Dead Before Sundown

Chapter 25

Frank never slept too deeply. The life he had led made sure of that.

So he was instantly alert when the sound of the shot jerked him out of slumber.

He came out of his bedroll reaching for the Winchester on the ground beside him. A bullet whined somewhere overhead and thudded into the rocky face of the ridge.

“Everybody down!” Frank called. “Stay down!”

He was already on one knee. He brought the rifle to his shoulder as he spotted a muzzle flash a couple of hundred yards away. The Winchester already had a round in the chamber. It kicked hard as he fired.

Frank worked the lever and threw himself forward, expecting return fire. He got it, but the shots continued to go high, smacking into the bluff.

Salty called, “Who in tarnation you reckon that is?”

“Don’t know,” Frank replied. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, other than havin’ my sleep disturbed!”

“Meg! How about you? Are you hit?”

She called back, “Reb and I are both fine, Frank!”

Shots continued to crack from the unseen rifleman. Frank considered the situation and said, “Salty, we’re going to try to flush that varmint out. You go left and I’ll go right.”

“You bet,” Salty replied eagerly. “I’m gettin’ so dang frustrated, I’m just itchin’ to shoot somebody.”

“Let’s take him alive if we can,” Frank cautioned. “I’d like to find out who he is and why he wants us dead.”

“Shoot, seems like ever’body wants us dead these days,” Salty muttered as he started crawling off to the left.

Frank heard the comment. It brought a grim smile to his mouth. Salty was right. It seemed as if everyone they had run into in Canada was an enemy, with the lone exception of Reb Russell.

And Frank wasn’t a hundred percent sure about him yet….

On hands and knees, Frank moved away from the camp to the right. When he reached an area of taller grass, he came up into a crouching run but still stayed as low as he could.

The rifle continued to bang in the night. As Frank circled toward the bushwhacker’s position, something began to nag at him. The light from the moon and stars was too dim for accurate shooting, but even so, it seemed that all the shots had been going too high for this to be a real ambush.

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he stopped short and started to turn back. The shots were nothing but decoys, he realized, designed to draw him away from the camp.

But as he swung around, something smashed against the side of his head like a giant fist. The terrible impact made rockets go off in his brain. He felt himself falling and tried to catch his balance, but he couldn’t stop.

He hit the ground, and that was the last thing he knew for a while.

Joe Palmer was pretty sure the man had just taken a shot at was Frank Morgan. His heart leaped as he saw Morgan fall.

Take that, gunfighter, he thought. Not such a big man now, are you?

Palmer didn’t waste any time gloating. He started down the slope, which was steep enough that part of the time he was bounding and the other part he was sliding.

He hoped Lundy remembered the plan and was holding his fire now. Otherwise Palmer might run smack-dab into a bullet from the outlaw’s rifle.

The kid and the blonde were still at the camp. They must have heard the shot from the top of the bluff and they probably heard Palmer making his way down the ridge, so he was expecting trouble. He wasn’t going to give them a chance to get oriented. He pulled one of his revolvers and emptied it in the direction he had last seen them.

He had barely reached level ground when a figure loomed up in front of him. The night was too dark for him to tell which one it was. Since he still had the empty gun in his hand, he lashed out with it.

At the same time, a gun went off practically in his face. The report slammed deafeningly against his ears. Burning bits of powder stung his left cheek. He felt a tearing pain in that ear, as if somebody had just tried to rip it off his head.

The gun in his hand crashed against his opponent’s skull. The figure went down like a poleaxed steer.

Palmer didn’t get any respite, though. Somebody tackled him from behind. They both went to the ground.

As he rolled in the dirt, wrestling with his attacker, Palmer’s hands told him he was fighting with the woman. He had dropped the empty pistol and the rifle when she knocked him down, but that meant he had both hands free. He drove a knee into her body, pinned her arms to the ground with one hand, and landed a punch to her jaw with the other fist. Her head bounced against the ground, and she went limp.

Palmer knew he had no time to waste. The way Morgan had gone down, he hoped the gunfighter was dead. But it was possible that Morgan was just wounded, and the old man was still unaccounted for, too. Palmer scrambled to his feet.

An idea occurred to him as he did so. He leaned down, and working by feel, he pulled the blonde’s belt from the trousers she wore and rolled her onto her stomach while she was still stunned and helpless. He pulled her arms behind her back and used the belt to bind her wrists together.

The horses were picketed. He grabbed a blanket and saddle and threw them on one of the mounts, hurriedly cinching the saddle in place. He risked taking long enough to saddle one of the other horses. The blonde was starting to make angry noises now as her wits returned to her. Ignoring the burning pain in his wounded ear, Palmer scooped her up and put her on one of the saddled horses.

“Don’t cause any fuss or I’ll kill you,” he warned.

She tried to kick him. Palmer dodged it and reached up to punch her in the belly. As the woman groaned and bent over, he used one of the picket ropes to tie her already-bound wrists to the saddle horn.

Now if she didn’t cooperate, she would fall off the horse and probably get dragged to death. So if she knew what was good for her, she would do what she was told.

All too aware that he was working against time, Palmer slung some supplies onto the pack animals, then jerked the other ropes loose, freeing the rest of the horses. An eerie silence hung over the night now that the shooting had stopped.

Where was the old man?

That question was answered just as Palmer picked up his rifle. A shot roared from somewhere close by. Palmer heard the bullet sizzle past his head. He swung around and opened fire, cranking off three rounds from the Winchester as fast as he could work the lever.

Stevens, who had reared up in the grass after crawling back to the camp, went over backward as at least one of the bullets ripped into him. The gun in his hand went off again, but it was pointed toward the stars now as he fell.

Palmer didn’t waste any more time. He leaped onto the other saddled horse, grabbed the reins of the horse carrying the blonde, and kicked his mount into a gallop. Together they thundered away from the campsite, scattering the other horses in the process. He rode close enough to one of the pack horses to reach over and grab its reins as well.

Palmer left the camp and his enemies behind him. He knew all three of the men were hurt, but he didn’t know how badly. All of them might be dead. He hoped fervently that was the case.

But even if they weren’t, they were set afoot now, while he had horses, supplies, guns … and a hostage, if he needed one.

Best of all, if he could get his hands on those chests of gold; now he wouldn’t have to split that fortune with anybody.

A grin stretched across Palmer’s face as he galloped through the night. Things were finally starting to go his way again.

Frank couldn’t hold back a groan as awareness seeped back into his brain. Thundering pain filled his skull.

If anybody was watching him, he had already betrayed the fact that he was regaining consciousness. He managed to lift a hand and touched the side of his head where the pain seemed to be centered. The sticky wetness he felt there was unmistakably blood.

But he was alive, and this was hardly the first time he’d been shot. He realized that the bullet that had come out of the night had barely creased him. Just a little hot lead kiss on the side of the head that had knocked him down and out for a while.

How long? he wondered.

Probably not that long, judging by the smell of burned powder that still hung in the air. The fight seemed to be over, though. No shots rang out, no angry yells. Instead everything was quiet and peaceful.

But so was a grave, Frank reminded himself.

He pushed himself up in a sitting position and looked around. A wave of dizziness went through him as the world seemed to spin in the wrong direction for a moment.

That feeling subsided. He was able to orient himself. He saw the ridge about a hundred yards away.

The shot that had felled him had come from the ridge, confirming his hunch that there were at least two bushwhackers. Both of them were probably gone now.

Cold fear for Salty and Meg gripped him. To a lesser extent, he was worried about Reb Russell, too. He looked around, spotted his rifle lying on the ground, and reached over to pick it up. He used the weapon to help lever himself to his feet.

Frank’s iron constitution helped him throw off the effects of being shot, at least for a while. Feeling stronger by the moment, he walked back toward the camp, his face hardening into a grim mask as he thought about what he might find there.

The moon was almost down and the eastern sky was turning gray, heralding the approach of dawn. As Frank came up to the camp, his keen eyes noted that the horses were gone. That came as no surprise to him. The horses could have been what the bushwhackers were after.

He heard a groan, followed by a muttered curse. That led him to a sprawled figure. As the man started to sit up, Frank drew the Colt and leveled it at him.

“Hold it right there, mister.”

“Wha—” The man sounded confused. “Frank?”

The voice belonged to Reb Russell. Not completely sure that Reb hadn’t had something to do with the attack, Frank didn’t lower his gun as he asked, “What happened here?”

“I … I don’t know. Somebody let off a shot from the top of the ridge. I heard him slidin’ down the slope and tried to jump him, but it felt like a mountain landed on my head.” Reb paused. “I’ve got a lump the size of a goose egg on my head! Son of a bitch must’ve pistol-whipped me.”

Frank’s instincts told him Reb was telling the truth, but he was still cautious. “Where’s Meg and Salty?”

Reb looked around. “Meg was with me…. I don’t know about Salty….” Alarm was in his voice as he called, “Meg!” He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the threat of the gun in Frank’s hand. “Meg, where are you?”

Frank was looking around, too. He said, “I don’t think she’s here.”

Reb let out a bitter curse. “The varmint must’ve grabbed her and taken her with him! Where are those damn horses? We gotta get after ‘em!”

“The horses are gone. The bushwhackers either took them or ran them off.”

“But … but … blast it! It’s hard to think straight with my head hurtin’ so much.”

Frank knew the feeling. Despite the pain in his skull, he started walking around the campsite, ranging farther out as he searched for Salty.

He almost tripped over the old-timer. Salty was lying on his side in the tall grass. For a second, Frank was afraid that his friend was dead. Then he heard the strained rasp of Salty’s breath.

Frank holstered his gun and knelt beside Salty. He rolled the old-timer onto his back. Salty groaned.

“Can you hear me, Salty?” Frank groaned. “How bad are you hit?”

“Did you find him?” Reb called. He hurried toward Frank and Salty.

Before Reb could get there, a figure loomed out of the shadows, gun in hand. “Where is he?” the man shouted hoarsely, but he didn’t wait for an answer.

Instead he jerked the trigger, and flame spouted from the revolver’s muzzle.