logs, preparatory to building a cabin. If he was being followed, this would be good place to confront them.
When Falcon reached the lot where the construction was pending, he stepped off the street and slipped in behind the logs. Pulling his gun, he looked back into the direction from which he had come.
By the light of a full moon and the ambient light of the nearest street lamp, he saw the men who were following him. He could see their forms, but not their faces, so he would have been unable to identify them even if he had known them.
There were three of them, all with drawn pistols. They had come off the main street and were now walking in the same direction Falcon had taken, pausing for a moment to look around. Evidently they had not seen him slip behind the logs and now they were wondering what happened to him.
From the center of the town could still be heard the raucous sounds of cowboys celebrating their selection or lamenting their failure. There were shouts, laughter, and loud conversations, even as the discordant singing continued to do battle with the tinkling of the only piano in town.
“What the hell?” Slayton asked. “Where did he go, Dewey?”
“I don’t know, one minute he was right in front of us, the next minute he was gone,” Dewey answered. “He just disappeared, like a haint or somethin’.”
“MacCallister ain’t no haint, I can tell you that,” Taylor said. When you and the others left me behind back at the train robbery, I got a chance to see him up real close, remember?”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t have no choice, we had to leave you,” Dewey replied. “But we come to break you out of jail, so you really ain’t got no complaint now, have you?”
“Keep your eyes open. He has to be down here, somewhere,” Slayton said.
“Yeah, Slayton, we know he is here somewhere,” Dewey said. “We all seen him come this way. The question is, where?”
“Wherever he is, I aim to find him, and I aim to kill the son of a bitch,” Slayton said.
“Ebersole said don’t kill him yet,” Dewey said.
“I don’t care what Ebersole said, I say we should kill him. Hell, I should have killed the bastard back in Sheridan when I had the chance.”
“Haw,” Taylor said. “From what I heard, you didn’t have no chance with him back in Sheridan.”
“That’s ’cause he got the drop on me when I wasn’t lookin’,” Slayton said. “Well, I’m lookin’ now, and I aim to kill ’im.”
“I don’t know,” Taylor said. “Maybe we should go back and get Ebersole, Peters and Hawkins.”
“No, I think Slayton is right,” Dewey said. “Ebersole and the others is keepin’ an eye on Buffalo Bill, and we may not get another chance this good. Besides, there’s three of us and only one of MacCallister. Just how damn hard can it be for three people to kill one man?”
“From what I’ve heard of MacCallister, it ain’t goin’ to be easy, even with the three of us,” Taylor said.
Because he had overheard the conversation, Falcon now knew who was after him. He recognized Taylor’s voice and knew that he was the one they had captured after the aborted train robbery. And from Taylor’s comment about being left behind, he knew that the other man must have been one of the train robbers who escaped. He recognized Slayton too, from the run in he had with him back in Sheridan. What he did not understand is why Slayton was with the train robbers.
Looking around, Falcon saw a fairly good-sized rock lying on the ground. He picked it up and tossed it toward a rock outcropping. As he hoped it would, it made a loud, chinking sound.
“He’s over there, by them rocks!” he heard one of them yell out loud.
“Shoot him! Shoot the son of a bitch!”
All three men began shooting then. The night was illuminated with muzzle flashes as guns roared and bullets screamed as they ricocheted off into the darkness. There were flashes of orange light as the bullets sparked little fireballs when they hit the rocks.
Falcon was well positioned to pick out his targets. The three shooters were clearly visible in the moon’s glow, backlit by the street lamp behind them, and illuminated by their own muzzle flashes. They made perfect targets, and Falcon picked one of them off with one shot.
“Damn! He’s seen us!”
“Son of a bitch! He ain’t by the rocks, he’s over there! Kill him! Kill the son of a bitch before he kills us!” the other yelled.
Amazingly, the remaining two attackers made no attempt to find cover or to run away. Instead, they stood their ground and continued to shoot at him.
Falcon shot two more times, and the final two went down.
Then it was quiet, except for the barking of some nearby dogs and the ongoing singing and celebration from Cinnabar’s lone saloon. A billowing cloud of gun smoke drifted up over the deadly battlefield and Falcon walked out among the fallen assailants, moving cautiously, his pistol at the ready.
He needn’t have been so cautious. All three men were dead.
By now the insistent singing of the cowboys had won over the piano player and the piano joined them as more began to sing, the words and celebratory music incongruent with the scene that had just played out in this open lot, could be heard all over the little town.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
