Free The King Hill War by Robert Vaughan

Hawke said.
    Hannah beamed proudly. “I knew he would be,” she said.
     
    The sign in front of the building read: FELIX GILMORE, ATTORNEY AT LAW. Gilmore stood as Joshua Creed came into his office.
    “Mr. Creed,” he said.
    “I understand you have some information for me,” Joshua Creed replied.
    “I do indeed, sir,” Gilmore said. “Have a seat and I’ll show it to you.”
    Gilmore put a sign on his front door that read IN CONFERENCE , then locked it and pulled the shade down before coming back to sit at his desk.
    “You wanted to know about Mason Hawke,” he said.
    “Yes. What did you find out?”
    “Quite a bit, actually,” Gilmore said. “He is a piano player who has worked in saloons all over the West and—”
    Creed laughed in loud guffaws. “A piano player?” he said. “Is that what you said? That Mason Hawke is a piano player?”
    “Yes, and evidently he is quite good. According to the information I’ve been able to ascertain, he was a concert pianist before the war, playing before audiences, not only in the United States, but over in Europe as well.”
    “A piano player,” Creed said, still chuckling.
    “Evidently, when the war broke out he returned home to join his father’s regiment.”
    “Let me guess. He played piano in the ballrooms of Washington.”
    “No, sir. In the first place, he fought for the South, not the North. And he fought quite well, frequently mentioned in the dispatches. In fact, it was during the war that he met Ian Macgregor. They are two of the very few members oftheir regiment who survived the entire war.”
    “Well, I appreciate all that, Gilmore,” Creed said. “I was wondering what he was doing out here with Macgregor. Now I know he must’ve come to play piano for a birthday party,” he added, laughing again.
    Gilmore shook his head. “I wouldn’t dismiss him that easily.”
    “Why not? What else would a piano player do?”
    “It turns out that our Mr. Hawke is considerably more than a piano player. In fact, he is establishing quite a reputation as a pistoleer.”
    “What is a pistoleer?”
    “Some people refer to such men as gunfighters,” Gilmore said. “And from all the evidence I’ve been able to gather, Mason Hawke is an exceptionally skilled and deadly gunfighter.”
    Creed squinted his eyes at Gilmore. “How deadly?”
    “I’ve not been able to determine the exact number,” he said. “But I think a guess of twenty would not be too far off.”
    “Are you telling me he has killed twenty men?”
    “I would say that is a conservative estimate, yes.”
    “If he has killed that many men, why isn’t he in jail?”
    “According to my sources, every man he has killed, he has faced. And, apparently, he has been on the right side of the law on every occasion. He has simply bested them all.”
    “I see,” Creed said, less ebullient now. “Well, in your research, have you been able to determine why he is here?”
    “I don’t have any definitive evidence, but I would suggest that he is here to help his friend, Macgregor, in the confrontation between the sheep men and the cattlemen,” Gilmore said.
    “In other words, Macgregor has hired himself a gunfighter,” Creed said.
    “Exactly.”
    Creed drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “Well, now, a gunfighter. If that doesn’t make Rosie sing.”
    “Mr. Creed, I can’t warn you strongly enough,” Gilmore said. “If, in your dispute with the sheep men, you engage in any physical confrontation, you will be doing so at your own risk. Like I told you, this man Mason Hawke is quite deadly.”
    “You aren’t telling me to walk away from this, are you?” Creed said. He pointed back toward the prairie. “Those damn sheep are destroying the grass, don’t you understand that? The open range has always been there for all of us to use. But when the sheep use it, they kill it.”
    “I can take care of that for you, but it’s going to cost you,” Gilmore suggested.
    “I don’t