William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

“The fact that you know I’ll kill you if you try something like that. And the fact that your hands are going to be tied most of the time. But I can take it a little easier on you if you promise you won’t try to get away again.”

She appeared to consider what he was saying, then asked, “You’ll stay away from me? You won’t lay a hand on me?”

“Not like that, if that’s the way you want it. You’re pretty good-looking, but to tell you the truth, I’m more interested in that gold than in anything you’ve got.”

She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “You’re a vile son of a bitch.”

“And the more you remember that, the better off we’ll both be,” Palmer said with a chuckle.

She sighed. “All right. I’ll cooperate … for now.”

“Good. You can get up, build a fire, and fix us some coffee and something to eat.” Palmer paused. “I remember you from that bunch of mail-order brides in Skagway, but I don’t recall your name.”

She got up and brushed herself off, saying with obvious reluctance, “It’s Meg.”

“All right, Meg, get to work. You play along with me and you’ll come out of this all right. Maybe better than all right.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You know Frank’s going to come after you and kill you, don’t you?”

“Frank Morgan?” Palmer smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Morgan’s dead. I shot him myself and saw him go down.”

Meg caught her breath as a stricken look appeared on her face.

“So are the other two who were with you,” Palmer went on. “It’s just you and me now, Meg, and that’s the way it’s gonna be from now on.”

Even as he spoke, Palmer hoped he was right. He didn’t know for sure that Frank Morgan was dead.

But even if the gunfighter was still alive, Palmer had himself an ace in the hole.

A blond ace in the hole, and he was going to hang on to her until the time was right.

Chapter 28

Later in the morning, Frank set out again to search for the horses. His frustration grew when he didn’t see any sign of them. When they stampeded, they must not have stopped running for a long time.

It was impossible for him not to think about Meg being Joe Palmer’s prisoner. Frank was worried about her, but he had learned over the years not to let himself be consumed by worry when he couldn’t do anything about the situation.

Which meant he needed to do something. It might be a waste of time, but he and Reb and Salty were going to have to start after Palmer on foot. Taking Salty along would slow them down a little, but it couldn’t be helped. Frank wasn’t going to abandon the old-timer here in the wilderness.

When he got back to the camp, Reb and Salty watched him come striding up. They wore disappointed looks on their faces.

“Didn’t find any o’ them durned fool jugheads, did you?” Salty asked.

“No,” Frank said. “We’re going to have to hoof it out of here ourselves.”

“Walk?” Salty said in the horrified disbelief of an old range rider. “All the way to Calgary?”

“Maybe not that far, if we’re lucky,” Reb said. “The countryside can’t be completely empty between here and there. There’s bound to be a ranch or even a small settlement where we can get our hands on some mounts.”

Salty raked fingers through his beard. “Y’all go on,” he said after a moment. “I ain’t up to a long walk like that, not with this dang bullet hole in my side. I’d just hold you back.”

Frank shook his head. “Forget it, Salty. We’re not leaving you here. We’ll just take it at a pace you can manage.”

“Dadgum it! You can’t do that. Meg’s more important than me. An old pelican like me ain’t got a lot of time left anyway, so if anything was to happen to me, it ain’t no great loss to anybody. But Meg’s got her whole life in front of her.”

“Salty’s got a point, Frank,” Reb put in. “I don’t like the idea of leaving him here, either, but if we’re gonna save Meg—”

“If we’re going to save Meg, we’re going to do it together,” Frank broke in with a tone of finality in his voice.

The other two men looked at him intently for a second; then Reb shrugged.

“I don’t know about you, Salty, but I reckon it ain’t safe to argue too much with a famous gunfighter like the Drifter.”

Salty sighed. “Yeah, you’re right about that. I’ve knowed him long enough to know how dadblamed stubborn he can be when he wants to.”

Frank nodded and drew his knife from its sheath. “I’m going to cut a branch off one of those trees and make a walking stick out of it,” he said. “That’ll make things a mite easier for you, Salty. Reb, make a couple of packs out of our supplies. We’ll have to travel pretty light, since we’ll be carrying those packs.”

“We’re takin’ along plenty of ammunition, though, right?” Reb said.

Frank nodded. “Yeah. Plenty of ammunition.”

They set out about half an hour later, Frank and Reb with the packs of supplies slung on their backs, Salty clutching the pine branch that Frank had cut and shaped into a walking stick. Frank had wrapped more bandages around the old-timer’s midsection, binding the dressing over the wound in place as tightly as he could.

“It’s so tight I can’t hardly breathe,” Salty said. “But I can move around without it hurtin’ too bad.”

“As long as it doesn’t start bleeding again, you ought to be all right,” Frank said.

“I ain’t worried about a little blood, as long as there ain’t too much of it.”

Everyone was ahead of them now: Palmer, Meg, and the Métis revolutionaries who had both the gold and the Gatling guns in their possession. At least, everyone that they knew of, Frank corrected himself as he thought about their situation. It might be a smart idea to keep an eye on their back trail anyway.

Out here on the frontier, you couldn’t ever be sure about what might be coming up behind you.

Frank’s feet already hurt, and it wasn’t long before Reb and Salty were limping a little, too. They pushed on stoically, though, stopping to rest only occasionally.

By midday they had covered a couple of miles. When they stopped to rest and eat a sparse lunch, Salty sat down on a rock and started to take one of his boots off.

“Better not do that,” Frank warned him. “If you do, you’re liable not to be able to put it on again because your foot would swell up. Then we really would have to leave you behind.”

Salty grimaced. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that. We’re gonna have to wear these dang boots until we find ourselves some horses, ain’t we?”

“That would be best.”

Reb smiled and said, “Just think about how good it’ll feel when you finally do get to take ‘em off, Salty.”

“Each foot’ll be nothing but a big ol’ blister by then,” Salty groused. “But don’t mind me. I’ll make it.”

“I know you will,” Frank said. “You don’t get to be as old as you are without being mighty stubborn.”

“Speak for yourself,” Salty muttered.

“I was.”

After a while they started out again on their trek. Frank had been alert for droppings or any other sign of the horses. He hadn’t completely given up on the chance of finding some of their mounts, even now.

Around the middle of the afternoon, he spotted some hoofprints and called a halt. He pointed them out, and Reb sounded a little excited as he asked, “Are those our horses?”

“Not unless they found some friends,” Frank said with a slight frown. “At least a dozen horses left those prints.”

It was true. A large group of riders had come through here sometime in the past couple of days, moving south to north through the foothills and cutting across the path of Frank and his companions, who were headed east.