“I ’preciate it,” Hawk said. “Seem like two nice fellows. It wouldn’t have been a fair fight.” Peavy looked puzzled when he drew his .44 from his holster and cocked it as he walked out the door. He stopped as soon as he was outside and stood for a few minutes in the shadow of the porch, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gathering darkness. He stepped down from the porch just as Lige popped out from behind a tree at the corner of the building. With no more than an instant to react, Hawk fired a shot that caught Lige in the shoulder, causing him to yelp in pain and send his shot into the dirt at his feet. Hawk dropped the sack of oats and sank to one knee, his Colt cocked, and aimed at the corner of the store, but neither one of the other two appeared. In the quiet after the two shots, he could hear them frantically imploring Lige to hurry. So, he moved cautiously toward the corner of the store but arrived just in time to see the three of them galloping away. One of them was slumped over, hugging his horse’s neck. He guessed that to be Lige. He thought about taking a couple of shots at them but figured a bullet in Lige’s shoulder was enough to settle it.

He walked back to pick up his sack of oats just as Peavy, Earl, and Jack deemed it safe to stick their necks outside. “Hot damn!” Earl exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

“Yep,” Hawk answered as he tied the sack of oats on his saddle horn. “I keep loadin’ this horse up with supplies and I ain’t gonna have room to sit in the saddle.”

“We heard two shots,” Peavy said, then waited for an explanation.

“Yeah, one of ’em was waiting to take a shot at me when I walked out. I figure it was most likely Lige. I put one round in him, got him in the shoulder, I think. I kinda thought he might try something like that, but I expect that’ll do it for him.” He nodded once and smiled. “Well, maybe I’ll be back this way sometime.” He climbed up into the saddle. “Tell your wife she makes the best beef stew in the territory.” He wheeled Rascal away from the hitching rail and rode up the path, back to the wagon track.

“I swear, I never thought that jasper would try to shoot that Hawk feller,” Peavy remarked as the three of them watched him till he rode out on the road.

“He acted like that was the sorta thing that happened every day,” Earl said.

“It’s a damn good thing he showed up here for supper,” Jack declared. “I was fixin’ to stand with you, but I was surely expectin’ a real ass-whuppin’ from the likes of those three.”