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 Metis 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 Metis 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 Metis 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
