The Last Gunfighter

by William W. Johnstone

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Frank said as he reined Goldy to a stop. “He’s less than half a mile from here.”

  The men stiffened again. “You found the damned thing?” Trotter asked.

  “You killed it?” Neville added.

  “No, he’s hurt, but he’s still alive,” Frank said. “That’s why I need your help.”

  Wilcox frowned and said, “You keep callin’ it he. What’s that all about, Morgan?”

  Frank took a deep breath. People had to know the truth eventually. He might as well start revealing it now.

  “The Terror’s not a monster. He’s a man. A man who’s done some awful things, but he’s still human.”

  The four loggers stared at him in disbelief. Finally, Wilcox demanded, “Who is he? Who’d do the sort of things that the Terror’s done?”

  “He’s Ben Chamberlain,” Frank said. “Rutherford Chamberlain’s son.”

  That revelation made the men stare even more. Gus Trotter exclaimed, “Hell, that can’t be true! Old Man Chamberlain’s boy ran off to San Francisco a couple of years ago!”

  Frank shook his head. “I know Chamberlain believes that, but it’s not true. Ben has been living out here in the woods since he left home. Something happened to him, though. His mind’s not right—”

  Wilcox snorted. “I’ll say it ain’t right! The Terror is a mad-dog killer! It’s worse’n a rabid skunk!”

  The other three men muttered in agreement.

  “Listen to me,” Frank said. “Like I told you, Ben Chamberlain has been hurt. He’s been shot, and he needs a doctor. I want you boys to bring your wagon and come with me. We’ll load him up and take him back to his father’s mansion.”

  “Us, help the Terror after it killed our friends?” Wilcox shook his head. “I’m not sure I believe you to start with about that thing bein’ the Chamberlain boy, but even if you’re right, Morgan, he’s still a murderer a dozen times over. Why should we help a thing like that?”

  Peterson said, “Yeah, I say we leave him in the woods and let him die. He’s got it comin’ to him!”

  Frank couldn’t argue with that. But he’d made a promise to Nancy Chamberlain, and his word still meant something to him.

  “I told the boy’s sister I’d bring him home.” The Colt came out of Frank’s holster without him hurrying the draw. The move was so smooth, in fact, that his hand barely seemed to move. The revolver just appeared in it as if by magic. “Get in the wagon. You’re going to help me.”

  Wilcox glared at him. “You’d take us right to that monster?”

  “I told you, he’s in no shape to hurt you or anybody else. When I left him, he was out cold. He’s lost a lot of blood and he may not pull through, no matter what we do. But I said I’d bring him home, and by God, I’m going to do it.”

  Neville said nervously, “I reckon that gunfighter means business, Karl.”

  Wilcox sighed. “Yeah, I reckon you’re right.” To Frank, he said, “All right, Morgan, we’ll do what you say. But we don’t have to like it.”

  “Didn’t ask you to like it,” Frank said. “Just asked you to give me a hand.”

  The men gathered up the rifles and shotguns and placed them in the back of the wagon, then climbed onto the vehicle. Wilcox handled the reins of the mule team while Trotter sat beside him and Peterson and Neville climbed in the back. Following Frank’s orders, Wilcox turned the wagon around and started back along the road toward the spot where Frank had left Ben Chamberlain hidden in the brush.

  “Just what do you plan on doin’ with the critter once you get it to Chamberlain’s house?” Wilcox asked as Frank rode alongside the wagon.

  “Somebody will have to hightail it to Eureka and bring back a sawbones. Dr. Connelly, I think. He seems like a good man.”

  “Then what? You gonna turn it over to the law?” Wilcox shook his head. “I’m not sure anybody could build a gallows big enough to hang that bastard.”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said honestly. “Right now, I’m just trying to see to it that he pulls through.”

  “Why?” asked Trotter. “If you ask me, if he’s really Ben Chamberlain, he’d be better off dead, the things he’s done.”

  The others nodded in solemn agreement.

  Frank had no answers for them, only his own stubborn determination to keep his promise to Nancy Chamberlain. A minute later, he recognized the spot where Goldy had dragged Ben off the road.

  “Hold it right here,” he told Wilcox. “Ben’s hidden in the brush, just off the road.” Frank dismounted. “I’ll go check on him first. He’s sort of friends with me now, so maybe he won’t panic if he sees just me. I’ll have to get him used to the idea that you fellas are going to help us.”

  “I’m still tryin’ to get used to that idea myself,” Wilcox said bitterly.

  Frank ignored the comment and made his way into the undergrowth. He pushed the brush aside that he had used for camouflage, expecting to see Ben still lying there on the ground.

  The problem was, Ben was nowhere to be seen. Frank stiffened in alarm as he realized that the young giant was gone. Ben must have come to, not known where he was, and wandered off. Given his mental condition, Ben might not even be aware that he’d been shot. That didn’t really matter, Frank realized.

  What was important was that the Terror of the Redwoods was on the loose again.

  Grimshaw wasn’t going to take the responsibility for killing Nancy Chamberlain. The hell with that. He worked for Bosworth, and it was Bosworth’s plans that were threatened by what Nancy had overheard.

  “The rest of you men stay here,” he ordered. “I’m goin’ to Eureka.”

  “What about Morgan?” Radburn asked. “We were supposed to be lookin’ for him.”

  “The hell with Morgan. This is more important.” Grimshaw narrowed his eyes. “I’m makin’ you responsible for that girl’s safety, Radburn. Keep her here, but see to it that she’s not hurt.”

  Radburn frowned. “I didn’t ask to be put in charge of anything, let alone some rich gal.”

  “Well, I’m puttin’ you in charge anyway.” Grimshaw looked around at the other men. “You hear that? No harm comes to that girl while I’m gone, understand? If it does, I’ll kill the man who’s to blame for it. Got that, Hooley?”

  “Why’re you singlin’ me out?” Hooley demanded resentfully. “What’d I do?”

  “Just remember what I said,” Grimshaw snapped. “Now let go of her. I want to talk to her before I leave.”

  With obvious reluctance, Hooley released his grip on Nancy Chamberlain. His hand had been straying dangerously close to her breasts as he held her, Grimshaw noted. Despite his orders, the girl might have to put up with a little pawing while he was gone, but really, that was the least of her worries. Grimshaw figured that Bosworth would order him to get rid of her.

  He motioned Nancy over and asked her, “What are you doin’ out here, gal?”

  Even though she was obviously terrified, she managed to jut her chin out in defiance as she answered, “That’s none of your business.”

  Grimshaw lowered his voice so the others couldn’t hear. “Lookin’ for your brother maybe?”

  Nancy gasped in surprise. “How did you know—”

  “Never mind about that. Where’s your buggy?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t bring a buggy. I came out on horseback. My horse is hidden over there in the trees. I…I wanted to come up to the cabin on foot.”

  “Didn’t want to spook him if he was here, eh?” Grimshaw nodded. “I understand.”

  Nancy lifted a hand as if she wanted to reach out and touch his arm, but she drew it back in fear. “What do you know about what happened to him?”

  “Like I told you, never mind about that. Anybody know you’re here?”

  She hesitated, and he knew she was thinking about how she ought to answer that question. When she said, “I told the men who work for my father, Rockwell and Cobb and the others,” he knew she was lying. Nobo
dy knew she was here.

  “Well, we’ll see about that. Go over there and sit down on that log.” Grimshaw pointed. “Don’t budge until I get back, and then we’ll figure out what to do with you.”

  By that time, he thought, he would have his orders concerning her—and he had a pretty good idea what they would be. She didn’t have to know that just yet, though.

  Nancy sat down where he told her. Grimshaw said to the men, “Don’t forget what I told you,” and mounted up again. He rode off toward Eureka.

  It took about an hour to reach the settlement, and Grimshaw didn’t feel a bit better when he got there than he had when he left the cabin. He went straight to the Eureka House and up the stairs to Bosworth’s suite. He pounded hard on the door of the sitting room. Bosworth jerked it open and demanded angrily, “What?” He looked surprised when he saw Grimshaw standing there in the corridor.

  “We got to talk,” Grimshaw said. He didn’t wait for Bosworth to invite him in. He bulled into the room, forcing the timber baron to step back. Bosworth’s face flushed even darker.

  Grimshaw smelled coffee and glanced around, spotting a breakfast tray sitting on one of the tables. Bosworth was still in his nightclothes. The bastard was just getting up, Grimshaw thought, when he and his men had been out on the trail for hours.

  Bosworth closed the door and snapped, “What the hell is this? You’re supposed to be out looking for Morgan.”

  “Forget about that,” Grimshaw said. “You’ve got more to worry about than Frank Morgan. While we were lookin’ for him this morning, we came across something else.”

  “The Terror?”

  Grimshaw shook his head. “Nancy Chamberlain.”

  Bosworth looked confused for a second. “You mean Chamberlain’s daughter? What does she have to do with anything?”

  “She was at that old cabin her brother used. The one where he was staying when—”

  Bosworth lifted a hand to stop him. “I told you before, I don’t want to hear about that.”

  “Well, you’ll want to hear about this even less. We didn’t know the girl was there when we rode up. She heard us talking about Morgan…and about you.”

  Bosworth’s face hardened. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean she knows that we’re working for you. She knows that you sent us out to kill Frank Morgan. She knows that we’re the ones who attacked her pa’s logging camp yesterday morning, and that we were followin’ your orders. In other words, she knows the whole damn thing, and she can put your neck in a noose right along with ours.”

  Bosworth just stared at him for a long moment, looking almost as horrified as if the Terror had just waltzed into his hotel room. Finally, he said, “How…how could everything go so wrong?”

  “That’s why they call it bad luck, I reckon,” Grimshaw said with a shrug. “Question now is, what are we gonna do about it?”

  “There’s only one thing we can do about it. Kill the girl.” Bosworth rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought. “Maybe you could use ropes and horses to pull her body apart. That would look even more like she ran into the Terror and it killed her.”

  Grimshaw swallowed the bitter, sour taste that welled up under his tongue at the death sentence for Nancy that Bosworth had handed out so casually. He had known the girl would have to die as soon as he saw her, but to hear Bosworth talk about it like that…

  But then Bosworth said suddenly, “Wait a minute. We don’t need to kill her just yet.”

  “What?”

  “That would be wasting an opportunity.” Bosworth began to pace back and forth as he thought. “Fate has dropped Nancy Chamberlain in our laps. We’d be fools not to use her.”

  Grimshaw shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “Get the girl. Meet me at that crazy mansion of Chamberlain’s in the woods. He’s going to sign his timber lease over to me in exchange for the safe return of his daughter.”

  “That’s loco!” Grimshaw burst out. “Maybe he’ll sign, sure, but then he’ll run to the law as soon as he’s got the girl back safe and sound. The papers won’t hold up in court, and we’ll all wind up stretchin’ rope when the girl gets through tellin’ her story.”

  Bosworth grinned cockily and shook his head. “She won’t tell anyone. Because as soon as Chamberlain and I have concluded our business arrangement, the Terror is going to come along and burn down that mansion, with Chamberlain and his daughter and all his hired guns inside it. No one will ever be able to prove that Chamberlain didn’t just get tired of dealing with the Terror and sign over his lease to me so he could get out of the business.”

  Grimshaw frowned. “You reckon people will really believe that?”

  “They won’t be able to prove otherwise. That’s all that matters.”

  “No, I reckon they won’t…Meet you at Chamberlain’s with the girl, you say?”

  “That’s right. How long will it take you to get there?”

  “Probably about an hour and a half.”

  “That’ll put it close to the middle of the day…Let’s call it noon.”

  “All right,” Grimshaw said with a nod. This would mean committing several more murders, but hell, they were already in so deep, a few more deaths wouldn’t make any difference, he supposed.

  This was the end of it, though. After today, Bosworth would have what he wanted. Grimshaw was going to take his payoff and ride away, and he was done selling his gun. Things had changed too much. It was too much of a business now, too vicious. There was no honor to it anymore.

  Hell, there probably never had been, he thought as he left the hotel. But at least, at times, he had been able to fool himself into believing so. Now even those illusions were gone.

  And nothing was left but the killing. Just the way it had always been.

  There was no point in keeping Wilcox and the other loggers from their work. Since Ben Chamberlain was gone, Frank had no need of the wagon.

  “What are you going to do now, Morgan?” Wilcox asked as Frank mounted up again.

  “Try to find Ben,” Frank answered. “Dog’s pretty good at tracking, and he’s been able to find Ben’s trail several times so far. He can do it again.”

  The wagon rolled back up the road toward the clearing where the four men had been working. Frank told Dog to find Ben’s scent, and the big cur soon had his nose to the ground, trotting along with Frank following on Goldy and leading Stormy.

  After a few minutes, Frank began to get an inkling of where they were headed. Ben’s old, primitive cabin was in this direction, and even though Frank had the impression that Ben had been avoiding the place, maybe being wounded had him even more addled than usual and he was headed back to someplace he knew. That made sense. The farther he followed Dog, the more convinced Frank was that he was right.

  They were coming at the place from a different direction, though, and when they got there, Frank found himself on top of the heavily timbered ridge, rather than in the clearing down below. Realizing where he was, he reined in well short of the edge and dismounted to go ahead on foot. If Ben was down there, he didn’t want the sound of hoofbeats to spook the giant.

  Frank motioned for Dog to be quiet, and moved silently through the timber himself. Even before he reached the edge of the ridge, he knew something was wrong, because he heard men’s voices drifting up from below. He bellied down, pushed his rifle in front of him, and crawled forward until he could peer over the sharp drop-off.

  Ten horses grazed in front of the tumbled-up logs. Frank saw the men they belonged to scattered around, evidently waiting for something. He didn’t recognize any of them, but he had a feeling he was looking at Emmett Bosworth’s gang of gun-wolves, the same men he’d shot it out with the day before, when the Terror had intervened in the battle.

  He saw no sign of Ben Chamberlain now, but an even more shocking sight met his eyes. Ben’s sister Nancy was down there, sitting on a log and looking pale and scared. A couple of the hardcases stood next to her, keeping an eye on her,
and it was obvious that she was a prisoner. Frank asked himself what in blazes was going on here. Why were Bosworth’s men at the cabin, and why was Nancy Chamberlain their prisoner?

  Regardless of the answers, he couldn’t make a move against the men right now. From up here, he could cut down several of them with the Winchester before they knew what was going on, but there were too many of them to get them all. Anyway, Nancy would be in too much danger if bullets started flying around. Frank knew he was going to have to bide his time and find out a little more about what was happening here.

  He didn’t see Jack Grimshaw among the men, which came as a bit of a surprise. He’d been convinced that Grimshaw was one of the gunmen working for Bosworth. He knew he had heard Grimshaw’s voice the day before. Maybe his old friend had been killed by the Terror. In that case, he’d be sorry…but Grimshaw never should have gone to work for a man like Emmett Bosworth.

  As Frank listened, Nancy asked in a voice on the verge of trembling, “What are you going to do with me?”

  One of the men watching her, an hombre with a square, florid face, said, “Well, little lady, I don’t really know. I reckon that’ll be up to somebody else.”

  “Mr. Bosworth,” Nancy said. “That’s who you mean.”

  Her captor shrugged. “Man with the money gives the orders. That’s how it works in this life.”

  “I have money, too, you know. My father has a lot of money. He’ll pay you to keep me safe.”

  “Sorry, Miss Chamberlain. It ain’t my decision to make.”

  Nancy looked down at the ground in despair.

  If Frank needed any more proof that these hired killers worked for Emmett Bosworth, the conversation he’d just overheard had given it to him. If he could get Nancy away from them, her testimony would put Bosworth behind bars, if not on a gallows.

  The man who was talking to Nancy went on. “Anyway, Jack ought to be back soon, I reckon, and then we’ll all find out what’s gonna happen.”

  Frank’s heart sank. He knew the man had to be talking about Grimshaw, who must be alive after all. Well, the line was definitely drawn in the sand now, Frank thought, and he and Grimshaw were on different sides of it.