sent jagged bolts of lightning streaking to the ground. The change in the weather had occurred quickly, the way it often did on the plains. But fortunately the rain had not yet started when Hawke saw the little cabin. Smiling at his good luck, he headed toward it.
He saw a flash of light at the window and heard the report of a rifle shot. The bullet struck his horse in the head, making a thocking sound, like a hammer hitting a block of wood. The horse went down and Hawke went down with it. His impact with the ground caused the Colt .44 to pop out of his holster and slide away from him. Worse, the horse fell on his leg, pinning him beneath the animal and leaving the .44 about three feet beyond his grasp.
Hawke was still reaching for his pistol when he saw two men leave the cabin then disappear behind a large boulder. A moment later they reappeared, mounted now, and rode up slowly, confidently, arrogantly. The boulder had hidden their horses, contributing to Hawke’s belief that the cabin was unoccupied.
“Well now, Poke, what do we have here?” the smaller of the two men asked when they reached Hawke. He was narrow-faced, hook-nosed, and with one eye that didn’t quite track with the other one.
Poke’s laugh was high-pitched, a cackle. The larger of the two, his most prominent feature was a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth.
“I’ll tell you what we got us here, Gilley. We got us a rabbit, all staked out on the ground, waitin’ to get his ass killed.”
The two men, still mounted, looked down at Hawke. Their drawn pistols were pointed at him.
“You got ’ny last words before we kill you, mister?” Poke asked.
“Yeah. Why did you shoot at me?”
“You come ridin’ in here like the cavalry gallopin’ in to save the settlers,” Poke said. He looked over at Gilley. “I’ll bet he was already countin’ his reward money.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawke said. “All I was doing was looking for a place to get out of the rain.”
“Yeah, well, in a minute you ain’t goin’ to be worryin’ about the rain,” Gilley said.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then I’ll make it easy for you,” Poke said. “We shot you ’cause you was here.”
“Well hell, mister, everyone has to be somewhere,” Hawke said.
Poke laughed again. “Everyone has to be somewhere,” he repeated. “You know what, Gilley? This here is a funny man. Too bad we have to kill him.”
“Then don’t do it. What do you say that the three of us go into town and have a few drinks? You’ll find out that I’m just a barrel of laughs,” Hawke said.
He was playing for time by keeping the conversation going for as long as he could. All the time he was talking, he was also working his rifle out of its saddle sheath. But like his leg, the saddle sheath was held down by the weight of the horse, making it difficult for him to extract the weapon. On the other hand, the fact that the horse was lying on the rifle managed to cover his efforts, so neither of the two men realized what he was doing.
“Yeah, well we ain’t likely to be havin’ no drinks together,” Poke said. “’Cause you see, we’ll be busy and you’ll be dead.”
Laughing at his own joke, Poke and Gilley raised their pistols to fire.
At that moment Hawke managed to yank his rifle free. He knew he had no time to aim. All he could do was jack a round into the chamber and fire. His bullet hit Poke’s horse just before Poke pulled the trigger. As the horse went down, it caused Poke to twist around as he fired, and because he was out of position, his bullet shattered the knee on the right foreleg of Gilley’s horse. That left Gilley on a collapsing horse, and like Poke, his shot was also wild.
Using the rifle barrel as a lever, Hawke managed to get enough space to pull his leg out. He rolled away just as Poke and Gilley, both unseated now, fired a second time. Their bullets kicked up dirt where a split second earlier he had been lying.
As Hawke rolled away he passed over his pistol. Grabbing it, he came out of the roll on his stomach and thrust his gun hand forward.
“What the hell! Poke, he’s got—”
That was as far as Gilley got with his warning, because Hawke pulled the trigger and his shot caught Gilley in the Adam’s apple. Poke fired a third time, but again Hawke managed to roll away. Hawke’s second shot was as deadly as his first, and Poke went down as well.
Still wary of his two would-be assailants, Hawke got to his feet, gun in hand. His leg, which had been pinned under his horse, bothered him a bit as he limped over to have a closer look at the two men. It didn’t take much of an examination to see that both men were dead. There was a hole in Poke’s forehead, and Gilley’s eyes were open but opaque, staring off in two directions, even in death.
He was still puzzled as to who his attackers were and why they had opened fire on him. What did they mean when they said he had ridden in like the cavalry rescuing settlers? And what reward were they talking about? Hawke looked at the three horses. His and Poke’s were dead. The third horse, Gilley’s, had managed to stand up again, but was wobbling around on a shattered and bloody knee. Hawke sighed, then limped over and embraced the horse’s head. He looked into the creature’s big, liquid brown eyes and saw intense pain and confusion.
“I’m sorry, fella,” he said to the horse. “It wasn’t your fault that your rider was such a sorry-assed bastard. It breaks my heart to do this, but believe me, it’s better for you.”
Hawke shot the horse between the eyes, then shook his head as he realized that he was in the middle of nowhere without a mount.
“Damnit!” he shouted in anger. “Who the hell were you two? And why did you shoot at me?”
The dark sky and ominous clouds chose that moment to deliver on their threat. The rain came down in large, heavy drops. The lightning, sporadic until then, increased in frequency until it was almost one sustained lightning flash, a new bolt striking before the previous one left. The thunder boomed in a continuous roar, not unlike the artillery bombardments Hawke could remember from the war.
Pulling his saddle and saddlebags from his horse, he hurried through the rain toward the shelter of the small cabin. He was about to step inside when he thought of the two men lying in the dirt a hundred yards behind him and realized there might be another one waiting for him. Pulling his pistol, he kicked open the door then fell to the floor inside, rolling away from the door with his gun at the ready.
No one came toward him.
Hawke lay on the floor for a moment, making a slow, thorough sweep of the cabin. Convinced that the cabin was empty, he stood and returned his pistol to the holster.
That was when he heard the bump.
Drawing quickly, he spun toward the sound, gun in hand again, eyes narrowed and ready.
He heard another bump, accompanied this time by a squeaking sound.
Curious, and cautious, Hawke moved carefully toward the sound. It was coming from the back of an overturned table. Looking around the table, he was startled by what he saw.
A pair of wide-open, blue, frightened eyes stared back at him. The eyes belonged to a woman, obviously the source of the squeaking he’d heard. She was making the only sound she could, because there was a gag around her mouth. In addition to the gag, she was bound, head and foot, by ropes, and Hawke was surprised to see that she was wearing a nightgown.
After one more quick perusal to make certain nobody was using the girl as bait, he knelt beside her and removed her gag.
“There were two outside,” he said. “Are there any more?”
“Not that I have seen,” the woman answered. “Please, don’t let them come back.”
“They won’t be coming back.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I killed them,” Hawke said.
The woman nodded. “Good. I’m glad you killed them.”
“Who were those men, do you know?” Hawke asked.
“Other than the fact that they called each other Poke and Gilley, I have no idea.”
The woman spoke with a cultured accent that Hawke recognized as British.
“Are you all right? Did they do anything to you?”
“What sort of question is that? Of course they did something to me. They kidnapped me, then they tied me
