William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

With his rifle held ready, Frank cat-footed along the side of the cabin. He waved toward the trees where Salty and Meg were hidden to let them know he was all right, as well as to signal that they should hold their fire.

He stopped at the front corner and listened. Dead silence hung over the valley. No sounds came from inside the cabin.

Like it or not, he had to move over to the window and see if he could find out what was going on here. He eased in that direction. Despite his long years of experience in dangerous situations, his pulse was beating a little faster than usual.

He was close enough now to see that while the door was pushed up, it wasn’t closed quite all the way. The window had shutters on the inside. One of them was closed, but the other hung open. Frank stopped only a foot from the window and listened again.

This time he heard a very faint rasping sound, like somebody using a piece of sandpaper on some wood. After a moment, he realized what he was hearing.

Someone inside the cabin was struggling mightily to draw one breath after another.

Carefully, he lowered the Winchester and leaned it against the cabin wall. He pulled the Colt instead, steel whispering against leather as he drew it. The revolver was better suited for close work.

The labored breathing could be a trick, the bait in a trap designed to lure him in.

Frank’s instincts told him that wasn’t the case. The man inside the cabin hadn’t cried out or claimed he was wounded or anything like that. It was unlikely that he even knew Frank was out here, close enough to hear those rasping breaths.

Frank took off his hat and leaned closer to the window. He risked a look around the edge of the closed shutter.

The inside of the cabin was dim and shadowy, but enough light came through the window for him to make out the shape of a man lying in a twisted position on the hard-packed dirt floor. The man wasn’t moving. Frank saw a dark stain on the ground around him and knew it had to be blood.

If the man Frank could see was the only one in the cabin, he didn’t represent much of a threat. Unfortunately, Frank couldn’t be sure the man lying on the floor was the only one in there. To confirm that, he would have to go inside.

He crouched low and went under the window, then straightened and put his hat on again as he came to the door. He paused long enough to flash a confident smile toward the trees where Salty and Meg were watching, then lunged forward, hitting the door with his shoulder and knocking it open as he dived through.

Frank landed on his belly with the Colt tilted up, ready to fire. His head jerked from side to side as his keen eyes scanned the room. The cabin wasn’t very big, and it took him only a second to see everything in it.

The man lying on his side in a pool of blood was the cabin’s only occupant except for Frank himself.

Frank heaved himself up on his knees. With the door wide open now, enough light spilled through it for him to see the man’s pale, twisted face. It was narrow, with an angular, beard-stubbled jaw. The man wore a buckskin shirt, the front of which was sodden with dark blood, and corduroy trousers.

He definitely wasn’t Joe Palmer.

A rifle lay on the floor not far from the man’s outstretched hand. Frank stood up and nudged it well out of reach with a booted toe. He kept his Colt trained on the wounded man. The man seemed to be out cold and probably on the verge of death, judging by the amount of blood he had lost, but Frank didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances.

He stepped to the doorway and called to Salty and Meg, “It’s all right! Come on in!”

The man on the floor let out a groan.

Frank wanted to go to him and see if he could do anything for him, but he waited until his companions got there. When they did, he told Meg, “Wait out here.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you don’t want to go in there,” Frank said bluntly. “Come on, Salty.”

Meg obviously didn’t like it, but she remained outside. When Frank and Salty stepped into the cabin, Frank said, “Keep him covered while I check on him.”

“What happened to him?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out. Looks like he was shot or stabbed in the belly.”

Being gut-shot was a long, hard, miserable way to die. Frank hadn’t wished such a fate on many men, not even most of his enemies. Certainly not on a stranger.

He holstered his Colt and knelt next to the man. Gently, he rolled the man onto his back and pulled up the buckskin shirt to take a look at the wound. The long, narrow opening through which the crimson blood had welled told Frank that the man had been knifed.

The man’s eyelids fluttered. His thinning dark hair was askew, and beads of sweat covered his forehead. He managed to force his eyes open and gasped, “Who—?”

“Take it easy,” Frank said. “I’m a friend. I won’t hurt you.”

“You … I shot … at you …”

“Yeah, but I won’t hold that against you. I reckon you thought you had a good reason.”

“I thought … you were him … comin’ back to … finish me off.”

Frank had thought it might be something like that. He said, “Are you talking about the man who stabbed you?”

“Y-yeah. He rode up … this morning … wanted some grub. I fed him…. Then he wanted to … swap horses with me….”

Every word was a struggle for the wounded man to get out. Frank felt a pang of sympathy, but he knew there was nothing he could do to save this luckless fella’s life. He wanted to find out as much as he could in the time the man had left, though.

“It hurts like … hell,” the man said. “I need some … whiskey.”

Frank glanced at Salty. Both of them knew that whiskey wouldn’t do the man any good.

On the other hand, he couldn’t hurt much worse than he already was, and the liquor might brace him up a little, at least for a few moments. Salty went over to a rough-hewn table and picked up a jug that sat on it. He pulled the cork, took a sniff of the contents, and nodded to Frank, who held out his hand.

Frank took the jug with one hand, lifted the wounded man’s head with the other, and tipped a little of the fiery rotgut past the man’s lips. That brought a gasp from the man. His eyes opened a little wider.

“The man who did this to you,” Frank asked, “what did he look like?”

“St-stocky fella … had a mustache … wore one of those … funny hats.”

“A derby?” Salty asked.

“Y-yeah. A d-derby.”

Salty nodded to Frank. “That’s Palmer, all right.”

“Had a hunch it was,” Frank said. He asked the wounded man, “What happened after he wanted to swap horses with you?”

“I said I … didn’t much want to … and he said … that was all right. He seemed like … a friendly cuss … but then he … when I wasn’t lookin’ … he … he stuck a knife … in my belly.”

“The low-down son of a bitch,” Salty said. “That’s just what he’d do, all right.”

“I tried to fight him … but I was … hurt too bad…. Reckon I must’a … passed out…. I came to … heard horses … thought he was comin’ back…. I got my rifle … made it to the window…. Couldn’t see too good, but I got off … a couple of shots….”

“That’s all right, friend,” Frank told him. “No need to wear yourself out. We understand now what happened.”

“Didn’t mean to … shoot at strangers….”

“Don’t worry about it. Just rest easy.”

The man grimaced and seemed to bow in on himself as a fresh surge of pain hit him. When it eased a little, he whispered, “I could use … some more whiskey….”

Frank lifted the jug again, but before he could bring it to the man’s mouth, a shudder went through the man and a long, rattling sigh eased from him. His muscles went slack and his eyes turned dull with death.