Mirabeau rode double with one of the other men this time as they headed back toward the meadow where the fight had taken place. He was confident that the man called Frank and the other two would be long gone by now.
That turned out to be true. The three of them were gone … but they had taken Pierre’s horse with them. Pierre still lay there lifeless on the ground.
Mirabeau ground his teeth together for a moment before he got control of his surging emotions. “We will bury him,” he declared. “Then we push on. We will take turns riding double. Our horses are strong. They will be all right.”
This was a setback, though. There was no doubt about that. At least they still had the money for the guns. Soon, Joseph and Charlotte would make contact with the Americans and arrange the transaction. Soon, the Métis would have what they needed to win their freedom. That was the most important thing.
But once that goal was accomplished, Mirabeau intended to turn his attention elsewhere. He would find out who Frank was. More importantly, he would find out where Frank was.
And once he did, Mirabeau would settle the score.
The man called Frank would die.
Chapter 13
They took the dead man’s horse with them. That would allow them to push on without having to wait for the animal that had gone lame to heal completely.
Frank thought about trying to bury the man, but they didn’t have a shovel and it would be a difficult chore scratching out a grave in this rocky ground.
Anyway, the hombre had tried to kill them, so Frank didn’t feel too bad about leaving him. Maybe the rest of the gang would come back and lay him to rest properly.
The three of them mounted up and headed back to the creek where Frank had left the other horse.
“I think it would be a good idea to find some other place to hole up for a while,” he commented as they were making their way down the heavily wooded slope.
“Yeah, that bunch knows where we were campin’, so we ought to move,” Salty agreed.
Meg put in, “Whatever errand they were on, it seemed to be important to them. Maybe they won’t take the time to bother coming after us.”
“Maybe not,” Frank said, “but we can’t afford to take that chance.”
The lame horse had wandered a short distance down the creek while grazing on the thick grass, but it wasn’t hard to find him. Once they had taken him in tow, they left the stream and headed for the far side of the valley.
Frank hoped he could find some place over there where they could fort up. He planned to go scouting for the smugglers and also for the gang of French-Canadian mixed-bloods, but he wasn’t going to set out on that mission until he had a safe place to leave Salty and Meg.
“Métis,” he said suddenly.
“What?” Meg asked.
“Those fellas who grabbed the two of you, that’s what they’re called,” Frank said. “Métis. I don’t know exactly where it comes from, but I’ve heard the word. They’re the descendants of the early-day French fur trappers and the Indians who lived here when the white men first came to this part of the world.”
He recalled hearing something else about them, too, something that nagged at him as if it was important, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was.
They came to a ridge that jutted up abruptly from the relatively flat ground of the valley. It was too steep for the horses to climb, so they turned and rode along the ridge until Frank spotted a wide crevice that ran back into the rock, as if someone had taken a giant knife and tried to hack the ridge into two pieces.
The crevice’s opening was screened somewhat by trees and brush. Frank reined in and studied it for a while, deciding that with a little work they could conceal the opening even more than it already was.
“That’s it,” he said, pointing. “We’ll put the animals in there, then drag enough brush into the mouth of the crevice that nobody’ll be likely to notice it if they ride past.”
Salty nodded. “I reckon that might work, all right. Be a good place to fight off an attack, too. They couldn’t come at you from but one direction.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Come on.”
Once they were through the screen of brush at the mouth of the crevice, they found that it formed a box canyon extending about fifty yards into the ridge. The canyon was approximately twenty yards wide at its widest point, narrowing down to nothing at the far end.
A man could probably climb up and down the walls inside the canyon. A horse definitely couldn’t negotiate them.
“We’ll have to have somebody standin’ guard all the time,” Salty said, “but we can hold this place if we have to.”
Frank nodded. “I agree. You and Meg can stay here while I try to find out why these mountains are so blasted crowded all of a sudden.”
“Don’t you think it would be better if we all went looking for those smugglers and that gang of Métis, or whatever you called them?”
“It’s a one-man job,” Frank said firmly.
Salty chuckled. “Danged if you don’t sound like all the other fellas I ever partnered up with. Always so dadburned stubborn and determined to go it alone.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll come back for you,” Frank told the old-timer with a grin.
“Oh, I ain’t worried. I know you’ll come back.” Salty paused. “We got the grub.”
Frank laughed. “Let’s drag some more brush up to hide that entrance.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon working to conceal and fortify the box canyon. Frank used the pack mules to drag some logs into the canyon; then he and Salty stacked them three deep and five high to form a barricade of sorts, behind which they could kneel to fire their rifles if they needed to.
By the time that was done, it was too late for Frank to venture out in search of either of the groups they had encountered earlier in the day. He would start his search in the morning.
Salty built a small fire to boil coffee, fry bacon, and cook biscuits. While he was doing that, Frank and Meg made sure that all the horses were taken care of.
After supper, they put out the fire. It would be chilly without the warming flames, but night was falling and they didn’t want to announce their presence here in the canyon.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Frank said. “Salty, are you all right with the second turn?”
“Sure. When you get to be my age, you don’t sleep much, anyway.”
Frank knew what he meant. He wasn’t that far behind Salty in years.
“I can take a turn, too,” Meg offered.
Frank shook his head. “You’ll be responsible for keeping an eye open during the day tomorrow while I’m gone, so you’ll need to be alert then.”
“All right,” she said with a grudging shrug. “I just want to do my share.”
“Don’t worry, you will.”
Salty and Meg turned in, rolling in their blankets near the glowing ashes of the fire, which would continue to give off a little heat for a while. At this latitude, the nights cooled off quickly once the sun was down.
Frank took his rifle and walked to the mouth of the canyon, where he sat on the log barricade and listened to the small, stealthy sounds of nocturnal life carrying on around him. Everything seemed peaceful.
He wished once again that he had Dog with him, as well as Stormy. The big cur and the rangy gray stallion could be counted on to warn him if anybody came sneaking around.
They were hundreds of miles away in Seattle, though. Knowing that made Frank feel a mite lonely.
So did the fact that he had no idea where his son was at this moment. Conrad had been through hell in the past year or so, losing his wife that way and then abandoning the life he had been living to roam the Southwest as a gun-toting loner, always getting in one scrape or another.
Like father, like son, Frank thought wryly. That was how the old saying went, wasn’t it? When he and Conrad had first met, the younger man had been determined to have nothing to do with him and to be as little like him as possible.