The Last Gunfighter Read online

  Frank took up Goldy’s reins and began leading the horse along the street. Price walked alongside him, and as they went toward the undertaker’s place, the marshal shooed away the curious townsmen who wanted to gawk at the corpse.

  “I don’t see why it matters to you who he is,” Price commented to Frank.

  “Just curious, I guess,” Frank replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t think there’s any connection between the Terror’s victims. They’re just hombres who were unlucky to run into the thing. But you never know. I might find out something that would help me track it down.”

  Price glanced over at Frank, his eyes narrowing. “Seems to me that you’ve been mighty close to the thing several times now, and it hasn’t come after you. Maybe there’s some connection between you and it.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong redwood, Marshal,” Frank said with a smile. “I’d never even heard of the Terror until yesterday. I don’t know what it is. I just want to put a stop to the killing.”

  “A gunfighter, wanting to put a stop to killing.” Sarcasm dripped from Price’s voice. “If that don’t beat all.”

  Frank suppressed the flash of annoyance he felt at the marshal’s attitude. Price was just trying to put a burr under his saddle, and Frank wasn’t going to let him do that.

  They reached the undertaking parlor and found the proprietor, a fat man with a round, unaccountably jolly face, waiting for them. “Take the deceased around back,” the undertaker told Frank. “I heard about you bringing a body into town, Mr. Morgan, so I have a couple of my assistants waiting back there to take charge of the remains.”

  “Before I do that,” Frank said, “do you recognize this hombre?”

  The undertaker studied the dead man’s face for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t say as I do. But then, I don’t pay much attention to what folks look like until I see them under these circumstances, when they’re never at their best.”

  Frank turned the dead man over the undertaker’s assistants. As they left the place, Marshal Price asked, “What are you going to do now, Morgan?”

  “I thought I’d get some lunch, and then I plan to go out and try to pick up the Terror’s trail again.”

  “How do you figure to kill a thing that can do”—Price jerked his head toward the undertaking parlor to indicate the corpse they had just left there—“that?”

  “Reckon I’ll figure that out when the time comes,” Frank said. He didn’t mention the fact that he didn’t plan to kill the Terror as long as there was a chance the thing was really Ben Chamberlain. He had given his word to Nancy Chamberlain.

  So what he really had to figure out was a way to trap a creature that could tear a man limb from limb and move through the woods with the speed and stealth of a ghost.

  That was all.

  Chapter 15

  Grimshaw looked around as he went into the Bull o’ the Woods Saloon. His men were scattered around the establishment’s big main room, drinking in groups of two or three, but not clustered together so it was obvious that they knew each other. That was the way Emmett Bosworth wanted it. The timber magnate didn’t want anyone in Eureka suspecting that he had assembled a gang of hired killers.

  As Grimshaw went to the bar, he caught the eye of the man on the other side of the hardwood. He gave the bartender a tiny nod and then said, “Give me a beer, Harry.”

  The drink juggler drew the beer, wiped the bar in front of Grimshaw with his rag, and then set down the foaming mug. When Grimshaw picked up the mug, his other hand moved smoothly to rest on the spot where the beer had been. That move with the rag had allowed Harry the bartender to slip a key under the mug, and now Grimshaw’s hand rested on it without anyone being the wiser. When he moved his hand, the key went with it.

  The key unlocked a door that opened from the alley behind the Bull o’ the Woods into the saloon’s back room. There was nothing in that room except a table and some chairs. From time to time, private poker games took place there. Months ago, Grimshaw had slipped Harry a tidy little sum to insure that he and the other men working for Bosworth would have a place to meet where no one could observe them together.

  Grimshaw drank about half the beer, then left the rest and walked out of the saloon after tossing a coin on the bar to pay for the drink. The others knew what to do. After making sure that no one on the street was paying any attention to him, he stepped into the narrow passage beside the building and made his way to the alley in back. He unlocked the door, stepped into the private room. It had one window, but the shade was tightly drawn.

  Within minutes, the first of the other men showed up, seeking entrance with a discreet knock. One by one, they filtered into the meeting place until all thirteen remaining members of the gang were there.

  “You got it?” Hooley asked eagerly. “You got the money?”

  Grimshaw took the roll of bills from inside his shirt. He had already discreetly peeled off his share and stashed it in one of his pockets. As he tossed the money on the table, he said, “What do you think? There it is, boys. Twenty-eight hundred dollars, as promised.”

  “Wait a minute,” Radburn said. “There’s only thirteen of us here, not countin’ you, Jack. What about Nichols?”

  Grimshaw shook his head. “Nichols won’t be collecting his share.” They would hear about it sooner or later anyway, so he thought he might as well go ahead and tell them the news. “The Terror got him. Frank Morgan brought his body in from the woods.”

  “Morgan!” one of the men said. “I heard he was in these parts. How do you know Morgan didn’t kill Nichols?”

  “Because he wasn’t shot,” Grimshaw replied flatly. “His back was clawed so wide open that most of his blood spilled out.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Radburn said in a soft, awed voice. He turned his head to look at Hooley. So did several of the other men.

  “What?” Hooley demanded. “You think I should have stayed there and got ripped open, too?” He started to cough, and had to cover his mouth with his hand.

  “What’s done is done,” Grimshaw said in a hard, emotionless voice. “What it amounts to is that there’s an extra two hundred bucks in that roll. You fellas can split it up any way you want to.”

  “I don’t really care,” one man said, “as long as Hooley don’t get any of the extra.”

  Another man jerked his head in a curt nod. “Yeah, that sounds good to me, too.” Mutters of agreement came from several of the others.

  For a moment, Hooley looked like he was going to fly into a rage. But then he controlled himself with a visible effort and his lip curled in a snarl.

  “Take it,” he snapped. “I don’t want any of the damned money except my share.”

  “Fine,” Radburn said. He scooped up the roll from the table and began passing out the bills. One of the men was pretty good at ciphering, so he figured out that if they split the extra money evenly, everybody would get an extra $16.66.

  “How the hell are we gonna do that?” one man demanded. “These are twenty-dollar bills.”

  Grimshaw took a couple of double eagles from his pocket and slapped the gold pieces down on the table. “There you go, boys,” he said. “That’ll make it come out even, an extra twenty apiece.”

  “We’re obliged, Jack,” Radburn said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “We’re all in this together, ain’t we?”

  Radburn gave Hooley a significant look. “Most of us are anyway.”

  Grimshaw laughed and clapped a hand on Radburn’s shoulder. “You were playin’ peacemaker earlier, so don’t go stirrin’ up trouble now,” he advised. Then he addressed the whole group. “The boss said he’d have some more work for us in a while. Until then, just lie low. You can have a good time, but stay out of trouble. And whatever you do, watch what you say. No talking about anything that happened today.”

  Radburn shook his head. “I don’t reckon any of us would much want to talk about that anyway, Jack.”

  Grimshaw knew
exactly what his fellow gunman meant. Bushwhacking was one thing, but mutilating a bunch of corpses was something else entirely. There was a time in his life when he would have said no to such a job and ridden away.

  But that time was gone. Grimshaw didn’t have any family left, no home to return to, damn few friends. He had his job, and by God, he was going to do it, no matter how unpleasant it got sometimes.

  At least Frank Morgan was in town. It would be nice to sit and talk about old times with good ol’ Frank.

  After leaving the undertaking parlor with Marshal Price, Frank said good-bye to the lawman and led Goldy toward the livery stable, with Dog padding along behind them. Patterson greeted the three of them with a friendly grin and set aside a wagon wheel hub he was greasing.

  The liveryman grew more serious as he said, “Heard you found another fella in the woods who’d been unlucky enough to run into the Terror.”

  Frank nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. His body’s down at the undertaker’s. I’d be obliged if you’d go down there and take a look at it if you get a chance.”

  “Me?” Patterson asked with a surprised frown. “Why me?”

  “Because you have the best livery stable in town, from what I’ve seen, and probably a lot of strangers come here first when they get to Eureka. I’d like to know if you’ve seen this fella around, and more importantly, if you’ve seen him with anybody else.”

  Patterson scratched at his close-cropped beard. “Well, I reckon that makes sense. Sure, I’ll mosey down there after a while and have a look. Can’t say as I’m real eager to take a gander at a corpse, though.”

  “I don’t blame you for that,” Frank said.

  He led Goldy into the stall where the horse had spent the night and started unsaddling him. When he returned to the forest this afternoon, he would take Stormy. Having two superb mounts enabled him to switch out between them and keep both horses fresher.

  When he was finished with that chore, he walked back to the front of the barn. He had his bedroll in his hands.

  “I’m hoping you can tell me who the best doctor in town is, if there’s more than one.”

  Patterson looked surprised again. “You sick or hurt?”

  “No, I just need to ask him a couple of questions.”

  “We got three doctors here in Eureka, that I know of…but I’d say Dr. Connelly is the best one.” Patterson told Frank how to find the physician’s office, which was on a side street at the other end of town. Frank thanked him, and then Patterson added, “Why don’t you just leave the dog here? I was about to step out back and eat some lunch, and he seems mighty fond of my table scraps.”

  Frank grinned. “Sure. Stay, Dog. I’ll see you later.”

  Carrying the bedroll, he headed along the street toward Dr. Connelly’s office. As he did, he thought about Jack Grimshaw and wondered what his old comrade in arms was doing in this part of the world. A disturbing possibility occurred to him. If Emmett Bosworth had indeed hired a gang of killers to go after Chamberlain’s men, then Grimshaw could be one of them. Even though they had been friends, Frank was honest enough with himself to realize that Grimshaw had always been more willing than he was to sign on for a job strictly for the money. Over the years, Frank had heard rumors that Grimshaw was mixed up in some pretty shady deals.

  But a little freelance outlawry was different from bushwhacking innocent men and then chopping them up with axes, Frank told himself. He didn’t want to believe that Jack Grimshaw was capable of such a thing, and until he saw proof of it with his own eyes, he wasn’t going to believe it.

  Dr. Patrick Connelly’s practice consisted of a neat little cottage containing his surgery and examination rooms, backed up by a larger house that was obviously the doctor’s home. No one answered Frank’s knock on the office door, so he walked around back to the doctor’s living quarters.

  The door there was opened by an attractive woman in her thirties with auburn hair and green eyes. “The doctor’s having his dinner,” she said in a tart voice. “He’s not seeing any patients right now. You can wait on the front porch of the office if you’d like.”

  “I’m not a patient,” Frank said, “and I hate to disturb a man’s dinner, but I need to ask him a question. Shouldn’t take but a minute, and then I’ll let him get back to his meal.”

  The woman got a stubborn look on her pretty face. She wore a wedding band on her left ring finger, so Frank figured she was Connelly’s wife. She was about to dig in her heels and tell Frank to go away, when a man’s voice came from somewhere else in the house.

  “Who is it, Molly?”

  The woman turned her head and called back, “Just an old cowboy. Nothing for you to concern yourself with, Patrick.”

  Frank heard footsteps, and then someone opened the door wider. The man who stood there was burly, built more like a prizefighter than a physician. He had a shock of gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard.

  “I heard you say you have a question for me, sir,” he said. “I hope for both of our sakes that it’s a good one. Otherwise, we’re both risking the wrath of my wife here.”

  “I think it’s a good one,” Frank said.

  The man raised his rather bushy eyebrows when Frank paused.

  “It’s about a bone.”

  Interest sparked in the man’s eyes. He stepped back and said, “Come in.”

  Molly Connelly blew out her breath disgustedly, shook her head, and retreated out of the room. “It’s a poor doctor who doesn’t take care of himself first,” she said over her shoulder.

  Connelly grinned and waited until she was gone before he said quietly, “My wife thinks my practice causes me to miss too many meals.” He patted his thick belly. “You couldn’t tell it to look at me, though, could you?” He ushered Frank into a parlor and then said, “Now what’s this about a bone?”

  Frank nodded toward a divan and said, “I need to unwrap it.”

  “By all means.”

  He set the bedroll on the divan and unrolled it. When he lifted the bone and held it up where the doctor could see it, Connelly’s eyes widened.

  “You were right, my friend. That’s definitely a bone.”

  “Human, isn’t it?” Frank asked.

  “Yes. That’s the radius, one of two bones that form the skeletal structure of a man’s forearm. Or a woman’s, although judging by the length and diameter of that one, I’d say it came from a man.” Connelly turned toward a bookcase that sat against one wall. “Let me show you…”

  He took a thick, leather-bound volume from one of the shelves and began flipping through it.

  “Gray’s Anatomy?” Frank asked.

  Connelly glanced up in surprise. “You’re familiar with it? You’ve had medical training?”

  Frank shook his head. “Only enough practical experience to patch up a bullet wound or a knife slash or set a broken bone. But I do a considerable amount of reading when I get the chance, in all subjects.”

  Connelly took a long look at Frank and then nodded. “Yes, I’d venture a guess that you’ve encountered more wounds of violence than an average man.” He flipped a couple more pages in the book, found what he was looking for, and jabbed a finger at one of the illustrations. “You see, here’s a man’s arm. The upper bone, between the shoulder and the elbow, is the humerus. The two lower bones, between the elbow and the wrist, are the radius and the ulna. What you have there is a radius, as I said. Where did you get it?”

  Before Frank could answer, Molly Connelly appeared in the doorway. “It would only take a minute, you said,” she told Frank in an accusatory tone. “Patrick, your food is getting cold.”

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” Connelly said. “Our visitor…By the way, what is your name, sir?”

  “Morgan. Frank Morgan.”

  “Mr. Morgan has brought me a very intriguing artifact.”

  Molly snorted. “That? That’s just an old bone.”

  “Indeed. And Mr. Morgan was about to tell me where he got it.”

  M
olly shook her head and left the room again. Frank smiled and said, “Reckon I’ve caused some trouble in your household.”

  Connelly waved a hand. “Don’t let it worry you. Molly is quick to anger, but even quicker to forgive. And she’s an excellent nurse, not to mention easy on the eyes.” He put out his hand, palm up. “May I?”

  Frank gave him the bone. As Connelly brought it close to his face and studied it intently, Frank said, “I found it in a cabin out in the woods.”

  “It was by itself?” Connelly murmured. “No other remains?”

  “Nope. Just the one bone. And it was stuck almost out of sight, where it would be easy to overlook.”

  Connelly glanced up. “Then someone took the rest of the skeleton and left this bone by accident.”

  “That’s what I’m wondering about,” Frank said with a nod.

  “One thing we can be certain of…The other bones didn’t get up and walk away by themselves.” The doctor’s manner became more brisk. “What is it you want from me, Mr. Morgan? A simple confirmation that this bone came from a human skeleton? The answer is yes.”

  “It doesn’t look like it’s been…damaged.”

  “Gnawed on, you mean?” Connelly looked at the bone again. “I agree. I don’t see any teeth marks. I’d say it was picked clean by insects, not cannibals.” Connelly smiled. “That thought did enter your mind, didn’t it, Mr. Morgan?”

  Frank shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Wait a minute,” Connelly said with a sudden frown. “Morgan, Morgan…You’re the man Rutherford Chamberlain hired to go after the Terror. The gunfighter. You’re the talk of the town…along with the Terror itself, of course.” He waved the bone in the air. “Does this have something to do with the Terror?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Frank replied honestly. Even though he instinctively liked and trusted the doctor, he wasn’t ready to reveal all his secrets and theories to the man. “I’d like to ask you, though, as a man of science…do you believe all the stories that have been told about the Terror?”