Dead Before Sundown Read online

  There were no windows on this side, either. It was beginning to look as if the door and the front window were the only ways in or out of the place.

  With his rifle held ready, Frank cat-footed along the side of the cabin. He waved toward the trees where Salty and Meg were hidden to let them know he was all right, as well as to signal that they should hold their fire.

  He stopped at the front corner and listened. Dead silence hung over the valley. No sounds came from inside the cabin.

  Like it or not, he had to move over to the window and see if he could find out what was going on here. He eased in that direction. Despite his long years of experience in dangerous situations, his pulse was beating a little faster than usual.

  He was close enough now to see that while the door was pushed up, it wasn’t closed quite all the way. The window had shutters on the inside. One of them was closed, but the other hung open. Frank stopped only a foot from the window and listened again.

  This time he heard a very faint rasping sound, like somebody using a piece of sandpaper on some wood. After a moment, he realized what he was hearing.

  Someone inside the cabin was struggling mightily to draw one breath after another.

  Carefully, he lowered the Winchester and leaned it against the cabin wall. He pulled the Colt instead, steel whispering against leather as he drew it. The revolver was better suited for close work.

  The labored breathing could be a trick, the bait in a trap designed to lure him in.

  Frank’s instincts told him that wasn’t the case. The man inside the cabin hadn’t cried out or claimed he was wounded or anything like that. It was unlikely that he even knew Frank was out here, close enough to hear those rasping breaths.

  Frank took off his hat and leaned closer to the window. He risked a look around the edge of the closed shutter.

  The inside of the cabin was dim and shadowy, but enough light came through the window for him to make out the shape of a man lying in a twisted position on the hard-packed dirt floor. The man wasn’t moving. Frank saw a dark stain on the ground around him and knew it had to be blood.

  If the man Frank could see was the only one in the cabin, he didn’t represent much of a threat. Unfortunately, Frank couldn’t be sure the man lying on the floor was the only one in there. To confirm that, he would have to go inside.

  He crouched low and went under the window, then straightened and put his hat on again as he came to the door. He paused long enough to flash a confident smile toward the trees where Salty and Meg were watching, then lunged forward, hitting the door with his shoulder and knocking it open as he dived through.

  Frank landed on his belly with the Colt tilted up, ready to fire. His head jerked from side to side as his keen eyes scanned the room. The cabin wasn’t very big, and it took him only a second to see everything in it.

  The man lying on his side in a pool of blood was the cabin’s only occupant except for Frank himself.

  Frank heaved himself up on his knees. With the door wide open now, enough light spilled through it for him to see the man’s pale, twisted face. It was narrow, with an angular, beard-stubbled jaw. The man wore a buckskin shirt, the front of which was sodden with dark blood, and corduroy trousers.

  He definitely wasn’t Joe Palmer.

  A rifle lay on the floor not far from the man’s outstretched hand. Frank stood up and nudged it well out of reach with a booted toe. He kept his Colt trained on the wounded man. The man seemed to be out cold and probably on the verge of death, judging by the amount of blood he had lost, but Frank didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances.

  He stepped to the doorway and called to Salty and Meg, “It’s all right! Come on in!”

  The man on the floor let out a groan.

  Frank wanted to go to him and see if he could do anything for him, but he waited until his companions got there. When they did, he told Meg, “Wait out here.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because you don’t want to go in there,” Frank said bluntly. “Come on, Salty.”

  Meg obviously didn’t like it, but she remained outside. When Frank and Salty stepped into the cabin, Frank said, “Keep him covered while I check on him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out. Looks like he was shot or stabbed in the belly.”

  Being gut-shot was a long, hard, miserable way to die. Frank hadn’t wished such a fate on many men, not even most of his enemies. Certainly not on a stranger.

  He holstered his Colt and knelt next to the man. Gently, he rolled the man onto his back and pulled up the buckskin shirt to take a look at the wound. The long, narrow opening through which the crimson blood had welled told Frank that the man had been knifed.

  The man’s eyelids fluttered. His thinning dark hair was askew, and beads of sweat covered his forehead. He managed to force his eyes open and gasped, “Who—?”

  “Take it easy,” Frank said. “I’m a friend. I won’t hurt you.”

  “You … I shot … at you …”

  “Yeah, but I won’t hold that against you. I reckon you thought you had a good reason.”

  “I thought … you were him … comin’ back to … finish me off.”

  Frank had thought it might be something like that. He said, “Are you talking about the man who stabbed you?”

  “Y-yeah. He rode up … this morning … wanted some grub. I fed him…. Then he wanted to … swap horses with me….”

  Every word was a struggle for the wounded man to get out. Frank felt a pang of sympathy, but he knew there was nothing he could do to save this luckless fella’s life. He wanted to find out as much as he could in the time the man had left, though.

  “It hurts like … hell,” the man said. “I need some … whiskey.”

  Frank glanced at Salty. Both of them knew that whiskey wouldn’t do the man any good.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t hurt much worse than he already was, and the liquor might brace him up a little, at least for a few moments. Salty went over to a rough-hewn table and picked up a jug that sat on it. He pulled the cork, took a sniff of the contents, and nodded to Frank, who held out his hand.

  Frank took the jug with one hand, lifted the wounded man’s head with the other, and tipped a little of the fiery rotgut past the man’s lips. That brought a gasp from the man. His eyes opened a little wider.

  “The man who did this to you,” Frank asked, “what did he look like?”

  “St-stocky fella … had a mustache … wore one of those … funny hats.”

  “A derby?” Salty asked.

  “Y-yeah. A d-derby.”

  Salty nodded to Frank. “That’s Palmer, all right.”

  “Had a hunch it was,” Frank said. He asked the wounded man, “What happened after he wanted to swap horses with you?”

  “I said I … didn’t much want to … and he said … that was all right. He seemed like … a friendly cuss … but then he … when I wasn’t lookin’ … he … he stuck a knife … in my belly.”

  “The low-down son of a bitch,” Salty said. “That’s just what he’d do, all right.”

  “I tried to fight him … but I was … hurt too bad…. Reckon I must’a … passed out…. I came to … heard horses … thought he was comin’ back…. I got my rifle … made it to the window…. Couldn’t see too good, but I got off … a couple of shots….”

  “That’s all right, friend,” Frank told him. “No need to wear yourself out. We understand now what happened.”

  “Didn’t mean to … shoot at strangers….”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just rest easy.”

  The man grimaced and seemed to bow in on himself as a fresh surge of pain hit him. When it eased a little, he whispered, “I could use … some more whiskey….”

  Frank lifted the jug again, but before he could bring it to the man’s mouth, a shudder went through the man and a long, rattling sigh eased from him. His muscles went slack and his eyes turned dull wi
th death.

  “He’s gone,” Frank said.

  “Yeah,” Salty agreed. “Poor varmint. He died for nothin’.”

  “Not completely for nothing.” Frank looked up at Salty and went on grimly, “At least now we know for sure that we’re on Palmer’s trail.”

  Chapter 7

  Frank wished he had taken a moment to find out the man’s name before that unfortunate passed away. As it was, all he could carve on the crude cross he and Salty made were the date and the letters RIP. They set up the cross at the head of the grave they dug to one side of the cabin, after they’d filled it back in.

  Salty glanced at the sky and said, “It’s a mite late in the day to be pushin’ on, but I ain’t sure I feel too good about spendin’ the night here where that poor varmint crossed the divide.”

  A shiver ran through Meg. “I feel the same way,” she said. “I’d rather make camp somewhere else.”

  Frank nodded. “Let’s ride. We’ve done all we can here.”

  They headed east, following the creek as it meandered along the valley. Soon the cabin and the lonely grave were out of sight behind them.

  That night they made a cold camp. “Palmer is less than a day ahead of us,” Frank pointed out. “If he hasn’t spotted us before, we don’t want him to now.”

  “We’re gonna catch the no-good varmint,” Salty said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  “No disrespect to your bones, Salty, but there’s still a lot that could happen.” Frank gazed off into the darkness. “But we know now that he’s up there somewhere ahead of us, and that’s something, anyway.”

  For the first time in several days, Joe Palmer wasn’t hungry. He had looted the trapper’s cabin of all the supplies he could pack onto his horse, after moving his saddle over to the horse in the corral behind the cabin.

  Now, with a week’s worth of provisions and a spare mount, he felt better about his chances than he had at any time since he’d fled from Powderkeg Bay. As he leaned back against the fallen tree that lay in the clearing where he’d made camp, he wondered idly about his former partner.

  Palmer had been trying to get away from Yeah Mow Hopkins ever since they had left Skagway together with that loot Soapy had cached. It wasn’t that Palmer had anything against Yeah Mow. He wasn’t that bright, but he was strong and loyal.

  Palmer wanted all the money for himself, though. He had never planned on partnering up permanently with Hopkins. That was just a way for both of them to get out of Skagway with their hides intact when the vigilantes started their rampage.

  But in the months since then, Hopkins had watched him like a hawk. Hopkins didn’t mind Palmer carrying the loot, but he didn’t let him out of his sight, either. Yeah Mow was cunning, even if he wasn’t exactly what anybody would call smart.

  So as far as Palmer was concerned, running into that old pelican Salty Stevens was a stroke of luck. It was amazing that Stevens was even still alive. He had disappeared from Skagway with winter coming on, and Palmer had just assumed that the old bastard had frozen to death somewhere.

  The worrisome thing was that if Stevens was still alive, Frank Morgan might be, too. Morgan had befriended the old-timer in Skagway. The gunfighter was definitely dangerous. Palmer and the rest of Soapy’s men had found that out when they tried to get rid of him.

  When the shooting had started in Red Mike’s, Palmer had seized the opportunity to get out of town while Hopkins was pinned down behind the bar. Palmer had mixed emotions about the outcome of that gunfight. If Stevens had killed Hopkins, then he didn’t have to worry about Yeah Mow coming after him. If it was the other way around, chances were that Hopkins would follow him. Hopkins knew that the plan called for them to cross the mountains and head for Calgary.

  Hopkins wouldn’t be in a forgiving mood. He would want the money, and he would want revenge for Palmer running out on him like that. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea, Palmer mused now. He hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, though. He had just acted when the chance presented itself to him.

  As usual, he was damned either way, he brooded. And damned even more if Frank Morgan was still alive and coming after him.

  But he couldn’t do anything about that now except try to stay ahead of any possible pursuers, no matter who they were. He’d have a lot better chance of doing that with the supplies and the extra horse. Since leaving Powderkeg Bay he had been living on the game he could shoot. Now with any luck, he could make those stolen supplies stretch all the way to Calgary.

  Once he reached the settlement, the biggest in western Canada, he was confident that he could link up with some fellas he knew there and be safe, even if Frank Morgan was still alive and on his trail.

  Both of the horses suddenly lifted their heads and pricked their ears. Palmer tensed as he noticed the reaction from the animals. They had heard or smelled something.

  A moment later, he smelled it, too. Wood smoke. Somebody had a campfire burning not too far away. Palmer muttered a curse under his breath.

  He hadn’t built a fire because he didn’t want anybody seeing it. Somebody was out here in this wilderness who didn’t care about that. Stevens? Morgan? Both of them?

  No, Palmer decided. The light breeze that carried the scent of smoke to him came out of the east. It was possible that someone trailing him could have gotten past him without any of them knowing about it, but he thought it was unlikely. He had been moving pretty fast.

  That meant somebody else was ahead of him. No telling who it might be. Another trapper, maybe. Some travelers on their way through the mountains. It could be anybody, Palmer told himself. He had no reason to think they were a threat to him.

  But he didn’t know, and that bothered him. He got to his feet and picked up his rifle. The idea of traipsing around on the side of a mountain in the darkness wasn’t very appealing to him, but he liked the idea of being surprised by enemies even less.

  He was a city boy and didn’t like this wilderness, but he had been around it enough that he was confident he could find his way back to the camp. He left the horses tied up where they were and started making his way through the shadows, following the scent of wood smoke that still drifted through the night.

  “The fire is already too big, Joseph,” Charlotte Marat said as she stood with her arms crossed, glaring impatiently at her brother. “Someone will see it.”

  Joseph tossed another branch onto the flames and shrugged. “Who is out here to see it, other than our friends?”

  “We don’t know who is out here,” Charlotte insisted. “That is the whole point of being careful.”

  Joseph sighed. It was easier to humor Charlotte than to argue with her, much easier. He knew that. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that fact, however.

  “We’ll let the fire burn down,” he said. “I wanted some hot food tonight. All this running and hiding and living like animals … it gets wearisome, Charlotte.”

  Her expression softened, and when it did, some of the beauty that hardship had drained out of her returned, if only momentarily.

  “Of course it does,” she said. “I’m sorry, Joseph. But we must stay alive and free if our cause is to have any chance of succeeding.”

  She sat down on a slab of rock on the other side of the fire. The light from the flames painted her face with red shadows.

  Joseph Marat was aware that his sister was a beautiful woman. She should have been in an elegantly appointed drawing room somewhere, wearing a fine gown, instead of hunkered in a forest clearing in boots, denim trousers, and a flannel shirt. Her thick, dark brown hair should have been piled on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls instead of drawn back and tied behind her head so that she could tuck it more easily under her hat when she was riding.

  But neither of them had asked for their fate. The Indian blood that mingled in their veins with the French meant that they would always be half-breeds, pitiful creatures to be scorned and looked down upon, despite the fact that both of them were more intelligen
t and better educated than the English and the Scots who had driven their people out of their homeland.

  Joseph took the skillet from the fire, divided the beans and bacon in it among the two of them. His rifle was close at hand, and even while he was heating the food, he had paid close attention to the woods around them.

  What he had told Charlotte was true, as far as it went. They had no enemies out here that he knew of.

  But it was what a man didn’t know that often wound up killing him, Joseph reflected. Charlotte was absolutely right. He shouldn’t have built such a big fire.

  The objection she had raised didn’t keep her from eating eagerly. They washed the food down with sips of hot coffee. After a while, Charlotte said, “How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait?”

  Joseph shook his head. “I don’t know. Duryea wasn’t sure when the guns would arrive. Sometime this month.”

  “We’ve been waiting for a week already.”

  “I know. We’ll wait another week if we have to. However long it takes.”

  Joseph’s tone was a little sharper than he’d intended. He saw the flash of hurt in his sister’s eyes and wanted to apologize to her. He suppressed the impulse.

  A man who was tough enough to lead a revolution didn’t start saying he was sorry every time his bossy little sister got her feelings hurt.

  A little noise in the brush caught Joseph’s attention. A small animal might have caused it … but it might be something else, too.

  Moving casually so as not to alarm anyone who was watching, he reached over and put his hand on his rifle. Charlotte noticed the movement, and her eyes narrowed. Joseph knew she was about to ask him if something was wrong. To forestall that, he stood up and said, “I think I’ll take a little walk.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t demand explanations from you when you have personal business to conduct, do I?”

  Her face turned even redder in the firelight. He felt bad about embarrassing her, but better a little embarrassment than tipping off a possible enemy that he was aware of them lurking near the camp.