Henry suspected that if he had been distracted for even a second, the assassin would have put a bullet in him or a dagger in his back. The man was venomous. It was only fitting that he die by a blade in the back himself. A perfect reckoning.
Henry's sharp eyes noticed something odd about the lining of the man's coat. He cut it open with a dagger and found a hidden stash of cash: $2,600, all in hundred-dollar bills.
There was also a leather map, aged and worn. Henry unfolded it. It was an irregular rectangle, clearly cut from a larger piece, covered in what looked like some form of pictographic writing. He couldn't make sense of it, so he stored it away with the money.
Then, he stored the body—rapier, blanket, and all—back into his space, careful not to spill any blood.
After a quick check of the room revealed no obvious traces of the struggle, he opened the door and walked back downstairs. Drummond was still nowhere to be seen.
Henry returned to the Sheriff's office. Half an hour later, the carriage driver brought Luke back. Henry spoke with the driver for a few minutes, confirmed he was just an ordinary coachman who didn't know his passenger, paid him his fare, and sent him on his way.
And just like that, the legendary Western assassin, Kahlenbeck, vanished from the world without a trace.
A new, skill-less green pearl appeared in Henry's vision.
At the exact moment Kahlenbeck's soul departed, another man was riding hard from Denver.
Barrett was traveling with two horses, alternating between them to maintain a blistering pace toward Frisco, eighty-five miles away.
He had finally retrieved all five of the keepsakes he had given out over the years. A sense of peace settled over him. Whatever the outcome of his duel with Henry, he would have no regrets.
He had been challenged by over two hundred men in his life and had outlived them all. For twenty years, he had been a force of nature. His pride and honor would not allow him to ambush a boy.
Many had forgotten that before he was a master horseman, a soldier, a spy, a scout, a lawyer, a gunslinger, and a gambler, he had been a man of God. He had put down his Bible and picked up a gun only because the times demanded it. Now, after years of fighting, he had no family left but himself.
A month ago, he had begun to suffer from dizzy spells. A doctor, an old friend, had given him the diagnosis: a rare eye disease. Within a year, he would be blind.
Barrett accepted the news with the quiet resignation of a man who had seen too much of life's cruelty. Perhaps this was the price for his extraordinary gifts.
He was content. He would be able to fulfill this one last promise before the darkness took him. To die in a duel was a far better fate than to waste away in a sickbed.
So, let the final act play out. Would the young lion take the throne, or would the old king's reign continue?
Twenty years old, Barrett thought. The exact same age he had been when he first drew his gun.
Sometimes, life is a full circle.
He would give this duel his all. Not just for the sake of his promise, but as a sign of true respect for a fellow master.
At 3 PM sharp, Henry began the shooting assessment for the thirty-six townsmen who had applied to be temporary deputies.
On a patch of open ground, six targets, each 20cm in diameter, were set up at varying distances and heights, all within a 15-to-21-foot range. The applicants had to draw and fire six shots, hitting all six targets. They were scored on time and accuracy.
For the rifle test, five man-sized targets were placed at 50, 100, 150, 200, and 300 meters. The applicants had to fire from kneeling and standing positions, without support.
By the end of the two tests, twelve men had been eliminated. Two of them were in their late forties—far too old, considering the average life expectancy for a man in the West was thirty-five.
Marksmanship was a skill that could only be honed through countless hours of live-fire practice. In his past life, Henry had read that it took ten thousand rounds to make a sharpshooter, and a hundred thousand to make a master. It took thousands of repetitions to build muscle memory, to learn to read the wind and the range instinctively.
Of course, a man with a stronger constitution could control recoil and trigger pull more easily. But for the average man, the path to mastery was long and expensive. In a real battle, it often took a thousand rounds to kill a single man.
Henry, of course, was playing on easy mode. His skill had advanced at a rocket's pace, equivalent to firing hundreds of thousands of rounds. And his enhanced physique, combined with what he suspected was a "Hawkeye" talent, made him a force to be reckoned with.
He couldn't hold ordinary men to such a high standard. He would select the best of the remaining twenty-four, and from them, he would choose the most loyal and talented for special training. He would personally fund their practice, at least ten thousand rounds per man.
Eight of them were promising young men, between eighteen and twenty-four. One of them, a boy named Thor from the Maxson Farmstead, was a friend of the original Henry.
After the official assessment was over, Thor, emboldened by his familiarity with Henry, called out with a grin. "Sheriff, everyone says you're a miracle with a gun. How about a demonstration?"
Henry looked around. The other men's faces were all alight with anticipation. A display of skill would help solidify his authority. Seeing is believing, after all.
He had twelve of the men, including Thor, each pick up a palm-sized stone. They scattered in a 120-degree arc about thirty meters in front of him.
"Luke," Henry said, "go over and tell them: when you fire your pistol into the air, they are to throw their stones at me with all their might."
Luke relayed the instructions, then stood beside Thor and fired his revolver into the sky.
Twelve arms whipped forward, sending twelve stones hurtling toward Henry. The average man can throw a stone at about 25 meters per second. These were strong young men; even if they threw at 30 m/s, it would still take a full second for the stones to reach him.
Henry's hands were a blur. The Colt 1878s appeared in them, and he opened fire. To the onlookers, it was as if the guns had simply teleported into his hands and started shooting.
His powerful dynamic vision allowed him to track the trajectory of every single stone, to see their sequence in the air with perfect clarity.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
He fired six shots from each pistol, and in the space of a heartbeat, all twelve stones were blasted out of the air, shattering into dust before they even came within ten meters of him.