Dead Before Sundown

by William W. Johnstone

  A horse blew loudly through its nostrils, though, so he knew the camp wasn’t completely deserted.

  Frank sniffed the air. The tang of burned powder still hung there faintly. This was where the shot had gone off, all right. He was sure of it.

  He shifted his position, circling the camp in as close to absolute silence as he could manage. When he stopped and peered through another gap in the thick foliage, he could see all the camp that he hadn’t been able to see before.

  The lame horse stood there, but the other saddle mounts and the pack mules were gone.

  More importantly, so were Salty and Meg.

  Chapter 11

  A short time earlier, Anton Mirabeau had had nothing more on his mind than the lovely Charlotte Marat. She filled his thoughts as she often did. He should have been paying more attention to where he and the other men were going.

  If he had, they wouldn’t have ridden right into trouble.

  As it was, Mirabeau and the half-dozen other Métis with him had emerged from the trees into a clearing on the creek bank only to find themselves looking down the barrels of a rifle and a revolver, held by a couple of people who had taken cover behind some pines.

  “Hold it right there, mister!” a man’s voice ordered.

  From the sound of it, Mirabeau thought the voice belonged to an old man. But an elderly finger could pull the trigger of a gun the same as a young one, provided, of course, that age had not stiffened it.

  Mirabeau reined his horse to a stop and motioned for the other men to do likewise. His gaze darted around the campsite. He saw three horses and three saddles, along with a couple of pack mules and the packs of supplies lying on the ground.

  Three saddle horses meant three people, but he saw only two pointing guns at him and his companions. The third man was probably somewhere nearby, out of sight, likely with a rifle pointing at him right now.

  “Easy, my friend,” Mirabeau said, taking care to keep both of his hands in sight. “We are not hunting trouble.”

  “Then what do you want?” the old-timer demanded.

  “We are looking for some friends of ours. A man and a woman. Brother and sister, actually. Perhaps you have seen them. They both have dark hair. The young woman is very attractive.”

  “I don’t know who in blazes you’re talkin’ about,” the old man said. Mirabeau caught a glimpse of white hair and beard as the man peered around the trunk of the tree where he had taken cover. The man added in a disgusted mutter, “Who’d’a figured these woods would turn out to be so blamed crowded?”

  Mirabeau knew what he meant. This area of the mountains had been chosen for the rendezvous precisely because it was so remote, so isolated, so empty of humanity.

  He looked at the other tree, the one where the man with the rifle crouched.

  Or perhaps the rifleman was not a man at all, Mirabeau thought suddenly, as he took note of how the denim-clad hip he could see behind the tree curved. Though he had lived his entire life in Canada, he credited the blood of his French ancestors for giving him an appreciative eye for the female form.

  The blue eyes and the blond curls stuffed under a flat-crowned hat just confirmed his suspicion. He and his companions were faced with an old man and a girl.

  But even such as them could be dangerous.

  “We will be on our way,” Mirabeau said. “Please forgive the intrusion.”

  “Hold on just a dang minute,” the old-timer said. “Who are you fellas, and what are you doin’ out here in the middle o’ nowhere?”

  “We could ask you the same,” Mirabeau pointed out, “but we did not.”

  The old man ignored him and demanded, “Are you lookin’ for that varmint Palmer? Is he a friend o’ yours?”

  Mirabeau shook his head. “I do not know anyone named Palmer.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d probably lie about it if you did. That’d make you the same sort of thievin’ polecat he is.”

  Suspicion suddenly reared up in Mirabeau’s mind. “This man Palmer is a thief?”

  “Dang right he is!”

  “And he is an American?”

  “What else would he be?”

  The response brought a faint smile to Mirabeau’s lips. So typical of the Americans to think without hesitation that they were the only ones occupying the continent. But despite their arrogance, they had their uses.

  Such as providing the weapons that Mirabeau, the Marats, and the rest of the Métis so desperately needed if their plans were to succeed. It was possible this man Palmer was part of the group that was supposed to rendezvous with Joseph and Charlotte. If that was true, then these two were after him. Could the old-timer be an American lawman? Mirabeau couldn’t rule out that possibility.

  That meant he and his friends couldn’t just ride away. They had to find out the truth. Nothing could be allowed to disrupt the plan. Not now. Not when they were so close to achieving their objective.

  Even though Mirabeau’s thoughts were whirling madly in his brain, he didn’t allow that to show on his face. Instead he kept smiling and said, “I give you my word, we know nothing about the man you seek. We are innocent trappers, nothing more.”

  The old man hesitated, but finally he nodded and stepped out from behind the tree. He didn’t lower the big revolver in his hand, which, despite his age, was rock steady. He motioned with his free hand for his companion to stay where she was, then said, “All right, I reckon you can go on about your business. Don’t get no ideas, though. There’s a dozen of us in this here posse, and they’ll be back any time now.”

  The old man had overplayed his hand, Mirabeau thought. There might be one more man in the group, but the story about there being a dozen was an obvious lie.

  Mirabeau hitched his horse into motion and lifted a hand as if in farewell as he started past the old man. The other Métis fell in behind him.

  Without warning, Mirabeau kicked his feet out of the stirrups and launched himself from the saddle in a dive that sent him crashing into the old man. His arm flashed out and struck the old-timer’s arm, knocking it to the side as the revolver roared. Both of them went down, with Mirabeau’s considerable bulk pinning the old man to the ground.

  The young blond woman darted out from behind her tree with the rifle in her hands. She hesitated, obviously not willing to take a shot at Mirabeau for fear that she would hit the old man instead.

  “Take her!” Mirabeau roared to his friends.

  She swung the Winchester toward the others, but she was too late. A couple of them were already on her, diving from their horses to grab her and wrench the rifle out of her hands. She screamed, but the sound lasted only a second before one of the men clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Mirabeau hit the old man, pulling his punch so that he stunned him, but did no real damage.

  “Get their horses and supplies!” he ordered. “We’ll take them with us.”

  He hadn’t forgotten about that third horse. He halfway expected rifle fire to start raking them, but silence hung over the rugged landscape.

  In a matter of moments, his companions had gathered up the supplies and thrown saddles and packs on the animals. They left the mount that had gone lame. They put the girl on one of their own horses, in front of a Métis plainsman. Mirabeau lifted the half-conscious old man and draped him across his horse in front of the saddle.

  “Across the creek,” he ordered. He led the way, and with the others following, the group of Métis and their prisoners splashed across the stream and disappeared into the thick woods on the far side.

  Frank emerged cautiously from the brush. He knew that Meg and Salty couldn’t have been gone long. He was convinced the shot he’d heard had come from Salty’s revolver.

  His eyes scanned the ground, searching for any clues as to what had happened here. He looked for splashes of blood on the ground but thankfully didn’t see any.

  Something on the other side of the creek caught his attention. The grass was thick on the other bank, as it was on this one,
and there was a wide stretch where it was wet. Frank saw droplets of water glistening in the sunlight as it played across the bank.

  The grass would be wet like that if a number of horses had forded the creek here and emerged on the other side, he thought. That was further proof that the incident had taken place very recently. The water splashed onto the bank by the horses hadn’t had time to dry.

  Frank looked at the horse Salty had been riding. The lame animal just stared back at him, uncomprehending.

  “I wish you could talk, old fella,” Frank muttered. “Wish you weren’t lame, too.”

  If the horse hadn’t been injured, they wouldn’t have stopped here, and whatever had happened wouldn’t have had the chance to take place.

  Frank couldn’t use the horse that had been left behind to go after Salty and Meg, either. The animal couldn’t carry his weight, not without being ruined permanently. Frank wasn’t going to do that.

  He patted the horse on the shoulder and said, “I’ll be back for you if I can.”

  Then he waded out into the creek, feeling the tug of the current as the knee-deep water swirled around his legs.

  When he reached the other side, he spotted a few hoofprints in the mud at the very edge of the stream. He couldn’t tell from them how many horses had crossed over here, but he estimated half a dozen or more.

  Those were formidable odds, especially for a man who had no supplies and no extra ammunition except for the rounds in the loops on his shell belt and another handful of bullets stuffed in a pants pocket.

  Frank didn’t hesitate, though. He picked up the trail, using bent and broken branches in the undergrowth to tell him which way the riders had gone.

  Too bad he didn’t have Dog with him, he mused. The big cur’s keen senses would have led him right to his quarry.

  Palmer could have doubled back, Frank supposed, and met up with some allies. That thought had crossed his mind earlier while he was looking for the men he and Meg had heard.

  Those men had turned out to be the smugglers he had spied on. They didn’t have anything to do with kidnapping Salty and Meg.

  Which meant there were two groups of strangers out here in this wilderness … three if you counted him and his two companions. Plus Joe Palmer, Frank reminded himself.

  Damned if these Canadian Rockies weren’t getting as crowded as some of the cities back east, he thought grimly.

  The brush was so thick that one man on foot could move just about as fast—or faster—than several men on horseback. Frank was counting on that.

  But at the same time, he had to be careful not to rush. He didn’t want to go charging right up the backsides of these kidnappers without any warning. That might get him shot, and more importantly, it might get Salty and Meg shot.

  From time to time he stopped to listen, and the third or fourth time he did that, he heard noises ahead of him. Horses moving through the brush, he judged. That meant he was close.

  He picked up his pace. He wanted to get ahead of them if he could. Outnumbered like he was, an ambush was his best chance to free the prisoners. Hit the men before they knew what was going on.

  The slope grew steeper as he circled to get ahead of the riders. That was good, Frank told himself. It would slow down the horses more than it would him.

  He paused again to listen, heard them off to his right, maybe fifty yards away. Like a ghost, he started through the woods again.

  The ground leveled off into a shoulder about a hundred yards deep. An almost sheer cliff rose on the far side of the open ground. The riders would have to go around it to one side or the other. From where he was, Frank couldn’t see a trail leading on up the mountainside, but there probably was one somewhere around here. A game trail, if nothing else.

  There were several boulders clustered at the base of the cliff, but if he holed up in those to challenge the kidnappers, he would be in effect pinning himself down. They could turn and flee, and he couldn’t do anything to stop them.

  Instead he abandoned the idea of getting in front of them and dropped behind a large deadfall at the edge of the slope instead. The fallen tree would make good cover, and he could see the whole stretch of open ground from here.

  He waited.

  But not for long. Only a few minutes had passed when the riders reached the top of the slope and emerged from the trees.

  Frank’s mouth tightened in anger as he spotted Salty and Meg. The old-timer was riding double with the man in the lead, who was a big hombre with a black beard. The man wore buckskins and a wide-brimmed slouch hat.

  Salty was in front of him on the horse, draped over the animal’s back like a sack of grain. That had to be a mighty uncomfortable position for the old-timer.

  One of the other men had Meg in front of him on his horse. She was sitting up, but the man had an arm held tightly around her. She had lost her hat, and Frank could see that her face was pale with anger and strain. She seemed to be unharmed, though, and that was a relief.

  The men were dressed like trappers or hunters, but Frank didn’t see any of the gear they would have had with them if they were after furs. They were leading the horses and the pack mules they had brought from the camp along with Salty and Meg, and they had another pack horse that was loaded down with what looked like a couple of small chests. Frank had no idea what was in those chests.

  All he knew for sure was that his friends were prisoners, and he didn’t like that one damned bit. He waited until all seven of the riders had emerged from the trees and started across the open ground toward the cliff.

  Then he laid the Winchester’s barrel across the thick log behind which he lay and sent a bullet whip-cracking over the heads of the riders. As they reined to a startled halt and the echoes of the shot rebounded from the surrounding mountains, Frank shouted, “Hold it right there! The next man who moves, I’ll blow him out of the saddle!”

  Chapter 12

  The big, bearded man in the lead wheeled his horse toward Frank. He hauled Salty up in front of him to use as a human shield. For a split second, Frank still had a shot past the old-timer, but he didn’t take it. The odds of hitting Salty were too high.

  “Hold your fire!” the man shouted. Frank didn’t know if the man was talking to him or to the other riders. Either way, no more shots rang out.

  “Frank!” Meg cried. “Get out of here while you can!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Frank said as he squinted over the barrel of his Winchester. “Not without you and Salty.”

  “Take it easy, mon ami,” the bearded man said, his accent and the French words giving away the fact that he was a French-Canadian. Frank didn’t know much about Canada’s politics, but he knew that some of the country’s population was descended from the French trappers who had been the first to explore its interior.

  This man’s high cheekbones and the faintly coppery shade of his skin indicated that he might have some Indian blood as well. His companions appeared to share that ancestry.

  “Who are you?” the bearded man went on.

  “That’s my business,” Frank snapped. Palmer wasn’t part of this group, and they didn’t appear to be the sort of men that Palmer would throw in with.

  That realization increased Frank’s puzzlement, but this wasn’t the time to ponder the matter. Salty and Meg were prisoners, and that was the only important thing.

  “We have business here as well,” the bearded man said, “and we cannot afford for anyone to interfere with it.”

  “My friends and I have no interest in you,” Frank replied. “Set them on the ground, leave our animals and supplies, and ride on. We’ll forget about this.”

  “I regret to say we cannot. Throw down your gun and come out, or I will snap this old man’s neck.”

  The coldness of the man’s voice told Frank that he probably meant the threat. Frank wasn’t used to letting himself be bluffed, though, and there was a chance of that.

  Of course, it was Salty’s life he was betting…

  �
��If you do that, you’ll have a bullet through your brain before the old-timer hits the ground,” Frank said.

  Salty yelled, “Shoot him anyway, Frank! Shoot me! A Winchester round’ll go right through me and get him!”

  “It appears to be your play, Frank,” the bearded man said with grim amusement.

  Frank didn’t like what he had to do next, but he called, “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Then he shot the bearded man’s horse.

  He had a clear shot. The bullet drove deep into the animal’s chest. The horse screamed and went down, its front legs collapsing so abruptly that Salty and the bearded man were thrown forward over its head.

  The collision with the ground broke loose the man’s grip on Salty. The old-timer reacted with surprising swiftness for his age, rolling away from his captor.

  Frank saw the other men reaching for their guns and sent another shot whistling over their heads.

  At the same time, Meg acted, driving an elbow backward into the belly of the man holding her. That must have taken him by surprise. His grip slipped, as well, and Meg dived off the horse. No sooner had she hit the ground than Salty was there beside her, reaching down to grab her arm and haul her to her feet.

  “Kill him!” the bearded man bellowed, adding a spate of French words that had to be curses.

  That order put things on a different footing where Frank was concerned. Before, he had been willing to give the men a little benefit of the doubt.

  No longer. He worked the Winchester’s lever and fired again at the man he had just set afoot.

  The bearded man flung himself to the ground, making Frank’s shot miss by a hair. Frank swung the Winchester and fired again. This time his target was the man who had been leading their horses and pack mules. The man howled in pain and let go of the reins as he clutched at a bullet-busted shoulder.

  Meg and Salty ran for the trees. One of the men swung his rifle toward them. Frank drilled the man through the body, knocking him out of the saddle. A second later, Meg and Salty reached the shelter of the pines.