Palmer was a fool. Mirabeau wasn’t going to turn over the gold to Palmer. He wouldn’t care that Palmer was holding the two of them hostage. But maybe Palmer’s intrusion would disrupt Mirabeau’s bloodthirsty plans. That was the only hope Joseph clung to.
Joseph saw the canvas-covered prairie schooner up ahead. He turned to Palmer and nodded toward the wagon.
“There,” he said.
A greedy smile creased Palmer’s face. “All right,” he said. “Go ahead. And if Mirabeau wants the two of you alive, he’d damn well better do what I say.”
That was where Palmer had made his fatal mistake, Joseph thought.
Anton Mirabeau didn’t care about life. His only concern was death.
*?*?*
Frank climbed to the top of the grandstand, leaving Salty and Reb to keep searching lower down. The broad brim of his Stetson shaded his eyes as he looked from one end of the arena to the other. He still didn’t see Palmer anywhere, but another thought had cropped up in his mind.
The Metis couldn’t just attach those Gatling guns to their carriages, roll the rapid-firers into place, and start shooting. People would see the guns and panic long before the first shot went off. They would have to hide the Gatlings somehow in order to get them close enough for the massacre they had planned.
He and his friends still didn’t know for sure that the revolutionaries were going to strike at the rodeo, Frank reminded himself. But it seemed like such a perfect opportunity that he didn’t see how they could pass it up.
The Gatling guns were pretty big. Frank recalled that the guards at Yuma Prison had had one mounted on a wagon. There were a lot of wagons parked near the arena. He turned to look toward one end of the grandstand….
And there was Joe Palmer, following a man and a woman toward a big prairie schooner with an arching canvas cover over its bed.
Frank’s eyes narrowed as he peered into the shadows under that cover. Something was in the back of the wagon, something bulky under another sheet of canvas.
“Blast it,” Frank breathed. He knew he was looking at one of the Gatling guns. There was something else in the back of the wagon, he realized, probably a second rapid-firer.
He jerked his head toward the other end of the grandstand, saw an identical wagon parked there, angled so that if the other two Gatling guns were in there, they could fire through the canvas cover, tearing it to shreds in seconds, and rake their deadly claws right across the crowded stands.
Frank cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Salty!”
The old-timer didn’t hear him at first over all the noise coming from the crowd. Frank yelled again, and this time Salty looked up.
“The Conestoga!” Frank shouted as he waved a hand toward the big wagon. “The Conestoga!”
Salty jerked his head in a nod and took off at a run, weaving his way awkwardly through the crowd. He couldn’t move too fast because of the wound in his side and the press of people all around him, but he hurried as much as he could.
Frank didn’t see Reb, but he knew the young Army officer was around somewhere. He made his way down the grandstand as quickly as possible, taking more than one step at a time and dodging around people arriving for the rodeo.
When Frank reached the ground, he spotted McKendrick. “Sergeant!” he called. “I’ve found what we’re looking for.”
He didn’t want to yell out anything about Gatling guns. That might start a stampede in which innocent people would be hurt or killed.
McKendrick joined him. “Where?” the Mountie asked sharply.
“In that wagon over there. There’s another one at the other end of the grandstand. I sent Salty down there.”
“That old man?”
“He’s a lot tougher than you think he is.”
McKendrick reached for the whistle attached to his red coat. “I must summon reinforcements.”
Frank grabbed his arm and jerked him into motion. “We can handle this ourselves!”
“You’re insane,” McKendrick muttered, but he came along.
Frank had lost sight of Palmer, but the man had to still be around somewhere. As he and McKendrick approached the wagon, some sort of scuffle suddenly broke out at the rear of it. Frank threw himself forward in a run.
A shot roared.
Mirabeau stared at Joseph and Charlotte in shock as they came up to the back of the wagon. He looked as if he was about to reach under the canvas to grasp the Gatling gun’s crank.
“Take it easy, Mirabeau,” Palmer said. “I don’t want any trouble. You can see I’ve got your friends. Give me the rest of that gold, whatever you’ve got left, and I’ll let them go.”
“You’re one of Lundy’s men!” Mirabeau exclaimed. “I thought you were all dead.”
“I’m my own man,” Palmer snapped, “and I want that loot.”
