Palmer’s breath froze in his throat, and his heart seemed to stop dead in his chest. He knew how dangerous it was not to pay close attention to everything around him, and yet he had done that anyway, had let his brain be consumed by thoughts of the woman, the guns, and the gold.
Now he might pay for that mistake with his life.
“Take it easy.” He forced the words out between suddenly dry lips. “There’s no need to shoot.”
“We’ll decide about that,” the man holding the gun against his neck said.
From the corner of his eye, Palmer saw a hand pick up his rifle. At the same time, somebody else plucked the revolver from the holster on his hip.
He still had a knife and a small hideout gun on him, but they wouldn’t do much good if he was outnumbered, as he seemed to be. He put the number of his captors at three, maybe more.
The gun muzzle went away from his neck. He heard men moving around and figured they had stepped back so they could cover him better.
He was thinking about flipping over and reaching for that hideout gun, even though he knew it was a foolish move and would just get him killed, when the man who had spoken before went on in his gravelly voice. “All right, get on your feet.”
Suddenly, something about that voice struck Palmer as familiar. He knew he had heard it before, although not any time recently. As he climbed awkwardly to his feet, well aware that guns were pointing at him while he did so, he wracked his brain in an attempt to figure out who the voice belonged.
The memory burst on his brain like an exploding shell. He started to turn around to see if he was right, but the voice snapped, “Hold it! Don’t try anything funny.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Palmer said. “Owen? Owen Lundy? Is that you?”
He heard air hiss between a man’s teeth in surprise. “What the hell? Who are you?”
Convinced now that he was right, Palmer said, “It’s me, Owen, Joe Palmer. I haven’t seen you since Chicago, but I heard you were up here in this part of the world.”
“Joe Palmer?” The gravelly voice was confused. “Can’t be. I heard Palmer got hisself hanged over in Alaska.”
Palmer laughed. “You heard wrong. It’s me, all right. Let me turn around, and you can see for yourself.”
A moment of hesitation went by before the man said, “All right, but take it slow and easy. Keep your hands where I can see ‘em, and no tricks.”
Palmer kept his open hands elevated to shoulder height and swung around so he could look at the men who had snuck up on him. Three of them stood close by, covering him with pistols and rifles, while farther back, dim blurs in the shadows, several more men waited.
The moon had risen and provided enough light for Palmer to see the man who took a step toward him holding a leveled revolver. The man had a craggy face, along with white hair and bushy side whiskers, under a black Stetson. Palmer knew him without any doubt as Owen Lundy.
“Last time I saw you, you weren’t dressed like a cowboy, Owen,” Palmer said with a smile. “It was in a dive on State Street in Chicago, and you looked like a real swell.”
“Well, as I live and breathe,” Lundy said. “By God, it really is you!” He lowered the hammer on his gun and holstered the weapon. With a motion to the men with him, he went on, “Take it easy, boys. This is Joe Palmer, an old friend of mine.”
Lundy stepped forward and held out his hand. Palmer clasped it firmly.
“It’s good to see a familiar face out here in the middle of nowhere, Owen,” he said. A thought occurred to him. “I’ll bet you’ve got something to do with that pair camped down there, don’t you?”
One of the other men grated a curse and started to raise his rifle again, saying, “He knows what’s going on, Lundy. We can’t take any chances—”
“Put that gun down,” Lundy ordered harshly. “I told you, this man can be trusted.”
“Maybe so,” another man put in coolly, “but I ain’t fond of the idea of carving another share out of the payoff.”
“Nobody said anything about that,” Palmer responded before Lundy could say anything. “Whatever you fellas have going on, I don’t want to horn in on it.”
That was a bald-faced lie, of course. If there was money involved, Palmer damn sure wanted to dip his fingers in the pie. But it would be unwise to let these men know that right now.
“You let me worry about the shares, Radford,” Lundy said. “Unless you think you’d rather start runnin’ things around here.”
The threat in Lundy’s voice was unmistakable.
“I never said that, Owen,” the man called Radford replied. “This job’s gone all right so far with you in charge.”
“Yeah,” the other man said, “except for that business with Blake.”
“Jericho?” Palmer said, remembering Lundy’s old partner. “Is he here, too, Owen?”
“No,” Lundy said with a grim edge in his voice. “He didn’t make it.”
“The soldiers killed him,” Radford said.
Lundy’s head turned. “That’s enough.” He looked again at Palmer, who sensed the tension in the air, and went on, “You’d better tell me what you’re doing here, Joe. It’s one hell of a coincidence that two fellas who know each other from the old days in Chicago wind up bumpin’ noses in the Canadian Rockies.”
“Not so much of a coincidence,” Palmer said. “I was on my way to Calgary to look for you. I’d heard that you and Jericho were operating around there now.”
Lundy considered that. “What’s your connection with those two ‘breeds?”
“There’s not any, except that I met them last night. We just talked and then went our separate ways, though.”
“Did they tell you what they’re doing up here?”
“Not a word.”
“But you’ve been trailing ‘em, haven’t you?” Lundy’s words held a cunning tone. “You think you’re on to something that might wind up with a big payoff.”
Palmer didn’t bother denying it. “They mentioned something about guns.” His brain made the connections between everything he had heard. “And you’re supplying them, aren’t you, Owen? What did you do, slip down across the border and steal a shipment of rifles from the U.S. Army? Is that how Jericho got killed?” His excitement grew, but he tried not to let it show. “Those two kids are carrying the money to buy those guns from you, aren’t they?”
“You always were a smart son of a bitch,” Lundy said. “You think you’ve got it all figured out.”
“I don’t?”
“Not all of it. We didn’t steal a shipment of rifles from the Army.”
“No? Then what did you steal?”
“Just four guns,” Lundy said. “Four very special guns.”
Chapter 15
Meg already had a small fire going and the coffee brewing when Frank rolled out of his blankets the next morning. His muscles were painfully stiff as he climbed to his feet. He tried to tell himself that was because he’d slept on the cold, hard ground.
But that wasn’t completely true, and he knew it. Sleeping on the ground might have made it worse, all right, but at his age, his muscles would be stiff and slow to loosen even if he’d spent the night in a four-poster feather bed.
Meg poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him with a smile. He thanked her, sipped the hot, strong brew, and asked, “Where’s Salty?”
“Taking a look around outside the canyon.”
Frank frowned. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We don’t want to draw attention to this place.”
“He said he’d be careful not to be noticed.”
Frank knew the old-timer meant well. And Salty was an experienced frontiersman who knew how to not be seen when he didn’t want to be.