William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

Frank swung down from the saddle and hunkered next to the dead man. He appeared to be a hard-faced gunman of the same sort that had attacked them back at the canyon. In fact, Frank considered it pretty likely that this man was part of the same gang.

“Ever seen him before?” he asked Reb.

“Me?” The young man sounded surprised. “Why would I have seen him?”

“I don’t know. There’s no telling who you might run into out here on the frontier.”

Reb looked down at the dead man. “Well, I don’t reckon I’ve ever laid eyes on him until just now … unless he was one of those hombres I was shootin’ at earlier, at the canyon. I never saw any of them close up.”

Frank straightened. “All right. Let’s take a gander at the others.”

It quickly became obvious that the other two dead men were the same sort of hardcases. If these men had been part of the gang with the Gatling gun, they were getting whittled down in a hurry.

Frank looked toward the far end of the valley at a big rock that sat there, then considered the positions of the dead men.

“Looks to me like somebody ambushed them,” he said. “Put a few riflemen up on that rock, and they’d have clear shots back up the valley.”

“The rock that looks like some sort of animal, you mean?” Reb asked.

Frank saw the resemblance now and nodded. “Yeah. I figure these men were riding toward that gap when the men on the rock opened up on them. They tried to scatter, but the odds were against them.”

“Where are their horses?”

“Got spooked by all the shooting and ran off, I expect.” Frank rubbed his chin as he frowned. “I wonder if this is all of them.”

“There might be more bodies, you mean?”

“No. More men who escaped the ambush and are still out there somewhere, still alive and ready to cause more trouble.”

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.”