Cal Rourke: Last Gunfighter: The Ledger That Killed Twice

Chapter 1: A Duel With No Witnesses

The wagon had finally stopped, but Cal Rourke couldn’t shake the feeling it hadn’t. Not really. The road’s hardpan grit still seemed to cling to his boots, and the sun still pressed down like a hand on the back of his neck. Somewhere behind him, the canvas over the coffin lay nailed tight, as if wood and canvas could keep a secret safe.

He’d been sitting with his back straight and his eyes open, waiting for the next thing to happen. That was how he’d survived most of his life. You didn’t get lucky in a place like this. You stayed ready.

What he hadn’t expected was for the town to start changing the plan while he was still standing in it.

It began with a man named Sutter.

Cal had met Sutter once before, back in the kind of daylight conversation where folks smiled with their mouths and kept their hands busy. Sutter wasn’t a gunman. He was the sort of man who made decisions sound like favors and favors sound like debts. He’d come to the wagon with a rider’s hat pinned too low, like he was trying to look smaller than his words.

“Mr. Rourke,” Sutter said, as if Cal were a customer and not a problem. “You’ll want to know the duel is still on.”

Cal didn’t answer right away. He watched Sutter’s eyes. People who tell the truth usually look like they have nothing to hide. People who rearrange the world tend to look busy even when they’re standing still.

“Still on,” Cal repeated, slow. “Same time?”

Sutter nodded. “Same hour. But the place is changing.”

Cal’s fingers tightened against his pistol grip, not to draw it, but to remind his body that it could. “Why’s that?”

“A matter of safety,” Sutter said. “Less crowd. Less trouble. You understand.”

Cal did understand. Crowds made noise. Noise made witnesses. Witnesses made stories, and stories made trouble for the kind of men who preferred things quiet.

“Who’s telling you this?” Cal asked.

Sutter hesitated. It wasn’t a big hesitation, but Cal had learned to read the small ones, the way you read weather in a dry sky. “Sheriff Harrow instructed it,” Sutter said finally. “He thinks it’s best.”

That name hit the air like a dropped tin cup. Sheriff Harrow had been the one man in town who didn’t blink when Cal stared at him. In earlier days, Cal would have called that courage. Lately, it looked more like a choice someone else had paid him to make.

“Harrow thinks it’s best,” Cal said. “For who?”

Sutter gave a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “For everyone.”

Cal stepped off the wagon’s rail and let the dust settle around his boots. “Tell Harrow I’ll be where he says. But if he wants fewer witnesses, he can’t be surprised when he gets none.”

Sutter’s smile tightened. “Oh, there will be witnesses. Just not the ones you’re expecting.”

Cal watched him turn away. The man walked like he’d already decided which direction the wind would blow.

When Sutter was gone, Cal stood with the wagon creaking as it cooled. A moment later, he found what he’d been half afraid of.

People were moving, and not like folks do when they’re heading to a gathering. They were moving like folks avoiding it.

He saw it in the saloon doorway, where a pair of men who’d been talking loudly ten minutes ago now stood with their hats in their hands, pretending they’d just stepped out for air. He saw it on the street, where a woman who’d been carrying a basket now turned down a side lane without looking back. He saw it in the way the town’s noise thinned, as if someone had pulled a plug.

Cal didn’t need a map to know a duel was being staged. He’d heard the schedule back when the story first started circling his name. In Volume Two of his life, the duel had been “scheduled by someone else,” and it had been arranged like a show with a fixed ending.

Now the show had changed its script.

He climbed onto the wagon again, not because he needed to ride, but because he needed to think with the reins in his hand. A coffin wagon made a certain kind of silence. It made room for thoughts that didn’t want to be crowded.

The duel, the new rules, the new location - it all pointed the same direction. Someone wanted the fight to happen without the sort of witnesses who tell the truth.

Cal’s problem was simple: he didn’t know who wanted it that way. Not yet.

He’d learned to keep track of ledgers, even the hidden ones. In the past, he’d seen how paper could kill. In the past, he’d seen how the story of a man could be rewritten long before he drew a gun.

So he tried something else.

He looked for the missing pieces.

When the town thinned, Cal found the names he expected weren’t there. Not at the saloon. Not at the hitching posts. Not at the edge of the road where men usually drifted when something was about to happen.

He’d been told, back when the duel first got pinned to a time, that three people would witness it. Ordinary folks, or at least folks ordinary enough to be believable....