She looked confused. “It couldn’t have been the same bunch. They came from opposite directions along the creek.”
“That’s right. The men I saw appeared to be some sort of smugglers.” Frank thought about the chests he had seen strapped to the pack animals of the bearded man’s gang. “I don’t suppose this bunch said anything about what they were carrying?”
“Not a word,” Meg replied. “What in the world is going on here, Frank?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I reckon it would be a good idea for us to find out.”
Salty said, “I figured we’d stay on Palmer’s trail and keep headin’ for Calgary.”
“The problem with that is, we don’t know whether or not Palmer has run into those smugglers. He could have even joined up with them.”
Salty raked his fingers through his beard. “So we got to find them so-called smugglers, dodge that other bunch o’ killers, and look for Palmer all at the same time?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Frank admitted with a shrug.
“You don’t never do nothin’ simple, do you, Frank?”
“Well, sooner or later it usually comes down to killing.” Frank’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “Can’t get much more simple than that.”
Anton Mirabeau seethed with anger. He and his companions had climbed to a rocky promontory where they could look back down the mountainside. One of his men had a pair of field glasses in his saddle bags. Mirabeau took them and scanned the rugged landscape that fell away in front of him, searching for any sign of the two men and the blond girl.
He didn’t see them. Scowling in disgust, he handed the glasses back to the other man.
“What do we do now, Anton? We’re short a horse.”
“We’ll go back and get Pierre’s horse,” Mirabeau said. “From the way he fell, he won’t be needing it anymore.”
Another rider spoke up. “I don’t like losing a man.”
Mirabeau turned angrily toward him. “You think I do? Pierre was like a brother to me!” He made a curt gesture. “You all are. We are a band of brothers, are we not?”
A couple of the men shrugged. The others just regarded him sullenly. They had started out on this journey with such high hopes, and now one of their number was dead.
“The plan will proceed,” Mirabeau declared. He couldn’t allow their resolve to weaken. “Pierre will not be there to see us triumph, but triumph we will. Come. We’ll fetch his horse.”
Mirabeau rode double with one of the other men this time as they headed back toward the meadow where the fight had taken place. He was confident that the man called Frank and the other two would be long gone by now.
That turned out to be true. The three of them were gone … but they had taken Pierre’s horse with them. Pierre still lay there lifeless on the ground.
Mirabeau ground his teeth together for a moment before he got control of his surging emotions. “We will bury him,” he declared. “Then we push on. We will take turns riding double. Our horses are strong. They will be all right.”
This was a setback, though. There was no doubt about that. At least they still had the money for the guns. Soon, Joseph and Charlotte would make contact with the Americans and arrange the transaction. Soon, the Metis would have what they needed to win their freedom. That was the most important thing.
But once that goal was accomplished, Mirabeau intended to turn his attention elsewhere. He would find out who Frank was. More importantly, he would find out where Frank was.
And once he did, Mirabeau would settle the score.
The man called Frank would die.
Chapter 13
They took the dead man’s horse with them. That would allow them to push on without having to wait for the animal that had gone lame to heal completely.
Frank thought about trying to bury the man, but they didn’t have a shovel and it would be a difficult chore scratching out a grave in this rocky ground.
Anyway, the hombre had tried to kill them, so Frank didn’t feel too bad about leaving him. Maybe the rest of the gang would come back and lay him to rest properly.
The three of them mounted up and headed back to the creek where Frank had left the other horse.
“I think it would be a good idea to find some other place to hole up for a while,” he commented as they were making their way down the heavily wooded slope.
“Yeah, that bunch knows where we were campin’, so we ought to move,” Salty agreed.
Meg put in, “Whatever errand they were on, it seemed to be important to them. Maybe they won’t take the time to bother coming after us.”
“Maybe not,” Frank said, “but we can’t afford to take that chance.”
The lame horse had wandered a short distance down the creek while grazing on the thick grass, but it wasn’t hard to find him. Once they had taken him in tow, they left the stream and headed for the far side of the valley.
