Dead Before Sundown

Chapter 12

The big, bearded man in the lead wheeled his horse toward Frank. He hauled Salty up in front of him to use as a human shield. For a split second, Frank still had a shot past the old-timer, but he didn’t take it. The odds of hitting Salty were too high.

“Hold your fire!” the man shouted. Frank didn’t know if the man was talking to him or to the other riders. Either way, no more shots rang out.

“Frank!” Meg cried. “Get out of here while you can!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Frank said as he squinted over the barrel of his Winchester. “Not without you and Salty.”

“Take it easy, mon ami,” the bearded man said, his accent and the French words giving away the fact that he was a French-Canadian. Frank didn’t know much about Canada’s politics, but he knew that some of the country’s population was descended from the French trappers who had been the first to explore its interior.

This man’s high cheekbones and the faintly coppery shade of his skin indicated that he might have some Indian blood as well. His companions appeared to share that ancestry.

“Who are you?” the bearded man went on.

“That’s my business,” Frank snapped. Palmer wasn’t part of this group, and they didn’t appear to be the sort of men that Palmer would throw in with.

That realization increased Frank’s puzzlement, but this wasn’t the time to ponder the matter. Salty and Meg were prisoners, and that was the only important thing.

“We have business here as well,” the bearded man said, “and we cannot afford for anyone to interfere with it.”

“My friends and I have no interest in you,” Frank replied. “Set them on the ground, leave our animals and supplies, and ride on. We’ll forget about this.”

“I regret to say we cannot. Throw down your gun and come out, or I will snap this old man’s neck.”

The coldness of the man’s voice told Frank that he probably meant the threat. Frank wasn’t used to letting himself be bluffed, though, and there was a chance of that.

Of course, it was Salty’s life he was betting…

“If you do that, you’ll have a bullet through your brain before the old-timer hits the ground,” Frank said.

Salty yelled, “Shoot him anyway, Frank! Shoot me! A Winchester round’ll go right through me and get him!”

“It appears to be your play, Frank,” the bearded man said with grim amusement.

Frank didn’t like what he had to do next, but he called, “Yeah, that’s right.”

Then he shot the bearded man’s horse.

He had a clear shot. The bullet drove deep into the animal’s chest. The horse screamed and went down, its front legs collapsing so abruptly that Salty and the bearded man were thrown forward over its head.

The collision with the ground broke loose the man’s grip on Salty. The old-timer reacted with surprising swiftness for his age, rolling away from his captor.

Frank saw the other men reaching for their guns and sent another shot whistling over their heads.

At the same time, Meg acted, driving an elbow backward into the belly of the man holding her. That must have taken him by surprise. His grip slipped, as well, and Meg dived off the horse. No sooner had she hit the ground than Salty was there beside her, reaching down to grab her arm and haul her to her feet.

“Kill him!” the bearded man bellowed, adding a spate of French words that had to be curses.

That order put things on a different footing where Frank was concerned. Before, he had been willing to give the men a little benefit of the doubt.

No longer. He worked the Winchester’s lever and fired again at the man he had just set afoot.

The bearded man flung himself to the ground, making Frank’s shot miss by a hair. Frank swung the Winchester and fired again. This time his target was the man who had been leading their horses and pack mules. The man howled in pain and let go of the reins as he clutched at a bullet-busted shoulder.

Meg and Salty ran for the trees. One of the men swung his rifle toward them. Frank drilled the man through the body, knocking him out of the saddle. A second later, Meg and Salty reached the shelter of the pines.

The other men concentrated their fire on the deadfall behind which Frank crouched. He had to duck lower as slugs slammed into the log and sent splinters and chunks of dead bark flying.

When he risked a look again, he saw that one of the other men had spurred over to the bearded hombre. He reached down, grasped the bearded man’s wrist, and hauled him up.

“Let’s get out of here!” the bearded man shouted.

The men who were still mounted wheeled their horses and galloped toward the cliff, turning still more to race along parallel to the rocky face. They must have known where a trail was, because moments later they vanished into the trees that grew almost to the base of the cliff.

Frank kept his rifle trained on the spot where they had disappeared as he listened to the hoofbeats fade. It sounded like they were really lighting a shuck out of here, but he suspected a trick.

“Frank!” Salty called.

“Stay where you are!” Frank replied. “Don’t come out until we’re sure they’re not doubling back! Are the two of you all right?”

“We’re not hurt,” Meg called back. “How about you?”

“I’m fine,” Frank told her.

After a moment he couldn’t hear the horses anymore. He waited another fifteen minutes just to be sure before he stood up behind the deadfall.

“All right,” he told Salty and Meg. “I’m pretty sure they’re gone now.”

The two of them emerged from their hiding places in the pines. Salty went to gather up the horses and mules while Meg hurried over to join Frank as he went to check on the man he had shot off one of the horses.

The man was dead, his eyes staring lifelessly at the sky. Frank had never seen him before.

“I’m sorry,” Meg said. She pointedly avoided looking at the corpse. “They were on top of us before we knew what was happening. We tried to convince them to go on about their business, but they jumped us.”

“What is their business?” Frank asked as he reloaded the cartridges he had burned in the Winchester. “Did they say?”

Meg shook her head. “No. They seemed to have some idea that Salty might be a lawman, though. That’s what it sounded like from some of the talk I overheard.”

“I used to be, you know,” the old-timer said as he came up leading the horses and the mules. “Range detective, anyway, and unofficial deputy a time or two.”

Frank said, “If they were worried about star packers, that means they were likely up to no good.”

Salty nodded. “I reckon you could bet a hat on that.”

“Do you think they have anything to do with Palmer?” Meg asked.

Frank frowned as he thought about it. After a moment, he said, “I don’t see how they could. But there are things going on out here that we obviously don’t know anything about.”

“Dang mountains is downright crowded,” Salty said.

“The same thought occurred to me. And it’s worse than you think, because I found those men you and I heard earlier, Meg.”

She looked confused. “It couldn’t have been the same bunch. They came from opposite directions along the creek.”

“That’s right. The men I saw appeared to be some sort of smugglers.” Frank thought about the chests he had seen strapped to the pack animals of the bearded man’s gang. “I don’t suppose this bunch said anything about what they were carrying?”

“Not a word,” Meg replied. “What in the world is going on here, Frank?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I reckon it would be a good idea for us to find out.”

Salty said, “I figured we’d stay on Palmer’s trail and keep headin’ for Calgary.”

“The problem with that is, we don’t know whether or not Palmer has run into those smugglers. He could have even joined up with them.”

Salty raked his fingers through his beard. “So we got to find them so-called smugglers, dodge that other bunch o’ killers, and look for Palmer all at the same time?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Frank admitted with a shrug.

“You don’t never do nothin’ simple, do you, Frank?”

“Well, sooner or later it usually comes down to killing.” Frank’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “Can’t get much more simple than that.”

Anton Mirabeau seethed with anger. He and his companions had climbed to a rocky promontory where they could look back down the mountainside. One of his men had a pair of field glasses in his saddle bags. Mirabeau took them and scanned the rugged landscape that fell away in front of him, searching for any sign of the two men and the blond girl.

He didn’t see them. Scowling in disgust, he handed the glasses back to the other man.

“What do we do now, Anton? We’re short a horse.”

“We’ll go back and get Pierre’s horse,” Mirabeau said. “From the way he fell, he won’t be needing it anymore.”

Another rider spoke up. “I don’t like losing a man.”

Mirabeau turned angrily toward him. “You think I do? Pierre was like a brother to me!” He made a curt gesture. “You all are. We are a band of brothers, are we not?”

A couple of the men shrugged. The others just regarded him sullenly. They had started out on this journey with such high hopes, and now one of their number was dead.

“The plan will proceed,” Mirabeau declared. He couldn’t allow their resolve to weaken. “Pierre will not be there to see us triumph, but triumph we will. Come. We’ll fetch his horse.”

Mirabeau rode double with one of the other men this time as they headed back toward the meadow where the fight had taken place. He was confident that the man called Frank and the other two would be long gone by now.

That turned out to be true. The three of them were gone … but they had taken Pierre’s horse with them. Pierre still lay there lifeless on the ground.

Mirabeau ground his teeth together for a moment before he got control of his surging emotions. “We will bury him,” he declared. “Then we push on. We will take turns riding double. Our horses are strong. They will be all right.”

This was a setback, though. There was no doubt about that. At least they still had the money for the guns. Soon, Joseph and Charlotte would make contact with the Americans and arrange the transaction. Soon, the Métis would have what they needed to win their freedom. That was the most important thing.

But once that goal was accomplished, Mirabeau intended to turn his attention elsewhere. He would find out who Frank was. More importantly, he would find out where Frank was.

And once he did, Mirabeau would settle the score.

The man called Frank would die.