Dead Before Sundown

Chapter 23

“Who … who are they?” Lundy asked weakly. “Can you tell?”

Palmer hesitated before answering. When he and Lundy had heard the hoofbeats, he had moved carefully to the edge of the trees so he could see who was coming, staying far enough back that he wasn’t likely to be spotted.

He could see well enough that he recognized one of the men, though. He hadn’t seen Frank Morgan since they’d both been in Skagway the previous winter, but it would be hard to forget that son of a bitch.

Lundy was already upset about the possibility of Morgan being mixed up in this, and even though the outlaw was wounded, Palmer was going to need him.

“Two men,” he said. Then he lied, “I don’t know them.”

Well, it was a half lie, anyway. He had never seen the gent who dressed like some Wild West show cowboy. Which meant it was a half-truth, too.

“Stay away from that horse, damn you,” he muttered as Morgan and the other man took a closer look at the dead animal. What was left of the loot Palmer had brought with him when he and Yeah Mow Hopkins fled from Skagway was still in the saddlebags, and he didn’t want to lose it.

“What’d you say?” Lundy asked from behind him.

“Nothing,” Palmer said. He wanted Lundy to shut up. Right now they couldn’t afford to draw Morgan’s attention. Lundy was still too weak to be any use in a gunfight. “Just be quiet, all right? We’ll let them go on their way.”

“They got horses,” Lundy said, ignoring Palmer’s request. “We need horses.”

“And we’ll get ‘em,” Palmer said as he tried to control the irritation he felt. “Tonight when you’re feeling better, we’ll find their camp, kill them, and take their horses so we can get after that other bunch.”

He had cleaned the wound in Lundy’s side, which started the bullet holes bleeding again, so he’d had to stop the bleeding before tightly wrapping strips of cloth cut from his own shirt around Lundy’s torso as makeshift bandages. Now Lundy needed to rest for a while before he started moving around much.

“What if we can’t find their camp?”

“We’ll find it, all right. Don’t worry about that.”

“Wish we had one of those Gatling guns,” Lundy said. “Wouldn’t have to worry about anything then.”

Palmer wished he had one of the rapid-firers, too. He would have gladly cut Frank Morgan and that other man into little pieces if he did.

But the Gatlings were gone, God knows where, he thought, and the only weapon he had other than a knife was his cunning.

That had been enough in the past, Palmer told himself, and it would be again.

To his great relief, Morgan and the other man mounted up without searching the saddlebags on the dead horse. An ugly smile tugged at Palmer’s mouth. Morgan was probably helping Stevens try to recover the money Soapy had stolen from him.

Dumb son of a bitch didn’t have any idea how close he’d been to what was left of that loot.

Instead of heading east, as Palmer expected them to, Morgan and the other man turned around and rode west, back up the valley in the direction they had come from. They must have left the old-timer behind and were going back to get him now, Palmer figured. In the long run, it wouldn’t really matter.

“You just take it easy now, Owen. We’ll make our move tonight.”

“Good …” Lundy sounded as if he was about to doze off. “I want to get that gold back.”

“We’ll get it back,” Palmer promised. “This thing is a long way from over.”

“Can you tell who they are?” Charlotte asked.

“A woman and an old man,” Joseph said as he peered around the edge of one of the rocks where he and Charlotte had hidden with the pack mules. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“What about the two men who left?”

Joseph shook his head. “Strangers.”

His nerves were pulled as tight as a barbed-wire fence. The two people who sat their horses out there in the open didn’t look particularly dangerous, but it was difficult to tell about such things. Joseph was acutely aware that the four Gatling guns were loaded on the mules behind him.

If anything happened to those guns, the rebellion was probably doomed to failure. Joseph wished that Mirabeau and the others hadn’t ridden off and left him and Charlotte responsible for the safety of the weapons.

The two men who had ridden off earlier had gone in the direction of Wolverine Rock. They might run right into Mirabeau’s party. Joseph listened for the sound of more shots but didn’t hear any.

Two men wouldn’t be any match for Mirabeau and the others, he told himself. Everything would be all right. All he and Charlotte had to do was be patient.

And hope that none of the mules decided to let out a loud bray. If that happened, the old man and the woman were bound to ride over to the boulders and investigate.

Joseph’s hands sweated on the Winchester he clutched as he considered that possibility. One by one, he wiped them off on his trousers. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a revolutionary after all, he thought.

Frank was relieved when he and Reb came in sight of Salty and Meg. He hadn’t heard any more shooting and figured they were all right, but it was always good to see that with his own eyes.

“Any problems?” he asked as he and Reb rode up and reined in.

“Nary a one,” Salty replied with a shake of his head. “What’d you two find up yonder?”

“Three dead men,” Frank said.

Salty didn’t look surprised by the news. “Any idea who they were?” he asked.

“Not really, but from the looks of them, I figure it’s likely they were part of the same bunch that attacked us earlier.”

“Palmer’s bunch, you mean.”

“I doubt if Palmer’s the leader of the gang. I think he probably just joined up because he knew some of them.”

“I’m just glad he wasn’t one o’ them corpses you found. I’d like to see to it my own self that the varmint gets what’s comin’ to him.”

Reb smiled. “You sound a mite bloodthirsty, amigo.”

Salty snorted and said, “You’d be bloodthirsty, too, if a bunch of polecats stole ever’thing you had and dang near ruined you.”

“I suppose you’re right about that.”

Meg asked, “What do we do now?”

“This doesn’t really change anything,” Frank said. “Palmer’s still somewhere ahead of us, as far as we know. We stay on his trail.”

With that settled, the four of them set out again. By late afternoon, they had passed the spot where the three dead men lay and ridden past the giant boulder that was shaped something like the head of a predatory animal.

Frank kept a close eye on the rock as they approached it—if it had been used for an ambush once, it could be again, he reasoned—but nothing happened.

He called a halt when they were past the rock and said, “Salty, let’s go take a look around over there and see if we can find any tracks. I’d like to know how many bushwhackers there were.”

“Good idea,” the old-timer agreed. “We’re liable to run into the varmints ourselves sooner or later.”

Frank nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

He didn’t mind leaving Meg with Reb Russell this time, since he and Salty would be close by, but as it turned out, Reb said, “Meg and I will ride along with you, Frank. I’d sorta like to know the odds we might be facin’, too.”

Frank didn’t object. The four of them scouted around behind the huge boulder until Frank spied some hoofprints. He dismounted and hunkered on his heels to study the marks on the ground.

“Looks like half a dozen riders,” he announced. “One man stayed here to hold the horses.” He looked up at the rugged rock looming above them. “I figure the rest climbed up there and waited for those dead men to come in range.”

“You reckon anybody escaped that ambush?” Reb asked.

“I don’t know. They could have, I suppose.”

Salty said, “What I can’t figure out is who this bunch is. They ain’t the hombres who had the Gatlin’ gun with ‘em. That gang is the bunch that got bushwhacked.”

“Maybe the ambushers stole the Gatling gun,” Meg suggested. “That could have been the reason for the ambush in the first place.”

Frank considered the theory and nodded slowly. “Yeah, it could’ve happened like that,” he said. “The only way to find out is keep trailing them.”

“Why do you care about that Gatling gun?” Reb asked bluntly. “I thought you were just after this fella Palmer who helped steal Salty’s money.”

“I don’t know how they plan to use the Gatling gun, but it can’t be anything good,” Frank said. “I don’t want to see a bunch of innocent blood spilled if there’s anything I can do about it.”

“That’s sort of an odd way for a notorious gunfighter to feel, ain’t it?”

Frank regarded Reb coolly. “So you do know who I am,” he said.

The young man shrugged. “I recognized the name. Shoot, anybody who’s lived in the West for very long has heard of Frank Morgan. To tell you the truth, if anybody had asked me before today, I would have said it was likely you were dead by now.”

“Not hardly,” Frank said.

“Yeah, I can see that.” Reb smiled. “I don’t mean any offense, Frank. It’s just that gunfighters are usually pretty good at killin’.”

“I don’t care what you’ve heard about me. I’ve never killed anybody who wasn’t trying to kill me, or somebody else who didn’t deserve it. I’m not a hired gun and never have been, no matter what the law thinks of me.”

Reb nodded. “Fine. Like I said, I meant no offense. I just didn’t know. Now I do.”

“That’s right,” Frank said in a flat voice. “You do.”

Probably in an attempt to change the subject, Salty said, “I don’t see no blood on the ground or up on that rock. I reckon none o’ the bushwhackers got winged.”

“Those fellas tried to scatter before they were gunned down. They may not have even gotten any shots off of their own.”

“That’s just plain murder,” Meg said.

Frank nodded. “It sure is.”

“And those are the people we’re trailing now.” Meg paused. “But I don’t understand. If Palmer was with the men who were ambushed, he wouldn’t be with this gang now. So where is he?”

Frank didn’t have an answer for that, except to say, “He’s not here. Maybe he’s trailing the same bunch we are.”

“Which would put us on the same side?”

“Nope,” Salty said. “There ain’t but two sides … us and ever’body else. We got no friends out here.”

Frank couldn’t argue with that. He had a feeling that whoever they might run into between here and Calgary would just as soon see them all dead.