Dead Before Sundown

Chapter 7

Frank wished he had taken a moment to find out the man’s name before that unfortunate passed away. As it was, all he could carve on the crude cross he and Salty made were the date and the letters RIP. They set up the cross at the head of the grave they dug to one side of the cabin, after they’d filled it back in.

Salty glanced at the sky and said, “It’s a mite late in the day to be pushin’ on, but I ain’t sure I feel too good about spendin’ the night here where that poor varmint crossed the divide.”

A shiver ran through Meg. “I feel the same way,” she said. “I’d rather make camp somewhere else.”

Frank nodded. “Let’s ride. We’ve done all we can here.”

They headed east, following the creek as it meandered along the valley. Soon the cabin and the lonely grave were out of sight behind them.

That night they made a cold camp. “Palmer is less than a day ahead of us,” Frank pointed out. “If he hasn’t spotted us before, we don’t want him to now.”

“We’re gonna catch the no-good varmint,” Salty said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“No disrespect to your bones, Salty, but there’s still a lot that could happen.” Frank gazed off into the darkness. “But we know now that he’s up there somewhere ahead of us, and that’s something, anyway.”

For the first time in several days, Joe Palmer wasn’t hungry. He had looted the trapper’s cabin of all the supplies he could pack onto his horse, after moving his saddle over to the horse in the corral behind the cabin.

Now, with a week’s worth of provisions and a spare mount, he felt better about his chances than he had at any time since he’d fled from Powderkeg Bay. As he leaned back against the fallen tree that lay in the clearing where he’d made camp, he wondered idly about his former partner.

Palmer had been trying to get away from Yeah Mow Hopkins ever since they had left Skagway together with that loot Soapy had cached. It wasn’t that Palmer had anything against Yeah Mow. He wasn’t that bright, but he was strong and loyal.

Palmer wanted all the money for himself, though. He had never planned on partnering up permanently with Hopkins. That was just a way for both of them to get out of Skagway with their hides intact when the vigilantes started their rampage.

But in the months since then, Hopkins had watched him like a hawk. Hopkins didn’t mind Palmer carrying the loot, but he didn’t let him out of his sight, either. Yeah Mow was cunning, even if he wasn’t exactly what anybody would call smart.

So as far as Palmer was concerned, running into that old pelican Salty Stevens was a stroke of luck. It was amazing that Stevens was even still alive. He had disappeared from Skagway with winter coming on, and Palmer had just assumed that the old bastard had frozen to death somewhere.

The worrisome thing was that if Stevens was still alive, Frank Morgan might be, too. Morgan had befriended the old-timer in Skagway. The gunfighter was definitely dangerous. Palmer and the rest of Soapy’s men had found that out when they tried to get rid of him.

When the shooting had started in Red Mike’s, Palmer had seized the opportunity to get out of town while Hopkins was pinned down behind the bar. Palmer had mixed emotions about the outcome of that gunfight. If Stevens had killed Hopkins, then he didn’t have to worry about Yeah Mow coming after him. If it was the other way around, chances were that Hopkins would follow him. Hopkins knew that the plan called for them to cross the mountains and head for Calgary.

Hopkins wouldn’t be in a forgiving mood. He would want the money, and he would want revenge for Palmer running out on him like that. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea, Palmer mused now. He hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, though. He had just acted when the chance presented itself to him.

As usual, he was damned either way, he brooded. And damned even more if Frank Morgan was still alive and coming after him.

But he couldn’t do anything about that now except try to stay ahead of any possible pursuers, no matter who they were. He’d have a lot better chance of doing that with the supplies and the extra horse. Since leaving Powderkeg Bay he had been living on the game he could shoot. Now with any luck, he could make those stolen supplies stretch all the way to Calgary.

Once he reached the settlement, the biggest in western Canada, he was confident that he could link up with some fellas he knew there and be safe, even if Frank Morgan was still alive and on his trail.

Both of the horses suddenly lifted their heads and pricked their ears. Palmer tensed as he noticed the reaction from the animals. They had heard or smelled something.

A moment later, he smelled it, too. Wood smoke. Somebody had a campfire burning not too far away. Palmer muttered a curse under his breath.

He hadn’t built a fire because he didn’t want anybody seeing it. Somebody was out here in this wilderness who didn’t care about that. Stevens? Morgan? Both of them?

No, Palmer decided. The light breeze that carried the scent of smoke to him came out of the east. It was possible that someone trailing him could have gotten past him without any of them knowing about it, but he thought it was unlikely. He had been moving pretty fast.

That meant somebody else was ahead of him. No telling who it might be. Another trapper, maybe. Some travelers on their way through the mountains. It could be anybody, Palmer told himself. He had no reason to think they were a threat to him.

But he didn’t know, and that bothered him. He got to his feet and picked up his rifle. The idea of traipsing around on the side of a mountain in the darkness wasn’t very appealing to him, but he liked the idea of being surprised by enemies even less.

He was a city boy and didn’t like this wilderness, but he had been around it enough that he was confident he could find his way back to the camp. He left the horses tied up where they were and started making his way through the shadows, following the scent of wood smoke that still drifted through the night.

“The fire is already too big, Joseph,” Charlotte Marat said as she stood with her arms crossed, glaring impatiently at her brother. “Someone will see it.”

Joseph tossed another branch onto the flames and shrugged. “Who is out here to see it, other than our friends?”

“We don’t know who is out here,” Charlotte insisted. “That is the whole point of being careful.”

Joseph sighed. It was easier to humor Charlotte than to argue with her, much easier. He knew that. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that fact, however.

“We’ll let the fire burn down,” he said. “I wanted some hot food tonight. All this running and hiding and living like animals … it gets wearisome, Charlotte.”

Her expression softened, and when it did, some of the beauty that hardship had drained out of her returned, if only momentarily.

“Of course it does,” she said. “I’m sorry, Joseph. But we must stay alive and free if our cause is to have any chance of succeeding.”

She sat down on a slab of rock on the other side of the fire. The light from the flames painted her face with red shadows.

Joseph Marat was aware that his sister was a beautiful woman. She should have been in an elegantly appointed drawing room somewhere, wearing a fine gown, instead of hunkered in a forest clearing in boots, denim trousers, and a flannel shirt. Her thick, dark brown hair should have been piled on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls instead of drawn back and tied behind her head so that she could tuck it more easily under her hat when she was riding.

But neither of them had asked for their fate. The Indian blood that mingled in their veins with the French meant that they would always be half-breeds, pitiful creatures to be scorned and looked down upon, despite the fact that both of them were more intelligent and better educated than the English and the Scots who had driven their people out of their homeland.

Joseph took the skillet from the fire, divided the beans and bacon in it among the two of them. His rifle was close at hand, and even while he was heating the food, he had paid close attention to the woods around them.

What he had told Charlotte was true, as far as it went. They had no enemies out here that he knew of.

But it was what a man didn’t know that often wound up killing him, Joseph reflected. Charlotte was absolutely right. He shouldn’t have built such a big fire.

The objection she had raised didn’t keep her from eating eagerly. They washed the food down with sips of hot coffee. After a while, Charlotte said, “How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait?”

Joseph shook his head. “I don’t know. Duryea wasn’t sure when the guns would arrive. Sometime this month.”

“We’ve been waiting for a week already.”

“I know. We’ll wait another week if we have to. However long it takes.”

Joseph’s tone was a little sharper than he’d intended. He saw the flash of hurt in his sister’s eyes and wanted to apologize to her. He suppressed the impulse.

A man who was tough enough to lead a revolution didn’t start saying he was sorry every time his bossy little sister got her feelings hurt.

A little noise in the brush caught Joseph’s attention. A small animal might have caused it … but it might be something else, too.

Moving casually so as not to alarm anyone who was watching, he reached over and put his hand on his rifle. Charlotte noticed the movement, and her eyes narrowed. Joseph knew she was about to ask him if something was wrong. To forestall that, he stood up and said, “I think I’ll take a little walk.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t demand explanations from you when you have personal business to conduct, do I?”

Her face turned even redder in the firelight. He felt bad about embarrassing her, but better a little embarrassment than tipping off a possible enemy that he was aware of them lurking near the camp.

He tucked the rifle under his arm as if he didn’t have a care in the world, then stepped out of the circle of light cast by the campfire. Instead of heading toward the sound he had heard, he moved off in another direction.

As soon as the thick shadows underneath the trees had enfolded him, he turned and shifted the rifle so that it was in his hands, ready to fire. He began working his way around the camp.

When Joseph was a boy, his father had been friends with Gabriel Dumont, the famous hunter and plainsman who was Louis Riel’s second-in-command. Dumont had taught Joseph how to track game, and that involved being able to move silently through the woods, even in darkness.

Joseph used those lessons now, taking care each time he put a foot down not to make any noise. It was slow, painstaking work, but such caution could save a man’s life.

He paused frequently to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything except the faint crackling of the fire as it burned down. Had he been too suspicious? Was there really nothing dangerous out here?

“Joseph?” That was Charlotte calling out to him. “Joseph, are you all right?”

Blast it, Joseph thought bitterly. He couldn’t answer her without giving away his position, but if he failed to respond and there really was someone out here watching the camp, that silence might warn the lurker that he had been discovered.

Joseph was trying to decide what to do when the brush crackled again, right in front of him this time. His eyes, adjusted to the darkness since he had been away from the fire for several minutes, saw a patch of deeper darkness shift and reveal itself to be the rough shape of a man.

Certain now that something was wrong, Joseph lunged forward and thrust the barrel of his rifle into the stranger’s back. “Don’t move!” he shouted. “Charlotte, stay where you are!”

Instead of obeying the order, as would any sane man who had a rifle barrel prodding him in the back, the stranger suddenly twisted around and threw himself out of the line of fire. Joseph started to pull the trigger anyway, but his finger froze on the trigger as he realized the rifle was pointing toward the camp. If he fired, he might hit Charlotte by accident.

That second of indecision was enough. The man grabbed the rifle barrel and wrenched upward. That move made Joseph jerk the trigger involuntarily. The shot was deafeningly loud under the thick canopy of tree branches.

The stranger drove the rifle toward Joseph, ripping the weapon from his hands and slamming it into his chest. The impact made Joseph stagger backwards. He felt stunned, as if the blow had caused his heart to stop beating. He couldn’t seem to get his breath. While he was off-balance and struggling, the man barreled into him and knocked him off his feet.

Joseph landed hard on the ground, stunning him even more. A knee dug painfully into his belly and pinned him there. The next second, he felt the cold, hard bite of steel as the stranger pressed a gun muzzle into the soft flesh of his neck.

“Don’t move, mister,” the man warned, “or I’ll blow your head off.”

He was about to die, Joseph thought, and things couldn’t get any worse.

But then they did, as Charlotte’s voice, tight with fear, said, “No, m’sieu, it is you who should not move, or I will blow your head off!”