William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

“Aye, sir. I found Mr. Handlesman, told him what you said, and he organized a search party. We checked everywhere, even in the cargo hold.”

“And you didn’t find Mr. Stevens?”

“No, sir.”

Beswick turned to Frank and Meg. “It looks like you may have been right. My apologies for doubting you.”

Frank didn’t care about apologies. He said, “Now that we know Salty’s not onboard, I’ll go take a look for him in the settlement.”

“Not alone,” Beswick said. “That wouldn’t be wise.”

Meg said, “He won’t be alone. I’m going with him.”

“That would be even more unwise.” Beswick looked at the sailor. “Monroe, you and Mr. Handlesman and the rest of that search party will accompany Mr. Morgan ashore.”

“I don’t want to have to keep up with a bunch of sailors,” Frank said.

“With all due respect, Mr. Morgan, that decision isn’t yours to make. I’m charged with the safety of my passengers, and I intend to see to it that I deliver each and every one of them safely to Seattle. Besides, you can use the help. Mr. Handlesman is my second mate and a good man.”

Frank supposed it wouldn’t hurt to have some of the crew with him, especially if Powderkeg Bay really was as wild and woolly a place as everybody said it was.

“All right, but I’m going ashore now. Salty could already be up to his neck in trouble.”

“There’s no doubt about that,” Beswick agreed.

“What about me?” Meg demanded.

“Go back to your cabin and wait,” Frank told her. “Sorry, but that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“I don’t like it,” she muttered darkly, “but I reckon we shouldn’t waste time standing around arguing. We’ve wasted too blasted much of it already.”

“I’ll see that the young lady gets back to her cabin safely,” Beswick said, which earned him another glare from Meg.

Frank and Monroe left them there and hurried back up to the deck. The continuing drizzle made it a little slippery under Frank’s boots.

Monroe found the second mate, Handlesman, who turned out to be a stocky gent with a bulldog face and red hair under his cap. Even though he clearly didn’t care for the orders that Monroe delivered, he quickly gathered up several sailors to serve as the search party.

“You don’t have to go ashore with us, sir,” he told Frank.

“I think it would be a good idea if I did. When you find Salty, he’s liable not to listen to you. He can be a crotchety old pelican when he wants to.”

Handlesman shrugged burly shoulders. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

They went down the gangplank to the dock. Frank was careful not to slip. His boots were made for riding, not for negotiating the damp gangplank of a ship.

Water lapped softly against the dock’s pilings. The thick mist in the air seemed to muffle sounds, including the music Frank could still hear.

“Where’s that coming from?” Frank asked Handlesman. “It might have lured Salty off the ship.”

The second mate grunted. “Like the Sirens, eh? You won’t find any such creatures at Red Mike’s place. Only whores, tinhorns, and cutthroats.”

“I’ve heard about Red Mike’s,” Monroe put in. “Never been there, though.”

“That’s because the skipper put the whole settlement off-limits before you shipped out with us,” Handlesman explained. He spat on the hard-packed dirt of the street as they reached the end of the pier. “We had a couple of crewmen get killed in there.”

It sounded like the sort of place where Salty could get in trouble, all right. Frank said, “Let’s go have a look.”

Not many people were out and about on this damp, dank night, and the ones who were got out of the way of the grim-faced party from the ship. Within moments, Frank and his companions were approaching a squat building made of rough-planed boards.

Frank had figured that the place was called Red Mike’s because the proprietor had red hair, but in the flickering light of a lantern that hung beside the door, he saw that the boards were painted red. It was a sloppy job with ragged bare patches and streaks, but Frank doubted if the men who came here to drink really cared about such things.

The door stood open. The music coming through it was louder now, but the notes came to an abrupt, discordant end when Frank and the men from the ship were still a block away. Loud, angry voices replaced the tinny strains from a piano.

“Sounds like trouble in there,” Frank said.

“I’m not surprised. Brawls happen all the time at Red Mike’s.” Handlesman motioned the other sailors forward. “Just in case the fella we’re looking for is in there, we’d better have a look before—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Guns began to roar inside the saloon, their deadly blasts ripping through the misty night.

Chapter 3

Frank started to break into a run toward Red Mike’s, but Handlesman lunged and grabbed his arm, stopping him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the Jupiter’s second mate demanded.

“My friend might be in there,” Frank responded as he jerked his arm free of Handlesman’s grip. He hurried toward the saloon.

“Come back here, you damned fool!” Handlesman shouted. Frank ignored him.

It would be just like Salty to get himself caught in the middle of a corpse-and-cartridge session like the one going on inside Red Mike’s. The old-timer was a trouble magnet.

Of course, the same thing could be said of Frank Morgan. But it took one to know one, as the old saying went.

He veered to the side as he approached the place. He didn’t want to run right into a stray bullet that came out that open door. When he reached the building, he put his back against the sloppily painted wall and slid along it toward the entrance.

Guns continued to bang inside the building. Frank passed a window, but inside the glass, heavy curtains were drawn, preventing him from looking in.

As he neared the door, he caught a whiff of the powder smoke that rolled out into the night. He had smelled that sharp tang too many times in his life. He was downright weary of it.

But weary or not, there was a chance Salty was in the middle of that ruckus, so Frank was going to have to go in there and make sure.

He used his left hand to take off his hat and edged his head just far enough into the doorway that he could take a look at part of the saloon.

He saw a bar to the right. It was made out of rough-hewn planks, not the polished hardwood of most bars, but the planks must have been thick enough to stop a bullet because several men appeared to be hiding behind it.

Smoke and flame gushed from the barrels of the guns they thrust over the top of the bar and fired at somebody who was back to Frank’s left.

Seeing that the volleys were going back and forth inside the bar instead of being aimed at the door, Frank took a deep breath and leaped across the opening, pressing his back to the wall on the other side.

From there he could see what seemed to be one man crouching behind an overturned table, sporadically returning the fire of the men behind the bar. Frank didn’t get a glimpse of anything except the man’s hand and the revolver in it, but he thought he recognized the old long-barreled Remington.

That was Salty’s gun.

Frank mulled over what he should do next. Charging straight through the door probably wouldn’t accomplish anything except to get him killed.

But he had spotted a door at the far end of the bar, and that door probably led to an office or a storeroom, something like that. There might be a back door to Red Mike’s, and if there was, it would allow him to get the drop on the men behind the bar.

Before Frank could move, he saw Handlesman, Monroe, and the other sailors from the ship making their way cautiously toward the saloon, staying low and behind whatever cover they could find. After a moment, Handlesman and Monroe dashed to his side.