Day of Independence by William W. Johnstone Page A

Gillman’s voice. “Pauleen is your boy, Hacker,” he said.
    â€œYes, and he was called out. Mr. Pauleen was only defending himself from a dangerous desperado. Look at the coffin on the wagon and read the sign. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?”
    Stutter’s bellow of pain and the sudden, tense bow he made of his back attracted everyone’s attention.
    After a moment that seemed to last forever, the people of Last Chance heard the gunman sigh and death rattle in his throat.
    Gillman closed Stutter’s eyes and stood. He stared hard at Hacker.
    â€œWhy are you still in our town?” he said.
    For a moment Hacker seemed taken aback by the question. But he recovered and smiled, his little eyes vanishing under folds of fat. “I’m a businessman, just as you are, Mr. Gillman,” Hacker said. “I came to find gold, but discovered there was none.” Hacker gave a dramatic little sigh. “Well, in business we learn to take our disappointments just as well as we take our triumphs, with a certain amount of humility and grace.”
    â€œThen why are you still here?” Gillman said, clinging to that question like a terrier to a rat.
    The crowd had grown larger.
    â€œAh, that is easy to explain,” Hacker said. “It was my intention to return to Washington in haste”—then a smooth lie—“especially since I was engaged to deliver a series of business lectures at Georgetown University.”
    Hacker had expected to impress the onlookers with that last, but he was met with a thin silence and stony expressions. The dead man on the ground made the atmosphere even more funereal.
    He forged ahead.
    â€œThen someone told me—was it Mayor Curtis? Yes, I believe it was—that the town planned to throw a crackerjack Independence Day party and that my good self and my associates were invited.”
    Hacker beamed, throwing his arms wide as though to embrace the crowd.
    â€œHow could I leave after that? Yes, Washington, D.C., throws one hell of a shindig, and I knew that I’d disappoint many students, but I could not refuse such a kind invitation.”
    He turned his attention to Pauleen. “Is that not so, Mr. Pauleen?”
    â€œYou got it, boss,” the little gunman said, grinning.
    Hacker saw Gillman open his mouth to speak, but he cut him off. “And all the expenses of our great patriotic celebration are on me,” he said. Then, his voice rising, “Abe Hacker will pay every last penny.”
    A few in the crowd smiled and one man let out with a halfhearted “Hurrah,” but Hacker’s generous pledge was met mostly with a stony silence.
    Pauleen had enough of Hacker’s niceties, hollow as they were.
    He stepped over Stutter’s body, walked to the wagon, and hauled off the coffin.
    He threw it to the ground, pointed at Stutter and said, “One of you rubes get the undertaker and tell him to bury that sorry piece of trash in the coffin he intended for me.”
    â€œPauleen, you have no respect for the living, but have some for the dead,” Gillman said, appalled.
    â€œShut your trap, storekeeper,” the gunman said.
    And a moment later Pauleen revealed his withering scorn for Last Chance, its citizens, and the rule of law.
    He made as if to walk back to the hotel, but stopped in midstride, swung around, and thumbed off fast shots at the window where Hank Cannan sat watching the proceedings.
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    â€œRanger!” Roxie Miller yelled as three bullets crashed through the window and set showers of shattered glass flying everywhere.
    Too stunned to move, Cannan sat where he was.
    But Roxie reacted quickly.
    She threw herself on Cannan and drove him to the floor.
    â€œStay down!” she said.
    But there were no more bullets.
    â€œWhat the hell?” Cannan said. “And you’re squashing me, Roxie.”
    The woman smiled. “Most men are glad to pay me for