William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

“Yeah, I’m fine. Keep him covered while I see how bad Salty’s hurt.”

Frank turned back to the old-timer. Salty was unconscious but still breathing. Frank ran his hands over Salty’s body and found that his shirt was wet with blood.

“Got to have some light,” Frank muttered. He fished a lucifer out of his pocket and snapped it to life with his thumbnail.

The glare from the match showed him that Salty was wounded in the side. Frank ripped the old-timer’s shirt aside to get a better look at the wound. Relief went through him when he saw that a bullet had plowed a fairly deep furrow in Salty’s flesh but hadn’t penetrated to anything vital.

As Frank shook the match out, Reb asked, “Is he gonna be all right?”

“I think so. I’ll get him back over to the fire and see if I can patch him up. You keep an eye on that one.”

Frank slid his arms under Salty’s body and straightened to his feet, lifting the old-timer and cradling him as if Salty was a baby. Salty didn’t really weigh all that much. He wasn’t much more than bones and skin like whang leather.

Gently, Frank placed him on top of one of the bedrolls and then put some more wood on the ashes of the burned-down fire. He kindled a small blaze so he’d have enough light to see what he was doing.

It would have been good to clean the wound with whiskey or some other disinfectant, but Frank didn’t have anything like that on hand. Instead he drew his knife from its sheath and heated the blade in the flames until it glowed red from the heat.

He hated to do this, but he didn’t want that bullet crease in Salty’s side to fester. Without hesitation, he pressed the red-hot knife to the wound.

The steel sizzled as it burned into the flesh. Even unconscious, Salty howled in pain and tried to arch up off the ground, but Frank’s other hand held him down.

Salty sagged back when Frank took the knife away. His breath rasped strongly in and out. Frank thought the old-timer would be all right now, once he’d had a chance to rest.

Frank stood up and went back over to where Reb stood next to the other man, gun in hand.

“Is this one still alive?”

“Not sure. I think so.”

Frank knelt and took hold of the man’s shoulders to roll him onto his back. The man gasped and cursed. His eyes fluttered open. The whole front of his shirt was sodden with blood. The thatch of white hair on his head was wildly askew.

“What’s your name, hombre?” Frank asked. He could tell that the man didn’t have long to live, and he wanted to find out as much as he could.

“G-go … to hell!”

Frank shrugged. “Fine. I just thought you’d like to have your name on the marker we’ll put up after we bury you.”

“D-damn you. You’ve k-killed me.”

“You come into a place with a gun in your hand and start blazing away, folks are going to shoot back at you. You look like you’ve been around enough to know that.”

The man hesitated, air hissing between his teeth as his ruined body struggled to draw breath. Finally he said, “It’s … Lundy. Owen … Lundy.”

Frank didn’t recognize the name, but he hadn’t heard of every owlhoot west of the Mississippi, either.

“You said something about Joe Palmer.”

“He was supposed to … come back for me … after he stole … the horses.”

“But he rode off and left you behind, didn’t he?”

“I was … already wounded…. Guess he thought … I couldn’t keep up.” What might have been a strangled laugh came from Owen Lundy’s lips. “What he really wanted … was to go after that gold … all for … himself.”

“Your gold?” Frank said.

“Y-yeah. B-bastards … stole it back … from us.”

The wheels of Frank’s brain turned rapidly as he made connections between the facts he knew and the things he had guessed.

“They paid you in gold for the Gatling gun you smuggled in from the States, then double-crossed you.”

“Yeah … but it was … guns … four Gatling guns.”

Frank’s jaw tightened. One Gatling gun could do a hell of a lot of damage. Four could wipe out a small town.

“Who are they?” he asked, urgency creeping into his voice. “Who has the guns?”

“Bunch of … breeds. Half-breeds …”

“Métis,” Reb said.

Frank didn’t look around, didn’t waste time right now worrying how come this rodeo cowboy knew about the mixed-bloods who had tried twice to rise in rebellion against the Canadian government.

“Yeah,” Lundy said. “Didn’t … trust ‘em…. Didn’t really think they’d … bushwhack us … though. Sons of … bitches.”

“So Palmer’s going after them?”

“I … I reckon. He wants that … gold. Never should’ve … trusted him … either. Somebody always … double-cross—”

Lundy’s head tipped back. The cords in his neck stood out as a shudder went through him. When he relaxed a second later, a long sigh came from him, and Frank knew the outlaw was dead.

The whole thing was a lot clearer now. The theories that Frank had put together concerning the Gatling guns had been confirmed. Somewhere out there in the night, a group of Métis revolutionaries had four Gatling guns and a couple of chests full of gold. There was no telling what kind of hell they meant to raise with those guns, but it couldn’t be anything good.

Joe Palmer was trailing them, intent on getting his hands on that gold, but Palmer wasn’t alone. He had Meg with him as a prisoner and a hostage if he needed one.

And Frank and Reb were left behind with a wounded Salty and no horses.

Any way you looked at it, they had been dealt a bad hand.

“You told him we’d bury him,” Reb said.

“I lied,” Frank snapped as he straightened from kneeling next to Lundy’s body. The sky was light enough now that they could see. Frank went on, “I don’t like doing that, especially to a dying man, but I wanted to know what was going on here so we could figure out what to do next.”

“What can we do next?” Reb asked. “We don’t have any horses.”

“That’s true. But there’s one thing I can take care of.” Frank faced Reb and gave him a cool, level stare. “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

Joseph Marat was exhausted, but he had no choice except to keep up as the group of riders made its way eastward toward the dawn.

He glanced over at his sister. Charlotte swayed wearily in the saddle. She was just as tired as he was. Anton Mirabeau kept pushing them through the foothills, though.

There was no longer any doubt who was in charge here. Mirabeau had shoved Joseph aside as the leader of the rebellion. Joseph had been relieved when Mirabeau and a couple of the other men had shown up to rendezvous with him and Charlotte and lead them back to join the others, but in weak moments he was no longer so sure it was a good thing.

“When can we rest, Anton?” Charlotte asked. “We’ve been riding all night.”

“Soon,” Mirabeau told her. “We can’t be sure that Lundy and all of his men are dead. I want to be well ahead of them before we stop. There are too few of us to take unnecessary chances.”

That was true, Joseph thought. Only eight of them remained to protect the gold and transport the Gatling guns to Calgary.

The gold was important, Joseph supposed, but the guns were everything. Without them, the plan would fail, and if the plan failed, the rebellion would fall apart before it ever truly began. They were counting on the conflagration they would ignite with the Gatlings to spread quickly across the entire western half of Canada.

Mirabeau was true to his word. He called a halt a short time later, next to a creek that twisted and turned through a narrow gap between a couple of hills.