Winter Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  With Dog’s sensitive nose to help him, it didn’t take long for Frank to find the place where someone had waited with the horses while the attack took place. That meant there were at least nine of the outlaws. Frank smiled tightly. The odds were already bad enough that one more hombre didn’t make all that much difference.

  Dog was able to follow the trail without any trouble. He led Frank through the woods to the northeast. After a few minutes, Frank spotted a rocky ridge in the distance as he peered through the trees. The outlaws’ trail seemed to lead straight toward it.

  They probably had a hideout somewhere over there around that ridge, Frank thought. He was confident that Dog could find it later, so for now he called out to the big cur and turned around to head back to the beach.

  He hadn’t seen any sign of Stormy and Goldy so far, but he wasn’t surprised when he got to the beach and found both horses waiting there with Meg and Conway. They weren’t the sort to let themselves be captured. They had probably run off as soon as the shooting started.

  Frank was glad to see that Conway was conscious again and sitting up. He held the torn piece of cloth from Meg’s dress to his injured head. His face was drawn and haggard with pain, grief, and anger.

  “We didn’t have a chance, Frank,” he said. “They opened up on us from the trees before we even knew they were there. All I remember after that is what felt like the whole world falling on my head.”

  “That was when a bullet clipped you,” Frank said. “Did Meg tell you that Fiona and the rest of the women were taken prisoner?”

  “Yeah.” Conway looked up at him. “What are we going to do, Frank?”

  “What do you think we’re going to do?” Frank looked toward the northeast, toward the ridge where he had a hunch they would find the outlaws. “We’re going to get them back.”

  With the thick overcast that clogged the sky nearly every day, the high northern latitudes at which they found themselves, and the time of year it was, darkness came very early these days. It began to settle down over the rugged landscape as Frank, Conway, Meg, and Dog made their way toward the ridge. Frank and Meg led the two horses. Dog ranged ahead, following the scent left by the outlaws and their prisoners.

  As they approached the ridge, Frank saw an orange glow lighting up the sky. “Looks like they’ve got a big bonfire burning,” he said quietly to his companions. “Probably celebrating their good luck.”

  Carefully, they moved closer until they could peer through some brush toward the foot of the ridge. That was where the fire was located, in a large open area where the trees had been cleared away and all the vegetation had been burned off. The big pile of wood blazed fiercely, with flames jumping up at least ten feet in the air. At the base of the ridge itself stood several log cabins, and off to one side was a corral made of peeled pine poles where the horses were kept.

  Most of the outlaws congregated around the fire and passed bottles of whiskey back and forth as they laughed and talked about their good fortune, but a couple of hardcases armed with rifles stood just outside one of the cabins. Frank pointed that out to Conway and Meg and whispered, “I’ll bet a hat that’s where the prisoners are being held.”

  “You’ll have to make it to Skagway and buy a hat before you have one to bet,” Meg whispered back to him, causing Frank to grin. The girl had spunk, and he, for one, admired that.

  “How do we get them out of there?” Conway asked.

  Frank studied the face of the ridge. It was fairly steep and dotted with trees, but he saw a few boulders here and there, too. Not enough to cause an avalanche if he started one of them rolling, though. Anyway, a rock slide might crush the cabin where the prisoners were.

  An idea began to form in his head. Meg still had her revolver, and Frank had given Conway his Winchester, leaving him armed with one of the .32s he had kept for himself. He was used to a heavier gun, but a .32 slug was enough to kill a man if it hit him in the right place—and nobody was better than Frank Morgan at hitting the places he wanted to hit.

  What they needed was a distraction, something to shake the outlaws up so bad they wouldn’t know what was going on until Frank, Conway, and Meg had had a chance to cut down some of them and even up the odds a little. Frank thought he saw a way to do that.

  But first he had to be sure of his allies. He looked at them in the faint light that reached into the brush from the bonfire and asked, “Meg, can you kill a man?”

  “I can kill more than one if I get the chance,” she answered without hesitation.

  “How good a shot are you? Have you ever used a pistol? I was going to give all of you ladies some tips on gun-handling while we were on the Montclair, but the weather was too bad and you were all too sick most of the time.”

  “I can shoot a pistol,” she said. “I used to plink at foxes and other varmints back on the farm.”

  Frank nodded. “All right. How about you, Pete?”

  “I’m a good shot,” the young man said.

  “Ever kill a man?”

  “Well…no. But I’ve been thinking about everything those poor gals have gone through already and how terrified they must be right now.” Conway swallowed. “I can pull the trigger when I need to, Frank. Don’t worry about that.”

  “All right, then. Here’s what I’m going to do…”

  Quickly, he explained his plan to them, and when he was sure they understood their part in it, he left them there and started circling wide around the outlaw stronghold, taking Dog with him. Once he was sure they were out of reach of the light from the fire, Frank darted to the base of the ridge and started climbing it. It was steep enough to be tough going, and he was a little out of breath before he got as high as he needed to be.

  He began working his way back along the ridge until he was above the fire and the cabins. Once he reached the right spot, he studied the terrain again, just to make sure he had figured things correctly and his plan had a chance of working. After a moment, he nodded to himself, satisfied that what he was about to do was the only chance they had of freeing the prisoners and dealing with the outlaws. He went to the boulder that was the key to everything and turned around so that he could put his back against it. Then he planted his feet against the slope and started to push.

  He didn’t have to worry about giving a signal to Conway and Meg. If this worked, they would know when to go into action.

  Frank groaned with effort as he strained hard against the big rock. At first it didn’t want to budge. Then it rocked a little, no more than an inch or two. Frank redoubled his efforts. Cords of muscle stood out in his neck as he strained. The boulder shifted again, and this time he didn’t let it rock back. He was able to keep it moving instead. He heard a scraping sound, and then suddenly the boulder fell away from him as it overbalanced and began to roll down the ridge.

  Frank dropped to the ground as the boulder’s resistance vanished. He sprang up in time to see the outlaws around the bonfire looking up. They must have heard the rumble of the massive rock coming toward them. Someone down below shouted.

  Then, just as it began to build up some speed, the boulder reached the little hummock of ground Frank had spotted earlier. Like it was launched from a ramp, the big rock shot up into the air, arching out away from the face of the ridge. It seemed to hang there for a second, suspended, before its weight sent it plummeting down…

  To crash right in the middle of the bonfire and send burning brands flying everywhere like a bundle of dynamite had just gone off.

  Chapter 17

  Some of the outlaws screamed as the red-hot ashes and burning branches pelted them. A couple of the fur coats worn by the men blazed up as they caught on fire. Others ran around waving guns, looking for something to shoot even though it must have seemed to them like the boulder had dropped magically out of the sky into the fire.

  Frank lined the sights of the .32 and began to fire, targeting the guards by the cabin. They hadn’t been injured when the fire scattered, since they were farther away from i
t, so they represented the greatest threats. The range was long for a handgun, but The Drifter was a superb marksman. He tried for headshots, and both of the outlaws went down as Frank’s bullets bored through their brains.

  At the same time, Conway and Meg opened fire from the brush where they were hidden. Two more of the hardcases stumbled and fell because of that volley. That left five of the outlaws on their feet. Of that five, two were on fire, staggering around and screaming as they slapped at the flames engulfing their clothes, and another man shrieked as he pawed at his eyes, which had evidently been blinded by the spray of hot ashes. The final two fired back at Conway and Meg in the brush. They must not have spotted Frank on the slope behind them. He drew a bead and shot one of the men in the back, the slug driving the outlaw forward onto his face as it ripped through him. That made the other one whirl toward the ridge and fire his rifle wildly. Lead whipped through the trees near Frank.

  Then two more shots roared out from the brush. Both of them found their target, knocking the outlaw off his feet.

  Less than thirty seconds had passed since the boulder slammed into the fire. Six of the nine outlaws were down. As Frank reloaded swiftly and efficiently, the two men in the burning coats finally succeeded in ripping the garments off themselves. Before they could do anything else, though, Frank snapped the cylinder of his revolver closed, lifted the gun, and fired two more shots—one, two! Both men staggered and collapsed.

  That left only the blinded man. As the echoes of the shots died away, he fell onto his knees and screamed, “Don’t kill me! Please, don’t kill me!”

  Frank was sure the man wouldn’t have shown any mercy if the circumstances had been reversed. But that didn’t really matter. He wasn’t a cold-blooded killer and never had been. He stood up and called to Conway and Meg, “Hold your fire!”

  He kept his gun trained on the remaining outlaw as he made his way down the steep slope. Conway and Meg emerged from the brush. “Cover the others!” Frank told them. “They might not all be dead!”

  He reached level ground and strode over to the blinded man. The outlaw must have heard Frank coming, because he took his hands away from his scorched eyes and held them out in front of him as he pleaded, “Oh, God, don’t kill me, mister!”

  Frank stopped in front of the man and drew back the Colt’s hammer so that the outlaw could hear it being cocked. “Are the women in that cabin where the guards were?” he asked.

  “Y-yeah. I swear!”

  “Have any of them been molested or hurt in any other way?”

  “No! I swear, mister, I swear! Nobody laid a finger on ’em!”

  “Yet,” Frank said coldly.

  “Well…yeah. We…we were gonna—”

  Frank pressed the gun’s muzzle against the man’s forehead, shutting him up. “Don’t tell me what you were going to do,” he said. “You don’t have to.”

  “I…I’m sorry, mister. We didn’t know the women was yours.”

  “How far are we from Skagway?”

  The question seemed to take the outlaw by surprise. “Skagway?”

  “That’s right.” Frank increased the pressure with the gun barrel.

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! It’s about five miles on up the coast, that’s all! Not far at all, mister!”

  Frank had already seen that the door to the cabin where the women were being held was closed off with a simple bar, so he wouldn’t need a key to unlock it. There were still a few things he wanted to know, though.

  “What’s your name?”

  The man licked his lips. “Jennings. B-Bart Jennings.”

  “Were you the boss of this bunch, Jennings?”

  “No, sir. That was Ben Cregar. It was all his idea to grab them women, I swear!”

  “You swear a lot,” Frank said. “Are there any more men in this gang, or were you all here tonight?”

  “This is it. This is all of us.”

  “Got any friends or relatives in these parts who’ll be looking to even the score for you?”

  “Nary a one. We…we all come up here to Alaska to look for gold, but—”

  “But that was hard work, wasn’t it?” Frank said. “So you turned to being outlaws instead.”

  “Mister, I’m blind,” Jennings moaned. “I can’t see a damned thing. I know why you was askin’ them questions. You’re plannin’ on killin’ me to cover your trail. But you don’t have to. I never saw your face. I don’t know who you are.”

  “You’re bound to hear about a man who brought a dozen women to Skagway, though.”

  Jennings began to shake. Clearly, he was convinced that he was only seconds away from death.

  Frank leaned closer and said in a low voice, “You know what I did here tonight, Jennings. You think I couldn’t get to a blind man any time I wanted? You know what’ll happen if you tell anybody about this?”

  “I…I know! You don’t have to worry about me, mister! Nobody’ll ever hear about it from me!”

  “Is there any law in Skagway?”

  “Law?” That question took Jennings by surprise, too. “N-no, none to speak of. A fella by the name of Soapy Smith sort of runs the town, I guess you’d say. You don’t have to worry about the law up here, mister.”

  “That means there’s nobody to save you if you go back on your word to me,” Frank warned.

  “I wouldn’t do that! Not ever!”

  “Remember that, Jennings,” Frank said, then reversed the Colt and slammed the butt against the man’s head, knocking him out cold and sending him sprawling on the ground.

  Conway said, “Miss Goodwin and I checked the others, Frank. They’re all dead.” The young man’s voice was a little hollow, probably because he wasn’t accustomed to the sight of so much death, but he and Meg had handled their part of the chore just fine, Frank thought.

  “Let’s go get those ladies out of there,” he said. “They’ve been locked up long enough.”

  The prisoners must have heard the crash of the boulder landing, followed by the shouting and the gunfire, then the silence, and Frank figured that silence must have sounded pretty ominous to them. So as he and Conway and Meg approached the cabin, he called out, “Fiona! Can you hear me? It’s all right, ladies!”

  “Frank!” Fiona’s excited shout came from inside, muffled somewhat by the thick, log wall and the heavy door. “Oh, Lord, Frank, is it really you?”

  “Grab the other end of that bar, Pete, and we’ll lift it out of its brackets,” Frank told Conway. “Hang on in there! We’ll have you out in just a minute!”

  They removed the bar and lifted the latch, and the door swung out, revealing that there was no handle for the latch on the inside. Ben Cregar and his gang had used this cabin for locking up prisoners in the past, and Frank didn’t want to think about the unfortunate folks who had wound up as prisoners of the outlaws. Chances were, none of them had come to a good end.

  Fiona came out first, followed by the nine young women. She threw her arms around Frank, while Jessica cried, “Pete!” and ran to him. The others hugged Meg, who patted them on the back and assured them that everything was going to be all right.

  Fiona stepped back a little, looked up at Frank, then raised herself on her toes so that she could kiss him hard on the mouth. She pulled away after a moment and asked, “How in the world did you find us?”

  Frank glanced over at Meg, who gave him that crooked grin of hers. She seemed amused by Fiona’s demonstration of gratitude. He cleared his throat and said, “Finding you wasn’t the problem. Dog took care of that. It was getting the drop on those varmints who took you that was a mite difficult.”

  “I see that you managed, though,” Fiona said as she looked around the clearing. “Are…are they all dead?”

  “All but one, and he won’t cause any trouble for us or anybody else.”

  “What are we going to do now?” A shudder went through her. “I’d like to get away from here.”

  “That’s what I figured. Those fellas don’t need their h
orses anymore, and we do. So we’re taking them, and we’ll ride into Skagway first thing tomorrow morning. It’s only about five miles from here.”

  “We made it almost all the way, then.”

  Frank nodded. “We did. We’ve come through hell. But it’ll be over soon.”

  With Stormy and Goldy, they now had almost enough horses for everybody. Some of the young women could ride double. They saddled the mounts and led them back to the beach where the bodies of Neville and the other three cheechakos still lay. In the morning, they wrapped those bodies in blankets brought from the cabins, carried them into the woods, and buried them in graves that Frank and Conway dug with shovels they also found at the outlaw camp.

  Frank had collected the gang’s guns and ammunition as well, along with all the supplies he found. It felt good to have a fine Colt .45 riding in his holster again. The gun was nearly new, so he figured the man he’d taken it from had either bought it or more likely stolen it recently.

  They were a well-equipped group now, especially for the short journey to Skagway that they faced. Frank surprised his companions by taking Bart Jennings with them. He had thought it over, and he couldn’t leave the blinded man to wander around in the woods alone. That was a sure death sentence. He had bathed Jennings’s scorched eyes with fresh water, then tied a rag around the man’s head to cover them and protect them from further injury.

  “You got a friend for life if you want one, mister,” Jennings declared fervently. “I never should’ve fell in with that bad bunch to start with. The way I see it, you could’ve killed me and you didn’t, so I owe you my life.”

  Later, Conway told Frank in a quiet voice, “I wouldn’t trust him if I was you, Frank. Once an outlaw, always an outlaw.”

  Frank wasn’t sure that was always completely true. He had known some badmen who had reformed and walked the straight and narrow. He himself was considered a badman by some, simply because of his reputation as a fast gun. But he planned to keep a close eye on Jennings anyway. It never hurt to be careful. Because of that, he had Jennings double up with him on Stormy.