Ride With the Devil (20 page)

Authors: Robert Vaughan

“I knew you couldn’t do it,” Culpepper said. “I knew you couldn’t kill an old boyhood friend.”

The smile turned evil.

“But I can,” Hawke said, and he pulled the trigger.

The entry hole in Culpepper’s forehead was small, but the hydrostatic action of the fluid in Culpepper’s brain blew the back of his head off, and blood, bone detritus, and brain tissue sprayed out behind him as he fell back onto the front porch of what had been his office.

While the town was gathering up the dead, Hawke returned to his room over the saloon and packed his few things into his blanket roll and saddlebags. Then he walked down the alley to the livery, behind the blacksmith shop.

Only Ken Wright was there to tell him good-bye.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you’d stay. Now that we’ve got our town back, I believe things are going to get real civilized around here. Wouldn’t you like to be a part of it? I’m sure Miss Delaney would like to see you stay.”

“I can’t stay, Ken. I…”

“I know, Mr. Hawke. You got what the Indians call the wanderin’ spirit, part wind, part buffalo. I seen that in you, first day you come here.”

“You’ll tell the others good-bye?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that,” Ken said. He watched as Hawke climbed into his saddle. “Mr. Hawke, if you ever get back this way, stop in and say hello,” Ken said.

“I may just do that, Ken,” Hawke said. “I may just do that.”

Hawke didn’t even look back at Salcedo until he was more than a mile away.

There was thunder in the distance and a smell of rain in the air. Hawke pulled out his slicker, turned down the brim of his hat, and settled in for a long ride. Somewhere, on the other side of the next range of hills, just over the horizon, there was another town, another saloon, another piano.

About the Author

ROBERT VAUGHAN
is a retired army officer and full-time novelist. His book
Survival
(under the pseudonym K.C. McKenna) won the Spur Award for best western novel (1994). He lives with his wife, Ruth, in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

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Books by Robert Vaughan

H
AWKE:
D
ANCE WITH THE
D
EMON

H
AWKE:
R
IDE WITH THE
D
EVIL

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

HAWKE: RIDE WITH THE DEVIL
. Copyright © 2007 by Robert Vaughan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ePub edition September 2007 ISBN 9780061744952

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