“You don’t have to go ashore with us, sir,” he told Frank.
“I think it would be a good idea if I did. When you find Salty, he’s liable not to listen to you. He can be a crotchety old pelican when he wants to.”
Handlesman shrugged burly shoulders. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
They went down the gangplank to the dock. Frank was careful not to slip. His boots were made for riding, not for negotiating the damp gangplank of a ship.
Water lapped softly against the dock’s pilings. The thick mist in the air seemed to muffle sounds, including the music Frank could still hear.
“Where’s that coming from?” Frank asked Handlesman. “It might have lured Salty off the ship.”
The second mate grunted. “Like the Sirens, eh? You won’t find any such creatures at Red Mike’s place. Only whores, tinhorns, and cutthroats.”
“I’ve heard about Red Mike’s,” Monroe put in. “Never been there, though.”
“That’s because the skipper put the whole settlement off-limits before you shipped out with us,” Handlesman explained. He spat on the hard-packed dirt of the street as they reached the end of the pier. “We had a couple of crewmen get killed in there.”
It sounded like the sort of place where Salty could get in trouble, all right. Frank said, “Let’s go have a look.”
Not many people were out and about on this damp, dank night, and the ones who were got out of the way of the grim-faced party from the ship. Within moments, Frank and his companions were approaching a squat building made of rough-planed boards.
Frank had figured that the place was called Red Mike’s because the proprietor had red hair, but in the flickering light of a lantern that hung beside the door, he saw that the boards were painted red. It was a sloppy job with ragged bare patches and streaks, but Frank doubted if the men who came here to drink really cared about such things.
The door stood open. The music coming through it was louder now, but the notes came to an abrupt, discordant end when Frank and the men from the ship were still a block away. Loud, angry voices replaced the tinny strains from a piano.
“Sounds like trouble in there,” Frank said.
“I’m not surprised. Brawls happen all the time at Red Mike’s.” Handlesman motioned the other sailors forward. “Just in case the fella we’re looking for is in there, we’d better have a look before—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Guns began to roar inside the saloon, their deadly blasts ripping through the misty night.
Chapter 3
Frank started to break into a run toward Red Mike’s, but Handlesman lunged and grabbed his arm, stopping him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the
“My friend might be in there,” Frank responded as he jerked his arm free of Handlesman’s grip. He hurried toward the saloon.
“Come back here, you damned fool!” Handlesman shouted. Frank ignored him.
It would be just like Salty to get himself caught in the middle of a corpse-and-cartridge session like the one going on inside Red Mike’s. The old-timer was a trouble magnet.
Of course, the same thing could be said of Frank Morgan. But it took one to know one, as the old saying went.
He veered to the side as he approached the place. He didn’t want to run right into a stray bullet that came out that open door. When he reached the building, he put his back against the sloppily painted wall and slid along it toward the entrance.
Guns continued to bang inside the building. Frank passed a window, but inside the glass, heavy curtains were drawn, preventing him from looking in.
As he neared the door, he caught a whiff of the powder smoke that rolled out into the night. He had smelled that sharp tang too many times in his life. He was downright weary of it.
But weary or not, there was a chance Salty was in the middle of that ruckus, so Frank was going to have to go in there and make sure.
He used his left hand to take off his hat and edged his head just far enough into the doorway that he could take a look at part of the saloon.
He saw a bar to the right. It was made out of rough-hewn planks, not the polished hardwood of most bars, but the planks must have been thick enough to stop a bullet because several men appeared to be hiding behind it.
Smoke and flame gushed from the barrels of the guns they thrust over the top of the bar and fired at somebody who was back to Frank’s left.
Seeing that the volleys were going back and forth inside the bar instead of being aimed at the door, Frank took a deep breath and leaped across the opening, pressing his back to the wall on the other side.
From there he could see what seemed to be one man crouching behind an overturned table, sporadically returning the fire of the men behind the bar. Frank didn’t get a glimpse of anything except the man’s hand and the revolver in it, but he thought he recognized the old long-barreled Remington.
That was Salty’s gun.
