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 it, 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—
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.
