Sudden Fury

Chapter 17

Frank thought Nancy was probably right about that. Rutherford Chamberlain looked mad enough to chew nails or bite somebody’s head off.

Chamberlain stomped down from the porch and came toward the carriage. He wore a white suit today, with a flat-crowned white hat, and looked more like a Southern plantation owner than a timber baron. He came to a stop in front of Frank, glared at him, and demanded, “What the devil are you doing talking to my daughter?”

“Just saying hello to the young lady,” Frank responded. “She told me you were looking for me. I was about to go into the hotel and find you.”

Chamberlain snorted. “Somehow I doubt that. You’d have to explain yourself, sir.”

“Explain what?”

“Why you haven’t killed that unholy creature yet!”

Frank took a deep breath and kept a tight rein on his temper. “It’s been less than twenty-four hours since we came to our agreement, Mr. Chamberlain. I don’t reckon that’s really giving me a fair chance to do the job, now is it?”

“You haven’t had time to find the Terror and kill it, but the monster has had time to slaughter a dozen more of my men! Is that fair?”

“I was in the woods this morning,” Frank explained. “I found one of the victims and brought him in. You didn’t know about that, did you?”

Chamberlain continued glowering at him and snapped, “It doesn’t matter. That creature has to be found and killed—now! Several of my foremen came to the house just before Nancy and I left and told me that the loggers don’t want to leave their barracks anymore. They’re afraid to do their work. I can’t allow that, Morgan. My business will collapse if the men won’t go into the woods.”

And that was probably the exact reaction Emmett Bosworth had been hoping for when he hired that crew of gun-wolves, Frank thought. Once again, the image of Jack Grimshaw flashed through his mind. He still hated to think that Grimshaw might be involved in that, but he was coming to the realization that he was going to have to talk to his old friend and try to get the truth out of him.

“Just give me some more time,” Frank told Chamberlain.

“How much time? Until every man jack who works for me has been ripped to shreds?”

“Give me another twenty-four hours,” Frank said.

“And if you haven’t found the Terror by then?”

“I reckon you’ll do whatever it is you think you have to do.”

Chamberlain snorted in disgust. “I’ll put that bounty back on the monster’s head,” he declared. “Only, it won’t be ten thousand dollars next time. It’ll be twenty thousand!”

Frank bit back a curse. Quite a few people had gathered around to watch the angry confrontation between him and Chamberlain, and they all heard what the timber baron had just said. Gasps of surprise came from several of them, followed by excited murmuring. In half an hour, maybe less, nearly everybody in Eureka would know that Chamberlain was talking about reinstating the bounty—and doubling it.

To men like Erickson and his pards, that would mean Frank was the only thing standing between them and a chance at twenty grand.

Chamberlain had just painted an even bigger target on Frank’s back than the one Frank usually wore there just because he was the infamous Drifter.

“Twenty-four hours,” he said, pressing Chamberlain. “We have a deal?”

Chamberlain hesitated, then jerked his head in a curt nod. “All right. Twenty-four hours. But not a minute more. And if you haven’t brought that monster’s head to me by that time, you’re finished, Morgan.”

Frank glanced at the carriage window, where Nancy Chamberlain’s pale, drawn face peered out. He gave her a tiny nod, trying to let her know that everything was going to be all right. He would find the Terror, determine whether or not it was really her brother, and act accordingly from there. Exposing Emmett Bosworth’s scheming would just have to wait.

Chamberlain turned away and started hollering for his driver. Frank nodded at Nancy again, then went into the hotel. He wanted to gather some extra gear. Once he went into the woods the next time, he wouldn’t be coming out again until he had found what he was looking for.

When he came back downstairs a short time later with a pair of full saddlebags draped over his shoulder, he found Dr. Patrick Connelly waiting in the lobby. Frank frowned in surprise as Connelly lifted a hand in greeting and said, “Could I have a moment of your time, Mr. Morgan?”

“Sure. I was on my way to the livery stable, if you’d like to walk along with me.”

“That will be fine.”

As they headed toward Patterson’s, Frank asked, “What can I do for you, Doctor?”

“A short time ago, you asked me to confirm something for you, Mr. Morgan. Now, I’d like for you to confirm something for me. You strike me as an observant, intelligent man, and even though you’ve only been in this area for a short time, you’ve seen several of the victims attributed to this so-called Terror.”

Frank laughed. “Funny how people keep putting so-called in front of the thing’s name. I’ve done it myself.”

“That’s because at this point, no one is certain what it really is. We can’t be, until it’s killed…or captured.”

“Seems like a man would have a mighty tough chore on his hands if he set out to capture a thing like that.”

“Indeed. But my point, Mr. Morgan, is that these bodies today struck me as being slightly different from the previous victims. I was wondering if you noticed the same thing.”

Frank stopped and looked around. No one was close enough to overhear him as he lowered his voice and said, “You don’t think the Terror killed those men Wilcox brought in from the logging camp.”

Connelly shook his head slowly. “Not unless it’s learned how to wield an ax. Those poor devils were chopped apart, not torn apart. I suspect that they were shot first as well, so the mutilation was postmortem, but I’d have to dig into their bodies and find the bullets to prove that. Whoever took an ax to them was careful to obliterate the gunshot wounds.”

“Have you told anybody else about this, like the marshal?”

Connelly grimaced. “Gene Price is an honest man, a good man despite his gruff nature. And he does a good job of keeping the peace here in town. But dealing with violence on this scale, with cold-blooded mass murder…that’s a little beyond him, I’m afraid. There’s enough panic in the region already because of the Terror. If people knew that a gang of vicious murderers was roaming the countryside as well…” The doctor shook his head. “It wouldn’t take much to set off riots among the loggers, and that could easily spread to the town.”

“That’s what I thought,” Frank said with a nod. “That’s why I’ve kept quiet about it.”

“Who do you think could be responsible for such an atrocity?”

“Only one man I can think of. Chamberlain’s competition. Emmett Bosworth.”

“Bosworth,” Connelly said softly. “He’s in town, you know.”

“He is?”

The physician nodded. “He’s staying at the Eureka House. Has the big suite, right up in front on the second floor. He’s been here, off and on, for months. He has a small timber lease up the coast, so it’s not unreasonable for him to be here to check on his holdings. Everyone knows he’s got his eye on Chamberlain’s trees, though.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Frank said, “but I don’t have time right now.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Chamberlain’s deadline. I heard about that. Do you believe you can find the Terror in that amount of time?”

“I’m going to try, that’s for sure.” Frank turned toward the livery stable again. He was glad he’d had this chance to talk to Connelly, but now he needed to get started on the hunt again.

“Mr. Morgan…that bone you showed me? Does that have something to do with the Terror?”

“It might,” Frank admitted. “I don’t know yet.”

“I have a safe in my office. I’ll lock it up, so that it’ll be secure.”

Frank nodded. “I’d appreciate that.” He shook hands with Connelly. “So long, Doctor.”

“Good luck, Mr. Morgan…or should I say, good hunting?”

Frank headed for the livery stable, leaving Connelly there in the street. He glanced toward the Eureka House and thought about Emmett Bosworth. He was leaving a lot of things hanging fire here, but he had no choice. If he didn’t find the Terror in the next twenty-four hours, Rutherford Chamberlain would put that twenty-thousand-dollar bounty on its head, and the whole countryside would explode in violence, Frank reckoned. The only way to stop that was to bring in the creature himself.

One showdown at a time, he thought as a grim smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“Son of a bitch,” Emmett Bosworth said as he let the curtain fall closed over the window. He’d had it pushed back only a few inches, leaving a small gap through which he could watch as Frank Morgan carried on an earnest conversation with Dr. Patrick Connelly. Bosworth knew Connelly from the time he had spent here in Eureka, and he had heard a great deal about Frank Morgan. Supposedly, Rutherford Chamberlain had hired the notorious gunfighter to find the Terror, and according to the conversations Bosworth had overheard in the hotel dining room a few minutes earlier, Chamberlain had now given Morgan a twenty-four-hour deadline to kill the creature.

That wouldn’t do at all. For his plans to succeed, he needed the Terror, whatever it was, to continue its occasional depredations. That way, the Terror would be blamed for the things Bosworth’s men were actually doing.

The Eureka House had a bell system, so that all Bosworth had to do to summon a porter was to push a button. He did so now, and a few minutes later, a soft knock came on the door. Bosworth opened it to see an elderly black man in a red jacket waiting in the hallway.

“Can I do somethin’ for you, Mr. Bosworth, sir?” the porter asked.

“Do you know a man named Jack Grimshaw?”

“Seen him around, yes, sir.”

“Find him,” Bosworth snapped. “Tell him I need to talk to him as soon as possible.” He took a silver dollar from his pocket and flipped it to the old man. “There’ll be another one of those for you if you don’t say a word to anyone about this ever. You understand?”

The coin disappeared smoothly into a pocket of the red jacket. “Yes, sir.”

“And if you do go shooting off your mouth, I’ll make you sorry that Abe Lincoln ever set you free.”

“No, sir. That won’t happen.”

Bosworth nodded curtly and shut the door. He took a cigar from his vest pocket, clipped off the end of it, lit it, and then paced back and forth and smoked for the next fifteen minutes while he waited for Grimshaw.

When a knock sounded on the door again, Bosworth stalked over to it and jerked it open. Grimshaw stood there, a puzzled look on his rugged face.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Bosworth?” the gunman asked.

Bosworth jerked his head and said, “Come inside.” He closed the door behind Grimshaw and didn’t offer him a drink this time. “Have you ever heard of a man named Frank Morgan?”

Grimshaw’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Morgan? You mean The Drifter? Yeah, sure, I’ve heard of him. Just about everybody west of the Mississippi has.”

“I thought you might know who he was, since you’re in the same line of work. Are you actually acquainted with him?”

“We’ve crossed trails a time or two over the years,” Grimshaw replied, his voice wary.

“Is he the sort of man who can be paid off?”

“Paid off to do what?”

“To go away and mind his own business.”

Grimshaw looked at Bosworth in silence for a moment, then burst out with a harsh laugh. “Frank Morgan? Paid to give up a job he’s agreed to do?” Grimshaw shook his head. “Not hardly.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’d stake my life on it,” Grimshaw said flatly.

Bosworth sighed. He stuck the cigar back in his mouth and bit down hard on the end. “Very well then,” he said around the cylinder of tobacco. “I have a new job for you and your men, Grimshaw.”

“Thought you said you wouldn’t be needin’ us for a while,” Grimshaw said with a frown.

“That was before other matters came up. You’ll have to leave this afternoon.”

“Where are we goin’? What’s the job?”

Bosworth puffed on the cigar for a second, then took it out of his mouth and said, “You’re going to follow Frank Morgan into the woods…and kill him.”