Showdown at Dead End Canyon (4 page)

“You,” he said. “You’re the cause of this. One day me ’n’ you’s goin’ to run across each other again.”

“I look forward to the day,” Hawke said easily.

“Go, now,” the bartender said, coming around the bar and poking Metzger with the end of the double-barrel.

Metzger moved toward the door with the bartender behind him. Everyone but Hawke went to the door as well, and they watched as Metzger climbed onto his horse.

“Gittup!” Metzger shouted to his horse, and a moment later the clatter of galloping hoof beats filled the street. The patrons of the Brown Dirt Cowboy cheered.

ON THE UNION PACIFIC TRACKS, THE EASTBOUND
train on which Pamela Dorchester was a passenger made a midnight stop for water. Asleep in the top berth of the Pullman car, Pamela was only vaguely aware that the stop had been made. She was too comfortable and too tired from all the packing and preparation for her visit to Chicago to pay too much attention to it.

Rolling over in bed, she pulled the covers up and listened to the bumping sounds from outside as the fireman lowered the spout from the trackside water tower and began squirting water down into the tank.

“I tell you what, Frank, we didn’t stop a moment too soon,” the fireman called back to the engineer. “This here tank is dry as a bone.”

Pamela could hear the fireman’s words. She thought of him standing out there in the elements in the middle of the night. In contrast, it made her own condition, snuggled down in the covers of her berth, seem even more comfortable. She felt herself drifting back to sleep.

Just outside the train, Poke Wheeler and Gilley Morris slipped through the shadows alongside the railroad track. The train was alive with sound; from the loud puffs of the driver relief valves venting steam, to the splash of water filling the tank, to the snapping and popping of overheated bearings and gear boxes.

The two men had been in position for nearly an hour, waiting by the tower where they knew the train would have to stop for water. Behind them, tied to a willow tree, were two horses. One of the horses was hitched to a travois.

“Which car is she on?” Poke asked.

“Well, according to what we was told, she’ll be in the first Pullman behind the baggage car,” Gilley answered. “First berth on the left.”

Glancing up toward the tender, they saw the fireman standing there, directing the gushing water from the spout into the tank. Satisfied that his attention was diverted, the two men stepped up onto the vestibule platform. They remained there a moment to make certain they had not been discovered, and when they were sure they were safe, they pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The car was dimly lit by two low-burning gimbal-mounted lanterns, one on the front wall and the other on the rear. The aisle stretched out between two rows of closed curtains, and heavy breathing and snores assured the two men that everyone was asleep. Toward the back of the car the porter sat on a low, wooden stool. He was leaning against the wall, asleep himself.

Gilley took out a small bottle and poured liquid from the bottle onto a handkerchief. That done, he nodded to Poke, who jerked open the curtains of the berth.

Pamela, suddenly awakened when the curtains parted, turned in her bed. Before she could react, however, a handheld handkerchief clamped down over her face. She tried to
scream, tried to fight against the cloying smell, but it was a losing proposition. Within seconds she was unconscious.

Still unobserved by anyone else in the car, Poke and Gilley lifted Pamela from her berth and carried her off the train. No one noticed them putting her unconscious form on the travois.

“Let’s go,” Gilley said.

The two men mounted and rode off, even as the train, its tank now full of water, got underway again.

Troy Jackson was the porter for the first Pullman car. A former slave, he been a railroad porter now for five years, and he enjoyed the job.

“Best job they is for a man of color,” he would tell anyone who asked. As a porter, he had traveled all over America, from New York to San Francisco, and from Chicago to New Orleans.

He took pride in his work too, which is why he was beginning to get nervous about the lady in berth number one. It was nine o’clock in the morning and her booth was the only one still not made up. He didn’t want to arrive in Cheyenne without all the berths being properly made.

He had stood just outside the closed curtains of her berth a few moments earlier calling out to her, but she didn’t answer. He couldn’t very well stick his head in. Suppose she was just getting dressed? Finally, he stepped up to the seat of a lady passenger who was only one seat behind the still-made berth.

Bowing slightly, Troy touched the brim of his cap. “Beg pardon, ma’am, but I needs to check on the lady in this berth and it would be unseemly for me to stick my head in. I wonder could you do it for me?”

“Yes, of course,” the woman replied with a smile.

Troy stood back to offer as much privacy as he could while the female passenger checked on the berth for him.
She stuck her head in, pulled it back out almost immediately and looked over at Troy.

“There’s no one in the berth,” she said.

“Ma’am?” Troy responded, surprised by the announcement.

“Here, have a look for yourself,” the woman invited. “There’s no one in the berth.”

Troy looked in the berth and saw only the empty sheets. Pulling back from the berth, he lay his hand alongside his cheek.

“Oh, Lord have mercy,” he said. “Where did she go?”

As soon as Troy reported to the conductor that one of his passengers was missing, the conductor turned out all the porters for a thorough search of the train. Every car was searched, to no avail.

“Are you sure you did not see Miss Dorchester leave the train at one of the stops?” the conductor asked.

“Yes, sir, I’m sure. I stood in the door at ever’ stop, just like I’m s’pose to.”

“What about during the water stops? Maybe she got off to stretch her legs and didn’t get back on the train before it left.”

“Maybe that could be. I don’t stand in the door at the water stops,” Troy said. “Ain’ nobody ever told me to do that.”

“I’m not blaming you, Troy,” the conductor said. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to her.”

The conductor sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. “We’re goin’ to have to send out telegrams to every station back along the way telling the trains to be on the lookout. Lord have mercy on her if she’s wandering around out there.”

“Extra! Extra! Woman disappears from train!” the newsboy shouted, hawking his papers in the café of the Cheyenne depot.

“Big mystery!” the boy shouted. “Her sleeping berth found empty! Extra, extra!”

“Boy, I’ll have one of those!” a woman called.

The boy reached down into his bag to pull out one of his papers.

“Yes, ma’am, that’ll be—” he started to say, but paused in mid-sentence, staring at the woman.

She was only four feet tall. He had never seen a full-grown woman this small, and he stared at her with his mouth open.

“You’re going to catch flies if you leave your mouth open like that,” the woman said. It was obvious that she was used to such stares.

“Yes, ma’am,” the paperboy replied.

“Well, are you going to bring me the paper?”

“Oh, uh, yes, ma’am,” he said. He took the paper over to her. “That’ll be two cents, ma’am,” he said.

“Pay him, would you, please, Mr. Dancer?”

The boy had been so mesmerized by the small woman that he hadn’t even noticed the other person at her table until the man dropped two pennies in his hand. That was when he saw that the man had a terribly scarred face. But it wasn’t the disfiguring scar that caused the boy to stare. It was the fact that the boy knew who he was, and that he was standing so close to a famous gunfighter.

“You’re…you’re Ethan Dancer, ain’t you?” the boy asked.

Dancer didn’t answer.

“You’re Ethan Dancer. I know you are, ’cause I’ve read about you in the penny dreadfuls. You’re a real famous gunfighter. What are you doin’ in Cheyenne? Are you going to kill somebody?”

“Yes.”

“You are? Who?” the boy asked excitedly.

“You if you don’t leave,” Dancer said with a growl.

The boy’s eyes grew large and he turned and ran from the café, followed by Dancer’s laughter.

“Ethan, shame on you,” the woman said, though she allowed a smile to play across her lips.

With the boy gone, the woman and her dining companion returned to their breakfast.

Although very small, Bailey McPherson was well-proportioned for her height, and at first glance one might have compared her to a Dresden doll. But upon closer examination there was something awry about her, like an imperfection in fine crystal. One could see a disquieting edge, a hardness to the set of her mouth, and a malevolent glint in her eyes.

Individually, Bailey and Dancer drew stares. Together, they were often the subject of intense scrutiny, what with her small stature and his disfigured countenance.

“He gives me the creeps just to look at him,” one of Bailey’s acquaintances had told her.

What that person didn’t realize was that it was exactly why she’d hired him. Because of her diminutive size, Bailey had the idea that she wasn’t always taken seriously. Having Ethan Dancer as her personal bodyguard did ensure a degree of respect.

Dancer continued eating his breakfast, while Bailey read the newspaper she’d bought from the boy.

NO LEADS ON MISSING WOMAN

“They are carrying a story in the paper about the disappearance of Pamela Dorchester,” Bailey said. “That should certainly get her father’s attention.”

“Yes,” Dancer answered as he spread jam on his biscuit.

“Wait here. I’m going to check and see if the train is on time,” Bailey said, setting her newspaper aside.

“Are you going to eat your biscuit?” Dancer asked.

“No, you can have it.”

Leaving the café, Bailey saw the sheriff standing in the waiting room, just beyond the door of the café.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” Bailey said.

“Ma’am,” the sheriff said, touching the brim of his hat. He nodded toward the dining room. “Would that be Ethan Dancer you’re sittin’ with?”

“It would be. Is there a problem?”

The sheriff pulled out a telegram. “I just got a telegram here, sayin’ that he shot and killed two men back in Bitter Creek.”

“When was that supposed to have happened?”

“According to what they say in the telegram, it happened two days ago.”

Bailey shook her head. “No, that’s impossible. We were on the train two days ago.”

“Did that train stop for repairs in Bitter Creek?”

“Oh,” Bailey gasped, putting her hand to her lips. “Oh, yes. Yes, it did, but he couldn’t have—”

“Did he get off the train?”

“Yes, but only for a little while. He couldn’t have been gone more than half an hour.”

“That’s all the time it took, ma’am. And it happened while the train was stopped for repairs.”

“Oh, my. What happened?”

“Accordin’ to the telegram, the two men drew on him. They’re sayin’ it was a fair fight.”

“It was a fair fight?”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“I see. Do you intend to arrest him?”

“That is my intention, yes, ma’am,” the sheriff answered.

“Why?”

“I told you, ma’am, he killed two men yesterday.”

“But you also said the other men drew first, did you not?”

The sheriff nodded. “That’s what the witnesses are all sayin’.”

“If that is the case, wouldn’t it be classified as justifiable homicide?”

“Justifiable homicide?”

“Self-defense,” Bailey explained.

“Yes, ma’am, I reckon a body could call it self-defense. But that’s not for me to decide. It is up to a judge and prosecutor to decide whether or not they want to charge him and bring him to trial.”

“You and I both know that when they hear the witnesses’ testimony, they are going to rule it was self-defense,” Bailey said. “So, there’s really no need to arrest him, is there? Couldn’t you just parole him to my care? I promise to be responsible for him.”

The sheriff chuckled. “You promise to be responsible for
him?” he asked. “Excuse me, ma’am, but you must know how strange it sounds that you, a…woman”—though he didn’t say small woman, he implied it by the break in his words—“could be responsible for Ethan Dancer?”

“Sheriff, you have to understand that Mr. Dancer does what I tell him to do.
Exactly
what I tell him to do,” she added pointedly.

The sheriff stroked his jaw for a moment. He obviously didn’t want to face Dancer. Finally, he nodded.

“What is your name?”

“My name is Bailey McPherson. I’m sure that even the most rudimentary check as to who I am would satisfy you that I can do what I say.”

“And you want me to parole him to you?”

Bailey smiled up at him. “I do.”

“You’ll make certain he is present for the trial?”

“If a trial is necessary, I will make certain that he is present,” Bailey promised. “But for now, I have business that I must attend to in Green River. And I shall require Mr. Dancer to accompany me.”

“If you don’t mind my askin’, what would he be accompanyin’ you for?”

“If you must know, he is my bodyguard. I frequently carry large sums of money, and I feel safe when he is with me.”

“Yes, ma’am, well, I reckon I can see that all right. Is there a way to get hold of you, Miss McPherson? I mean, if I need you for anything.”

“Yes. You can always send a telegram to Bailey McPherson Enterprises, Green River. The telegrapher will get the message to me.”

“All right, I’ll parole him to you,” the sheriff said, clearly pleased that he would not have to attempt to arrest Dancer.

“You’ve made a good decision, Sheriff,” Bailey said.

Leaving him, Bailey walked up to the ticket counter to
check on the train. She could barely see over the counter.