Sudden Fury

Chapter 18

Jack Grimshaw had been worried that was what Bosworth was going to say. The timber baron wouldn’t have started asking about Morgan if he wasn’t concerned about The Drifter for some reason.

But Grimshaw wasn’t going to just accept this new job without finding out what it was all about either.

“Why do you want Morgan dead?” he asked.

Bosworth flushed with anger at the blunt question. “I’m not in the habit of having my orders questioned, Grimshaw, or of explaining myself.”

Grimshaw didn’t back down. He said, “Yeah, well, you never sent me after a man like Morgan either. You know, sometimes folks have another name for him besides The Drifter. They call him The Last Gunfighter.”

Bosworth gave a contemptuous snort. “That’s preposterous. There are scores of gunfighters left in the West. Hundreds perhaps. You’re one yourself, and so are the men who ride with you.”

“Not the same thing,” Grimshaw replied with a shake of his head. “Yeah, I’m pretty slick on the draw, and I hit what I shoot at. Those other boys, they’re the same way. But Frank Morgan…well, he’s in a class by himself. Ben Thompson and Wes Hardin are dead. Smoke Jensen, Falcon McAllister, Matt Bodine…they’ve all hung up their guns, and they’re makin’ it stick somehow. That old-timer called Preacher…well, hell, he’s got to be dead by now, even though I never heard anybody who knew for sure say that he is. But Morgan, he’s still in the game, and still as good as he ever was, from what I’ve heard.”

Bosworth had listened to Grimshaw’s words with growing impatience on his face. He took the cigar out of his mouth, waved it in the air, and with his lip curled in a sneer, said, “So what you’re telling me is that you’re afraid of this man?”

Grimshaw suppressed the impulse to knock that sneer off of Bosworth’s face. That wouldn’t solve anything in the long run. Instead, he said, “I’m tellin’ you that Frank Morgan is a mighty dangerous man, and I respect that. I’d be a damn fool not to, and my mama back in Texas didn’t raise any fools.”

“More dangerous than fifteen men who are supposed to be good with their guns?”

“Fourteen,” Grimshaw reminded him. “We lost Nichols this morning.”

Bosworth waved that away. “So the odds are fourteen to one, and yet you hesitate to go after Morgan?”

“I didn’t say we wouldn’t do it,” Grimshaw snapped.

“Ah!” Understanding appeared on Bosworth’s face. “You want more than your usual pay.”

“What I want is to know why. What’s so important about Morgan that you have to send us after him?”

Bosworth snorted. “Isn’t it obvious? Chamberlain has given him the job of tracking down the Terror and killing it. If this man Morgan is actually as dangerous as you claim he is, he might succeed. We can’t allow that.”

“Because you need the Terror to stay out there in the woods, so he’ll get blamed for anything me and the rest of the men do for you.”

“Exactly!” Bosworth puffed on the cheroot. “Perhaps your mother really didn’t raise any fools, although I’d say that the jury is still out on that question.”

Grimshaw allowed himself a second’s luxury to wonder how it was that an arrogant son of a bitch like Bosworth had managed to live this long without anybody shooting him or beating him to death with a two-by-four. Then he said, “It didn’t bother you when Chamberlain had that ten-grand bounty on the critter and there were men all over the woods looking for it.”

“The chances of any of those men actually finding and killing the Terror, or even of surviving the encounter, were so slim that I wasn’t worried. But as you yourself say, Morgan is different.”

Even though Grimshaw didn’t want to admit it, Bosworth had a point. If there was anybody who might actually corral the Terror, it was Frank. And if that happened, Bosworth’s long-range plans would indeed be ruined.

But this was Frank that Bosworth was talking about. Sure, they hadn’t been all that close over the years, but they had fought side by side on more than one occasion. They had saved each other’s life. They’d fished and gone swimming in the Brazos River and run wild as kids together. Forget for a minute about the dangers involved in trying to kill Frank Morgan. Think about betraying an old friend…

“Five thousand,” Bosworth said.

Grimshaw blinked. “What? You mean you’ll give us five thousand for this job?”

Bosworth shook his head. “No. I’ll give you five thousand, and five thousand more to split among your men. Chamberlain put up a bounty of ten thousand dollars for the man who kills the Terror. It’s worth that much to me to keep the thing alive for a while longer.”

“Chamberlain’s talkin’ about doublin’ it to twenty grand, you know.”

“Don’t push it, Grimshaw. That’s my offer. Five to you, five to your men.”

“And if I don’t take it?”

“Then I’ll make the same offer to, say, Radburn. He seems like a tough, competent man.”

There was no getting around it, Grimshaw realized. That was too much money to turn down, and if he did refuse it, then Bosworth was right—Radburn wouldn’t. The men would go after Frank either way.

But they’d be more likely to succeed if Grimshaw was along, he told himself. He knew Frank Morgan better than anybody else in these parts. The group would have the best chance of bringing him down, and losing fewer men in the process, if Grimshaw was part of the effort. And he did owe some loyalty to his current partners, didn’t he?

“All right,” he said heavily. “It’s a deal.”

“Good.” Bosworth glanced out the window, then lifted a hand and summoned Grimshaw over. “There he is now, leaving the livery barn. He’ll be riding out of town. Follow him. Kill him. Simple as that. When you come back, I’ll have ten thousand dollars in cold, hard cash waiting for you.”

Grimshaw nodded and turned toward the door. Normally, he shook hands to seal a deal, but he didn’t particularly want to shake Emmett Bosworth’s hand.

And Bosworth probably didn’t want to shake the hand of a man who would betray an old friend either, Grimshaw thought as he put a stony expression on his face and left the hotel room.

“Well, better you than me goin’ out there,” Patterson said as Frank walked out of the livery stable leading Stormy and Goldy.

The rangy gray stallion wore the saddle right now, but Frank intended to take both horses along on this trip, despite the fact that he had ridden Goldy that morning. He didn’t know how long he would be away from town. He had packed supplies to last for several days. If he didn’t find the Terror before the deadline Chamberlain had given him, that didn’t mean he was going to abandon the search. He intended to keep looking until he located the creature and determined once and for all whether Nancy Chamberlain was right about it being her brother.

If it wasn’t—if it was some sort of animal—Frank intended to kill it. Even though the Terror wasn’t guilty of all the charges that had been leveled against it, there was no doubt that it had attacked and killed more than a dozen men. Either way, it had to be stopped.

“I appreciate the good care you’ve taken of my friends,” Frank said as he held out his hand to the liveryman. “We’ll see you when we get back to town.”

“Sure thing,” Patterson said. “By the way, I went down to the undertaker’s and had a look at that dead fella, the way you asked me to.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Yeah, I think he kept his horse here for a few nights when he first got to town. That was a while back, a couple of months ago maybe, so I can’t be completely sure, but I believe I’m right.”

“Do you remember if he was traveling with anybody else?”

Patterson shook his head. “Not really. Like I said, it’s been a while.”

“Well, I appreciate it anyway. You say he only kept his horse here for a few nights?”

“Right. I reckon he found some place permanent to stay and was able to keep his horse there. That’s just a guess, but it’s all I’ve got, Mr. Morgan.”

“I’m obliged,” Frank said with a nod. He mounted up and lifted a hand in farewell, then turned the horses toward the end of the street. Dog trotted alongside as Frank rode out of Eureka.

He headed southwest, toward the thick band of timber that ran for miles along the Pacific coast, south of Humboldt Bay. Thick clouds were forming over the ocean, Frank saw. They didn’t look particularly threatening, but they would block some of the sunlight and make the twilight world under the redwoods more shadowy than ever. No telling what might be lurking in that gloom…

The Terror wasn’t the only thing he had to worry about, he reminded himself. He’d been shot at several times during the twenty-four hours he had been in this part of the country, including the previous afternoon when he first visited Ben Chamberlain’s cabin. That incident had been lurking in the back of his mind. Something about it didn’t quite jibe, and as he rode along the logging road now, penetrating deeper into the woods, he thought about what had happened at the cabin. That was before the ruckus with Erickson and his friends, before it was even widely known that Rutherford Chamberlain had given him the job of finding the Terror.

So who had taken those potshots at him when he stepped out of the cabin?

Frank had no answer for that, but it was one more mystery to solve once he had taken care of his more pressing problem.

“Stay alert, Dog,” he said unnecessarily to the big cur as they entered the towering trees. Dog’s senses always operated at peak efficiency.

Frank had recognized a landmark, a particular tree with a long blaze down its side from a lightning strike. The tree had survived, but it would be marked for all eternity by what had happened to it.

One more way trees and men were alike, Frank reflected as he rode past the redwood.

“Twenty grand,” Treadwell said. “A big share of that bounty would go a long way toward making things all right again.”

“Yeah, your balls wouldn’t ache as much if you had a pocket full of dinero, would they?” Erickson asked with a grin.

“Let’s leave my balls outta this. And Sutherland’s ass and Roylston’s nose, too. Let’s face it, all of us have plenty of reasons for wantin’ that bastard Morgan dead, even without the bounty.”

Dawson said, “But twenty grand always helps.”

None of the six men could argue with that.

They had ridden out of Eureka about half an hour after Frank Morgan left town. Roylston, Jenkins, and Sutherland had all worked for Rutherford Chamberlain before the danger from the Terror had spooked them into quitting, so they knew the woods quite well. Erickson intended to put that knowledge to good use.

In fact, he had gotten Jenkins, the smartest of the trio, to draw a map of the timberland southwest of the settlement. There was a low range of hills to the east, the Pacific to the west, and the Eel River running into the ocean about twenty miles south of Eureka. Within those boundaries were some of the biggest trees in the world, and those were also the stomping grounds of the Terror. The three loggers knew every place the monster had struck. Chances are Morgan would be scouting around those same locations. And Erickson and his companions would be scouting for Morgan.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Erickson mused as they rode along. “Once we’ve taken care of Morgan, we’ll go ahead and start looking for the Terror. If we find it, we can kill it and hide the body somewhere. Then we’ll go back to town to wait until Old Man Chamberlain has given up on Morgan and posted that twenty-thousand-dollar bounty. Then we’ll go back to wherever we stashed the body, cut off the head, and take it back to collect.” He grinned at the others. “How’s that sound?”

“It sounds like you ain’t hurtin’ for confidence,” Treadwell said with a dour look. “Hell, it ain’t the middle of the afternoon yet. Plenty of time to hunt down and kill Morgan and the Terror.”

Erickson frowned. “I’m just sayin’, if it works out that way, that’s how we’ll do it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dawson said. “I’d just as soon get this over with as quick as we can.” He looked at the trees that had started to close in around them. “I don’t much like it out here.”

Neither did Erickson, but he wasn’t going to let the others see that. He kept the confident look on his face as he rode forward.

The wind picked up a short time later. They really couldn’t feel it much where they were, but they could hear it sighing through the branches far overhead, and see the trees swaying a little, too, if they looked up. Dawson asked, “Is it gonna storm?”

“No, those weren’t storm clouds comin’ in from the ocean,” Roylston said. “It might drizzle a little, that’s all. You’d hardly feel it under here.”

“I wouldn’t want to get caught in these trees during a thunderstorm. Too much lightnin’.”

“Hell, you’d be safe.” Roylston waved a hand at the redwoods. “Everything around here is a whole heap taller’n a man. What you have to worry about with lightning is it starting a fire, and we’ve had enough rain lately so that’s not a real threat right now.”

Erickson took the map Jenkins had drawn out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it to study it. He motioned Jenkins up alongside him, conferred with the former logger for a moment, then said, “How about we all shut up for a while? We’re gettin’ to an area where the Terror’s been spotted several times. In fact, the damn thing killed a man not far from here. We don’t want it sneakin’ up on us while we’re busy runnin’ our mouths, do we?”

The men shook their heads as Erickson looked at them one by one. He had just gotten that response from Sutherland when something came flashing out from behind a tree and jerked the man right out of the saddle.