William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

Frank could see Salty and Meg from where he was, too. Meg was tying a bandana around Salty’s wounded arm as a crude bandage. The old-timer gestured up toward Frank with his other arm. Meg turned her head to look, and Frank gave them a wave and a grin to let them know he was all right.

Then he crawled forward, searching for a spot where he could look out into the valley and maybe get a shot at the murderous bastards manning the Gatling gun.

A few moments later, he spotted the rapid-firer. It was set up at the edge of a clump of trees. Flame licked from its muzzle as each of the revolving barrels lined up with it in turn and fired its cartridge. Frank pulled his rifle up where he could use it and tried to draw a bead on the man turning the gun’s crank. The wheels of the carriage and the body of the weapon itself gave him some cover … but there weren’t many better shots on the frontier than Frank Morgan. He lined his sights on an exposed shoulder and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.

The man flopped backward, howling from the pain of a broken shoulder as the Gatling gun stopped firing. Frank saw another man dart forward. He had already worked the rifle’s lever and fired again. The second man staggered back into the shadows under the trees.

Angry shouts drifted up to the top of the ridge. The attackers were arguing among themselves now, and that was always a good thing, Frank thought with a grim smile.

Their options were limited. They could turn the Gatling gun toward him and try to kill him … but if they did that, the rifleman on the other side of the canyon could open up on them again. They would be right back in the same spot they were in now.

Frank held his fire and waited to see what they were going to do.

After a few minutes, rifle shots began to crack. Bullets whistled and whined around the rimrock, forcing Frank to duck lower behind the rocks. He suspected the same thing was happening on the other side of the canyon, but he didn’t risk a look.

The men down in the valley were throwing a lot of lead up here, but nothing compared to what they had been doing with the Gatling. Frank figured this was just covering fire so they could move the rapid-firer. When he edged his head up for a look during a lull in the shooting, he saw that he was right.

The Gatling gun was gone.

A few more shots blasted, but they trailed away, to be replaced by the sound of horses moving off through the trees. The attackers were cutting their losses and lighting a shuck before they lost too many men to the unexpected resistance they had encountered.

Unless they were pulling some sort of trick, Frank reminded himself. He would have to give it some time before he decided about that.

The sun had climbed high in the sky by now, although it was still morning. The temperature had risen as well. It was actually getting hot up here on the rimrock. Frank sleeved sweat off his forehead, then leaned forward suddenly as he squinted into the distance.

Movement had caught his eye. As he watched, a whole line of men on horseback came into view heading east, away from the canyon. They were probably half a mile down the valley, Frank judged. Some of the men were leading what appeared to be pack mules.

His earlier hunch was right. They were leaving.

“Salty! Meg!” he called down to his friends. “The two of you all right?”

“We’re fine!” Meg shouted up to him. “What about you?”

“Yeah. I’m coming down. They’re gone!”

Before he started the descent, he looked across the canyon at the other side of the rimrock. The man he had seen there earlier was gone. Frank had never gotten a good look at him, and he couldn’t help but wonder where the hombre was now.

He could try to figure that out later. Right now, he wanted to get down from this rocky perch.

Climbing down was harder than getting up there, and by the time he reached the ground he was winded. Carrying the rifle, he walked across the canyon toward Salty and Meg, who were standing beside the log barricade. The logs had suffered a lot of damage during the attack, but they had done their job.

“What happened to that other fella?” Salty asked as Frank came up to them.

“Don’t know,” Frank replied with a shake of his head. “I lost sight of him, but he’s got to still be around somewhere close by.” He nodded toward Salty’s wounded limb. “How’s the arm?”

“Aches a mite, but it’ll be fine.”

“How about you?” Frank asked Meg. “Are you hurt?”

“Well, my ears are still ringing a little from all that racket, but other than that I don’t have any complaints,” she told him, returning his smile.

Salty asked, “What’re we gonna do now?”

Frank grew solemn. “I’d like to go after that bunch. I don’t much cotton to being shot at, so I reckon they’ve got a whole heap of marks chalked up against them right now.”

“Dang right,” Salty agreed with an emphatic nod. “Besides, if what we was sayin’ earlier is right, there’s a chance Palmer is with ‘em, and I still got a score to settle with that polecat.”

Frank looked at Meg. “What do you say?”

“I say I don’t like being shot at, either,” she answered.

“You know the odds are against us. We downed a few of them, but they still outnumber us.”

“And they got them devil guns,” Salty said. “But I vote we go after ‘em anyway.”

Meg nodded again, and Frank said, “I reckon it’s settled then—”

The sound of hoofbeats nearby made him turn toward the brush piled in front of the canyon. It had been shot up so much by the Gatling gun that it wasn’t much of a barrier anymore. They could see the rider reining in there. Frank covered the man as he swung down from the saddle and pushed through the branches into the canyon.

“Howdy,” the stranger said with a friendly grin. “Looks like you folks are all right. I’m glad to see that.”

“Well, I’ll swan,” Salty said in surprise. “What circus did you escape from, mister?”

Chapter 19

Charlotte looked like she was going to be sick, and Joseph Marat felt that way himself. He had not expected the sort of wanton slaughter that he had witnessed.

And yet, he told himself, the change that he and his friends wanted so fervently could not come without violence. The oppressive representatives of the British Empire understood only one thing—deadly force.

But despite the firepower they possessed, things hadn’t worked out exactly like Owen Lundy and Joe Palmer thought they would. Those people in the canyon, Palmer’s enemies, had put up more of a fight than they expected.

So now, as they retreated, the only ones who had died were some of Lundy’s men. Three of the outlaws had failed to come back: the one who had ventured through the brush barrier, and the two men Lundy had sent up onto the rimrock to ambush the people inside the canyon.

Lundy was angry about it, too.

“You cost me three men with that wild scheme,” the white-haired man complained to Palmer as they rode along at the head of the little column. Joseph and Charlotte were right behind them, then the other outlaws strung out in a line, leading the pack mules that were loaded down with the disassembled Gatling guns.

The rapid-firer they had put together earlier was still on its wheeled carriage. It had been turned around and the rear brace had been lifted so it could be tied to one of the mules. The stolid animal pulled the gun behind it.

“They must have had some place to fort up in there,” Palmer responded bitterly. “Otherwise we would’ve gotten them. We poured enough lead into that canyon to wipe out anybody in it.”

“Yeah, well, that ain’t the way things worked out, is it?” Lundy snapped. “From now on, Joe, I’ll be doing all the thinking around here.”