The Last Gunfighter Read online

  The third hardcase mounted up again and said, “No hard feelings, Morgan. It sure as hell wasn’t my idea for Jingo to slap leather like that. He’s always wanted to make a big name for himself as a gunman, and I reckon he figured killin’ you was the best way.”

  “No hard feelings,” Frank agreed, “as long as you really let it go and don’t try to bushwhack me later. I wouldn’t take kindly to that.”

  “Don’t worry.” The man gave a harsh laugh. “I’m not that stupid. Anyway, I still want that ten-grand reward for the Terror, so I’m gonna be kind of busy hunting that monster. I don’t have time to get myself killed throwing down on The Drifter.”

  Leading the other two horses, the man turned his mount and hitched it into motion. He rode off into the trees, and was soon out of sight among the thick, towering trunks.

  The leader of the loggers stuck out his hand to Frank. “My name’s Karl Wilcox. It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Morgan.” He glanced around at the gory remains of his fellow loggers. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

  “So do I,” Frank agreed.

  Wilcox waved a hand at the other men. “This is Dave Neville, Asa Peterson, and Gus Trotter.”

  Frank nodded at them. “I imagine you fellas would like to gather up your friends’ bodies. I’ll give you a hand.”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a wagon back yonder in the woods. Gus, go get it.” Wilcox grimaced. “The rest of us will start rolling up the bodies in blankets.”

  That was a particularly grim, grisly chore, since some of the bodies were in pieces. The loggers were able to tell which pieces went together, or least they claimed they could. Frank certainly wasn’t going to argue with them. He hadn’t known any of the dead men.

  Gus Trotter came back with the wagon. Two mules were hitched to the vehicle, and numerous logging tools were heaped in the back of it. The loggers shoved those tools aside to make room for the corpses.

  “What’s the nearest town?” Frank asked.

  “That’d be Eureka,” Wilcox said. “That’s where we’ll take these poor fellas.”

  “I reckon that’s where I’ll find Rutherford Chamberlain, too?”

  Frank wasn’t sure why he wanted to talk to the timber baron. Maybe in the back of his mind, he was considering asking Chamberlain to call off the bounty hunting.

  Wilcox shook his head. “Nope, Mr. Chamberlain doesn’t go into town much. He conducts all his business from his house.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “About five miles north of here. You can’t miss it. Biggest damn house I ever saw, and nearly all of it is made out of redwood.”

  “He lives in the forest?” Frank asked in surprise.

  “That’s right. He always says that since the woods made him his fortune, that’s where he’s gonna live. You plan to go see him, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I might,” Frank said.

  “Be careful when you ride up. He’s always got men on guard, and with everything that’s going on in these parts, they’re probably pretty nervous. They might get trigger-happy.”

  Frank nodded. “Much obliged for the warning. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  The loggers made ready to leave for Eureka with their gruesome cargo, but they paused as Karl Wilcox said, “You know, Mr. Morgan, when we first got here, I thought for a second you had done that to our friends. Or rather, that dog of yours. I figured it was a wolf when I first saw it.”

  The other men nodded in agreement.

  “I’m glad you stopped to find out what was really going on before jumping to conclusions,” Frank said.

  Wilcox nodded. “So are we. If we’d gone after you or the dog, I reckon you would’ve shot all four of us.”

  That wasn’t likely, Frank thought, but he couldn’t rule it out entirely. Anybody who came at him with an ax was asking for trouble, no doubt about that.

  “Are you gonna look for the Terror?” Wilcox asked.

  “I’m not in the business of hunting monsters,” Frank said. Especially when he didn’t really believe in them in the first place, he added to himself.

  Of course, just because he didn’t believe a monster had killed those men, that didn’t mean he knew what had ripped them apart like that. That uncertainty was enough to make a trip through these shadow-haunted woods plenty nerve-racking, especially for a man traveling alone. It was a good thing the dangerous life he’d led had given him such icy nerves, he thought with a wry, inward grin.

  The wagon rolled off toward Eureka, loaded down with six corpses and four live, scared men. Dave Neville handled the reins. Wilcox, Peterson, and Trotter gripped their axes tightly and swiveled their heads from side to side, constantly on the lookout for danger.

  Before mounting up, Frank walked all the way around the clearing, studying the ground. A thick carpet of redwood needles covered it, built up from centuries of shedding by the huge trees. There were also a lot of brittle cones lying around. Frank had hoped that whatever killed those loggers might have left some tracks, but that wasn’t the case. He didn’t see any prints among the needles.

  That left Dog’s nose. “How about it, fella?” Frank asked the big cur. “You smell anything unusual?”

  Dog trotted around the clearing. He paused in one spot, lifting his head and peering off into the woods.

  “What is it, Dog?” Frank asked as he knelt next to the wolflike beast. “You smell some sort of critter?”

  Frank studied the ground at this spot. Something might have kicked through the needles, but he couldn’t be sure about that. He whistled for Stormy and Goldy. The horses came over to him, and he swung up on Stormy.

  “Trail, Dog!” Frank ordered.

  Dog had a scent of some sort, all right, although he still wasn’t reacting like he would if his quarry was a bear or some other sort of wild animal, Frank thought. Dog took off through the woods, nose close to the ground. Frank followed, riding Stormy and leading Goldy.

  Dog didn’t move so fast that he got out of Frank’s sight. He weaved through the trees, heading first one direction, then another, as if whoever—or whatever—he was tracking didn’t have any specific destination in mind but was just roaming aimlessly through the forest. That sounded like the behavior of an animal.

  Maybe a grizzly bear had wandered over here into California from the Rockies, Frank thought. It wasn’t impossible. That didn’t explain why Dog hadn’t growled when he picked up the scent, but there might be some reason for that. Or maybe the predator was some sort of freakishly large wolf—but again, Dog would have reacted more violently to wolf scent.

  Frank had told Karl Wilcox that he wasn’t going monster hunting, but that was exactly what he was doing, he realized. He didn’t believe the so-called Terror was something supernatural, but he wanted to find out who had killed those men anyway. Wholesale slaughter like that rubbed Frank the wrong way and always had.

  Dog paused suddenly and lifted his head. He sniffed the air, and now a growl came from him. At the same time, Frank heard a crackling in the brush off to his right. He twisted in the saddle to gaze off into the perpetual twilight under the giant trees, but didn’t see anything moving.

  Then something crashed to his left. Dog whirled in that direction and growled again.

  Were there two of them, whatever they were? That would help explain how six men had died back there.

  Frank felt his heart hammering in his chest. He wasn’t afraid; he had never run into anything that a well-placed bullet couldn’t take down, and he didn’t believe he was going to here. But there was something about the gloom, and the trees towering over him like giants, and the memory of blood and scattered body parts…

  Somewhere not far away, a horse nickered, and another answered it. Frank took a deep breath. Riders in the woods were one thing; some bizarre, mysterious something that could rip six men limb from limb was another thing entirely.

  But men could be mighty dangerous, too, he reminded himself. He had seen ample evidence of that in his life.
/>   And as if to emphasize that, a gun suddenly cracked not far away on his right, and a bullet whined through the trees, much too close for comfort.

  That wasn’t enough trouble, though. More shots blasted from the left in return, and in the blink of an eye slugs were sizzling through the brush and smacking into tree trunks all around Frank.

  “Son of a—” He threw himself off Stormy, grabbed the reins of both horses, and led them hurriedly toward a deadfall he had spotted up ahead. Rather than being felled by loggers, the massive redwood had toppled over due to some natural cause, probably years earlier. These trees took a long time to rot, though, so the log was still in fairly good shape. It stood fifteen feet tall, too, so it would offer some protection if Frank and the horses could get behind it. He called, “Stay down, Dog!” to the big cur.

  They reached the deadfall. That shielded them from the shots coming from one direction anyway. Frank heard a man shout, “Over here! I got it, I got it!”

  The fool didn’t have anything. Frank understood now what was going on. Two separate groups of hunters looking for the Terror of the Redwoods—and that ten-thousand-dollar bounty—had mistaken each other for their quarry and opened fire. They would be lucky if several of them didn’t get killed.

  That was one thing about offering a bounty like the one Rutherford Chamberlain had placed on the Terror—it brought out all the greedy, trigger-happy fools who would blaze away at anything in hopes of earning the money. Frank had tried to tell himself that what Chamberlain did was none of his business, but when folks started shooting at him, that made it his business.

  He intended to have himself a talk with Rutherford Chamberlain. If he got out of these woods alive, that is.

  The guns were still popping. Frank cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” He had to shout it twice more before the shooting began to die away.

  “Hey,” a man yelled into the lull, “who’s that?”

  “Hold your fire!” Frank shouted again. “You’re just shooting at each other!”

  Horses crashed through the brush. Somebody else yelled, “Don’t shoot anymore!”

  Frank breathed a little easier now. Both groups of hunters had ceased fire. Maybe they wouldn’t start shooting indiscriminately again before they found out what was going on.

  Three riders came into view, carrying their rifles at the ready. Frank stepped out from behind the huge log and raised a hand.

  “Was that you we were shooting at, mister?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah, but you were also shooting at another bunch over there,” Frank replied, pointing with a thumb in the other direction.

  That was where more shots abruptly sounded, and a man screamed at the top of his lungs in sheer terror.

  Chapter 3

  Frank wheeled in that direction. He had heard shrieks like that not long before, and six men had died. He jerked his Winchester from the saddle boot and broke into a run toward the sounds.

  As thick as the woods were, he could move just as fast on foot as the other men could on horseback. He charged through the trees for several moments, then had to leap aside as a runaway horse suddenly loomed up right in front of him. The animal’s eyes were wide and rolling with fright. Foam drooled from its mouth. It wasn’t paying any attention to where it was going, and only Frank’s superb reflexes kept the horse from trampling him.

  He heard more crashing in the brush, as if other horses were bolting through the woods in panic-stricken flight. The gunfire had stopped, but the screaming continued. Frank couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was a different voice now.

  As if something had already stilled the first one.

  Another shape appeared in the shadows before him, coming toward him at a fast rate of speed. Frank stopped and swung the rifle up, ready to fire if whatever it was attacked him. It wasn’t a monster, though, or even some sort of wild animal. It was a man, running for his life like Satan himself was after him. A crimson smear of blood covered his face, and he kept looking behind him as he plunged heedlessly through the forest.

  Frank lowered the Winchester and called, “Hey! Stop! You’re all right!”

  The man never slowed down. Frank stepped to the side so that the hombre wouldn’t barrel right into him, leaned the rifle against a tree trunk, and then reached out to grab the man as he went by. Frank wrapped his arms around him, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching under the butternut shirt as he jerked the fleeing man to a halt.

  The fellow wasn’t going to settle down without a fight, though. He was too hysterical from fear to do that. He struggled frantically to get loose, twisting in Frank’s grip and flailing at him. The fists thudded into Frank’s shoulders and back and didn’t really do any damage, but he got tired of it in a hurry anyway. He grabbed hold of the front of the man’s shirt, shoved him back a step, and drove a short but powerful punch into the hombre’s jaw.

  The blow snapped the man’s head to the side and made his eyes roll up in their sockets. Frank let go of him. The man’s knees unhinged. He folded up and crumpled to the needle-covered ground at Frank’s feet.

  The riders had arrived while Frank was struggling with the stranger. They looked down at the stunned man, and one of them asked, “Who’s that?”

  “I think his name’s Scott,” another rider said. “I’ve seen him in Eureka.”

  “Man, looks like somethin’ tore into him.”

  That was true. Most of the blood on the man’s face came from a hideous gash that slanted across his forehead, but he had some smaller cuts and scratches on his cheeks, too. His shirt was torn and bloodstained, like something had tried to claw it off him.

  Frank realized that the screaming had stopped. He picked up his rifle and said to the men on horseback, “A couple of you come with me. The other one stay here and keep an eye on this gent.”

  “Who are you to be givin’ orders, mister?”

  “The man who’s giving the orders,” Frank snapped. “Come on.”

  The tone of command didn’t allow for any argument. One of the men shrugged and said, “I’ll stay here with Scott. Just don’t you fellas be gone too long. That critter’s still roamin’ around out here in these woods, unless I miss my guess.”

  Frank led the way, stalking forward with the Winchester at the ready. In a few minutes, he spotted what looked like two heaps of old clothing lying on the ground ahead of him. He had a bad feeling that there was more to the heaps than old clothes, though.

  Unfortunately, he was right. He saw the torn and mangled bodies as he came closer. Blood formed reddish-black pools around both dead men. Not only had their flesh been shredded, but their throats were torn out as well. These injuries looked more like something an animal would inflict. Frank was getting back to the bear idea again. The killer hadn’t taken the time to rip the bodies apart this time.

  “Holy Mother o’ God!” one of the riders who had trailed along behind Frank exclaimed when he saw the mutilated corpses. Frank heard retching behind him, but didn’t look around.

  “It was the Terror, that’s what it was,” the other man said. “No doubt about it. The damn thing’s gone on a real rampage this time.”

  Frank thought that eight dead men in less than an hour qualified as a rampage, all right. But he still wasn’t convinced that some sort of monster had done this.

  “There’s nothing we can do for these fellas,” he said. “Let’s go back and see about that other one.”

  They returned to the spot where they had left Scott and the third rider. The injured man had regained his senses, at least to a certain extent. He sat with his back against the trunk of a redwood. He had his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. He swayed back and forth and made soft moaning noises.

  “I was gonna try to clean up those wounds a little,” the third man said, “but he won’t let me touch him. I figured if I tried too hard, I might spook him and make him run off again.”

  Frank nodded. “It was
good thinking to leave him alone. I’ll see what I can get out of him.”

  He went over to the man and hunkered on his heels, not getting too close to him. The man rolled his eyes in Frank’s direction and cringed away.

  “It’s all right,” Frank told him in a calm, steady voice, the sort of tone he would use on a frightened horse. “The thing that killed your friends and hurt you is gone. You’re safe now.”

  The man’s teeth chattered. “N-nobody’s safe,” he stammered. “Nobody’s s-safe in the w-woods. The T-Terror’s out there!”

  “Did you see it?” Frank asked.

  Scott jerked his head in a nod. “It…it came out from behind a tree…knocked Billy off his horse…I never saw anything move so f-fast.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Big! Hairy! Must’ve been…nine feet tall…and it had these…claws…” A shudder ran through the man’s body. “It tore out Billy’s throat…with one swipe…There was blood all over him…We tried to shoot it, but it was too fast…It went for Rance…” Scott sobbed. The tears left little trails in the gore smeared on his cheeks. “Rance’s horse spooked, threw him. So did m-mine. The thing jumped on Rance…it was tearin’ him up…slashin’ at him with those claws like it was tryin’ to…to dig his insides out…Then it…came for me…hit me once and knocked me clear across the open space between two trees.”

  Frank leaned closer. “How did you manage to get away?”

  “Just luck. The thing started tearin’ at me…like it had done to Rance…and then one of the horses stampeded right into it. Knocked it off of me. I got up and ran.” Scott lifted horror-haunted eyes and gazed at Frank from them. “It could’ve come after me, could’ve caught me. I don’t know why it didn’t. Maybe the horse hurt it. Maybe it was just tired of…playin’ with us.”

  One of the hunters said, “You hear that, boys? The thing’s hurt! We can track it down for sure now.”

  Frank looked around at the men and told them, “You don’t know that. Like this hombre said, maybe it had some other reason for leaving.” He returned his attention to Scott. “You must have gotten a good look at it. Could it have been a bear? Maybe a grizzly that wandered over here from somewhere in the Rockies?”