William Johnstone - Dead Before Sundown

The man at the Gatling gun let go of the crank and lurched to his feet. One hand clutched at his neck where a bullet had torn through it. Blood flooded over his fingers. With his other hand, he reached for the rapid-firer’s crank, evidently determined to fire it even as he was dying.

Frank stood up and shot him in the head.

The man reeled back against the other side of the wagon’s canvas cover and then slid down it, leaving a crimson stain behind him.

Frank turned his head to look for Palmer. The battle, eventful though it had been, had lasted only a minute or so.

Palmer was gone. Frank’s heart sank when he realized that. Then a second later he spotted what looked like Palmer’s back as the man fled from the bloody chaos.

“Morgan, what—” McKendrick called after him as Frank broke into a run.

“Tell Salty and Reb I’ve gone after Palmer!” Frank shouted over his shoulder as he bulled his way through the crowd, trying desperately not to lose sight of his quarry.

Chapter 33

Everybody was trying to get away from the scene of the shooting, but the crowd thinned a little as Frank left the immediate area of the grandstand. He could see the man he was chasing better now, and he was sure it was Joe Palmer. The man glanced back, and Frank would have sworn that Palmer’s eyes widened with recognition.

The hombre probably thought he was being chased by a ghost.

Suddenly, Reb Russell flashed past Frank, so quickly it appeared almost as if the older man were standing still. Reb quickly closed the gap with Palmer and left his feet in a flying tackle that sent both of them spilling to the ground.

By the time Frank caught up, Reb was on top of Palmer, slamming punches into the man’s face. “Where is she, damn you?” Reb demanded between clenched teeth. “Where is she?”

Frank holstered his gun. He could get it out again quickly enough if he needed to … and it didn’t look like he would need to.

Reb had just about pounded Palmer’s face into raw meat by now. Frank put a hand on the young man’s shoulder and said, “You’d better stop hitting him, Reb, or he won’t be able to talk at all. He might even be dead.”

Reb stopped throwing punches and drew his gun instead. He jammed the muzzle up under Palmer’s jaw and said, “He’ll be dead, all right, if he doesn’t tell me where Meg is right now.”

“A … a house,” Palmer began babbling. “Close by! I’ll … I’ll show you!”

Salty, Sergeant McKendrick, and several more Mounties came hurrying up. “Get that man on his feet,” McKendrick ordered. “He’s under arrest.”

Reb looked like he might argue the point, but he moved aside and let the Mounties take charge of Palmer.

“He’s going to tell us where to find our friend Meg,” Frank said. “You can wait that long to take him to jail, can’t you, Sergeant?”

“Very well,” McKendrick said. To Palmer, he said, “You, there. Lead us to your hostage, immediately.”

“Jus’ … jus’ don’t let that madman near me again,” Palmer choked out through smashed lips.

A few minutes later, at a house surrounded by aspens not far from Victoria Park, Meg rushed out onto the porch and into Reb’s arms while the woman who ran the place babbled to McKendrick about how she hadn’t known anything about Palmer kidnapping anybody, she’d just been doing a favor for a friend of a friend….

The sergeant held up a hand to stop her. “Silence, madam,” he ordered. “Just be thankful that the young woman is all right. She is all right, isn’t she?”

“She’s fine,” the woman insisted. “Nobody laid a hand on her, Sergeant, I swear. You can ask her yourself.”

“I will, have no doubt about that.”

Frank and Salty stood at the other end of the porch, thumbs hooked in their gunbelts, grinning as Reb kissed Meg. Salty dug an elbow into Frank’s side and chuckled.

“Looks like these young folks don’t need us old pelicans around no more,” he said.

“I don’t reckon they ever really did,” Frank said with a smile.

That evening, Frank and Salty sat in the lobby of the Drover’s Rest. Salty was smoking a big cigar he had gotten somewhere. Reb and Meg were in the dining room, having supper. Frank had figured it was a good idea to give them some privacy.

“You see the way they was sparkin’ each other this afternoon?” Salty said between puffs on the “see-gar,” as he called it.

“I saw,” Frank said solemnly.

“I reckon Meg ain’t gonna be moonin’ over you no more.”

“You knew about that?”

Salty snorted. “Of course I knowed it. I ain’t blind, you know.”

“She’ll be a lot better off with Captain Russell.”

“No doubt about it. You’re too old to have much to offer to a gal like that. And I got to admit, I never was all that sold on the idea of her comin’ down to Mexico with us. Havin’ a gal along might sort’a cramp my style when it comes to the señoritas.”

“Speaking of being too old to have much to offer,” Frank said drily.

“Oh, there’s life in these old bones yet,” Salty insisted. He puffed on the cigar again, then sighed and went on, “I just wish I’d got my money back from Palmer.”

After being saved from being beaten to death by Reb, Palmer had been eager to talk. He had freely confessed that he no longer had any of the loot he and Yeah Mow Hopkins had taken with them when they escaped from Skagway.

“Hell, I lost most of it in a poker game while Yeah Mow was sleepin’ off a drunk in some whore’s bed, before we ever got to Powderkeg Bay,” Palmer had told them. “I never told Hopkins about it, because I knew as long as he thought I had the loot, I could get him to go along with anything I wanted while he was waiting for his share.”

“You mean we chased you halfway across Canada for nothin’?” Salty had demanded in astonishment.

“It wasn’t for nothing,” Frank had pointed out. “We helped save a lot of people from being massacred today.”

“Well, yeah, I reckon. But I’m still broke.”

“Don’t worry about the money,” Frank assured the old-timer now as they sat in the hotel lobby. “I’ve got enough for both of us.”

“You’re gonna have to tell me sometime how come a driftin’ gunfighter’s got plenty of dinero,” Salty said.

Frank smiled. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

He looked up and grew more solemn as Sergeant McKendrick came through the hotel’s front door. The sergeant looked around, spotted them, and came across the lobby to join them.

“What was the final tally, Sergeant?” Frank asked as McKendrick sat down.

McKendrick sighed. “Six dead—not counting the Métis—and upwards of thirty wounded. Terrible, just terrible. But it would have been much, much worse if not for you and your friends, Mr. Morgan.”

“I’m glad we were around to lend a hand.”

“What are your plans now, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Is that an official question?” Frank asked with a grin.

“Well … it might be. I’ve spoken to some of my superiors about you. They tell me that you have quite a reputation down in the States. It’s said that trouble follows you wherever you go.”

“So you’d probably just as soon I went somewhere else besides Canada.”

“Indeed. The North West Mounted Police are charged with keeping the peace, you know. I have a feeling that would be much easier without the, ah, Drifter in our midst.”

Frank didn’t take offense. He had heard it all before. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be moseying on pretty soon. Salty and I have been talking about going down to Mexico.” He turned to the old-timer. “In fact, I was thinking about seeing if I can send a wire to Seattle and see if the fella who’s been looking after Stormy, Goldy, and Dog could put them on a train and ship them over to White Sulphur Springs in Montana. I’ve got a friend named Bob Coburn who owns a ranch near there. It’s really not all that far from here, as the crow flies. If we could pick them up there, we wouldn’t even have to go back to Seattle.”