Ride With the Devil Read Online Free PDF

the guns. Bravo for his skills, and may he continue to provide us with his brilliant and insightful contributions.”
    After the war, when he was presented with the chance to buy a hand press from the widow of a newspaper publisher who had been killed in the fighting, Cyrus seized the opportunity to produce his own paper. Salcedo was the fourth town in which he had attempted to start a paper, and it was not until he got there that his dream began to show promise of success.
    The fact that he had won the last mayoral election by an overwhelming margin was evidence of the degree of acceptance he had achieved since moving to the town.
     
    At the Golden Calf saloon, Hawke had walked over to the piano and was now examining it. Pulling the bench out, he sat down and opened the cover, then wiped away the gathering of cobwebs. He moved his finger up the keyboard, hitting all the white and black keys in order. To his surprise, the piano was in amazingly good tune.
    “Well, hell, mister, don’t just sit there,” one of the other saloon patrons said. “Either scratch your ass or play the piano, whichever one you’re the best at.”
    The other patrons laughed.
    For a long moment Hawke didn’t move. As he sat there, the smoke, the smell of bodies and beer, the noise, the heat, and the stained walls all faded into the background. For him,the little saloon in a tiny, flyblown town in West Texas became the Place de l’Opera in Paris in 1861.
     
    “You have set all Europe on its ear, Monsieur Hawke,” Monsieur Garneau said. “You are the musical genius of the year.”
    “The audiences have been very gracious,” Hawke replied as he buttoned his formal jacket.
    On stage, the concert master raised a megaphone to his lips and made an announcement.
    “Dames et messieurs, Place de l’Opera fièrement présents Monsieur Mason Hawke.”
    The audience erupted into thunderous applause, and Mason Hawke, the most sought after pianist of the season, strolled quickly out onto the stage. Flipping his tails out of the way, he sat down to the keyboard and began playing to the enraptured Parisian audience.
     
    In the Golden Calf saloon of Salcedo, Texas, the patrons were amazed to hear the intricate weaving of chords, melody, and countermelody of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 12 in A major rather than the hesitant and frequent off-key renditions of some familiar cowboy tune.
    As Hawke played, he was transported to another place and another time, totally oblivious to the effect he was having on the saloon and its patrons. They sat in stunned silence, listening. Passersby came in from the street and stood quietly, just to hear to the music. Even women, who would never come into the saloon, were drawn by the beautiful sounds coming from the keyboard of the old, scarred, upright piano.
    Hawke played every movement, every bar, every note of the composition, holding the now large saloon crowd spellbound by the beauty of the music and the power of his playing. Finally, twelve minutes after starting the piece, he finished it in a crashing crescendo.
    The audience cheered and applauded. Not until then did Hawke bring himself back from that distant, ephemeral paradise that such musical interludes allowed him to visit. No longer was he Mason Hawke, the jeune pianiste brillant d’Europe . He was, once again, Mason Hawke, the displaced wanderer, sitting at a scarred upright piano in a beer-soaked, smoke-filled saloon in a town that he had never heard of until recently.
    Standing, he turned and acknowledged the cheers and applause of the crowd.
    “Paddy, give this man a beer, on me!” one of the patrons said.
    “Do you know what you are doing there, Doc? You’re not one who’s known for buyin’ many drinks,” someone said.
    “I admit to a degree of parsimoniousness,” Doc replied. “But who can put a price tag on what we just heard?”
    The one the others called Doc was the same man who had invited Hawke to play.
    “Urban is