William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

“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.

Chapter 24

They rode on, leaving the bodies behind them. That bothered Frank, but they still didn’t have a shovel and there were no handy canyon walls to collapse on the dead men.

Even though the gap through which they rode marked the end of the really rugged mountains, they were still miles from the actual plains. In between were foothills, many of which were almost as tall and rocky as the peaks behind them.

As the sun lowered toward the Canadian Rockies, the four riders found a place to camp at the foot of a ridge. Frank and Reb tended to the horses while Salty and Meg gathered wood for a fire and got started on supper.

Sensing that they were still in hostile territory, Frank suggested to Salty that they keep the fire small tonight. The old-timer agreed and used a flat rock to scrape out a small depression where he arranged the wood. More rocks piled around the shallow pit would serve to shield the flames from easy view. Once they had boiled up some coffee and cooked bacon and biscuits, the fire could be allowed to burn down.

While they were eating supper, Frank indulged his curiosity and said to Reb, “You sound like you’re from Virginia. Is that right?”

The young man shook his head. “No, but my ma and pa were, and they raised me, of course.” He grinned. “My pa had a farm near a little place in Virginia called Culpeper, not far from Bull Run. He fought in the war, fought all over the place, in fact, and when it was finally over and he got back home at last, he found that the farm was ruined. The Yanks had burned down everything and tore up the fields. He might’ve tried to rebuild the place, but some carpetbagger judge took the land away from him on account of taxes.”

Frank nodded. “That happened a lot. Same thing went on in Texas, where I’m from.”

“I know. It was all over the Confederacy, I reckon. Anyway, my pa had himself a sweetheart, a gal who lived on one of the farms close by, and when he decided to leave Virginia and light out for some place where he could make a fresh start, he asked her to marry him and come with him. Her daddy didn’t like the idea, but they ran off and got hitched anyway.”

“That’s very romantic,” Meg said.

“Maybe so, but it was a hard life for ‘em, for a while, anyway. They wound up in Arkansas and eventually moved on to Texas. Settled in a place called Cross Plains.”

Frank nodded. “I’ve been there.”

“That’s where I was born,” Reb said. “I saw plenty of carpetbaggers there while I was growin’ up, but Pa said it wasn’t as bad as it was back in Virginia. He worked on a ranch and saved up his money until he could afford a place of his own. I was ridin’ a horse before I could walk, so naturally I helped him out as much as I could. Had a handful of little brothers who pitched in, too, as soon as they were old enough. We got by. More than that, really. The Russell spread wound up bein’ one of the best ranches in that part of Texas.”