The Last Gunfighter

by William W. Johnstone

  But maybe staying here wouldn’t be, he saw after a moment. The area that sloped down where he had taken shelter dropped about a foot from front to back. If he stretched out right at the very brink, maybe the surrounding ground would stop the tree from descending all the way into that shallow depression…

  No, Frank thought, he was grasping at straws. The tree would crush everything in its path when it fell, and that little bit of extra space wouldn’t stop it for a second. What he needed was a miracle.

  Or some help.

  “Keep drivin’ those wedges in!” Grimshaw called. “We don’t want the tree to start bindin’ on that saw. If it does, we’ll never get it out.”

  Even though he’d never done anything like this before, cutting down a tree seemed like common sense to Grimshaw. You hewed and sawed through the trunk from both sides, a little lower on the side in the direction you wanted the tree to fall. It was hard, dangerous work, but not all that complicated.

  They had started the cuts with axes, but were now using the long, two-man saws. A couple of other men worked driving wedges into the cuts on both sides with wooden mallets. Once the cuts were deeper, the saw on the cliff side would be taken out, and the wedges on that side would be removed as well. Then more wedges would be pounded into the cut on the back side to widen it and tip the tree toward the cliff. When it tipped enough, gravity would take over.

  Having a tree dropped on him was a hell of a way for a man like Frank Morgan to die, Grimshaw thought. Ol’ Frank ought to go out with his hands full of blazing guns, dealing out death even as it came to him. A shame it couldn’t be that way today, but Grimshaw didn’t want to lose any more men. Bosworth would have plenty of work for them in the future, and he might wind up needing every gun.

  “Keep an eye on Morgan’s hidey-hole,” Grimshaw reminded the men who had their rifles trained on the edge of the cliff. “You see a whisker move, you open up on it.”

  He walked around the tree, studying the cuts. They were almost deep enough, he decided, not overlapping but close. “You’re doin’ fine,” he told the men working the crosscut saws. “Another couple of minutes, and we’ll be ready to topple the damned thing.”

  Radburn had one end of a saw. Sweat covered his face. He panted, “I’m sure as hell glad…I don’t do this…for a livin’.”

  “Yeah, no matter what a man does, there’s always something worse,” Grimshaw said.

  “Give me…a gunfight…any day.”

  Grimshaw felt the same way. He had done his share of honest labor when he was a young man. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that he didn’t like it. Once he had realized that he could handle a gun pretty well—not anywhere near as good as Frank Morgan, of course, but better than most men—that was all he’d really needed to know.

  Carrying his rifle, he walked around to the back of the tree again. He stood there, watching as the work continued. After a moment, he frowned a little as his nose wrinkled. A funny smell had drifted to him. It wasn’t pleasant at all, something like a cross between unwashed flesh and a rotting carcass. It was getting worse, too.

  Realizing suddenly what that might mean, Grimshaw stiffened. He jerked his rifle up and whirled around.

  And found himself face-to-face with a horror that had surely come crawling up out of the depths of Hell.

  Chapter 21

  Frank heard the yelling and shooting from the trees, and he knew right away the bushwhackers weren’t shooting at him. The fast, frantic sound of the gunfire told him the men were fighting for their lives, though.

  Then one of them shouted, “Watch out! It’s comin’ down!”

  Frank’s head jerked up to look at the tree they’d been trying to fell. It was moving, all right, picking up speed as it tilted forward.

  He had no choice. He had to get out of that leviathan’s way, and hope that the ambushers had their hands too full with something else to gun him down when he came out into the open.

  That something else, he thought as he surged to his feet, had to be the Terror. Nothing else out here in these woods could provoke such an uproar.

  With a loud cracking sound, the tree began to topple toward the cliff. Frank ran to his right along the rim. Not only did he have to get out of the way of the massive trunk, but he had to avoid the branches, too, some of which were more than big enough to break his bones and knock his brains out if they hit him. As he ran, he snapped shots toward the trees with the Winchester, but he wasn’t sure anybody in there was paying attention to him anymore.

  The tree came down with a huge crash that caused the earth to shudder. Frank’s quick action had carried him well out of its way. He angled toward the trees, thinking that if he could get into that twilight world underneath the redwoods, he would be able to give the bushwhackers the slip.

  That is, if any of them survived the battle with the Terror. The yelling and shooting were still going on.

  Frank ran into the trees. Instantly, a huge, shaggy shape darted at him. Instinct made Frank swing the Winchester toward the creature, but his finger froze on the trigger before he could pull it. He had recognized Dog, who had obviously been waiting for him.

  Dog reared up, put his front paws on Frank’s shoulders. Frank winced from the pain that caused in his wounded arm, but he didn’t make the big cur get down. Instead, he looped his arm around the thick, shaggy neck and gave Dog a quick hug, glad to see that his old friend was all right.

  “Where are Stormy and Goldy?” he asked. “Take me to ’em, Dog.”

  Dog got down and started through the trees, glancing back to make sure that Frank was following him. Dog seemed to know where he was going.

  A minute later, they came to a small clearing where Stormy and Goldy waited. Frank grabbed Stormy’s reins and swung up into the saddle.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, but then, before they could even get started, he thought better of it and hauled back on the reins.

  He had come out here to find the Terror, he reminded himself. His close call in escaping the ambush attempt didn’t really change anything. He still had to deal with the Terror, and the evidence seemed to say that the creature was close by right now. Even though Frank was wounded, it didn’t make sense not to try to take advantage of that fact.

  He turned Stormy’s head toward the sounds of the battle going on nearby.

  As he rode, he thumbed fresh cartridges into the rifle’s loading gate. When the weapon was fully loaded, he stowed it in the saddle sheath again. If he wound up in the middle of this ruckus, it might be close work, more suited to the Colt on his hip.

  Frank weaved around the giant tree trunks. Mist still filtered down through the canopy of branches high overhead. The light was bad, full of shifting shadows.

  Then the gunfire stopped. A man yelled, “It went that way!”

  “Let it go!” another man bellowed. “Find Morgan! We’ve still got to kill him!”

  Frank’s lips drew back from his teeth in a disappointed grimace. He recognized the voice that gave those orders.

  It belonged to his old friend Jack Grimshaw.

  Frank had hoped that his suspicions about Grimshaw were wrong. Obviously, though, they weren’t. Grimshaw worked for Emmett Bosworth. He was part of the group that had slaughtered those loggers at Chamberlain’s camp that morning. Given Jack’s age and experience, he was probably the ramrod of the bunch. And now Bosworth had given them a new job.

  Kill Frank Morgan.

  Those were the only conclusions that made any sense. Frank knew what he was facing now, and he knew as well that no matter how much damage the Terror might have done to Bosworth’s hired killers, they still probably outnumbered him by quite a bit, and he was in no shape to face them right now. His wounded left arm throbbed, and he could barely use it. His ribs ached. His clothes were soaked, and that had started a chill in his bones. Or maybe the wound in his arm had started a fever brewing inside him. That would account for the chill, too.

  Regardless of the cause, he re
alized that he needed some rest, maybe a fire so that he could dry out, and something to eat, to keep his strength up. He couldn’t risk a shootout with a gang of professional killers right now.

  So with a sigh, he turned Stormy and motioned for Dog and Goldy to follow him. He had to find a place where he could hole up for the night, a place where Grimshaw and the others wouldn’t find him. Then maybe in the morning, he could resume his search for the Terror. He hadn’t been thinking straight just now when he’d decided to go after it. Even if he’d found it, he would have been no match for the creature. Even on his best day, he might not be a match for the Terror.

  Moving quietly, Frank rode deeper into the woods. He heard a few sounds of pursuit behind him, but gradually they faded away. It was next to impossible to track somebody in this wilderness unless you had a dog to help you. Frank’s confidence that he had given the slip to Grimshaw and the other gun-wolves began to grow.

  Damn shame about Grimshaw, Frank mused. Jack had always been one to follow the lure of so-called easy money, though. Frank supposed it was inevitable that if they both lived long enough, sooner or later they would wind up on opposite sides in some fight.

  That day had come, and Frank hated to think about what it meant.

  More than likely, before this was over he was going to have to kill Jack Grimshaw.

  No matter how long he lived, he would never forget the sight that had met his eyes a short time earlier, Grimshaw thought. The image was seared into his brain just as surely as a brand was burned into a cow’s hide.

  The damn thing had been huge, towering over him—and Grimshaw wasn’t a small man. At first glance, it appeared that the creature had some sort of patchwork pelt of different colors and textures. Logic told Grimshaw that it was really a coat or a robe of some sort, stitched together from the hides of several different kinds of animals. The garment was so shaggy, the creature’s hair and beard so long, that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

  But in the midst of all that hair were two burning eyes filled with such hatred that it seemed to blast a path straight through Grimshaw to his soul, which withered for a second under the heat of that baleful gaze. He saw patches of pink scar tissue inside that beard, too, and then a mouth that opened to emit a growl and a wave of even fouler odors as the thing lunged at him.

  Grimshaw had never moved faster in his life. He ducked away from the rush, stumbled, fell, rolled, came up with his Colt in his hand spitting fire and lead. Involuntary shouts tore loose from his throat.

  The rest of the men had abandoned the tree cutting and swiftly joined the battle, opening fire on the Terror in their midst. Grimshaw knew that Emmett Bosworth wanted the thing to survive, so that it could continue spreading fear and, more importantly, be blamed for any attacks on Chamberlain’s operation that Bosworth had Grimshaw and his men carry out.

  But knowing that was one thing, and finding yourself under attack by a crazed monster was another. Grimshaw and the others didn’t think twice about defending themselves. They just blazed away at the creature.

  Problem was, the damn thing was so fast, it seemed to dodge the bullets as it rampaged among them, slashing right and left with hands that dealt out as much damage as talons. One man went down with his throat torn open and gushing blood. Another screamed and staggered as his eyeballs were gouged from their sockets and popped from his head like grapes. A third man stumbled backward, his skull crushed and misshapen by the sledgehammer blow that had landed on top of it.

  Three men dying in about that many seconds…it would have been easy to freeze in fear when confronted with such devastation. Grimshaw’s hardcases had been in plenty of fights before, though, even if none of them had ever been like this one. They kept firing, even as the tree toppled on its own, and suddenly the Terror was gone, vanished into the shadows under the redwoods as if it had never been there.

  Radburn shouted, “It went that way!” but Grimshaw figured that was just a guess. The Terror had been moving too fast for any of them to see where it had gone.

  “Let it go!” he shouted. “Find Morgan! We still have to kill him!”

  Grimshaw figured that Frank had slipped out of the trap as soon as all hell broke loose. Holding his Colt at the ready, he ran along the tree trunk to check. Sure enough, when he reached the little hollow at the edge of the cliff where Morgan had taken shelter, it was empty.

  The Drifter was gone.

  “Mount up!” Grimshaw yelled as he swung around. “We’ve got to find Morgan!”

  Hooley asked, “What about the men that…that thing killed?”

  “Leave ’em there,” Grimshaw replied with a snarl. “We ain’t got time to do anything else. Anyway, you left Nichols for the Terror, Hooley, when he was still alive, so don’t go gettin’ tenderhearted on me now.”

  For a second, Grimshaw thought Hooley was going to take a shot at him. He would have almost welcomed it. He wanted really badly to kill something right now, and Hooley would do just fine.

  But he’d already lost four men today, so he supposed it was better that Hooley got control of his temper and turned away. When you set out after Frank Morgan, you needed the odds on your side to be as high as possible.

  The pursuit was delayed even more because some of the horses, badly spooked by the Terror’s scent, had broken free and run off. The men whose mounts were still where they had been left had to round up those other horses. By the time they started searching along the cliff, Grimshaw was certain that Frank was long gone.

  That was the way it turned out. One of the men thought he had caught a glimpse of Morgan running south along the cliff during the battle with the Terror, but they couldn’t be sure about that. And it was next to impossible to follow tracks in the trees.

  All they could do was spread out and comb through the forest as best they could. Grimshaw put his men a couple of hundred yards apart and told them to keep their eyes open.

  “I don’t like it,” Hooley said. “What if we run into that monster again? One man alone wouldn’t stand a chance against that shaggy bastard.”

  “Yeah, well, this way he can only kill one of us at a time,” Grimshaw pointed out, “instead of wipin’ out the whole bunch.”

  That didn’t seem to make Hooley feel a lot better.

  The searchers started through the woods, heading south along the coast since that was the only lead they had, and any lead was better than none. As soon as Grimshaw was out of sight of the others, the wet afternoon seemed lonelier than ever. With the trees closing in all around him, he might as well have been the only human being in some strange, primeval world.

  “Damn you, Frank,” he muttered. “Why couldn’t you have just kept riding? Why’d you have to get mixed up in all this?”

  Grimshaw wasn’t expecting answers, and he didn’t get any. Only the whisper of the wind in the trees and the faint dripping of moisture as the drizzle grew harder.

  Frank continued working his way inland. He knew there were some hills in that direction that might offer him shelter. Also, he didn’t want to get caught with his back to the sea again, with no place to go in case of trouble.

  His stomach growled, prompting him to dig a strip of jerky out of his saddlebags and gnaw on it as he rode. He was still feverish, and his left arm now hurt from wrist to shoulder. He shivered in the saddle as chills ran through him again.

  Maybe he ought to try to make it back to Eureka, he thought. Dr. Connelly could patch up his arm. Connelly would probably stick him in bed and make him stay there for three or four days, though, and if that happened, Frank wouldn’t have any more chances to find the Terror before Rutherford Chamberlain’s twenty-thousand-dollar bounty went into effect.

  No, he wasn’t going back to Eureka, Frank decided. Not until he had finished the job he set out to do.

  Gradually, he became aware that the terrain wasn’t flat anymore. It had a slope to it. Stormy climbed steadily, still weaving around the massive tree trunks. Dog padded out ahead, wh
ile Goldy followed along behind. Because of the late hour and the overcast that was lowering even more, the shadows under the trees were thick enough so that Frank couldn’t see more than a few yards in any direction. Tendrils of fog floated among the trees, cutting down on Frank’s vision as well.

  Suddenly, something huge and black loomed up right in front of them. This wasn’t the Terror, Frank sensed immediately. It was too big even for that. After a moment, he realized that it was a low bluff, about thirty feet tall.

  And set in it, unless he was mistaken, was the round black mouth of a cave.

  He closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath. Fate had been kind to him and led him to exactly what he needed: a place to get out of the rain, rest, and spend the night. He urged Stormy forward.

  The opening in the bluff was about ten feet tall. Judging by that, the cave might be big enough not only for Frank and Dog, but for Stormy and Goldy as well. Frank hoped that he could find some wood that wasn’t too wet to burn. He really wanted to build a fire and dry out.

  They were approaching the cave mouth when Dog suddenly planted his feet and started to growl. The two horses stopped short as well and tossed their heads as if reluctant to go any closer.

  “Come on,” Frank urged. He felt light-headed now, and the fog that crept through the trees seemed to have seeped into his brain as well. His thoughts were sluggish. All he wanted was a place to rest, to be warm again, and his friends who were usually so helpful weren’t cooperating this time.

  Stormy wouldn’t budge, so Frank dismounted, slipping a little and grabbing the saddle horn to keep from falling. He took hold of the reins and tried to lead the rangy gray stallion into the cave. Stormy’s hooves were planted firmly on the ground, though. He wasn’t budging. Neither was Dog or Goldy.

  “All right,” Frank muttered. “Stay out here and get wet then.”