness,” she said as she put the second moccasin on, tying it down just as Hawke had. She laughed. “Heavens, I don’t know which is the more discomfiting thought.”

  “Yes, well, whatever the reason, the horses are dead, so the only way we have of reaching Green River is by shank’s mare.”

  “Shank’s mare?”

  “Walking.”

  “You Americans and your quaint expressions.” Pamela sighed. “Very well. If we are going to go ‘shank’s mare,’ as you call it, then it might be bet
ter to walk to the railroad.”

  “How far are we from the railroad?”

  “I don’t know exactly how far, but I’m sure it’s much closer than Green River. As I said, Poke and Gilley took me off the train when we stopped for water.”

  “You should’ve screamed or something. They would never have gone through with it if anyone on the train had been alerted.”

  “I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t do anything. It was all I could do to breathe. They put something over my mouth and nose, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up here.”

  “My guess is they used chloroform,” Hawke said.

  “Yes, well, the problem is, I was unconscious when they took me, so I don’t know if we are north of the railroad or south. And if we start out in the wrong direction, we could wander around for who knows how long.”

  “We’re south of the railroad,” Hawke said.

  “How do you know we’re south? I thought you said you were new here.”

  “I came up from the south and I haven’t crossed it,” he explained. “You think your feet will hold out for nine or ten miles? The moccasins will keep the rocks and stickers out, but they won’t give your feet much support.”

  “They’ll be fine,” Pamela insisted.

  “All right, we’ll head for the railroad. We’ll start as soon as the rain stops.”

  Chapter 6

  HEADING TOWARD THE BRILLIANT SCARLET AND gold sunset beneath the darkening vaulted sky, the Western Flyer made its way west across the Wyoming landscape. Inside the Baldwin 440 locomotive the engineer worked the throttle while his fireman threw chunks of wood into the roaring flames of the firebox. The train was exactly on schedule, passing a milepost every 180 seconds.

  Behind the engine and tender was a string of coach cars, inside of which the passengers were getting down to the business of eating their supper. Although America liked to call itself a classless society, nowhere were classes more evident than on a transcontinental passenger train.

  The third-class passengers were the immigrants seeking better opportunities out West than they had found in the East. The immigrant cars were filled with exotic smells such as smoked sausages, strong cheeses, and fermented cabbage.

  The second-class passengers were those in the day coach. Often, these were not transcontinental passengers, but merely people traveling from one city or town to another along the route. Most of them were eating their dinner from the boxed meals they had bought for twenty-five cents at the previous stop.

  The more affluent, first-class passengers occupied the parlor cars, and they took their meals in the dining car at linen-covered tables set with gleaming china and sparkling silverware. They made their meal selections from expansive menus that could compete with the finest restaurants in the country.

  One of the diners stopped the conductor as he passed by the table. “I say, how long until we reach Green River?”

  The conductor was wearing a watchfob, chain, and watch across his vest. With an elaborate show, he pulled the watch out and opened it.

  “We shall be there in exactly two hours and forty-seven minutes,” he said. “Barring any unforeseen stops.”

  To his relief, Hawke discovered that as he walked, his leg felt better, and after a while he lost the limp altogether. When he and Pamela Dorchester reached the railroad, Hawke dropped his saddle with a sigh of relief, then climbed up the little rise to stand on the tracks.

  Before him the empty railroad tracks stretched like black ribbons across the bleak landscape, from horizon to horizon. The tracks gave as little comfort as the barren sand, rocks, and low-lying scrub brush of the great empty plains, but Hawke was certain that a train would be coming through before sundown.

  “Oh,” Pamela said. “I don’t believe I have ever walked this far in my entire life.”

  “You did well,” Hawke said.

  “Well? Ha! That’s because you don’t see the bruises and blisters I have on my feet now.”

  “No, I mean you did well because you didn’t complain all the way here,” Hawke said. “You’re a strong woman, Miss Dorchester.”

  “It’s the Brit in me,” Pamela said. “And the fact that my father would have it no other way.” She sat down and gingerly unlaced her moccasins.

  “Your father must be quite a man.”

  “Brigadier Emeritus of the Northumberland Fusiliers, Sir James Spencer Dorchester, Earl of Preston, Viscount of Davencourt,” Pamela said as she rubbed her feet.

  “That’s quite a mouthful.”

  “Of course, here in America he is simply Mr. Dorchester. He gave up his title and his holdings when we left England.”

  “And your title too,” Hawke said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You would be Lady Dorchester. No, that’s not right, it’s your father’s title, not your husband’s, so it would be Lady Pamela.”

  Pamela tilted her head and looked up at Hawke with a quizzical expression. “Oh, my, I’m very impressed, Mr. Hawke. How is it that you know such a thing?”

  “I picked it up somewhere,” he replied.

  “I’m beginning to suspect that you are not quite the itinerant you appear to be.”

  Hawke chuckled. “Thanks. I think.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a watch?”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” he said, and pulled his watch from his pocket. “It is lacking fifteen minutes of seven.”

  “Ah, very good. We shall have no more than a fifteen minute wait.”

  “You carry a timetable in your head, do you?”

  “In a manner of speaking. The westbound train reaches Green River at nine P.M. every day. We are forty miles from Green River, and the train proceeds at a velocity of twenty miles each hour. Therefore, it will be here at seven o’clock.”

  “I can’t argue with that logic.”

  As Pamela had predicted, fifteen minutes later they saw a train approaching. Hawke knew that it was running at a respectable enough speed, but because of the vastness of the prairie, it appeared to be barely moving. Against the great panorama of the wide open spaces, the train seemed very small, and even the smoke that poured from its stack made but a tiny mark on the big, empty sky.

  He could hear the train quite easily now, the sound of its puffing engine reaching him across the wide flat ground the way sound travels across water. He stepped up onto the track and began waving. When he heard the steam valve close and the train began braking, he knew that the engineer had spotted him and was going to stop. As the engine approached, it gave some perspective as to just how large the prairie really was. The train that had appeared so tiny before was now a behemoth, blocking out the sky. It ground to a reluctant halt, its stack puffing black smoke and its driver wheels wreathed in tendrils of white steam that purpled as they drifted away in the fading light.

  “Perhaps you had better stay down here until I call you,” Hawke cautioned.

  “That’s all right by me,” Pamela agreed. “I don’t feel like walking, or even standing up, until I have to.”

  The engineer’s face appeared in the window, backlit by the orange light of the cab lamps. Hawke felt a prickly sensation and realized that someone was holding a gun on him. He couldn’t see it, but he knew that whoever it was—probably the fireman—had to be hiding in the tender.

  “What do you want, mister? Why did you stop us?” the engineer asked.

  Hawke knew that his appearance was not all that reassuring.

  “My horse went down,” he explained without going into detail. “I need a ride.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the conductor,” the engineer said.

  Even as the engineer was talking, the conductor came walking up alongside the train to see why they had made an unscheduled stop. He was holding an open watch in his hand.

  “Smitty, what’s going on? Why are we stopped?” he asked. “We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

  “This here fella wants a ride,” the engineer repli
ed. “His horse went down.”

  The conductor studied Hawke, obviously put off by his trail-worn appearance. He shook his head no and waved his hand dismissively.

  “We don’t pick up drifters,” the conductor said to Hawke.

  “Are you saying you’d leave a man stranded out here?” Hawke asked.

  “When we reach the next stop, I will inform someone that you are out here,” the conductor replied.

  “Well now, that certainly isn’t very Christian of you, Mr. Marshal,” Pamela said, coming up from her place of seclusion.

  The conductor gasped. “Miss Dorchester! My Lord, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Did you know the whole line has been looking for you? What happened? Did you fall from the train?”

  “I was kidnapped,” Pamela said.

  “Kidnapped? What do you mean, kidnapped?”

  “I mean that when the train stopped for water, someone came on board and kidnapped me.”

  “Oh, heavens!”

  “This gentleman saved my life. Now we are trying to get back to Green River. That is, unless you plan to make us rely on shank’s mare.” Pamela looked over at Hawke and smiled, calling his attention to the fact that she had acquired the Americanism for her own.

  “No, of course I would never do anything like that,” the conductor said, falling all over himself now to please her. “I can find accommodations in one of the first-class cars for you, and your friend can ride—”

  “In the first-class car, with me,” Pamela said, interrupting the conductor.

  The conductor cleared his throat. “Uh, yes, ma’am. Yes, of course, he can ride with you as well.”

  “I appreciate that,” Hawke replied. “Oh, and by the way—Smitty, is it?” Hawke called up to the engineer.

  “That’s what folks call me. My real name is Malcolm Smith.”

  “Well, Mr. Malcolm Smith, you can tell your fireman to take his gun off me? I’m just another passenger now.”

  “Billy,” the engineer called. “Come on out.”

  There was a rustling sound as the fireman climbed out of the pile of wood. He leaned the shotgun against the edge of the tender, then began brushing himself off.

  “How’d you know he was there?” Pamela asked.

  “He had to be somewhere,” Hawke said. “It takes two men to drive a train, and Mr. Smith was the only one in the cab.”