The Last Gunfighter

by William W. Johnstone

  “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.”

  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.