Showdown at Dead End Canyon

Chapter 10

THE ANGRY BUZZ OF BULLETS COULD BE HEARD even above the rattle of musketry, the heavy thump of cannon fire, and the explosive burst of artillery rounds. Men were screaming, some in defiance, some in fear, and many in agony.

By now the blood was pooling in the rocks and boulders of Devil’s Den, but still the fighting continued. Mason Hawke had taken shelter in those rocks, and from his position was engaged in long distance shooting, killing Yankee soldiers from five hundred to a thousand yards away. He shot until the hexagon barrel of his Sharps breechloader was so hot that he could no longer touch it, so he took off his shirt to use as a pad to allow him to hold the rifle and continue his killing. He lost count of how many men he had killed, but knew that one of his victims was a brigadier general.

Around him, sixty-five of his fellow soldiers had already fallen victim to the Yankee Sharpshooters under the command of Colonel Hiram Berdan.

“This ain’t never going to stop!” a private next to him shouted in horror. “We’re just goin’ to keep on a’killin’ each other till ever’ last one of us is dead.”

Hawke turned to answer him, to assure him that this battle, like all the others they had been in, would end. But before he could say a word, a minié ball slammed into the private’s head. The man’s blood, brains, and tiny fragments of bone splinters sprayed into Hawke’s face.

Hawke didn’t even bother to wipe off the detritus as he selected his next target.

“Hawke, we’ve got to get out of here!” one of the others shouted.

“Hawke!”

“Hawke!”

“Mr. Hawke!”

“Mr. Hawke?”

The sound of gunfire faded away, replaced by the sound of a train in motion.

“Mr. Hawke?”

Hawke was fully awake now, and already this dream of the hell of Gettysburg, like many before it, was mercifully slipping from his memory. He could feel the gentle sway of the train in motion, and when he pushed his hat up and looked through the window, he saw that they were well out of the city. They were passing a farm, and on the other side of the field he saw a man walking behind a mule and plow.

“Mr. Hawke.”

The tone grew more insistent.

Hawke turned to see who was addressing him and saw a man wearing a blue uniform jacket and billed cap.

“Yes?” Hawke replied

“My name is McCutcheon, Mr. Hawke. I am the conductor. If you would come with me, I’ll show you to the palace car where you will be playing.”

“All right,” Hawke said.

“I don’t know what you have been told as to what your duties are,” the conductor said, “but let me go over my rules with you.”

“Your rules?”

“Yes, Mr. Hawke, my rules. As the conductor of this train, I am the man in charge, the captain, so to speak, of this ship. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No problem.”

“Very good. First of all, I shall expect absolute courtesy to all the passengers. Some may get a little out of hand from time to time, but if they do, I want you to remember that we are here to serve them.

“Secondly, I will require you to be present in the palace car until midnight, every night, until we have completed our journey. You will be allowed one hour off for your meals, and you may take your meals in the dining car.”

Hawke was following the conductor now, and as they passed between the cars, it was necessary to step across a gap of some two feet from the platform of one car to the platform of the next. Looking down through the gap, Hawke could see the ballast and railroad ties slipping by rapidly. Also, out here there was a breath of hot wind and the smell of smoke.

With the train in motion, there was a great deal of independent movement in the sway and roll of the individual cars, though they were connected. Because of that, it was not possible to step from one car to the next without paying attention to what you were doing. Despite the conductor’s haughty attitude, Hawke had to give him grudging respect for the ease with which he negotiated the transit from car to car.

As they passed through one of the parlor cars, Hawke saw Jay Dupree and Libby St. Cyr.

“Well, we meet again, I see,” Libby said. “Are you going to play now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll be in to listen, shortly.”

When they stepped onto the rear platform of this car, McCutcheon held up his hand to stop Hawke.

“Another thing,” he said. “There is to be absolutely no fraternization between employees of Union Pacific and passengers.”

When Jason White entered Bailey McPherson’s office in Green River, he was carrying a large, rolled-up document.

“Miss McPherson, I have the preliminary surveys here, if you would like to see them.”

“Yes, of course I want to see them,” Bailey said. “Spread your map out here on the table.”

Jason unrolled the map, and Bailey began finding ways to hold down the corners. She put an ink bottle on one corner, a book on a second corner, and a lantern on the third. When the fourth corner attempted to roll up, she looked at Dancer.

“Ethan, put your gun on that corner,” she said.

Dancer hesitated a moment, then took his gun from the holster and put it where she directed.

“Now, show me the route,” she said to Jason.

He used his finger to trace along the drawn railroad tracks.

“We will follow the Green River northwest until we reach the conflux of the Green and the Big Sandy. We turn north along the Big Sandy until we reach the Little Sandy River. We will follow the Little Sandy almost due north until we arrive at its terminus at South Pass.”

“And the entire route is along the rivers?” Bailey asked.

“Yes. Of course, you do realize, don’t you, that by routing your railroad this way, instead of going straight to South Pass, you are increasing the length by some thirty miles. That’s almost half again what a straight route would be.”

“Yes, I know that,” Bailey said.

“What will we tell the railroad commission? They will question why you aren’t going by the shortest route.”

“You don’t worry about that,” Bailey said. “Addison has already taken care of it. All you need to do now is submit the surveys for compensation. According to the Railroad Land Grant Act of 1862, we are entitled to a four-hundred-foot right of way, and ten square miles of property for every one mile of route.”

“Good Lord! That gives you a five-mile-wide swath of land from here to the Sweetwater!” Jason did some quick figuring. “That’s over a quarter of a million acres!”

“A quarter of a million acres of the best range land in the entire territory,” Bailey said. “With sweet water and green grass.”

“That’s a lot of land.”

“Yes, it is. It challenges Northumbria in size.” Bailey looked up with shining, beady eyes. “And, if I play my cards right, I’ll own Northumbria as well.”

Hawke had been on the train for two days, playing the piano in the palace car. Dupree and the three women with him—Libby, Lulu, and Sue—were his most faithful listeners. The women were young, attractive, and very flirtatious. If Hawke had had any question as to the purpose of Dupree’s social club, spending some time around these women answered it for him.

The first night out, after departing Chicago, Hawke played mostly classical music. But as the train got farther west and picked up new passengers, the demographics of his audience changed. Mechanics, farmhands, and ultimately cowboys now outnumbered the wealthy eastern businessmen by a substantial number, and their music tastes were more rural. As a result of these changing dynamics, the music was now little different from the kind of music he played in the saloons.

Just west of Cheyenne, a young cowboy in chaps and silver spurs and rowels got on the train. He had a bottle with him, and Hawke was just finishing a song as he stepped into the palace car.

Hawke’s audience applauded him, and the cowboy, though he had not heard Hawke, tucked the bottle of whiskey under his arm so he could pointedly join the applause.

“Well now,” he said loudly. “Ain’t this a little bit of fancy drawers? We got us a piano player.”

“Yes, and he has been playing beautifully too,” Lulu said.

“Is that the truth? Well now, tell me Mr. Fancy Pants piano player. Is this here little lady tellin’ the truth? Have you been playing…beautifully?” He sat the word apart, mocking Lulu. “Or does this little filly have her cap set for you?”

“Sir, if you would please find a seat and be quiet so the others can enjoy the music, I will continue to play,” Hawke said as politely as he could.

“Oh, yeah, I should be quiet,” the cowboy said. Standing in the middle of the car, he turned to everyone, making an exaggerated show of putting his finger across his lips in the symbol of shushing. “All right, I’ll be quiet.”

“Thanks, I would appreciate that,” Hawke said as he turned back to the piano.

It wasn’t a second later before the cowboy spoke up again.

“Hey, piano player!” he shouted in a loud and belligerent voice. “Play ‘My Dog Is Dead.’”

Over the last several years of playing piano in saloons from Beaumont, Texas, to Denver, Colorado, Hawke had played just about every cowboy ditty ever written. But he had never heard of the song “My Dog Is Dead.”

“Sorry, I don’t know it,” he said.

Hawke moved into another song, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the cowboy move to sit next to Lulu. She moved a couple of times, but each time she did so, he moved with her.

“Hey! Piano player! Play ‘My Dog Is Dead’!” the cowboy shouted again. Laughing, he turned the bottle up to his lips and took several, Adam’s-apple bobbing swallows. Lowering the bottle, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and extended the bottle, by way of offer, to Lulu. She shook her head no.

“You sure?” he asked. “It’s not bad whiskey.”

“No, thank you,” Lulu said quietly.

Several of the others in the car made shushing sounds.

“Oh, yeah, I’m s’posed to be quiet so Mr. Fancy Pants piano player can play,” the cowboy said.

Hawke began playing.

“Hey! Piano player! Play ‘My Dog Is Dead’!” the cowboy shouted one more time.

By now the others in the car were getting fed up with him, and one of the men asked him to leave.

“I’ll leave when I damn well want to leave,” the cowboy said. “Unless there is someone in here who is man enough to make me leave.”

The cowboy’s belligerence and implied threat quieted everyone.

“Hey, ladies, you all turn your heads now and don’t peek,” he said, laughing. “’Cause ol’ Johnny is goin’ to go out on the platform and take a leak.”

“Well, I never!” one woman gasped.

“Hey, that rhymes,” Johnny said. “Did you hear that? Turn your heads and don’t peek, ’cause ol’ Johnny is goin’ to take a leak. Listen here, Mr. Fancy Pants piano player, when I come back, maybe me ’n’ you could get together and write that up as a song.”

Laughing, Johnny stepped out of the car, onto the vestibule platform.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you please excuse me for a moment?” Hawke said just after the cowboy left. He got up from the piano and went outside behind the young cowboy. Johnny was standing on the edge, unbuttoning his pants.

“No, no, no,” Johnny said in a singsong voice. He didn’t bother to look around. “I told you ladies not to take a peak.”

“I promise not to look,” Hawke said.

“What?” Johnny replied, turning around when he heard a man’s voice.

Hawke grabbed the cowboy by his collar and belt, then tossed him over the side, pitching him far enough to make certain he cleared the cars.

“Hey, what the hell!” the cowboy yelled, though it was in Doppler effect because as the train proceeded, his voice receded.

When Hawke returned to the palace car, he was roundly applauded by everyone there. Bowing, he took his seat then played a piece by Chopin.

“That was beautiful!” Libby said. “What was it?”

“It was Waltz in D flat, Opus 64, Number 1. Sometimes called the Minute Waltz.”

“The Minute Waltz? Why do they call it that?”

Hawke chuckled. “I never have figured that out, because it takes a minute and forty-five seconds to play it.”

Those in the car laughed.

“It’s dinnertime, Mr. Hawke,” Dupree said. “Would you care to join the ladies and me this evening?”

“Thank you,” Hawke replied. “I believe I will.”

As the dining car was just one car in front of the palace car, it was a short walk to dinner. They were met by one of the stewards who, showed them to a table.

“Mr. Hawke will be joining us for dinner tonight, Adam.”

“But sir, the table will only seat four,” the black steward replied.

“You can put these two ladies at the table just across from us,” he said, pointing to Lulu and Sue.

“Very good, sir.”

The dining car was set up so that tables on one side would seat four, while on the other side the tables sat only two. Lulu and Sue were put at the table for two.

Outside the window the bare, featureless seascape that had been their vista yesterday while still in Nebraska had turned to yellow and gray foothills climbing up to red buttes, guarded by ring-tailed hawks that sailed along the walls, their sharp eyes searching for prey.

The steward returned with the menus.

The main choice tonight seemed to be between steak and salmon. Hawke and Dupree chose steak. Libby, Lulu, and Sue selected salmon.

“So, what do you think you will do when this trip is over?” Dupree asked as the steward left with their order. “Will you continue to play piano for the Union Pacific?”

“Well I—” Hawke began, but was interrupted by the conductor, who came storming into the car, his face red and twisted in rage.

“Mr. Hawke! I have been told that you threw a passenger from the train. Is this true?”

Hawke chuckled. “I wondered how long it would be before you heard about it.”

“It is no laughing matter, Mr. Hawke,” McCutcheon said with barely controlled anger.

“Look, Mr. Conductor,” Dupree said, “if Mr. Hawke hadn’t thrown that unpleasant gentleman from the train, I would have done it myself. And if not me, someone else would have. Either that or someone would have shot him. He was one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met.”

“Nevertheless,” McCutcheon said, addressing himself to Hawke, “you can’t just go about tossing disagreeable passengers off the train. Especially when it is moving, and especially in the middle of the desert.”

“I’ll be more careful where I throw him next time,” Hawke said.

“In addition to throwing a paying passenger from the train, you are in blatant violation of my specific orders not to fraternize with the passengers. You don’t have to worry about being more careful next time, because there won’t be a next time. Your employment with Union Pacific is hereby terminated.”

Literally spinning on his heel, McCutcheon turned and left the dining car. For a moment the five sat in silence, with the women staring at their plates in embarrassment.

“I believe you asked if I intended to stay with the railroad?” Hawke said.

“I did ask that, yes.”

“I think I can safely say that I will not be playing piano for the Union Pacific Railroad.”

Dupree laughed, and Hawke laughed with him. Then the three women laughed as well, and when the conductor happened to glance through the door and saw them all laughing, he turned away, angry and confused as to why Hawke would find it so amusing that he had just been fired.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Dupree asked.

At that moment, their meal was delivered and Hawke waited until the steward withdrew before he answered.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll go looking for a saloon that needs a pianist.”

“Have you ever considered playing the piano in a whorehouse?”

“Jay!” Libby said.

“Well, let’s face it, dear, what we will be running is a whorehouse, no matter what fancy title we give it. And if Mr. Hawke accepts the invitation, he will have to know what’s going on upstairs.”

Hawke smiled. “I’ve not only considered playing in such an establishment, I’ve actually done it. At many of the saloons where I’ve worked, a rather brisk business was being conducted upstairs.”

“Then you have nothing, in principle, against the profession? You might come to work for us?”

“I have absolutely nothing in principle against playing the piano in a whorehouse,” Hawke said. “But I’m going to say no, because I don’t want to commit myself to anything right now. I do thank you for the job offer, though.”

“I understand,” Dupree said. “But I do want you to know that if you ever change your mind, the invitation still stands.”