Showdown at Dead End Canyon by Robert Vaughan Page B

anything. He found a spot by the wall for his saddle and dropped it there.
    As he was turning away he saw a piano—not the beer-stained, cigarette-burned, spur-scarred upright of most saloons, but a Steinway Concert Square.
    Hawke walked over and ran his hand across the smooth, ebonized rosewood. Pulling the bench out, he sat down between the carved cabriole legs, then lifted the lid and supported it with the fretwork music rack.
    It had been a long time since he’d touched such a fine piano. He hit a few keys and was rewarded with a rich, mellow tone. As he began playing, Hawke felt himself slipping away from the dark, depot storeroom in a small western town. He was at another time and another place.
     
    Fifteen hundred people filled the Crystal Palace in London, England, to hear the latest musical sensation from America. When the curtain opened, the audience applauded as Mason Hawke walked out onto the stage, flipped the tails back from his swallow coat, then took his seat at the piano.
    The auditorium grew quiet, and Mason began to play Beethoven’s Concerto Number Five in E Flat Major. The music filled the concert hall and caressed the collective soul of the audience. A music critic, writing of the concert in the London Times, said:
    “It was something magical. The brilliant young American pianist managed, with his playing, to resurrect the genius of the composer so that, to the listening audience, Mason Hawke and Ludwig Beethoven were one and the same.”
     
    “I say, my good man, who is that playing the piano?”
    The shipping clerk looked up to see a tall, white-haired, distinguished-looking man.
    “Oh, Mr. Dorchester! I’m sorry,” the shipping clerk said. “I don’t know just what the hell that fella thinks he’s doin’ in there.”
    The shipping clerk got up from his desk and went around the counter, heading for the storage area. “I’ll put a stop to it at once.”
    “No wait,” Dorchester said, holding up his hand. “I’ll see to it myself.”
    “I thought you were going to find Mr. Hawke and thank him,” Pamela said.
    “I will, my dear, I will,” Dorchester replied. “But listen to that music. I have not heard anything so beautiful since we left England. I must see who it is.”
    Dorchester and his daughter stepped into the dimly lit storeroom. The man playing the piano was practically in the dark, but even in the shadows of the dingy and crowded room, he projected a commanding presence as he sat on the bench dipping, moving, and swaying to the powerful movements of the allegro.
    “It can’t be,” Pamela said in a shocked tone of voice.
    “It can’t be what?” Dorchester asked.
    “It’s him!” Pamela said quietly. “This is the man I told you about! Father, he is the one who rescued me.”
    “This can’t be possible,” Dorchester whispered.
    “Father, it is him. I swear it is.”
    Dorchester held out his hand as if to quiet his daughter, then, seeing a box and a stool nearby, motioned that they should be seated.
     
    When Hawke finished the piece, he sat there for a moment, listening to the last fading echo of the music. It wasn’t until then that he heard two people applauding him. Turning, he saw Pamela and a tall, white-haired man that he knew must be her father.
    “I am sure that, for as long as I own that piano, I will never hear it played more beautifully,” Dorchester said.
    “Father, this is Mason Hawke, my knight in shining armor,” Pamela said.
    “This is your piano, Mr. Dorchester?” Hawke asked.
    “Yes, it arrived last week. I’m waiting to have it delivered to my house.”
    “I’m sorry. I had no right—” Hawke began, but Dorchester interrupted him.
    “That is nonsense. Who, I ask, has more right to play any piano than Sir Mason Hawke, Knight of the British Empire? You are that person, are you not? You were knighted by Queen Victoria during your triumphant concert tour of Britain and the Continent?”
    Hawke waved his hand in dismissal. “As you