The Law of a Fast Gun Read Free Page A

have any cornmeal.”
    “Next,” the captain said, ignoring Waters’s complaint.
    Just before Jesse stepped up to the table, the captain who was doing the interviews was replaced by another officer.
    “Who’s next?” the new officer called.
    Jesse took a deep breath. The new officer was Bert Rowe, now a major.
    When Jesse stood in front of the table, Bert looked startled. There was a long, silent moment while the two men stared at each other. Jesse braced himself for the inevitable.
    “What is your name?” Bert asked.
    Was Bert saying that he wasn’t going to betray him? Or was he just testing him?
    Jesse took a chance.
    “My name is Tobin. Don Tobin.”
    “Mr. Tobin, have you ever ridden with Quantrill, Anderson, Wilson, or,” Bert paused for a long moment before he said the last name, “Cole?”
    “I’ve never ridden with any of them,” Jesse replied.
    “Are you willing to take the oath?”
    “I am.”
    “And abide by it?”
    “Major, to me, abiding by an oath is a sacred thing,” Jesse said.
    “Is that a fact? You mean like, an oath to duty, honor, country?”
    “Yes,” Jesse said. He stared pointedly at Major Rowe. “Just like that.”
    “I’m glad,” Bert said. “I’m glad that this war is over and the animosity and all its horrors are being put behind us.”
    Bert administered the oath, then he and Jesse shook hands.
    Jesse started to walk away, but Bert called toward him. “Mr…. Tobin…is it?”
    Jesse stopped. Had Bert just been playing with him?
    “I wouldn’t spend much time in Missouri, if I were you.”
    “Thanks,” Jesse called back over his shoulder.
    Jesse left the camp, walking toward Independence. He had no horse, and on his person he had no money and no weapon. But the war was over, and he was a free man. And he knew where twenty thousand dollars of Yankee greenbacks were buried.
     
    One hour after Jesse left the camp, a lieutenant and a sergeant came over to Bert’s table.
    “Major Rowe, be on the lookout for a man calling himself Don Tobin,” the lieutenant said.
    “Don Tobin?”
    “Yes, sir. We just got word that the man calling himself Don Tobin is really Jesse Cole.”
    “And he’s here, in our camp,” the sergeant added.
    “I wish you had come by earlier,” Bert said.
    “Why?”
    “I’ve already paroled a man named Don Tobin.”
    “Damn!” the lieutenant said, hitting his fist in his hand. “Do you have any idea where he went?”
    Bert shook his head no. “You know how this works, Lieutenant. Once these men are paroled, they are on their own.”
    “Yes, sir, I reckon so,” the lieutenant said. “But we now have authorization to hang him on the spot just as soon as we find him. And after all the killin’ he done, well, that’s one fella I’d pure dee like to see strung up.”

Chapter 2
    Ten Years Later
    EVEN AS THE FINAL CHORDS OF THE PIANO CONCERTO were still reverberating through the Munich Opera House, the crowd erupted in thunderous applause.
    “Bravo! Bravo! Wunderbar! Prächtig !” the crowd shouted in appreciation.
    Standing, Mason Hawke turned to face the accolades and adoration of his audience, bowing in respect as the applause continued.
    Someone in the audience began to whistle, and the whistling grew louder and louder until it became the whistle of an incoming cannon ball.
    “Get down! Yankee artillery!”
    It was then that Hawke realized that he was no longer on a concert stage in Europe wearing the formal attire of a pianist;he was on a Civil War battlefield wearing the soiled gray of a Confederate uniform.
    Hawke dived behind a nearby rock as the incoming shell exploded above, sending shards of red-hot shrapnel singing through the nearby tree limbs. He could hear the cannonading of Confederate Napoleon 32-pounders as they returned fire.
    Thump thump thump.
    His stomach shook with each blast.
    Thump thump thump.
    The acrid smoke of the black powder charges drifted across the field as the cannonading continued.
    Thump thump