Sudden Fury

Chapter 14

Frank didn’t recognize the man who had hailed him right away, although he knew he should remember the hombre. The stranger was almost as old as Frank, and while Frank couldn’t put a name with the face right offhand, he recognized the casual stance, the alertness in the eyes, the way the man’s right hand never strayed far from the butt of his gun. He was ready to hook and draw in case this fella had an old grudge against him that needed settling.

Then the stranger said, “Remember that time we decided to go fishin’ in the Brazos River while it was flooding? Like to washed us both away.”

“Jack!” Frank exclaimed as the name came back to him. “Jack Grimshaw!”

“That’s right.” Grimshaw stepped closer and reached up, extending his hand. “How are you, Frank?”

Frank clasped the man’s hand. “I’m all right. A little stiffer than I used to be when I get up in the morning.”

Grimshaw chuckled. “Ain’t we all?” He let go of Frank’s hand and gestured toward the body on the travois. “Somebody run into some trouble?”

“Bad trouble,” Frank agreed. He frowned slightly. “You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?”

“Let me take a look.”

Grimshaw moved closer to the corpse and studied its face. Frank swung down from the saddle and stood beside him, holding Goldy’s reins.

“What do you think?”

Grimshaw shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. I don’t see any wounds either. What did he die of? Looks like it was pretty bad, judging by the expression on his face.”

“You don’t see any wounds because he’s lying on his back. The Terror got him. Clawed him wide open.”

“The Terror?” Grimshaw sounded surprised. “You mean that monster folks say is out in the woods? You really believe in a thing like that, Frank?”

Grimshaw’s tone implied that he might think a little less of his old friend if Frank replied in the affirmative.

“I wasn’t sure at first,” Frank said, “but I’ve seen its handiwork now, several times. It’s real, all right. I just don’t know exactly what it is.”

That was true. He knew that Nancy Chamberlain was sincere in her belief that her brother Ben was the Terror, and while Frank hadn’t found any real evidence supporting that theory, he hadn’t come across anything to invalidate it either. The jury was still out as far as he was concerned.

“Well, whatever got him, I’m sorry this hombre had to die the way he did,” Grimshaw commented. “Looks like it was a bad way to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you takin’ him? The undertaker’s parlor?”

Frank shook his head. “I thought I’d stop at the marshal’s office first, see if maybe he recognized the gent.”

Grimshaw chuckled and nodded down the street. “I don’t think you’ll have to go all the way to the marshal’s office. Judgin’ by the badge on that hombre’s vest, the law’s comin’ to you.”

It was true. The body on the travois had drawn quite a bit of attention as Frank rode into town. One of the townies must have run down to Marshal Gene Price’s office to tell him about it.

Grimshaw reached up and ticked the tip of his index finger against the brim of his Stetson. “I’ll be moseyin’ on, Frank. Mighty good to see you again. Maybe we can get together later and have a drink, catch up on old times.”

“Still don’t care much for badge toters, eh?”

Grimshaw shook his head. “They make me antsy, even when I ain’t done anything.”

Frank slapped a hand on Grimshaw’s shoulder. “I’ll be seeing you.”

As Grimshaw strolled away and Marshal Price continued hurrying toward Frank, The Drifter’s thoughts went back to the last time he had seen Jack Grimshaw.

“They’ll be comin’ soon,” Grimshaw said as he crouched next to the window in the ramshackle old cabin. “You ready, Frank?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Frank replied with a nod. He was next to the window on the other side of the cabin’s only door. Whenever he risked a glance out that window, he could see a magnificent vista of Wyoming mountains spread out before him.

Unfortunately, hidden out there in the trees and the brush were nearly a dozen hardened gunmen who wanted to kill Frank and Jack Grimshaw because Frank and Grimshaw rode for one side in the deadly war that had spread across this part of the territory and they rode for the other.

It was as simple as that. A fella took money from one man, and he became mortal enemies with the hombres who took money from another man. That was crazy, Frank had been known to think, but it was the way of the West and had been ever since the great cattle barons had begun clashing over the rich rangeland.

Of course, for some men, things were a little more complicated. Frank himself had never sold his gun strictly for cash, despite the reputation that had attached itself to him over the years. The only causes he fought for were the ones he believed in.

In this case, he had allied himself with a rancher named Maynard Pollinger, an Englishman who had come to this country to make a new life for himself because he’d had the misfortune to be born the second son in an aristocratic British family. Pollinger wasn’t looking for trouble, but his MP spread had grown to be successful enough that it attracted the attention of Pete Dwyer, the boss of the Diamond D. Dwyer regarded Pollinger as a threat, and so he had started trying to run him out of the territory, sending hired guns to ambush Pollinger’s cowboys, poison his water holes, and stampede his stock.

Pollinger had had no choice but to fight back using the same methods. Jack Grimshaw was one of the men he had hired. Frank was another. They had been riding Pollinger’s range today when they’d been ambushed by a group of Dwyer’s gun-wolves. Forced to flee, they had taken shelter in this old line shack.

But even as they forted up inside the shack, both men had known that it would be only a matter of time before their enemies rushed them. The numbers were on the side of Dwyer’s men. They would lose a few, without any doubt, but in the end they would overrun the cabin and kill Frank and Grimshaw.

As Frank waited beside the window, a six-gun in each hand, ready to sell his life as dearly as possible, he suddenly heard a thump on the roof overhead. So did Grimshaw, who looked up and exclaimed bitterly, “Damn it!”

A couple of seconds later, both of them smelled smoke. That didn’t come as a surprise to either Frank or Grimshaw. Dwyer’s men had decided they didn’t want to lose anybody. One of them had gotten behind the line shack and tossed a torch onto the roof. They were going to smoke out their quarry.

Grimshaw’s lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace as he looked over at Frank. “We go out shootin’?” he asked.

“Only way to go,” Frank said.

“You know…you might have a better chance of gettin’ away if I drew their fire first…”

“We go together, or not at all.”

Grimshaw chuckled, said, “To hell with that,” and before Frank could even move, his companion had bounded out the door and was running toward the trees. The irons in Grimshaw’s hands blazed as they threw out a storm of lead.

“Blast it!” Frank exclaimed as he darted through the door as well. He saw men to either side of the cabin and fired in both directions at once. He saw several of Dwyer’s killers go down, felt the tug of bullets on his shirt.

Up ahead, Jack Grimshaw stumbled, twisted, went down. Crimson flowers bloomed on Grimshaw’s shirt. Frank ran to him, stood over him, and kept firing, expecting to feel lead smashing into him, too, at any second.

Then, the sudden pounding of hoofbeats and a fresh rattle of gunfire changed things. A group of riders led by Maynard Pollinger swept down out of the hills toward the burning line shack, and that tipped the balance. The newcomers’ bullets riddled Dwyer’s men, except for a couple who fled frantically.

Safe again and miraculously unhit, Frank dropped to a knee beside Grimshaw and rolled the man onto his back. “Jack, damn it,” Frank said, “if you’d just waited a minute, help was on the way.”

Grimshaw was conscious. He looked up at Frank, his face gray and drawn, and rasped, “Well, we didn’t…know that…did we?”

“If you hadn’t been trying to give me a better chance—”

“Hell,” Grimshaw cut in. “I always figured to…go out shootin’…anyway.”

Maynard Pollinger rode up and quickly dismounted. “How badly is he hit, Frank?”

“Shot through the body three or four times, looks like,” Frank told the Englishman.

“We’ll take him back to the ranch. I’ll send a man right now to fetch the doctor from town. We’ll do everything we can to save his life. I give you my word on that.”

Frank looked down at Grimshaw’s gaunt, gray face and figured it was too late for that.

He’d been wrong, though. Maynard Pollinger was true to his word. He got the best medical attention possible for Grimshaw, nursed the gunman through the critical first few days, then took him to the doctor’s house in Laramie as soon as Grimshaw was strong enough to stand the trip. Frank heard later that Grimshaw had been laid up for eight months, but eventually he had made a full recovery. Frank had seen the proof of that with his own eyes, here in Eureka.

The range war between the MP and the Diamond D had ended in rather prosaic fashion only a couple of weeks after the fight at the line shack. A horse had kicked Pete Dwyer in the head, and after a couple of days of lingering in unconsciousness, the cattle baron had died. His grieving widow didn’t have the stomach to continue the war. In fact, she had sold the ranch and left Wyoming Territory, and after that, things had become downright peaceful in the region. All the hired gunmen drifted on, including Frank, once he had satisfied himself that Grimshaw was getting the best care possible.

Those memories flashed through Frank’s mind in a second as he stood there in Eureka’s main street. The history between Frank Morgan and Jack Grimshaw went back a lot further than that range war in Wyoming, though. They had known each other as boys growing up near Weatherford, Texas, and had spent a considerable amount of time fishing, as Grimshaw had mentioned. They had ridden hell-for-leather across the wooded hills of the Cross Timbers as wild young cowboys.

Frank had gone on the drift after the war, when he began to get a reputation for being fast on the draw. As far as he knew at the time, Grimshaw had remained behind to continue working as a cowhand.

A few years later, though, he had run into his friend in Santa Fe and discovered that Grimshaw had abandoned ranch life, too, and was now walking the thin line that divided the law-abiding from the outlaws. He wasn’t as slick with a gun as Frank, but he was fast enough to stay alive. As fellow members of the gunfighting fraternity, they had run into each other several times over the years. The West, for all its untamed vastness, was a small place in many ways. The two of them had fought on the same side more than once. Grimshaw had saved Frank’s life in a fight in Wichita, and Frank had returned the favor during a dustup at Yankton.

Now, Frank was pleased to see Grimshaw again, pleased that Grimshaw seemed to be doing all right. He put the thoughts of his old friend out of his mind, though, because now Marshal Gene Price was standing in front of him, an angry look on his face.

“What the hell’s all this?” the lawman demanded as he swept a hand toward the body on the travois.

“I was hoping you could tell me, Marshal. I found this man out in the woods. Looks like the Terror got him.”

An expression like he had just bitten into something extremely unpleasant appeared on Price’s face. “The Terror, eh?”

“His back is clawed up pretty bad. I reckon he died from losing so much blood. Have you ever seen him before?”

Price frowned and studied the dead man’s face. After a moment, the marshal said, “Maybe. I think I’ve seen him around town. I don’t know his name, though.”

“Or what he was doing here?”

Price gave a disgusted snort. “Doing the same thing as every other damn fool in these parts, I reckon. Hunting that monster.” Price turned toward Frank again. “Or maybe I should say, that’s what they were doing until you came along, Morgan. You’ve sort of taken over that job, haven’t you?”

“I just figured it would be a good idea if the woods weren’t full of men shooting at anything that moves.”

“Yeah. And if you earn yourself ten thousand dollars in the process, then so much the better, eh?”

Frank knew the lawman didn’t like him. Fortunately, he didn’t care one way or the other about Gene Price’s opinion of him. He said, “I’m going to take the body on down to the undertaking parlor and spread the word that folks should go by there and see if they can identify it. Maybe somebody will claim the body.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Hardcases like that usually don’t have many friends.”

That was true enough, Frank thought, and there was another angle to consider, too. If the dead man was part of the group that had attacked the logging camp, the men who had been with him weren’t likely to come forward and identify him, let alone claim the body and give it a proper burial. They would want to keep any connection with the dead man concealed, to avoid any awkward questions from the law.

In fact, Frank would have been willing to bet that any time the gang got together here in town, they would do so in secret if possible, so people wouldn’t get the idea they were working together. If Emmett Bosworth actually was behind the atrocity at the logging camp, as Frank suspected, he would want to avoid as much suspicion as possible, so he wouldn’t want his men to be noticed.

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.