Dead Before Sundown

Salty looked as if he was going to argue, and so did Meg. Frank forestalled their protests with a hard look. He nodded to Reb and said, “Come on.”

They heeled their mounts into a fast trot that left Salty and Meg behind. Once Salty thought about it, he would realize that Frank hadn’t wanted to drag Meg along into danger yet again, and he also didn’t want to leave her there alone with Reb Russell, even though they had known him for only a few hours.

The shooting died away before they had covered half a mile. “Sounds like the battle’s over,” Reb commented.

“For now,” Frank said.

“That usually means one side or the other’s had all the fight knocked out of it and has given up.”

Frank nodded. “Or else everybody on one side is dead. You sure you want to get mixed up in this?”

“You bet I do,” Reb said. “This whole mess has got me plumb curious.”

A short time later, Frank spotted something on the ground up ahead and reined in as he realized that the dark shape was a fallen horse.

“Somebody over there, too,” Reb said, pointing.

Frank looked and saw the bodies sprawled on the ground. Victims of the shooting they had heard, no doubt.

He drew his Colt and sent his horse ahead at a careful walk. Reb slid his ivory-handled revolver from its holster as well. The way the young man handled the gun told Frank that he probably knew how to use it, too.

When they came to the first body, Frank said, “Cover me while I take a look at him.”

“Sure, Frank,” Reb replied easily. His eyes squinted slightly as he looked at the trees, searching for any signs of danger.

Frank swung down from the saddle and hunkered next to the dead man. He appeared to be a hard-faced gunman of the same sort that had attacked them back at the canyon. In fact, Frank considered it pretty likely that this man was part of the same gang.

“Ever seen him before?” he asked Reb.

“Me?” The young man sounded surprised. “Why would I have seen him?”

“I don’t know. There’s no telling who you might run into out here on the frontier.”

Reb looked down at the dead man. “Well, I don’t reckon I’ve ever laid eyes on him until just now … unless he was one of those hombres I was shootin’ at earlier, at the canyon. I never saw any of them close up.”

Frank straightened. “All right. Let’s take a gander at the others.”

It quickly became obvious that the other two dead men were the same sort of hardcases. If these men had been part of the gang with the Gatling gun, they were getting whittled down in a hurry.

Frank looked toward the far end of the valley at a big rock that sat there, then considered the positions of the dead men.

“Looks to me like somebody ambushed them,” he said. “Put a few riflemen up on that rock, and they’d have clear shots back up the valley.”

“The rock that looks like some sort of animal, you mean?” Reb asked.

Frank saw the resemblance now and nodded. “Yeah. I figure these men were riding toward that gap when the men on the rock opened up on them. They tried to scatter, but the odds were against them.”

“Where are their horses?”

“Got spooked by all the shooting and ran off, I expect.” Frank rubbed his chin as he frowned. “I wonder if this is all of them.”

“There might be more bodies, you mean?”

“No. More men who escaped the ambush and are still out there somewhere, still alive and ready to cause more trouble.”

Chapter 23

“Who … who are they?” Lundy asked weakly. “Can you tell?”

Palmer hesitated before answering. When he and Lundy had heard the hoofbeats, he had moved carefully to the edge of the trees so he could see who was coming, staying far enough back that he wasn’t likely to be spotted.

He could see well enough that he recognized one of the men, though. He hadn’t seen Frank Morgan since they’d both been in Skagway the previous winter, but it would be hard to forget that son of a bitch.

Lundy was already upset about the possibility of Morgan being mixed up in this, and even though the outlaw was wounded, Palmer was going to need him.

“Two men,” he said. Then he lied, “I don’t know them.”

Well, it was a half lie, anyway. He had never seen the gent who dressed like some Wild West show cowboy. Which meant it was a half-truth, too.

“Stay away from that horse, damn you,” he muttered as Morgan and the other man took a closer look at the dead animal. What was left of the loot Palmer had brought with him when he and Yeah Mow Hopkins fled from Skagway was still in the saddlebags, and he didn’t want to lose it.