Bailey shook hands with all of them, then said to Ford, “Secretary of Interior Delano is with us on this?”
Ford smiled. “I have with me full power of attorney to act for the Secretary. He isn’t the one you need to please. I am.”
“Oh?” Bailey said. “Tell me, Mr. Ford, are you suggesting that you were not pleased by the, uh…inducement I sent you to ensure your cooperation?”
“Oh, I was very pleased with it,” Ford replied. “As a goodwill gesture,” he added pointedly.
“A goodwill gesture?” Bailey asked.
“Yes, to—as they say—ensure tranquility between us.”
“I see.”
Ford cleared his throat. “Miss McPherson, surely you understand all of the intricacies and details I must arrange. There are other agencies to bring on board, congressmen to convince, and expenses to incur. All of that will have to be funded. And of course, we both know that you stand to make a great deal of money from this operation. A great deal of money. As the only person who can bring all this to fruition for you, I don’t think it is at all unreasonable to expect to be generously compensated.”
“Very well, Mr. Ford,” Bailey agreed. “We’ll have an organizational meeting first thing after we reach Green River.”
“I look forward to it,” Ford said.
The engineer blew two short blasts on the whistle, and, with a series of jerks, the train started forward.
“I’ll be getting back to my car,” Bailey said. “We’ll postpone any further business discussion until later. In the meantime, please enjoy your trip.”
It was now two days since Poke and Gilley brought Pamela to the little cabin, and she had been tied up the whole time. Her back and legs were cramped and the ropes were beginning to rub blisters on her wrists. She had no idea where she was, nor did she know how she got here, though she was vaguely aware of being awakened in her berth to the smell of the chloroform-soaked handkerchief.
“You want some jerky?” Poke asked.
“No, thank you,” she replied.
“Here, take a piece,” Poke said, offering her a piece of the dried meat.
Pamela shook her head. “I don’t want it.”
“You got to eat something. You ain’t et a bite since we brung you here.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“How can you not be hungry?”
“It stinks in here,” Pamela said. “You stink. How can I have an appetite under such conditions?”
Gilley laughed. “Poke, I done tol’ you that you smelled somethin’ awful. By God, man, your stink would gag a maggot on the gut wagon.”
“You ain’t no bed of roses yourself,” Poke replied angrily. He looked back at Pamela, who was still in her nightgown. “Look, if you don’t want to eat, I ain’t goin’ to beg you. It ain’t no skin off my ass, that’s for sure,” he said. He put the proffered piece in his own mouth and tore a chunk off with his crooked yellow teeth.
“She’s got to eat sometime,” Gilley said. “We ain’t goin’ to get nothin’ from her pa if she starves herself to death.”
“You aren’t going to get anything from him anyway,” Pamela said.
“That’s what you think, girlie. This has all done been thunk out for us,” Poke said.
Despite her condition and situation, Pamela chuckled. “It would have to have been thought out for you by someone else,” she said.
“Hey, Poke. Someone’s comin’!” Gilley said.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s somebody come lookin’ for the woman.”
“Better get a gag on her so’s she can’t yell out none,” Poke said.
Less than an hour earlier the sky had been clear and blue, but now dark rolling clouds darkened the day and 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.