Showdown at Dead End Canyon

by Robert Vaughan

  “Are you the new foreman Willie told us about?” one of the men asked. “Are you Hawke?”

  “I am,” Hawke said. “What do you need?”

  “Well, the thing is, Hawke, uh, Mr. Hawke, me ’n’ Eddie Taylor…” He paused in mid-sentence and pointed to the man standing beside him. “This here is Eddie Taylor, I’m Win Woodruff. And the thing is, we used to cowboy here.”

  “And we was good hands too,” Eddie said. “You can ask any of the other cowboys here and they’ll tell you. We was good hands.”

  “But we quit to go hunt for gold,” Win continued.

  “Only we didn’t find none,” Eddie said.

  “’Cause I don’t think there’s none there,” Win added.

  Hawke stared at the two men. He knew that they wanted him to ask them to come back to work for the ranch, but he was determined to make them ask.

  “So, uh…” Win said. He cleared his throat nervously. “Uh, so, we thought maybe…”

  “Maybe we could get our old job back,” Eddie put in quickly.

  “When’s the last time you two men had a good meal?” Hawke asked.

  “Well, we had some jerky this mornin’,” Eddie said.

  “And yesterday,” Win added. “And the day before that too.”

  “But now, a real sit down and eat kind of meal,” Eddie said, “well, sir, that’s been a good while.”

  “Have the cookie fix you a plate,” Hawke said. “I can’t be hiring cowboys who are so hungry they can’t work.”

  Win and Eddie smiled broadly, then hurried over to the big wood-burning stove where the cook was already preparing supper. He gave them both a generous helping of some stew, left over from lunch. There was also half a pan of leftover biscuits, and the two men cleaned it out.

  Bringing their food back to the table, they sat down and began eating, wolfing the food down ravenously. It wasn’t until Win had cleaned his plate and eaten the last biscuit that he happened to glance across the table to the map Hawke was studying.

  “That there map ain’t exactly right,” he said casually.

  “What?”

  “That map,” Win said, pointing. “Accordin’ to that map, this whole area here is flatland. But that ain’t the way of it. Crowley’s Ridge is there, but this here map don’t show it.”

  “Do you know how to read a map?”

  “Yeah,” Win said. “’Afore I cowboyed, I worked some for the Union Pacific when they was buildin’ the railroad. I had to read maps all the time, and sometimes even drawed ’em.”

  Hawke turned the map around. “Where is this ridge you were talking about?”

  “Right here,” Win said, “betwixt the Big Sandy and the Pacific rivers.” He traced the location with his finger.

  “Can you point out the location of the Hilliard ranch?” Hawke asked.

  “Sure, it’s right here,” Win said.

  “Just on the other side of Crowley’s Ridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn,” Hawke said with a sigh.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There are five hundred head of cattle up here,” Hawke said, putting his hand on the Hilliard ranch, “that I need to get down here. I was trying to find the best route. But with this Crowley’s Ridge in the way…” He let the sentence hang.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Win said. “The Little Sandy River comes right through the middle of the ridge. There’s a break there that’s prob’ly a hundred yards wide or so. You could bring five hundred beeves through there easy. Me ’n’ Eddie will help bring ’em down, won’t we, Eddie?”

  “Sure will,” Eddie said, mumbling around a mouth full of biscuit.

  “Thanks, I can use you.”

  “When you going to bring ’em down?”

  “Tonight, just after dark.”

  Win looked surprised. “Tonight? After dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh, pardon my askin’ you this, but why the hell would you want to move five hundred head of cattle at night?”

  “It’s probably safer that way.”

  “Safer? To move a herd at night? Through a narrow pass in a high ridge?”

  “I thought you said it would be easy bringing them through the pass,” Hawke said.

  “Well, yeah, I did say that. But I was talkin’ about bringin’ ’em through in the daytime when you can see what the hell you are doin’.”

  “There’s a full moon tonight,” Hawke said. “It will be moon bright.”

  “Still in all, it’s not like bringin’ ’em through in the daylight. What do mean when you say you think it would be safer to bring ’em down in the dark?”

  Hawke took the final swallow of his coffee and looked for a long, appraising moment at Win and Eddie.

  “Safer, because there is less chance of us getting shot.”

  “Less chance of getting shot?” Win gasped. He held out his hand and shook his head. “Wait a minute, hold it. I ain’t goin’ to have nothin’ to do with stealin’ no cows. What’s this all about, anyway? I’ve never knowed Mr. Dorchester to swing a wide loop.”

  “No,” Dorchester said, “and I haven’t started now.”

  None of them had heard Dorchester come into the dining hall. Now they all looked around at him.

  “They’re my cows, bought and paid for,” he continued. “With a bill of sale. You boys are back, I see.”

  “Yes, sir. We just talked to Hawke, and he hired us back. I hope that’s all right with you,” Win said.

  “Yes, of course it is all right,” Dorchester said. “I’m happy to have you boys back. And are your saddlebags filled with gold?”

  Win and Eddie shook their heads contritely.

  “We didn’t find nothin’ up there,” Win said.

  “Not even so much as one little flake of yellow,” Eddie added.

  “Well, I’m glad you both have it out of your system and have come back. I was left pretty short-handed. I hope some of the others will come back as well.”

  “Like as not, they’ll all be comin’ back sooner or later,” Win said. “Soon as they discover there ain’t no gold up there, they’ll come back wantin’ to work.”

  “And I’ll hire them.”

  “Mr. Dorchester, if we ain’t stealin’ them cows, why is it we’re going to get ’em at night?” Win asked. “And what did Hawke mean when he said that we might get shot at?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie added. “I’m not all that anxious to get shot at.”

  Dorchester told them the story of two men riding up to confiscate Roy Hilliard’s ranch. He told them how Roy tried to resist, how they shot him down and then served Mrs. Hilliard with the paper that said she no longer owned the land.

  “They gave her twenty-four hours to get off her property and take her livestock with her.”

  “Twenty-four hours?” Eddie said. “And her just a woman? Now, just how the hell was she s’posed to do that? Excuse my language.”

  Dorchester shook his head. “No need to apologize, I feel the same way you do about it. So, I bought the cattle from Mrs. Hilliard.”

  “You bought the herd while it is still up there?” Eddie asked.

  “Right,” Dorchester said.

  “So now you want that herd down here.”

  “Right again,” Dorchester said.

  “So, if you bought the herd, why don’t you just go up and get it in the broad daylight?”

  “There is a question of who actually owns it,” Dorchester said. “I’m afraid that the Sweetwater Railroad Company believes they own the herd, and they probably have it guarded with orders to shoot anyone who attempts to take it.”

  “Excuse me for sayin’ this, Mr. Dorchester, but that just don’t make a whole lot of sense, you buyin’ a herd that you ain’t even got yet.”

  “Events may yet prove you right, Win,” Dorchester said. “But Mr. Hawke assured me it could be done, so I am putting my trust in him.”

  “You still want to help me bring the herd down?�
� Hawke asked.

  Win scratched his cheek and, after pausing for a moment, nodded in the affirmative. A broad smile spread across his face. “Always did want to try myself a little cattle rustling.”

  “This isn’t exactly rustling,” Dorchester said.

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s close enough. Count me in, Hawke.”

  “Me too,” Eddie said.

  “Thanks,” Hawke said.

  “Hawke, could I speak to you for a moment? Outside?” Dorchester asked.

  “Sure,” Hawke said.

  “Hey, Cookie, you got ’ny coffee left?” Eddie asked, starting toward the kitchen. Win joined him as Hawke followed Dorchester out onto the front porch of the cook shack.

  “Bailey McPherson is the Sweetwater Railroad,” Dorchester said when Hawke joined him outside. “I spoke to her today.”

  “So she’s the one responsible for taking Hilliard’s and Miller’s land?”

  “Yes. And 144,000 acres of Northumbria.”

  “What?” Hawke gasped.

  “That’s what she said today, and she has government papers to back her up. In addition to that, the land she is taking will leave the rest of Northumbria isolated from water. And not only Northumbria, but the entire valley. And without water, my ranch, and everyone else’s ranch—and farm in the entire valley—will be worthless.”

  “Are you going to fight it?”

  “Yes, of course I’m going to fight it,” Dorchester said. He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. “I just don’t know how to fight it.”

  Chapter 18

  UPSTAIRS IN HER ROOM AT THE GOLDEN CAGE, Lulu lit a candle. Then she poured some water from a pitcher into a basin and, taking the water with her, stepped around behind a screen.

  Rob Dealey could hear the splash of water as Lulu began her ablutions. He looked at the bed. It was made, though somewhat crookedly.

  Rob had come up to the Sweetwater Mountains with seven other men from the Northumbria. They had come, in the words of one of them, “bright eyed and bushy-tailed,” to make their fortune in found gold.

  But none of them had found gold, and now there were only three of them left. Micah McGee and Billy Pearson had left first, saying they were going back down to Texas. Eddie Taylor and Win Woodruff were the next to leave, pulling up a couple of days ago. They were going to go back to the ranch and see if they could get their old jobs back.

  Well, that was good for them, he thought. They probably could get their old jobs back. But Rob he knew that he couldn’t. He had been the foreman, and Dorchester told him on the day that he got paid out that he would not be able to return to his old job.

  He was a fool to have left. As foreman, he was getting almost twice as much money as the others. And he had a position of respect. Now he grubbed around in the mud and the mire, searching for gold.

  What a fool he was to have left, he thought again.

  When Lulu stepped out from behind the screen a moment later, he was surprised to see that she was totally nude. And though he knew that most whores promised much more than they were able to deliver, in this case he was not disappointed. Lulu was all she promised and more. She was slender, except for the flare of her hips and the gentle rise of her relatively small but well-formed breasts. Without her clothes, she really did look like she was only nineteen. For a moment he felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of going to bed with a nineteen-year-old. He was thirty-two, considerably older than Lulu.

  On the other hand, Lulu was a prostitute, and prostitutes were without history, therefore they were without age. There was no doubt in Rob’s mind but that Lulu was much older than he was in some areas. Especially when it came to sexual experience. For in truth, his own sexual experiences had been few and relatively far between.

  “Honey, you don’t even have your clothes off yet,” Lulu said, the expression in her voice indicating that she was puzzled by that fact.

  “What’s the hurry?” Rob replied. “We have all night, don’t we?”

  Lulu laughed. “Yes, we do,” she agreed. “It’s just that most men are so—” Lulu stopped in mid-sentence. It was as if she were embarrassed to continue the statement about “most” men. “But that’s all right,” she said. “You’re different.”

  “Does it bother you that I am different?”

  “No. I like it that you’re different.”

  Rob sat on the edge of the bed. “Will you help me take off my boots?” He held out his left leg.

  Smiling at him, Lulu swung a long, naked limb over his leg, pivoting as she did, so that she wound up facing away from him. Rob found the image of her bare behind intensely erotic as she struggled with his boot.

  As soon as his boots were off, Lulu removed his clothes. After he was naked, she leaned into him, pressing her bare breasts against his chest, grinding her pelvis against his and pushing him down onto the bed as she did.

  They lay on the bed exploring each other’s bodies with their hands until, finally, Rob climbed on top. For the next few minutes there was only the sound of heavy breathing, a few groans of pleasure, and the symphony of creaking bedsprings.

  Afterward they lay side by side, bathed in perspiration and coasting back down from their erotic high.

  “Where are you going now?” Lulu asked.

  “What do you mean, where am I going? I’m staying here all night.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean after tonight. When you give up looking for gold, where will you go?”

  “Are you that certain that I’m going to give up?”

  “You should.”

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “Because there is no gold here,” Lulu said.

  “I know that’s what everyone is telling you,” Rob said, “and I don’t blame them. It’s frustrating as hell to bust your ass out there day after day after day and not come up with even the tiniest bit of color. I’m frustrated too, but I’m not ready to give up yet.”

  “There is no gold,” Lulu said again.

  Rob chuckled. “Are you trying to get rid of us so you and the other girls can go out and start digging where we left off?”

  “No,” Lulu said. “Do you know Luke Rawlings and Percy Sheridan?”

  “Sure,” Rob said. “Everyone in the camp knows them. They are the two who discovered gold up here in the first place.”

  Lulu shook her head. “They didn’t discover it here, they put it here.”

  “What do you mean, they put it here?”

  “I think the word is called ‘seeded.’ They seeded several rocks with gold, then scattered them around.”

  “Well now, why the hell would they do something like that? That doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not like they are trying to sell off claims or anything.”

  “I don’t know why, but they did it,” Lulu said. “They just did it.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because Luke got drunk one night and told me,” Lulu said. “He did more than just tell me, he bragged about it. And Percy did the same thing with Sue. They seeded the field up here. And all this time they’ve been laughing at all you men, behind your backs.”

  “I’ll be damn,” Rob said. “You know, I could almost believe it. Nobody has really found anything since we started. Nobody. I just can’t understand why they would have done it, though. By the way, if you know this, why are you and the other girls staying here?”

  “We’re here because we know where the gold really is.”

  “You do? Where?” Rob asked.

  “It’s in your pocket, honey. And the pockets of every other man up here.”

  Rob laughed. “I guess I walked right into that one,” he said.

  Somewhere in the predawn darkness a calf bawled anxiously and its mother answered. In the distance a coyote sent up its long, lonesome wail, while out in the pond, frogs thrummed their night song. The moon was full and the night was alive with stars, from the very bright, shining lights, all the way down to those stars that weren�
�t visible as individual bodies at all but whose glow added to the luminous powder that dusted the distant sky.

  Around the milling shapes of shadows that made up the small herd rode four men: Eddie, Win, Willie, and Hawke.

  “You ever drove a herd before, Mr. Hawke?” Willie, one of the cowboys who had stayed on at Northumbria, asked.

  “No, I can’t say as I have,” Hawke replied.

  “Well, sir, I know you’re the boss ’n’ all, so’s I wouldn’t want to speak out of turn or nothin’, but iffen it was me, I’d start drivin’ ’em toward the river now.”

  “Good idea, thanks. All right, 1et’s start ’em toward the river,” Hawke said.

  “I’m surprised they don’t have anybody out here watching the herd,” Win said.

  “They do,” Hawke replied.

  “What do you mean, they do? Have you seen anyone?”

  “No,” Hawke answered.

  “Then what makes you think they’ve got anyone out here watchin’?”

  “I can feel it,” Hawke said.

  The calf’s call for his mother came again, this time with more insistence. The mother’s answer had a degree of anxiousness to it.

  “Sounds like one of the little fellers has wandered off,” Eddie said. “Maybe I’d better go find it and get it back to its mama.”

  “Leave it,” Hawke said. “We need to get out of here as quickly as we can.”

  “Ah, I don’t mind,” Eddie said, slapping his legs against the side of his horse and riding off, disappearing in the darkness.

  Suddenly, from the darkness, came a gunshot.

  “What the hell is Eddie doing?” Willie asked. “He’ll spook the herd.”

  “I don’t think that was Eddie,” Hawke said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we’ve got company.”

  They heard the sound of galloping hooves. From the darkness, Eddie’s horse, its nostrils flared wide and its eyes wild with terror, came running by them, its saddle empty.

  “My God, where’s Eddie?” Willie asked.

  Now, several gunshots erupted in the night, and the muzzle flashes lit up the herd.

  “Jesus! What’s happening? Who is it? They’re all around us!” Win shouted in terror.

  The cattle, spooked by the gunfire, started running. But Hawke noticed they were at least running in the right direction.