“By now you’ve probably figured out that I can make one bullet do the work of about ten,” Hawke said. “If I have to shoot again, I’m going to put the bullets where they can do the most damage…same as I did with the Luke and Percy. You’ve got five seconds to give yourself up, or die.”
Hawke raised his rifle.
“No, wait!…wait, wait, wait!” The terrified word echoed through the canyon. “I’m comin’ down!…down, down, down!”
“Throw your weapon down first.”
Hawke heard and saw a pistol clattering down the side of the canyon. A moment later he saw Dancer coming down.
“I can’t keep my hands up in the air now,” Dancer said. “I need ’em in order to climb down.”
“Come on down, I’m watching you.”
It took almost five minutes for Dancer to work his way all the way down the side of the rock wall. When he finally reached the canyon floor, he turned toward Hawke.
“Don’t you want to try?” Dancer said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t you want to see which one of us is the fastest?”
“I’m not particularly interested,” Hawke said. “Right now I’ve got the gun and you don’t.”
“Answer a question for me, will you?” Dancer said.
“What?”
“Have you reloaded?”
“Reloaded?”
Smiling, Dancer reached behind him and pulled out a pistol he had secreted in his wristband. He pointed it at Hawke.
“That’s a Spencer,” Dancer said. “Seven shots. I counted ’em. You ain’t got no bullets left, boy. It’s time for you to dance with the demon.”
Hawke pulled the trigger and the rifle roared. He hit Dancer high, in the center of his chest, and Dancer went down, his holdout gun falling beside him.
“You tricked me,” Dancer gasped. “You reloaded.”
Hawke cocked the rifle and pointed it at Dancer’s face. Dancer closed his eyes and winced, waiting for the impact of the bullet.
“No,” Hawke said. “You tricked yourself. You counted the echoes.”
He pulled the trigger and Dancer jumped as the hammer fell on an empty chamber.
“I’ll be damned,” Dancer said.
Hawke dismounted at the depot, tied his horse off, and went inside.
“Hawke!” Jay Dupree called. “You’ve come to see us off! How delightful.”
Squealing in delight, each of the three women gave Hawke a hug.
“Ladies, isn’t that nice that he has come to see us off? We’ve been run out of a few towns before, but we don’t often have people coming down to bid us a fond farewell.”
Hawke laughed.
“I hear that you quit your job out at Northumbria,” Libby said.
“Yeah, I did.”
“I would have thought you might stay on out there.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s a beautiful place, it has a fine piano that you could play anytime you want, and Mr. Dorchester has a beautiful daughter.”
“I thank you for your interest,” Hawke said, “but I’ve got what you might call the wandering disease. I can’t stay settled in any one place too long. Besides, I wasn’t that good a foreman. Willie is a lot better than I was. I talked Dorchester into giving him the job.”
“You could do worse than marry a wealthy woman,” Libby said. “And she could do a lot worse than marrying you.”
“Are you playing matchmaker now, my dear?” Jay asked.
“I was trying to,” Libby admitted. “Evidently, not very successfully.”
There was a distant whistle as the train approached town.
“All right, ladies, grab your things,” Jay said.
“Libby, could I speak to you for just a moment?” Hawke asked.
“Sure,” she said, walking away with him.
“Libby, don’t you miss the train!” Jay shouted.
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Hawke said when he had her alone.
“What? What was me?”
“When we had lunch that day, you excused yourself early, remember? You sent a telegram, didn’t you? To your father, the North Carolina congressman.”
Libby looked back toward the Jay and the other two women. “They don’t know,” she said.
“What do you mean, they don’t know? When Jay introduced all of you, he said you were a congressman’s daughter. I didn’t believe it until Dorchester got the telegram saying that all the land would be returned.”
“Look, Lulu is not a New York debutante and Sue is not a Russian princess. Jay allowed us to make up our own stories. I just happened to choose one that is true. And what better way to keep it a secret?”
Hawke laughed and shook his finger. “Somehow, there is a woman’s logic there. I’m just not sure I see it.”
“Don’t try to figure it out,” she said, laughing as well. “It will give you a headache.”
“Come, I’ll walk you to the train.”
The eastbound train pulled alongside the depot platform and came to a clanking, squealing, hissing halt. Hawke walked outside with Libby then waited until all were aboard. Once the train got underway, he left.
As he mounted his horse to ride away from town, he heard a distant roll of thunder. Looking to the west, he saw a dark bank of clouds building up, but knew the rain wouldn’t get there. The Wind River Range would steal what moisture the clouds had, but at least it would make the ride a little cooler.
About the Author
ROBERT VAUGHAN is a retired army officer and full-time novelist. His book Survival (under the pseudonym K.C. McKenna) won the Spur Award for best western novel (1994). He lives with his wife, Ruth, in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
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Showdown at Dead End Canyon Page 22