They were getting ready to set out on the trail, with Frank riding Stormy and Conway and Salty doubling up on Goldy, when Frank suddenly spotted something moving across the snow in the distance to the east. His heart leaped as he thought he recognized Dog.
A moment later he knew for sure that was his old friend and trail partner bounding toward them. Dog’s barks floated to their ears through the vast Alaskan sky.
“Thank God!” Salty exclaimed. “I was afraid the critter might’ve froze after bein’ dunked in the creek like that.”
“Dog’s coat sheds water pretty well, and it’s thick,” Frank said. “Plus he never stays still long enough to get cold.”
Dog ran up to them, and Frank greeted the big cur by wrestling with him for a moment. There was a shallow wound on Dog’s hip where it looked like a bullet had grazed him, but that was the only injury Frank could find.
“The fella he jumped got a shot off, but that was all,” Frank said. “You’re like Salty and me, Dog. You’re slowing down a mite.”
Salty snorted. “Speak for yourself, mister! Now that I ain’t froze half to death no more, I’m as spry as ever.”
“Maybe we should hitch Dog to that sled,” Conway suggested. “We might need some of those supplies before we get the women back.”
Frank nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Salty can ride on the sled.”
“You’re gonna ask the big feller to pull me after he done saved my life once today already?” the old-timer said.
“I don’t reckon he’ll mind. Let’s get to work mending that harness they cut.”
The repairs didn’t take long. They hitched Dog into the harness, and Salty climbed onto the runners and grasped the gee-pole.
“You followed those varmints before and then came back for us, Dog,” Frank said. “You lead the way. Trail!”
Dog seemed a little confused by the harness and the weight attached to him, but he threw his muscles into the effort and ran along through the snow, pulling the sled behind him. Frank and Conway flanked the sled on the horses as Dog followed the trail left by the bushwhackers.
The marks left in the snow by the sleds weaved around hills and through valleys. A range of jagged peaks loomed over the spectacular scenery. Farther to the north, White Pass cut a gap through that range, and on the other side of the pass was the glacial ribbon of ice that led to Chilkoot Pass.
For now, though, Frank could only be concerned about rescuing the women, not the rest of the journey to Whitehorse. Without the women, there was no reason to keep going.
Salty had said that the cabin was about two miles east of the place where they had attempted to cross the creek. But that was as the crow flies, and the trail weaved back and forth so much that they actually had to cover at least twice that much ground. It was late in the afternoon, with the light beginning to fade, when they reached the top of a wooded ridge that overlooked a wide flat. In the middle of that flat, as Salty had said, stood a ramshackle old log cabin.
White smoke curled from the cabin’s stone chimney.
“Well, I reckon they’re in there,” Frank said as the three men came to a halt. He pointed to the five sleds and the large gang of dogs outside the cabin. That was more proof the men they sought were here.
“What do they think we’re going to do?” Conway asked. “Just walk right up and demand that they give us the women, so they can shoot us?”
“They won’t expect us to do anything that stupid,” Frank said. His eyes narrowed as they studied the terrain around the cabin. About a hundred yards behind it, there was a long, irregular line where the snow had drifted several feet deep, forming a snakelike hump that eventually ran within twenty feet of the cabin’s rear corner. He pointed it out to Salty. “I thought you said there wasn’t any cover around the cabin. What’s that?”
“There’s a old fence along there, most of it fallen down. It ain’t enough to give a man any cover when there’s no snow. And when the snow’s deeper, it ain’t drifted up like that. That hump’s completely covered. Reckon when the snow’s like this is about the only time a feller could hide behind it to sneak up.”
“Is that what we’re going to do?” Conway asked.
“You and Salty are,” Frank said. “We’ll wait until dark, though.”
“It won’t make much difference,” Salty pointed out. “Sky’s clear. There’ll be enough starlight they can see us almost plain as day against that snow when we stand up and try to make it to the cabin.”
Frank shook his head. “No, they won’t, because I’ll be distracting them.”
“How you gonna do that?” Salty wanted to know.
Frank didn’t answer immediately. He dismounted and went to the sled, where he started pawing through the bundles of supplies that were packed onto it.
“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.
Frank shouted, “Dog! Hunt!” Then he whirled and fired both guns again. Two more men fell. It was chaos in front of the burning cabin now, and Frank was like a phantom gliding through it, the guns in his hands spitting death. Men dropped with slugs in their heads or blood fountaining from bullet-torn throats. The close range allowed him to place his shots perfectly without hitting the women. Frank heard the heavier crash of rifles, along with growling and snarling, and knew that Salty, Conway, and Dog were getting into the fight, too. The sled dogs, tied up a short distance from the cabin, barked and yelped crazily, adding to the noise.
“Shoot the women!” one of the men yelled. Frank put a bullet in his mouth while it was still open from that shouted order. He bulled to the side, barreling into another kidnapper and knocking him away from the hostage he’d been holding. As the man fell, Frank snapped two shots from the smaller revolver into his face.
“Frank!”
That was Fiona’s voice. Frank whipped around and saw her trying to run as one of the kidnappers drew a bead on her with a pistol. Frank fired both guns without hesitation. The bullets punched into the man’s body and drove him backward over the threshold into the burning cabin, which was fully ablaze by now. The flames engulfed the man, filling the air with the stench of roasting human flesh.
The rest of the gunfire had died away, but as Frank turned from the cabin, he heard the sounds of struggle still going on. He saw Pete Conway and one of the kidnappers trading punches, slugging away at each other. A few yards away on the ground, Salty Stevens was wrestling with one of the men. Salty was on the bottom, doing his best to hold off the hatchet that the kidnapper was trying to bring down in his face. Salty’s hand was locked around the man’s wrist, but the kidnapper was younger, bigger, and stronger, and Frank knew the old-timer couldn’t hold out much longer.
Both revolvers clicked as the hammers fell on empty chambers when Frank tried to shoot the man, though. Frank dropped the guns and launched himself in a diving tackle that knocked the man off of Salty. They rolled through the snow, grappling desperately.
Frank saw starlight wink off the head of the hatchet as it slashed toward his face. He jerked his head aside so the hatchet hit the ground instead and bounced back up. With a grunt of effort, Frank stuck a foot in the man’s belly and heaved him up and over his head. The kidnapper howled in surprise as he found himself flying through the air. He lost his grip on the hatchet as he crashed down on his back.
Frank was there to snatch up the weapon. He brought it up and over in a looping strike that buried the razor-sharp head in the center of the kidnapper’s forehead. The man spasmed as the keen, cold steel sunk deep into his brain, then went limp. Frank left the hatchet where it was and stood up.
When he looked around, he saw that the fight was over. The bodies of the kidnappers lay sprawled around the area in front of the burning cabin. The light from the flames turned the snow a garish red, but it was a deeper crimson where blood had been splashed. He tugged the white cloth off his head and stood there with his chest heaving and his breath pluming in front of his face.
Meg ran up to him and threw her arms around him. “Frank!” she cried. “Frank, I knew you’d come for us!”
He held her and looked over her shoulder at the other women. Some of them seemed to be disoriented. They were wandering around crying. But as he counted them, i
ncluding Meg and Jessica Harpe, who was being embraced by Conway, he saw that all eleven of them were there, on their feet and apparently unhurt. Salty was all right, too. He picked up his rifle and started checking on the bodies of the kidnappers, making sure that all of them were dead.
“How many men were there?” Frank asked Meg. He wanted to be certain that none of them had gotten away.
“T-ten, I think,” she replied. “Not counting that awful little man Dixon. He already went back to Skagway to tell Smith that they had captured us and were laying a trap for you.” She smiled at him. “But I knew you wouldn’t fall for it, Frank. I knew you’d figure out some way to save us.” She paused. “I just didn’t know it would involve running around in your underwear.”
Frank glanced down at himself and chuckled. Before, he had been so caught up in carrying out the plan that he hadn’t really thought about how cold it was. Now he realized that he was frozen clear through. At least, he would have been if not for the heat coming from the burning cabin.
Salty came over to him and said, “They’re all dead.”
“Ten of them?”
“Yep, countin’ the feller just inside the door of the cabin. Ain’t much o’ him left, though.”
Frank nodded in satisfaction. They had wiped out Smith’s men. By the time Smith figured out that the kidnappers wouldn’t be returning to Skagway with the women, Frank and his companions would be well on their way to Whitehorse and it would be too late for Smith to do anything about it.
Even though they had ruined Smith’s plans, it had come at the cost of Bart Jennings’s life, as well as with considerable pain and terror for the women. Those scores would have to be settled, although it might be spring or even summer before Frank got a chance to do so.
But one thing he was sure of: Soapy Smith would be seeing him again.
Chapter 29
Conway and Salty moved the sleds and the dogs well away from the burning cabin while Frank retrieved his clothes from the woods and got dressed again. It felt mighty good to shrug into his thick coat, but even better to buckle on his gun belt and settle his hat on his head. He was The Drifter again, not some hombre who crawled around in the snow.
Winter Kill Page 20
