Jay Dupree, Libby, Lulu, and Sue returned to Green River with much less fanfare than there had been at their departure. When they left, they were riding in a carriage, complete with driver, followed by an entourage of four fully loaded freight wagons. They returned in a buckboard that Jay was driving, and they were alone; no freight wagons followed them.
The town was almost as crowded as it had been when they arrived the first time, only now the crowd was leaving.
Jay stopped the buckboard at the railroad station. “I’ll get tickets back to Chicago,” he said, climbing down. “You ladies wait here.”
Libby was sitting on the front seat, Lulu and Sue were on the back. They began talking among themselves as they waited.
“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” Lulu said.
“Yes,” Sue said. “But I can’t help but feel sorry for all those men who worked so hard, when all along there was nothing there.”
“I feel sorry for them too,” Libby said. “And for Jay. He lost a lot of money in this venture.”
Jay returned to the buckboard.
“Did you get tickets?” Sue asked.
“Yes,” Jay said. He climbed into the driver’s seat and picked up the reins. “But because so many people are leaving, the earliest I could get all of us booked on the same train is seven days from now.”
Chapter 21
THAT NIGHT, HAWKE TOOK THREE MEN WITH HIM: Rob, Willie, and Win. When Eddie heard they were going, he wanted to go as well, but he was still recovering from his wound so he had to stay behind. When they reached the dam at just after midnight, Hawke held up his hand to stop the others. They dismounted and ground hobbled their horses. Hawke took his saddlebags from his horse and draped them over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said, starting toward the dam.
Just a slice was missing from a nearly full moon, so the five men had an excellent view of the stream, the dam, and the sluice gates, only one of which was open. The gates that would have allowed the creek to flow on down to the Northumbria and beyond were closed.
Hawke and the others moved to within about twenty yards, stopping behind a rock outcropping for a closer examination of the area.
“Looks like they don’t have anyone watching it,” Willie said. “Hell, we could just walk right down there and open the gates.”
“Yeah,” Hawke said. “And they’ll have them closed again by morning. I aim to fix it so they can’t close it again.”
“Let’s do it,” Win said.
The three men moved cautiously down to the dam. There, Hawke took out three bundles of dynamite, each bundle containing four sticks. He gave one bundle to Rob, another to Willie, and kept the third bundle himself.
“Get the bundles right up under the dam if you can. That way you’ll get the whole thing. But don’t light them until we are all ready, and we’ll light them together. Win, you keep a good lookout.”
“All right,” Win said.
“Let’s go,” Hawke ordered, moving toward the dam. He sent Willie to one end of the dam, and Rob to the other, while he planted his bundle in the middle. When he had his in position, he raised up and looked to the left and the right.
“Ready?” Hawke called.
“Ready,” Rob answered.
“Ready,” Willie said.
“Light the fuses, then get the hell away!” Hawke shouted.
He struck the match, cupped his hand around the flame to keep it from blowing out, and held it to the fuse. The end of the fuse glowed, then caught and began spitting off sparks.
Hawke turned away from it and ran back toward the rock outcropping, arriving at about the same time as Willie and Rob. Rob stuck his fingers in his ears as the four men waited.
Willie’s charge went first, a flash of light, followed a second later by the heavy thump of the explosion. Then came Rob’s, followed almost immediately by the dynamite Hawke had placed. Even from there they could feel the concussion of the blow. Then pieces of debris rained down from the sky, followed by the sound of rushing water as Sugar Creek began to flow again.
“Yahoo!” Win shouted. “Damn that was good.”
“All right, boys, let’s get back home,” Hawke said. “We’ve done a good night’s work here.”
By the next day, everyone on Northumbria and the adjacent ranches knew that the water was flowing again. And shortly after they learned that the water was flowing, they also found out why. Hawke and the men who had ridden with him became the heroes of the valley.
“What am I paying you for?” Bailey railed at Dancer.
“To be your bodyguard,” Dancer answered.
“No, I’m not paying you just to be my bodyguard. That’s just what I tell everyone,” Bailey said. “What I really pay you for is to make certain that things like what just happened don’t happen.”
“I wasn’t there,” Dancer replied. “If I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You are supposed to be intimidating enough that nobody would dare do something like this,” Bailey said. “Here you are, one of the most famous gunfighters in the West, but a bunch of cowboys have no more respect for you than to go out to the dam and blow it up.”
“I wasn’t there,” Dancer said again.
“I know you weren’t there, you ignorant baboon!” Bailey said loudly. “My point is, if people were afraid of you, they wouldn’t do it. But you know what I think? I think you are afraid of that man Hawke.”
“I am not afraid of him,” Dancer said.
“Really? Well, you can’t prove it by me.”
Metzger stepped into the office during the argument between Dancer and Bailey. As soon as he realized what was going on, he stepped back outside, without having been seen. He knew, intuitively, that he didn’t want to get caught up in the middle of a fight between Ethan Dancer and Bailey McPherson. The best thing for him to do now, he decided, would be to go down to the saloon and have a drink or two until things calmed down.
A piano tuner had come from Cheyenne, and Hawke stood at the piano with Aaron Peabody as the instrument was tuned.
“You know, there’s not a lot I can do with this,” the tuner said. “The soundboard is warped, the strings are stretched out of shape. This piano is in terrible condition.”
“I know,” Peabody said. “But my brother says I don’t play well enough to make it worth buying a new one. Maybe if you could get it closer into tune, my playing would improve enough to convince him.”
“I’ll do what I can,” the tuner said. “As long as you don’t expect miracles.”
“You want to hear a miracle, you should hear this man play,” Aaron said, nodding toward Hawke. “I mean, even with the piano like this, he made it sound real good the other day.”
“If he made this piano sound like anything at all, it was a miracle,” the tuner said as he continued to work.
When Metzger stepped into the saloon, he saw Hawke standing by the piano. Hawke’s back was to him.
Damn! he thought. He would never get another chance like this. If he was ever going to do anything, he would have to do it right now.
“Hawke!” Metzger shouted. “Turn around and die, you son of a bitch!”
Turning slowly, Hawke saw that Metzger was pointing his gun at him.
“I missed you the other night,” Metzger said. “But I ain’t goin’ to miss you now.”
“So you
“Yeah, that was me.” Metzger smiled a crooked, evil smile. “When you get to hell, tell my ol’ pards Poke ’n’
