“Hello, the cabin!” Frank shouted. “Hello in there! We’re not looking for trouble!”
There was no response.
Frank tried again. “Can you hear me in there? We’re friends!”
“That’s stretchin’ it a mite,” Salty muttered. “I ain’t friends with nobody who tries to part my hair with a bullet!”
“Hush,” Frank said. He raised his voice again. “Hello, the cabin!”
Nothing met the call but silence. There weren’t even any sounds in the underbrush. The shots had caused all the birds and small animals to flee.
“Something’s wrong,” Frank said quietly.
“Yeah, some polecat shot at us!”
“It’s more than that,” Frank said. “Salty, you and Meg keep an eye on the place.”
“What are you going to do?” Meg asked.
“Work my way through the trees and see if I can get behind the cabin. There might be a door or a window back there by that corral and shed.”
“Be careful,” Meg cautioned him. “There might be more than one man in there. If there is a back way in, somebody may be watching it.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” Frank said. Before she could argue with him, he slid off through the trees, moving quickly but quietly.
He pulled back deeper into the woods so that anybody watching the trees wouldn’t be as likely to see him. The cabin was only about fifty yards away. Frank covered twice that distance in circling around it. When he thought he had gone far enough, he ventured a look.
He was past the cabin now, so he was able to look at the back side of it. The shed was built right against the wall. There was no window or door.
But that didn’t mean this side was a blind approach. There could be chinks between the logs big enough for a man to look out through them but too small for Frank to see from this distance. There could even be loopholes through which a rifle barrel could be slid.
But he had to take the chance. The only other option was for him and his companions to mount up, work their way through the woods until they were out of sight of the cabin, and then ride on.
They could do that, but Frank didn’t like unanswered questions. Nor did he care for the possibility that the man they were looking for could be in that cabin.
The cabin and its adjacent shed and corral lay about twenty yards from the edge of the trees. Frank took a deep breath and then charged out from cover, running toward the structures as fast as he could.
Riding boots weren’t made for running. All too aware that he was out in the open, Frank felt like he was barely making any progress at all. He knew with every step that somebody could be drawing a bead on him.
In reality, only a few seconds passed before he reached the corral. He paused for a second, crouching beside the pole fence. When no shots roared out from the cabin, he moved closer. He reached the corner of the cabin.
There were no windows on this side, either. It was beginning to look as if the door and the front window were the only ways in or out of the place.
With his rifle held ready, Frank cat-footed along the side of the cabin. He waved toward the trees where Salty and Meg were hidden to let them know he was all right, as well as to signal that they should hold their fire.
He stopped at the front corner and listened. Dead silence hung over the valley. No sounds came from inside the cabin.
Like it or not, he had to move over to the window and see if he could find out what was going on here. He eased in that direction. Despite his long years of experience in dangerous situations, his pulse was beating a little faster than usual.
He was close enough now to see that while the door was pushed up, it wasn’t closed quite all the way. The window had shutters on the inside. One of them was closed, but the other hung open. Frank stopped only a foot from the window and listened again.
This time he heard a very faint rasping sound, like somebody using a piece of sandpaper on some wood. After a moment, he realized what he was hearing.
Someone inside the cabin was struggling mightily to draw one breath after another.
Carefully, he lowered the Winchester and leaned it against the cabin wall. He pulled the Colt instead, steel whispering against leather as he drew it. The revolver was better suited for close work.
The labored breathing could be a trick, the bait in a trap designed to lure him in.
Frank’s instincts told him that wasn’t the case. The man inside the cabin hadn’t cried out or claimed he was wounded or anything like that. It was unlikely that he even knew Frank was out here, close enough to hear those rasping breaths.
Frank took off his hat and leaned closer to the window. He risked a look around the edge of the closed shutter.
The inside of the cabin was dim and shadowy, but enough light came through the window for him to make out the shape of a man lying in a twisted position on the hard-packed dirt floor. The man wasn’t moving. Frank saw a dark stain on the ground around him and knew it had to be blood.
If the man Frank could see was the only one in the cabin, he didn’t represent much of a threat. Unfortunately, Frank couldn’t be sure the man lying on the floor was the only one in there. To confirm that, he would have to go inside.
