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.”
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.