“I need to get my rifle,” he said.
“Have you gone loco?” Salty demanded. “These logs are the only things keepin’ us from gettin’ shot to pieces!”
“They won’t last forever,” Frank pointed out. “We need to be able to put up a fight, otherwise whoever is out there can take their time about killing us.”
“Let me go get the rifle,” Meg suggested. “I’m thinner than you, Frank. I can stay closer to the ground.”
“Forget it,” he answered curtly. “You’re not going out there and risking your life.”
She glared at him. “You think I’ll be a lot better off in the long run if you get your head shot off? You know I have the best chance of succeeding, Frank. You’re just too damned stubborn to admit it!”
Frank frowned as he considered what she’d said. He couldn’t deny that, in a way, she was right. Her chances of survival would drop considerably if he was dead, and those chances weren’t all that high to begin with.
But it went deeply against the grain for him to stay behind cover while a woman risked her life. He didn’t know if he could allow that.
“Look,” Meg said. “Most of the bullets are going above us, about waist-high to a man. I can stay lower than that, and if they dip a little, I’ll still have a better chance of avoiding them than you would, Frank.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Instead he said, “You get down as flat on the ground as you can and keep your face in the dirt. Try to crawl straight toward the horse. If I see that you’re veering off to the side, I’ll call out to you and let you know.”
A grin flashed across her face, but it couldn’t completely conceal the fear in her eyes as she took off her hat and said, “Now you’re being sensible.”
Pressing herself to the ground, she slithered out from behind the logs. Frank’s heart slugged with worry for her as he watched her crawl toward the fallen horse.
Meg couldn’t move very fast. She had to inch herself along with fingers and toes. The seconds seemed like minutes, the minutes like hours.
Salty said, “Frank, they ain’t gonna just keep on shootin’ with that devil gun. After a while, they’re gonna come in here to see what damage it did.”
“I know,” Frank said with a nod.
“We’ll have a real fight on our hands then. Why do you reckon they want us dead?”
“Well, neither bunch probably wants any witnesses left alive.” Frank’s mouth twisted grimly. “I reckon the main thing, though, is that those smugglers are demonstrating just how effective a Gatling gun can be.”
“They’d kill us just to make a point?”
“That’s what I’m guessing,” Frank said.
“Well, if that don’t beat all. Them sorry buzzards—”
Salty stopped the tirade he was about to launch when Frank stiffened suddenly and caught his breath.
“What is it?” the old-timer asked anxiously. “Did Meg get hit?”
“No. She made it to the horse.”
Meg had to lift herself up now to reach the rifle, but the horse’s body served as protection for her. She snaked her arm over the animal’s motionless flank and wrapped her fingers around the Winchester’s stock. Slowly, she began to ease the rifle from the saddle boot.
The Gatling fell silent.
“Uh-oh,” Salty said to Frank. “You reckon they’re fixin’ to come chargin’ in here?”
“Could be. Or they might just be letting the gun cool off for a few minutes.”
Meg pulled the Winchester the rest of the way from its sheath.
Then, to Frank’s surprise, she rolled over, surged to her feet, and started running back toward the log barricade.
He knew what was going through her mind. She thought she could get back to the logs before the Gatling gun opened up again.
And maybe she could, but if she didn’t—
In the eerie silence that now hung over the canyon, Frank heard a faint metallic clatter from outside. More ammunition magazines were being racked in the rapid-firer.
Meg was only halfway back to the logs.
Frank sprang up and dashed out to meet her. Her eyes widened in surprise. He left his feet in a long dive that carried him to her. His arms went around her calves and jerked her legs out from under her. She fell with a startled cry.
A split-second later, the devil gun started singing its unholy song again.
The slugs whined through the air above them. Frank rolled Meg onto her belly and pushed her toward the barricade. She had dropped the Winchester when she fell. He picked it up and crawled after her, staying as low as he could.
Luck was with them. They made it back behind the logs to join a grim-faced Salty.
“I thought you two was goners for sure,” the old-timer said.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” Meg said. She was pale, probably from knowing how close she had come to being cut in two by that deadly barrage. “I thought maybe I could get back before they started shooting again.”
He nodded. “It wasn’t a bad gamble. But I heard them reloading and knew you didn’t have time.”
“You saved my life. Not for the first time, either.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he told her. “We’re still in a mighty bad fix.”
The Gatling gun stopped firing again. Frank figured that this time, the men who’d been using it would venture into the canyon for sure, to find out if anyone was left alive in here.
He looked back over his shoulder. He already knew there was no real cover in the canyon; that was why he and Salty had built the log barricade.
But while the logs would do a fine job of stopping rifle fire, they wouldn’t stand up to an all-out assault from the Gatling gun.
Frank knew that, but he also knew they had no choice but to play the hand they were dealt.
He would try to keep the attackers out of the canyon as long as he could. As long as they couldn’t get a good look at the setup in here, they wouldn’t know what bad shape the defenders were in.
Frank rested the Winchester on top of the logs and nestled his check against the smooth wood of the stock as he peered over the sights. He trained the rifle on the brush they had dragged up in front of the canyon mouth and waited.
Several tense minutes ticked by.
A rifle barrel appeared, pushing some of the branches aside. The rifle’s owner was being cautious. Frank held his fire. He wanted the man to show himself.
A coarse, unshaven face appeared under a floppy-brimmed felt hat. The man started to step through the gap he had made in the brush.
Frank shot him in the head.
The .44-40 slug from the Winchester took the man just above his left eye, bored on through his brain, and exploded out the back of his head. Frank saw the pink spray of blood in the air as the man jerked backward and disappeared.
“Get him?” Salty asked.
Frank worked the Winchester’s lever. “I did.”
He heard angry cursing; then the Gatling gun started up again.
Salty ducked his head and said, “At this rate, them varmints are gonna burn up a thousand bullets before sundown.”
“More than that,” Frank said. “With one of those contraptions, it only takes a few minutes to fire a thousand rounds.”
“That’s a lot o’ lead and gunpowder to spend on just three folks,” Salty pointed out.
Frank nodded. “You’re right. It’s almost like they’ve got a personal grudge against us, whoever they are. Like they’re bound and determined to root us out of here.”
But that didn’t make any sense, he thought. They didn’t know anybody in Canada except …
“Palmer,” he said under his breath.
Salty looked over sharply at him. “What’s that you say, Frank?”
“I was just wondering if maybe Joe Palmer is out there with that bunch. We know from what Hopkins told us that Palmer has friends up here on this side of the border. Maybe he didn’t have to go all the way to Calgary to meet up with them.”
&n
bsp; Salty took off his hat and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Dadgum it!” he said. “That’d explain why they’re comin’ after us so fierce-like. If Palmer’s with ‘em and knows I’m in here, he’d dang sure want me dead, and anybody who was with me. That’s just one more reason I’m to blame for this whole blasted mess—”
The Gatling gun fell silent yet again.
“Do you think they’ll try to get in here again?” Meg asked.
“Maybe,” Frank said. He started to lift his head to take a look over the logs.
But as he did so, a rifle cracked and a bullet whipped past his ear to smash into the logs.
They were under attack again … but from a different direction this time.
Chapter 18
Frank spun around, lifting the Winchester. He spotted a man on the rimrock, above the canyon. The man had a rifle in his hands and had already levered another shell into the chamber. Flame spurted from the weapon’s muzzle as he fired a second shot.
Frank’s Winchester blasted a split second later, the sound of the rifle’s report blending with a yelp of pain from Salty. The man on the rimrock doubled over as Frank’s bullet punched into his guts. He dropped his rifle, staggered to the side, and lost his balance.
With a scream, he toppled off the edge and plunged toward the canyon floor. The soggy thud of his body striking the rocky ground silenced the scream.
Gut-shot as he was, he would have died anyway.
The fall had just hurried things along.
Frank turned toward his friend, saying urgently, “Salty, are you all right?”
Salty was clutching his left arm, where blood stained the sleeve of his faded flannel shirt. “I’m fine,” he said. “Dang buzzard just nicked me.”
“Let me see—” Frank began.
Meg interrupted him. “Frank, there’s another one!”
Frank’s head jerked up. Meg was right. A second rifleman had appeared on the rimrock. Frank knew that the men with the Gatling gun must have sent them up there to see what the situation was inside the canyon and ambush anyone who was still alive.
Frank reacted instantly, lifting his rifle to draw a bead on the bushwhacker, but he knew he was going to be too late.
The whipcrack of a shot split the air, but it didn’t come from the man on the rimrock. Instead, a bullet hit him from behind and drove him forward. Frank could tell that much by the way the man arched his back and threw his arms in the air. The rifle flew from his hands, unfired.
This man fell into the canyon, too, but he didn’t scream on the way down. He plummeted in silence, a grim silence that told Frank the man was probably dead already.
A figure appeared on the rimrock holding a rifle. Frank was about to snap a shot at him when the man lifted the Winchester over his head one-handed and waved it back and forth in a signal of some sort. With the way the light was, Frank couldn’t tell much about the man. He was mostly just a silhouette.
But he disappeared without firing again, fading back out of sight.
“What in Hades just happened?” Salty asked.
“I’m not sure,” Frank said, “but I think we’ve got a friend up there.”
“A friend? You just said we didn’t know nobody in Canada except Palmer, and he dang sure ain’t our friend!”
“Anybody who wants to keep those rascals from killing us is a pard as far as I’m concerned,” Frank said drily.
“Huh. Well, I can’t argue with that, I reckon.”
The Gatling gun started its fearsome pounding again, but after a moment, Frank heard a rifle bark and the rapid-firer stopped short.
Frank lifted his head. The rifle shot had come from somewhere up on the ridge, to the left of the canyon mouth.
“He’s up there somewhere,” Frank said. “He can see the Gatling gun, and he plugged the man turning the crank.”
“They’ll try to roust him out in a minute,” Salty predicted.
Frank’s grip on the Winchester tightened. “More than likely. When they do, I’m going to get up on the other rimrock.”
He nodded toward the right side of the canyon. The wall was steep, but a man could climb it if he was careful.
“Frank, you can’t do that,” Meg protested. “If they start shooting in here again while you’re halfway up there, you won’t have a chance!”
“I’ll have to move fast,” he said. “Anyway, once you’ve got one of those Gatlings set up, you can’t change the aim as quick as you can with a rifle or a handgun. You have to pick up the back of the carriage and turn the whole thing.”
The rifleman on the rimrock fired again; then two more shots cracked out from him.
“They’re probably trying to get the gun adjusted now, and he’s trying to pick them off while they’re doing it,” Frank said. He surged to his feet. “I’m going.”
Meg called after him to be careful as he ran toward the right side of the canyon. It took only a moment to reach the steep wall. He took his belt off and ran it through the rifle’s lever to make a crude sling that went around his neck.
Reaching up, he grabbed a projecting rock, found a toehold, and began to climb.
With every passing moment, he was aware that the Gatling gun could start up again at any time. If that storm of lead filled the canyon once more, the odds were that some of the screaming, ricocheting bullets would find him, would rake him off the canyon wall like a bug.
He didn’t let himself think about that. And when the hellish hammering of the Gatling gun filled the air again, he kept climbing, pausing only long enough to glance over his shoulder and catch a glimpse of the slugs throwing up dust and grit as they smashed into the rimrock on the other side of the canyon.
Just as Frank had expected, the attackers had swung the weapon’s revolving barrels toward their mysterious benefactor. In the face of that onslaught, the rifleman would have to withdraw if he could.
That gave Frank time to reach the top, though. He pulled himself up the last few feet and rolled over the edge into the boulders that littered the top of the ridge.
From there he could look across the narrow canyon and see that the other side was just as rocky. He caught a glimpse of a figure huddled in the lee of a rock slab that protected him from the hail of lead. A ricochet might still find the man, but he was relatively safe where he was.
Frank could see Salty and Meg from where he was, too. Meg was tying a bandana around Salty’s wounded arm as a crude bandage. The old-timer gestured up toward Frank with his other arm. Meg turned her head to look, and Frank gave them a wave and a grin to let them know he was all right.
Then he crawled forward, searching for a spot where he could look out into the valley and maybe get a shot at the murderous bastards manning the Gatling gun.
A few moments later, he spotted the rapid-firer. It was set up at the edge of a clump of trees. Flame licked from its muzzle as each of the revolving barrels lined up with it in turn and fired its cartridge. Frank pulled his rifle up where he could use it and tried to draw a bead on the man turning the gun’s crank. The wheels of the carriage and the body of the weapon itself gave him some cover … but there weren’t many better shots on the frontier than Frank Morgan. He lined his sights on an exposed shoulder and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.
The man flopped backward, howling from the pain of a broken shoulder as the Gatling gun stopped firing. Frank saw another man dart forward. He had already worked the rifle’s lever and fired again. The second man staggered back into the shadows under the trees.
Angry shouts drifted up to the top of the ridge. The attackers were arguing among themselves now, and that was always a good thing, Frank thought with a grim smile.
Their options were limited. They could turn the Gatling gun toward him and try to kill him … but if they did that, the rifleman on the other side of the canyon could open up on them again. They would be right back in the same spot they were in now.
Frank held his fire and waited to see what they were going to do.
&nb
sp; After a few minutes, rifle shots began to crack. Bullets whistled and whined around the rimrock, forcing Frank to duck lower behind the rocks. He suspected the same thing was happening on the other side of the canyon, but he didn’t risk a look.
The men down in the valley were throwing a lot of lead up here, but nothing compared to what they had been doing with the Gatling. Frank figured this was just covering fire so they could move the rapid-firer. When he edged his head up for a look during a lull in the shooting, he saw that he was right.
The Gatling gun was gone.
A few more shots blasted, but they trailed away, to be replaced by the sound of horses moving off through the trees. The attackers were cutting their losses and lighting a shuck before they lost too many men to the unexpected resistance they had encountered.
Unless they were pulling some sort of trick, Frank reminded himself. He would have to give it some time before he decided about that.
The sun had climbed high in the sky by now, although it was still morning. The temperature had risen as well. It was actually getting hot up here on the rimrock. Frank sleeved sweat off his forehead, then leaned forward suddenly as he squinted into the distance.
Movement had caught his eye. As he watched, a whole line of men on horseback came into view heading east, away from the canyon. They were probably half a mile down the valley, Frank judged. Some of the men were leading what appeared to be pack mules.
His earlier hunch was right. They were leaving.
“Salty! Meg!” he called down to his friends. “The two of you all right?”
“We’re fine!” Meg shouted up to him. “What about you?”
“Yeah. I’m coming down. They’re gone!”
Before he started the descent, he looked across the canyon at the other side of the rimrock. The man he had seen there earlier was gone. Frank had never gotten a good look at him, and he couldn’t help but wonder where the hombre was now.
He could try to figure that out later. Right now, he wanted to get down from this rocky perch.
Climbing down was harder than getting up there, and by the time he reached the ground he was winded. Carrying the rifle, he walked across the canyon toward Salty and Meg, who were standing beside the log barricade. The logs had suffered a lot of damage during the attack, but they had done their job.
Dead Before Sundown Page 12