Frank hoped he could find some place over there where they could fort up. He planned to go scouting for the smugglers and also for the gang of French-Canadian mixed-bloods, but he wasn’t going to set out on that mission until he had a safe place to leave Salty and Meg.
“Metis,” he said suddenly.
“What?” Meg asked.
“Those fellas who grabbed the two of you, that’s what they’re called,” Frank said. “Metis. I don’t know exactly where it comes from, but I’ve heard the word. They’re the descendants of the early-day French fur trappers and the Indians who lived here when the white men first came to this part of the world.”
He recalled hearing something else about them, too, something that nagged at him as if it was important, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was.
They came to a ridge that jutted up abruptly from the relatively flat ground of the valley. It was too steep for the horses to climb, so they turned and rode along the ridge until Frank spotted a wide crevice that ran back into the rock, as if someone had taken a giant knife and tried to hack the ridge into two pieces.
The crevice’s opening was screened somewhat by trees and brush. Frank reined in and studied it for a while, deciding that with a little work they could conceal the opening even more than it already was.
“That’s it,” he said, pointing. “We’ll put the animals in there, then drag enough brush into the mouth of the crevice that nobody’ll be likely to notice it if they ride past.”
Salty nodded. “I reckon that might work, all right. Be a good place to fight off an attack, too. They couldn’t come at you from but one direction.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Come on.”
Once they were through the screen of brush at the mouth of the crevice, they found that it formed a box canyon extending about fifty yards into the ridge. The canyon was approximately twenty yards wide at its widest point, narrowing down to nothing at the far end.
A man could probably climb up and down the walls inside the canyon. A horse definitely couldn’t negotiate them.
“We’ll have to have somebody standin’ guard all the time,” Salty said, “but we can hold this place if we have to.”
Frank nodded. “I agree. You and Meg can stay here while I try to find out why these mountains are so blasted crowded all of a sudden.”
“Don’t you think it would be better if we all went looking for those smugglers and that gang of Metis, or whatever you called them?”
“It’s a one-man job,” Frank said firmly.
Salty chuckled. “Danged if you don’t sound like all the other fellas I ever partnered up with. Always so dadburned stubborn and determined to go it alone.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll come back for you,” Frank told the old-timer with a grin.
“Oh, I ain’t worried. I know you’ll come back.” Salty paused. “We got the grub.”
Frank laughed. “Let’s drag some more brush up to hide that entrance.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon working to conceal and fortify the box canyon. Frank used the pack mules to drag some logs into the canyon; then he and Salty stacked them three deep and five high to form a barricade of sorts, behind which they could kneel to fire their rifles if they needed to.
By the time that was done, it was too late for Frank to venture out in search of either of the groups they had encountered earlier in the day. He would start his search in the morning.
Salty built a small fire to boil coffee, fry bacon, and cook biscuits. While he was doing that, Frank and Meg made sure that all the horses were taken care of.
After supper, they put out the fire. It would be chilly without the warming flames, but night was falling and they didn’t want to announce their presence here in the canyon.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Frank said. “Salty, are you all right with the second turn?”
“Sure. When you get to be my age, you don’t sleep much, anyway.”
Frank knew what he meant. He wasn’t that far behind Salty in years.
“I can take a turn, too,” Meg offered.
Frank shook his head. “You’ll be responsible for keeping an eye open during the day tomorrow while I’m gone, so you’ll need to be alert then.”
“All right,” she said with a grudging shrug. “I just want to do my share.”
“Don’t worry, you will.”
Salty and Meg turned in, rolling in their blankets near the glowing ashes of the fire, which would continue to give off a little heat for a while. At this latitude, the nights cooled off quickly once the sun was down.
Frank took his rifle and walked to the mouth of the canyon, where he sat on the log barricade and listened to the small, stealthy sounds of nocturnal life carrying on around him. Everything seemed peaceful.
He wished once again that he had Dog with him, as well as Stormy. The big cur and the rangy gray stallion could be counted on to warn him if anybody came sneaking around.
They were hundreds of miles away in Seattle, though. Knowing that made Frank feel a mite lonely.
So did the fact that he had no idea where his son was at this moment. Conrad had been through hell in the past year or so, losing his wife that way and then abandoning the life he had been living to roam the Southwest as a
