Showdown at Dead End Canyon

The canyon exploded with the sound of gunfire as the three men he was trailing opened up on what they thought would be their pursuer. Instead, their bullets whizzed harmlessly over the empty saddle of the riderless horse, raised sparks as they hit the rocky ground, then whined off into empty space, echoing and reechoing in a cacophony of whines and shrieks.

From his position just around the corner from the turn, Hawke located two of his ambushers. They were about a third of the way up the north wall of the canyon, squeezed in between the wall itself and a rock outcropping that provided them with cover. Or so they thought.

The firing stopped and, after a few seconds of dying echoes, the canyon grew silent.

“Where the hell is he?” one of the ambushers yelled, and Hawke could hear the last two words repeated in echo down through the canyon. “…is he, is he, is he?”

He studied the rock face of the wall behind the spot where he had located two of them, then began firing. His rifle boomed loudly, the thunder of the detonating cartridges picking up resonance through the canyon and doubling and redoubling in intensity. He wasn’t trying to aim at the two men, but instead was taking advantage of the position they’d chosen. He fired several rounds, knowing that the bullets were splattering against the rock wall behind them, fragmenting into deadly, whizzing, flying missles of death. He emptied his rifle, and, as the echoes thundered back through the canyon, began reloading.

“Dancer!” a strained voice called. “Dancer!”

“What is it?” another voice answered, this one from the other side of the narrow draw, halfway up the opposite wall.

“Dancer, we’re both killed.”

“What?”

There was no answer.

“Luke!”

Silence.

“Percy!”

More silence.

“Percy, Luke, are you all right?”

There was no answer.

Hawke changed positions and searched the opposite canyon wall. There was silence for a long time, and then, as Hawke knew he would, Dancer began to get anxious. He popped up to have a look around.

“Dancer!” Hawke shouted, and the echo repeated the name. “Dancer, Dancer, Dancer.”

“What do you want?…want, want, want?”

“We’re playing my game now, Dancer,” Hawke said. “Have you ever heard of a place called Devil’s Den at Gettysburg?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” Dancer called back, his words echoing and reechoing. “What about it?”

“I killed twenty-one men there, Dancer. In a place just like this.”

In fact, Hawke wasn’t sure how many he had killed at Devil’s Den, but he’d said twenty-one because he knew it would rattle Dancer.

Dancer fired. Hawke smiled. He could tell by the sound of the report that it was a pistol. Dancer had been so sure of the effect of the three-on-one ambush that he hadn’t even taken his rifle with him.

Hawke raised his rifle and shot at the wall just behind Dancer, creating the same effect he had with Percy and Luke. He fired several rounds—not to kill, but merely to give a demonstration of what he could do. The shots echoed and reechoed through the canyon, sounding almost as if a full army was firing.

“Son of a bitch!” Dancer shouted.

“I can take you out of there just the way I did Luke and Percy,” Hawke said. “Or I can let you wait up there until you run out of water. You didn’t take your canteens with you, did you?”

Hawke was running a bluff. He couldn’t see well enough to determine whether Dancer had his canteen. He would bet, however, that if Dancer had thought he could ambush and kill him quickly, then he hadn’t taken his canteen with him. It was actually a double bluff, because when Hawke sent his own horse through he had not removed his canteen and taken it with him either.

There was no response from Dancer, so Hawke waited a few minutes, then fired two more times. The booms sounded like a cannon blast, and he heard the whine of the bullets, followed once more by a curse.

“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