The Last Gunfighter Read online

  Scott shook his head. That made the flap of skin that hung down from the gash on his forehead move. “It wasn’t a bear,” he said. “It was hairy all over like a bear, but…it wasn’t a bear.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “It didn’t have a snout like a bear. And it went on two legs.”

  “Bears can get around on two legs,” Frank pointed out.

  “Not like this.”

  “Some other sort of animal then?”

  Stubbornly, Scott shook his head again. “No, it was more like…a man’s face, but…bigger…hairier. It was the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Sounds like one of those Sasquatch critters they’ve got up north,” one of the men said. All three of them had dismounted and stood around Frank and Scott now.

  “Yeah,” another man said. “I’ve heard ’em called Bigfoot, too. They’re supposed to be nine feet tall and hairy, just like this hombre said.”

  Frank wasn’t going to believe in such a thing, not unless and until he saw it with his own eyes. Even then, he’d be doubtful.

  He came to his feet and said, “This fella needs medical attention. I want the three of you to take him to Eureka.”

  “Hell, no! There’s ten grand on the hoof not far from here. We’re gonna go find it.”

  The other two spoke up, voicing their agreement.

  Scott clutched at the leg of one of them. “You can’t!” he wailed. “It’ll kill you, too, just like it did Billy and Rance!”

  The man pulled his leg loose and said, “We can handle some damned old Bigfoot.”

  “You don’t know…It’s worse than that…I can’t even t-tell you how bad it really is.” Scott closed his eyes and shuddered. “Like it’s not even from this world.”

  “You saw what it did to those two men,” Frank said. “Well, just a little while ago it killed six more the same way, only worse. Those hombres it tore apart. Flat out tore them apart.”

  One of the men rubbed at his angular jaw. “Maybe it would be better to come back later,” he suggested. “Maybe get some more men first.”

  “That’ll mean splittin’ the bounty more ways.”

  “I’d rather have a little less to spend and still be alive to spend it.”

  “Well, I’m not goin’.”

  “Yes, you are,” Frank said.

  “Who the hell are you to be tellin’ me what to do?” The man who had been arguing moved his hand toward the butt of his gun. “Folks say I’m pretty fast on the draw, and if you ain’t careful, I might just show you.”

  “That wouldn’t be a very good idea. My name’s Frank Morgan.”

  The man’s nostrils flared as he drew in a deep, startled breath. His face paled under its tan. “Morgan,” he repeated. “The gunfighter?”

  “One and the same,” Frank said.

  “You’d best back off, Tom,” one of the man’s friends advised him. “Bein’ fast for around here don’t mean nothin’ against a man like Frank Morgan.”

  “Yeah. All right.” Tom nodded. “We’ll do like you say, Morgan. We’ll take this fella in and find a sawbones to patch him up. And I, uh, didn’t mean any offense…”

  “None taken,” Frank assured him.

  “What are you gonna do, if you don’t mind my askin’?”

  “Are you goin’ after the monster?” one of the other men asked. “That’d be somethin’, The Drifter takin’ on the Terror.”

  “I thought I’d pay a visit to that fella Chamberlain,” Frank said. “I don’t believe it’s a good idea to be throwing out a bounty like that. It can lead to more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “It won’t do you any good. From what I hear, Chamberlain’s the big skookum he-wolf in these parts. He’s used to doin’ as he pleases.”

  “Maybe I can talk some sense into his head.” Frank looked around. “If I can figure out which way’s north. It’s hard to tell in this blasted forest where you can’t hardly see the sky.”

  He had a keen sense of direction, though, so it only took him a few minutes to orient himself once he picked up his horses and Dog. As he rode off, he could hear the other riders moving through the trees toward the settlement of Eureka, to the east. Scott was riding double with one of them.

  Frank kept his eyes and ears open. From the way Scott had talked, whatever had attacked them had struck with no warning, moving so fast that they couldn’t even hit it with their shots. Frank didn’t know if he would fare any better should the thing jump him, but he didn’t intend to go down without a fight, even if he was facing some nine-foot-tall hairy critter with giant claws.

  Nothing bothered him, though, and after a while he came to a fairly wide, hard-packed dirt road that led more directly northward. Frank had a hunch it led to Rutherford Chamberlain’s house. He wondered how much it had cost to hack a good road like this out of the thickly timbered wilderness. It must have been a pretty penny.

  But he supposed Chamberlain could afford it. A few minutes later, the road reached a huge clearing. The trees had been stripped from a small hill to form the estate, and at the top of the gentle slope stood a mansion the likes of which Frank hadn’t ever seen anywhere except San Francisco, Denver, and Boston. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t sure he had ever seen anything like it in those places.

  He recognized the sort of men who came galloping around the house and charging toward him, though. They bristled with guns, and they were looking for trouble.

  Chapter 4

  Frank saw several rifles and shotguns among the men. He reined Stormy to a halt and said in a low voice, “Dog, sit. Stay.” He didn’t want the big cur to give the men any excuse for being trigger-happy.

  For that same reason, he kept his hands in plain sight, well away from his guns. These men were Rutherford Chamberlain’s bodyguards, he told himself, and they were just doing their job. With all the mysterious and deadly things going on in the forest these days, you couldn’t blame them for being suspicious of strangers.

  It went against the grain, though, for him to have guns pointed at him and not do something about it. That was just part of who he was.

  “Take it easy, gents,” Frank said in a loud, clear voice as the men on horseback surrounded him. “I’m plumb peaceable.”

  “Who are you?” one of the men demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  Frank answered the second question. “I’m looking for Mr. Chamberlain. I just want to talk to him.”

  The spokesman, who had an ugly, rawboned face and straw-colored hair under a black Stetson, sneered and said, “Well, he don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Maybe you should ask him about that,” Frank suggested.

  The sneer didn’t go away. It just got uglier. “Yeah, maybe you should just go to hell.”

  “I still haven’t told you who I am.”

  “I’ve decided it don’t matter. I can tell by lookin’ at you that you’re just some old saddle tramp, and Mr. Chamberlain ain’t got time for trash like you.” The man jerked a thumb toward the road. “Vamoose.”

  Frank knew that he ought to just tell this man who he was. Most likely, the name Frank Morgan would open the door of the mansion.

  But he was just stubborn enough not to do that. This hombre’s arrogance had gotten under his skin, and he knew it would be like a burr under a saddle if he didn’t do something about it.

  He pressed his heels against Stormy’s flanks. The horse moved forward.

  The leader of the guards jumped his mount ahead to block Frank’s path. “Are you loco, mister?” he yelled. “You get outta here right now or you’re gonna be sorry.”

  “I’m going to talk to Chamberlain, and you’re not going to stop me,” Frank said.

  “There are eight of us—” the man began.

  “No,” Frank cut in, “I said you’re not going to stop me.”

  The man’s face flushed a dark, angry red. “Why, you son of a bitch!” he burst out. “You think I’m scared of you?”

  One of
the other men spoke up, saying, “Cobb, maybe you better be careful. I don’t like the looks of this hombre.”

  “I don’t either,” Cobb snapped. “That’s why I intend to change ’em a mite.” He glared at Frank. “Get down off your horse, mister.”

  “Before I do, I want your word that this is between you and me,” Frank said. “And I don’t want any of your men bothering my dog or my horses either. If they try, they’ll be sorry.”

  Cobb waved a hand impatiently. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, mister.”

  “I have your word?”

  “Hell, yeah!” Cobb looked around at the other guards. “You fellas stay out of it, hear?”

  “I’ll be glad to,” said the man who had spoken earlier. He was looking intently at Frank, as if he recognized him. Frank thought that was possible. These guards all had the look of tough, hard-bitten hombres, the sort of men who traveled in the same circles he did.

  Cobb swung down from his saddle, unbuckled his gun belt, and hung it on the saddle horn. He put his hat on top of it. He was a couple of inches taller than Frank, but probably packed about the same amount of weight on his rangy frame. He wore a white shirt, a black vest, and black leather wrist cuffs.

  Frank dismounted as well and removed his gun and hat. Cobb gestured at the bowie knife on Frank’s left hip and said, “Get rid of that pigsticker, too.”

  Frank slid the fringed sheath off his belt and tucked it and the knife in his saddlebags. “Just so we’re clear,” he said, “once I’ve gotten past you, your friends won’t stop me from going on up to the house, right?”

  “You won’t get past me,” Cobb said with a grin.

  “But if I do—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let him talk to the boss, boys, if the boss is willin’ to see him.” Cobb looked at Frank. “I can’t promise any more than that.”

  “Fair enough,” Frank said.

  He hadn’t gotten the words completely out of his mouth before Cobb let out a yell and charged him. The man was fast, but Frank was able to twist out of his way. As Cobb stumbled past, Frank hit him on the ear. It was only a glancing blow, but it must have stung. Cobb bellowed and swung around with a look of rage on his face. He threw a looping punch at Frank’s head.

  Frank blocked it, stepped in, and landed a hard right on Cobb’s sternum. The blow rocked Cobb back a step and set him up for the left hook that Frank exploded on his jaw. Cobb went to one knee, a look of stunned surprise on his ugly face. Clearly, he hadn’t expected Frank to land the first three punches.

  With another angry roar, Cobb came up from the ground and launched himself into a diving tackle with his arms spread wide. Frank couldn’t avoid the lunge. Cobb wrapped an arm around his thighs and drove him backward off his feet.

  When Frank hit the ground, the impact knocked the air out of his lungs. He gasped for breath and rolled to the side to avoid Cobb’s knee as Cobb tried to plant it in his groin. Frank brought his elbow back and clipped his opponent on the jaw with it.

  Some of the other men yelled encouragement to Cobb, but most of them just sat silently on their horses, watching the fight. They made no move to interfere, though, and that was all Frank cared about where they were concerned. He twisted around, got his left hand on Cobb’s throat, and bounced the man’s head off the ground.

  Cobb brought his left up and for the first time landed a punch cleanly. The knobby fist crashed into the side of Frank’s head and sent him sprawling. That brought more shouts from Cobb’s friends. Cobb dove after Frank, who rolled onto his back and managed to get his right leg up in time to drive the heel of his boot into Cobb’s belly. Cobb’s weight and momentum made the boot heel sink deeply into his midsection. He went “Oooff!” and doubled over.

  Frank reached up, grabbed Cobb’s vest, and hauled hard on it at the same time as he levered the man into the air on his leg. Cobb sailed through the air over Frank’s head and crashed onto the ground. It was his turn to gasp for breath now. Frank had recovered his. He flipped over, landed on Cobb, and slugged him on the jaw again. Pinning his opponent to the ground with a knee in his belly, Frank hit Cobb twice more, a left and then a piledriver right. Cobb’s head lolled loosely on his neck as he lay there on his back with his arms and legs spraddled out.

  “If you’re thinking about hitting him again, Morgan, I wouldn’t. He’s out.”

  Frank looked up at the man who had tried to warn Cobb. Chest heaving a little from his exertions, he said, “You…recognized me.”

  “That’s right. Cobb’s damned lucky he just tried to thrash you. If he’d thrown down on you, you probably would’ve killed him. Better a beating than a bullet in the heart.”

  One of the other guards said, “Rockwell, who the hell is this jasper? You act like you know him.”

  The man called Rockwell shook his head. “No, we never met, but he was pointed out to me one night in a saloon in Fort Worth. His name’s Frank Morgan.”

  “Morgan!” Several men muttered in surprise. The one who had exclaimed said, “You mean the gunfighter?”

  “One and the same,” Rockwell said.

  Another man let out a whistle. “You’re right. Cobb’s lucky to be alive.”

  Frank went over to Stormy and got his hat from the saddle. He put it on and then buckled the gun belt around his hips. He paused to rub Dog’s ears. The big cur had stayed right where Frank had told him to stay, even during the fight. He had probably growled a few times, though, frustrated that he couldn’t tear into Cobb.

  A couple of the guards had dismounted. They reached down, took hold of Cobb’s arms, and lifted him to his feet. He sagged in their grip, and would have fallen if they hadn’t been supporting him, but he was starting to come around now. He gave a groggy shake of his head and moaned.

  “Come on,” Rockwell said to Frank. “I’ll take you up to the house. I think you knocked all the fight out of Cobb, but it’ll be simpler if you’re already inside when he wakes up good.”

  Frank nodded. He picked up the horses’ reins and motioned for Dog to follow him.

  Rockwell led the way along a path made of crushed rock that ran through a green lawn in front of the house. It widened out into an area where buggies could be parked. From there, the path ran on around the mansion toward a carriage house and several other outbuildings.

  The house itself was one of the oddest, yet most impressive structures Frank had ever seen. It was a three-story Victorian topped by a square tower with a steep roof and a long metal spire that served as a lightning rod. There were more gables than Frank could count, each one topped by a lightning rod as well, and although he was no architect, they seemed to be placed rather haphazardly around the roof. A room jutted out from the front of the house, cutting off a porch that appeared to wrap the rest of the way around the house. The porch railings were wrought iron and decorated with elaborate curlicues and designs. Latticework framed the windows, and carvings were everywhere in the wood. Frank saw birds and animals, moons and stars, even human faces. The whole place had a reddish gleam in the sun, and he recalled that Karl Wilcox had said the mansion was made out of the redwood that had brought Rutherford Chamberlain his fortune.

  Frank thought that if he had to live in a place like this, he would go plumb loco in a week.

  Rockwell must have had an idea what he was thinking, because the man grinned over at him and said, “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  “It’s something, all right,” Frank said. “I’m just not sure what.”

  “The old man designed it himself. He says the woods made him a rich man, so it’s only fitting that he lives here among the trees.”

  “I hear that he does all his business from here and doesn’t go into town very often.”

  “Hardly ever,” Rockwell said with a nod. “He used to get out more, but Mrs. Chamberlain passed away a few years ago, and now Mr. Chamberlain just stays in the house unless there’s some sort of emergency.”

  “I guess he figures no one will bother him here,” Frank
mused. “It must have really shaken him up when this whole business with the Terror started.”

  “Ah, the Terror,” Rockwell said. “I sort of figured you were here about that. Going after the money, are you?”

  “I want to talk to Mr. Chamberlain about the bounty,” Frank said, not answering the question directly. Let Rockwell draw whatever conclusions he wanted to. As they came up to the porch, Frank went on. “What do you think about the Terror? Ever seen it?”

  “No, and I don’t want to.” Rockwell stopped and looked over at Frank. “Call me hardheaded, but I’m not sure the damned thing really exists. The evil that men do is bad enough without there being monsters in the world.”

  Frank started to say that he felt the same way, but he surprised himself by not doing it. After the things he had seen this afternoon, he wasn’t certain what he believed anymore. The only things he knew for sure were that something was killing men in the forest and that it needed to be stopped. But he didn’t think that posting a bounty was the best way to go about it. That might just get some innocent men killed.

  Frank tied Stormy and Goldy to a fancy hitching post in front of the house and told Dog to stay. Then the two men walked up onto the porch. The front door was a massive slab of varnished redwood with a bronze lion’s-head knocker so big that for a second Frank thought Chamberlain must have gotten it from a real lion. Rockwell grasped the knocker and rapped it sharply against the door.

  “They probably heard the commotion inside,” he said, “so they’ll know that something was going on—”

  As if to support his words, the door opened almost right away. A tall, cadaverous man with white hair and a white mustache stood there. He wore a black suit. Frank had seen enough butlers in his life to recognize the breed. He halfway expected the gent to talk with a British accent, but the butler sounded American as he asked, “What is it, Rockwell? Who is this man?”

  “He’s here to see Mr. Chamberlain,” Rockwell said. “His name is Frank Morgan.”