William Johnstone - Winter Kill

“Frank?” Conway prodded. “What are you going to do?”

“Come at them from the direction they least expect, right straight in front.”

“But they’ll spot you and fill you full o’ lead!” Salty protested.

Frank found what he was looking for in the supplies and straightened from the sled with a grin, holding up something so that the other two men could see what he had.

“They can’t shoot me if they can’t see me,” he said as a breeze fluttered the pair of long underwear he held in his hands.

Chapter 28

Frank was already wearing long underwear, of course. They all were. But after the sun had set, he stripped off his outer clothes and donned the second pair. He pulled on two extra pairs of socks to protect his feet and cut holes in another pair for his fingers so that he could use them as makeshift gloves. He found a spare shirt in the supplies that was white and put it on over the long underwear, but only after cutting a piece off the tail that he tied around his head to cover his dark hair.

“It’ll never work,” Conway said. “They’ll still see you.”

“Not to mention you’re gonna freeze to death in that getup,” Salty added.

“They’d see me in the daytime, but not at night. And I can stand the cold for that long,” Frank insisted. He took his .45 and one of the .32s and stowed them under the long underwear, next to his body where they would stay warm. Guns had a tendency to freeze up in this weather. “You fellas are going to be colder. You’ll have to circle wide around the cabin and crawl a ways through the snow to get to that hump where they can’t see you. If you stay as low as you can, you should be able to work your way pretty close to the cabin. Then, when the shooting starts, it’ll probably be best if you split up and come around the cabin from different sides.”

“How you gonna get the varmints out?” Salty asked.

“With this.” Frank took one of the cans of kerosene used as fuel in the Primus stoves from the supplies. He cut another piece of material from the white shirt to wrap around it. The can already had a wick attached to it, so it could be set in the stove’s burner and lit just the way it was.

“You’re going to set the cabin on fire,” Conway said.

“That’s the only way I know of to get them out of there in a hurry.”

“What if the women are trapped inside?” Conway’s voice was hard and angry. “You’re taking a chance with their lives.”

“Letting them be taken back to Soapy Smith in Skagway would be worse,” Frank said. “We don’t know how many of Smith’s men are in there, and we can’t get at them as long as they’re holed up. This is the only way to get them out where we can kill them.”

Salty scratched at his beard. “It’s a risk, all right,” he said, “but I reckon Frank’s got a point.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” Conway said. “But I can’t think of anything else, either. Just be careful when the fire forces them out of the cabin. They’re liable to be holding the women in front of them as hostages.”

Frank nodded. “I thought of that, too. We may have to take on some of them hand to hand.”

Conway thumped his big right fist into the palm of his left hand. “I don’t reckon I’d mind that too much.”

Frank took the little waterproof tin container of matches he usually carried and tucked it under the long underwear, too. The light had faded from the sky, and he was ready to go. What seemed like a million stars burned in the heavens above, casting silvery illumination over the snow-covered ground.

He draped one of the fur robes around his shoulders and said, “I’ll wait twenty minutes for you fellas to get in position, then start my approach to the cabin. That’ll probably take another ten minutes or so. I’ll need to move pretty slowly, so they’ll be less likely to notice me.”

“We’ll be ready when you are,” Salty promised.

He and Conway set off along the ridge. They would have to get out of sight of the cabin before they began to circle behind it. Frank waited in the trees with Dog, Stormy, and Goldy. He rubbed the cur’s ears and said, “You wait here until I call you, big fella. But when I do, you come a-running.”

Dog whined softly. He was as anxious for the action to start as Frank was.

When Frank judged that enough time had passed, he tossed the robe back onto the sled. He picked up another strip of cloth he had cut from the shirt and tied it around the lower half of his face, covering his mouth and nose so that only his eyes were visible. If anyone had been there to watch, they would have seen how the outfit made him blend into the snow as he left the trees, dropped to his hands and knees, and then stretched out on his belly to begin crawling toward the cabin with the cloth-wrapped can of kerosene in one hand.

He moved slowly, because fast movement drew the eye. Keeping his arms and legs drawn in so that he would leave as narrow a trail in the snow as possible, he inched toward the cabin. His progress seemed agonizingly slow. He couldn’t really judge it because he kept his head down most of the time, so that the white cloth wrapped around his head was pointed toward the cabin. Smith’s men had to be watching from in there. Frank knew that if they spotted him out in the open like this, they could fill him full of lead before there was anything he could do.

From time to time he glanced up and saw that he was getting closer to the cabin. The warmth from the stove inside had melted the snow on the roof, causing it to run down and form long icicles that glittered in the starlight. Under other circumstances, the scene would have been pretty, or at least picturesque.

Finally, he was about twenty feet from the front door. No one had shot at him yet, which meant they hadn’t spotted him. He lifted his head and studied the cabin. The chimney was at the left end of the roof. He figured everyone inside would be gathered at that end, closest to the fireplace. He angled the other way, toward the right end.

Now he was right under the eyes of any watchers inside, so he moved a fraction of an inch at a time. It had been long enough so that Salty and Conway had to be in position and ready. Unless something had happened to delay them, Frank reminded himself…but he wasn’t going to think about that. Just like he wasn’t going to think about the possibility that one of the kidnappers could be drawing a bead on him right now…

He reached the corner of the cabin and brushed some snow away to reveal the logs that had been used as its foundation. He pushed the can of kerosene up against them and shoved some snow under the back side of it to tilt it a little toward the wood. Then he got the matches out, struck one, and lit the wick.

A blue flame sprang up, and with it the smell of the fuel burning. Frank hoped the scent of the wood burning in the fireplace inside would mask the kerosene odor. Since the can was sitting at an angle, the flame licked directly at the log foundation. Frank watched until he saw smoke start to curl up from the wood; then he began to back away.

The cabin was old and the wood was dry. Once the logs caught fire, the flames started to spread rapidly, clawing their way up the side of the wall. Frank slid his hands under the long underwear and wrapped them around the grips of the revolvers. More than half the wall on this end of the cabin was on fire. The men inside the place had to notice it soon.

Sure enough, a moment later shouts of alarm rose inside the cabin, and the door flew open. Men began to rush out, and just as Frank had thought might happen, each of them held a struggling woman as a human shield.

But when he sprang to his feet, he was right there among them, taking them completely by surprise. He thrust both arms to the sides, the Colt in his right hand, the .32 in his left, and fired simultaneously. Each barrel was almost touching the head of a kidnapper, and both men probably never knew what hit them as bullets slammed through their skulls and into their brains. They collapsed, letting go of the screaming women they had been holding.