The Last Gunfighter

by William W. Johnstone

  Frank wasn’t surprised. No matter what a man’s business, he always had competitors. And if he was ruthless enough to be successful, which Rutherford Chamberlain obviously was, those competitors often became sworn enemies. Frank had seen it in mining, ranching, and every other business there was.

  Including the business of being a fast gun.

  “So Chamberlain’s worried that this fella Bosworth might try to move in on him?”

  “Yeah. There have already been some squabbles between logging crews over lease boundaries. That’s when Chamberlain brought in me and Cobb and the other boys. All that’s sort of faded out over the past six months—”

  “Since the Terror showed up,” Frank said.

  “Yeah. The loggers are all more worried about the monster than they are about Bosworth. But Chamberlain kept us on anyway, since he figures he’ll have more trouble with Bosworth sooner or later.”

  Frank nodded. Chamberlain was probably right about that. Greed, ambition, call it whatever you wanted to, it was a powerful force that was seldom denied for long.

  But Frank had a more pressing problem, finding and capturing the Terror, and once that was done and he’d kept his promise to Nancy Chamberlain, The Drifter would be riding on. He wasn’t going to get involved in any timber war.

  Frank turned Stormy’s head and lifted a hand in farewell to Rockwell as he rode away. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was going, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to catch the Terror here on Chamberlain’s estate. If Nancy was right and the creature really was her brother, Ben would probably avoid his father’s house. And if Nancy was wrong, if the Terror was some sort of mindless, animalistic monster, instinct would keep it from coming too close to the haunts of man. The trouble had started when the logging crews began to make their way deeper into the woods.

  Frank knew where the Terror had been earlier in the day. He had seen the grisly evidence with his own eyes, heard the screams of the men being torn apart. He turned Stormy toward the south and rode slowly back the way he had come. Picking up the trail of the creature would be a long shot, but Frank was willing to give it a try.

  Considering everything he had seen earlier in the day, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d found more mutilated bodies, but the forest seemed to be quiet and peaceful again. He heard an odd sound in the distance, but after a few minutes he figured out that it was the chunk! chunk! of ax blades biting deep into tree trunks. A logging crew was at work somewhere within hearing distance, but in this dense redwood jungle, it was impossible to tell how far away or even exactly which direction the sounds came from.

  After a while, Frank found the camp where he had first encountered the creature’s bloody handiwork. After loading up the bodies to take them to Eureka, Karl Wilcox and the other loggers hadn’t returned, so the place looked almost like it had when Frank left it. The campfire in its ring of stones had burned down and gone out, but not before boiling the coffee dry and scorching the bottom of the pot.

  The frying pan was the big difference, though. The bacon and biscuits that had been in it earlier were gone. Somebody had come along and helped himself—or itself—to the food.

  Frank dismounted and hunkered next to the ashes. He called Dog over and said, “Take a whiff, boy. See what you smell around here.”

  Dog circled the dead fire with his nose to the ground, pausing halfway around the ring of stones to lift his head and gaze off to the west. Frank knew that the Pacific Ocean lay only a few miles in that direction, the endless waves washing in over jagged rocks that lay at the bottom of steep cliffs. Between here and the sea, though, lay thousands of acres of thickly timbered woodland where the Terror could be hiding.

  Frank stood up and grasped Stormy’s reins again. “All right, big fella,” he told Dog. “Trail!”

  Dog set off through the trees while Frank mounted up. He followed the big cur, leading Goldy. Dog didn’t range too far ahead, but even so, there were times when Frank couldn’t see him. He followed the crackling sounds of Dog’s passage through the undergrowth.

  As the brush thickened, the going became even slower and more difficult. Frank would have thought that the lack of direct sunlight under the towering redwoods would have kept other vegetation from growing so well, but obviously, these hardy plants had adapted.

  After half an hour or so, Frank and Dog and the horses emerged from the woods, coming out into an open, parklike area about fifty yards wide. Beyond it, a rocky ridge jutted up about a hundred feet. Part of it formed a sheer cliff. Redwoods lined the top of the cliff, growing right to the edge. At the base of it lay a tumbled mass of broken trunks and branches.

  It took Frank a moment to figure out what had happened. Over the centuries, erosion had eaten away at the cliff face, so that some of the trees on top of it had lost their anchorage and fallen. Lightning strikes or windstorms might have toppled some of the other redwoods. The debris formed by those natural occurrences had scattered along the base of the cliff to form a maze of sorts, as if giant fingers had flung down a handful of matches and let them fall where they might. In places the trees had stacked like makeshift walls.

  Dog turned and started northward, still following the scent that had brought them this far, and Frank was about to follow him when something about the jumbled tree trunks along the cliff caught his attention.

  “Wait a minute, Dog,” he said. “I want to take a look over there.”

  Dog looked in the direction he’d been going and whined, then turned and came back, as if he were humoring Frank. That brought a grin to The Drifter’s face. Dog was a stubborn old cuss, sort of like Frank himself. Maybe that was one reason they got along so well.

  When Frank reached the edge of the tumbled-down tree trunks, he reined in and dismounted. Leaving Stormy’s reins dangling because he knew the rangy gray stallion wouldn’t wander off, he started into the tangle of logs on foot.

  He hadn’t gone very far before he realized what had caught his attention over here. Somebody had stacked up broken branches, some of which were as big around as the trunk of a regular tree, as well as the upper sections of the redwoods, which were much narrower than the bases, and made walls out of them. Those walls formed a crude cabin built up against the cliff face. From a distance, it looked natural and blended in with the rest of the jumbled logs.

  Densely intertwined branches formed the roof. Whoever had built this dwelling had left an open space for the door. An old blanket hung over it.

  Frank slid his Colt from its holster. Nancy Chamberlain had mentioned that her brother Ben had built a cabin for himself when he left home and moved to the woods. Was this it?

  And more importantly, was this the lair of the Terror?

  Frank moved closer, the heavy revolver gripped tightly in his hand. When he was about ten feet from the blanket-covered doorway, he called, “Hello, the cabin! Anybody home?”

  There was no response from inside. Frank said, “Ben! Ben Chamberlain!”

  Still nothing.

  Dog had come up behind him. The big cur pressed against Frank’s leg. Frank felt Dog’s muscles trembling, and knew it wasn’t from fear, but rather from the desire to explore inside that cave-like structure.

  “All right, Dog,” Frank said quietly. “Check it out.”

  Dog bounded forward and pushed past the blanket to disappear into the cabin. Frank stalked closer, ready to go in with his gun blazing if he heard any commotion.

  Instead, a few moments later Dog reappeared. A few cobwebs clung to his wolflike face, as if he had pushed his nose into some dusty, empty hole.

  “Nothing, huh?”

  Frank pushed the blanket aside with his left hand, thrust the gun in front of him with his right. Although the afternoon was well advanced now and the sun would soon be dipping toward the horizon, enough light still spilled through the doorway for Frank to be able to see as he looked around the inside of the cabin.

  There was only one room. Whoever had built the place had dug a fire pit in the gro
und in the center and left some openings above it in the thatched roof for the smoke to drift out. On one side of the room was a crude bed, little more than some blankets piled up on some branches. Had to be uncomfortable as hell, Frank thought as he looked at it.

  On the other side of the room was the only real sign that a civilized person had ever lived here. An old wooden trunk with a curved lid sat there. Leather straps ran around it, but the leather was rotting now. It had brass corners and a brass latch, all of which were tarnished and dull. Frank went over to it and lifted the lid. He had no idea what he would find inside.

  A frown creased his forehead as he saw that the trunk was empty except for a few books. The scent of mildew drifted up to his nose. The books had gotten wet at some point in the past, and they were moldering away now. He holstered his gun and knelt in front of the trunk, reached inside to pick up one of the leather-bound volumes.

  The smell was even stronger as he opened the book. He saw words written on the flyleaf. Moisture had caused the ink to run, but the writing was still legible.

  Property of Benjamin Andrew Chamberlain.

  That pretty well answered his question about whether or not this was Ben’s cabin, thought Frank. Out of curiosity, he turned the pages to the title page. Five Weeks in a Balloon, by Jules Verne. Frank smiled. He had read this one, too, and he was willing to bet that this particular copy had come from the library in Rutherford Chamberlain’s mansion. Maybe that edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea had belonged to Ben, too.

  Frank put the book back and stood up, carefully closing the trunk’s lid. Maybe the trunk and the books inside it were rotting away, but they belonged to Ben Chamberlain and Frank made it a habit to respect other folks’ property. He could come back for them, though, and take them to the Chamberlain mansion once he had returned Ben himself to that redwood edifice.

  He took a quick look around the rest of the cabin. His boot prints and Dog’s tracks were the only marks that disturbed the hard-packed dirt floor. No one had been here recently. That agreed with what Nancy had told him about her brother avoiding the cabin that had once been his home in the woods.

  Ben had hacked several cubbyholes into the cliff face, probably using a hammer and chisel and enlarging openings that were already there. Frank could see the marks of the tools on the rock. The young man must have used them for storage of some sort, but they were empty now except for cobwebs. That explained how Dog had gotten the silky strands stuck on his muzzle. He might have smelled the last vestiges of food scent in some of them and stuck his nose in to see what was there.

  Satisfied that he had seen everything there was to see, Frank turned toward the doorway. He stopped when he spotted something else from the corner of his eye, a flash of white from the corner where the crude bunk was. Something was wedged up between the branches and the cabin wall. He went over and knelt to reach in and pull it out. The shadows were starting to grow thick in here now, so he couldn’t see very well. He thought maybe what he’d seen was a piece of paper.

  Instead, what his fingers encountered was a smooth cylinder of some sort, maybe an inch or a little more in diameter. It had a slight curve to it, he realized as he closed his hand around it and started working it past the branches.

  His jaw tightened and his breath hissed between his teeth when he pulled the thing out and saw that it was a bone. He was no expert on anatomy, but he was pretty sure it was an arm bone from a human being.

  A sudden sick feeling made Frank’s stomach clench. Still holding the bone, he stood up and moved closer to the doorway so the light would be better. He studied the thing closely, hardly wanting to admit, even to himself, that he was looking for teeth marks.

  A feeling of relief went through him as he realized the bone was still smooth. The flesh and sinew were gone, but they had been stripped away by insects rather than gnawed off. That made him feel a little better.

  Still, he couldn’t help but wnder how a man’s arm bone had come to be here in this cabin that had belonged to Ben Chamberlain. Was it Ben’s bone? Was Nancy’s brother dead after all, as Frank had warned her that he might be? Or had the bone come from somebody else?

  He had no way of answering those questions right now, and the fading light reminded him that night would be falling soon. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but clearly there was something in these woods that was dangerous, and he didn’t particularly want to spend the night out here. He had a pretty good idea which way Eureka was from here. He would head for town, find a hotel room, and ride out here to take up the search for the Terror again the next morning.

  Frank went over to the trunk, opened it again, and put the bone inside with the books. He would figure out what to do with it later, when he had a better idea who it belonged to.

  “Come on, Dog,” he said to the big cur. “I don’t want to spend the night out here, and I don’t reckon you do either.”

  Frank pushed the blanket aside and stepped out of the cabin. As he did so, Dog growled. That warning was enough to make Frank lift his head and look around, and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of orange flame in the shadows under the trees on the other side of the clearing. At the same time, the wicked crack of a rifle shattered the peace of the late afternoon.

  Chapter 8

  Frank heard the bullet’s whine as it went past his ear. The slug smacked into the cabin wall behind him and chewed splinters from it, showering them in the air.

  Frank could have retreated into the cabin, but then he would have been pinned down there. Instead, he threw himself to the left, into the jumble of fallen trees. He crouched behind one of the massive redwood trunks, safe for the moment from the hidden rifleman’s fire. Bullets wouldn’t ricochet among these trees, as they might have if he had taken shelter in a cluster of boulders.

  Dog was right next to him, having followed his lead. Stormy and Goldy were still out in the open, though, and Frank worried that the bushwhacker might turn his gun on the horses next.

  “Hyyaahh!” he shouted at them. “Get out of here, you jugheads!”

  The horses turned and dashed away. They were accustomed to gunshots, but they knew how to get out of the line of fire, too.

  Of course, that left Frank on foot for the moment, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Staying low, he worked his way through the fallen trees, putting some distance between himself and the last place the bushwhacker had seen him, right in front of Ben Chamberlain’s cabin. The hidden gunman hadn’t fired since that first shot, but Frank’s instincts told him the man was still out there, just waiting for another crack at him.

  He took his hat off so that its white crown wouldn’t give away his position, and slowly raised his head until he could peer through an open space among the tree trunks. Fifty yards was mighty long range for a handgun, but he thought that with luck and good aim, he could reach the trees on the other side of the clearing where the bushwhacker was hidden. He needed to get a little better idea of where the man was, though.

  Still holding his hat in his left hand, Frank slowly raised it and moved it in a slightly jerky, up-and-down motion from right to left, as if it were on his head while he was creeping along behind the trees. It was an old trick, but the reason it had been around for so long was that it usually worked.

  Another shot blasted from across the clearing. Frank flung the hat away from him like it had been hit, even though the bullet had missed. He had spotted the muzzle flash from the bushwhacker’s rifle. Of course, the man might not stay in the same place. But that was all Frank had to go by, so he lined up his shot, figuring windage and elevation and distance with the instinctive skill of a man who had been using his guns for decades and was still alive.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The Colt roared and bucked in his hand. He couldn’t see where the shot landed, but the rifle across the clearing suddenly started barking rapidly, the bushwhacker triggering rounds as fast as he could work the weapon’s lever. Frank ducked lower as splinters rained a
round him. A grim smile tugged at his mouth. He had come close enough to shake the son of a buck up anyway.

  After a couple of minutes, the rifle fell silent. Frank crawled about ten yards to his left and found another gap in the trees big enough for him to peer through. He saw a flicker of movement under the trees opposite him, and a moment later, he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats. The sound faded quickly into the distance.

  A trick of some sort, or had the bushwhacker really lit a shuck out of there? Once Frank had forted up in the fallen trees, the man might have decided that killing him was going to be more trouble than it was worth, and riskier, too. Frank retrieved his hat and then waited where he was. Patience had kept him alive more than once during the long, rugged years.

  The sun set during the next fifteen minutes. By then, the light was bad enough that Frank risked moving out from his cover behind the trees. He whistled, and Stormy and Goldy came trotting up a moment later. He grabbed Stormy’s reins and swung into the saddle.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said to his trail partners. “It’ll be dark by the time we make it to Eureka.”

  Actually, it was dark well before that. Frank, Dog, and the two horses were still deep in the woods when the last of the light faded away, to be replaced by thick, shrouding shadows. Frank had been underground once in a cave where there was no light at all. It wasn’t quite that utterly dark under the trees, because a faint glow from the stars filtered down through the leafy canopy. But it was dark enough he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, and that was the truth.

  He couldn’t hear anything except the hoofbeats of his horses either, as they picked their way along. He had to trust Stormy’s instincts and let the stallion find his own path, because he couldn’t see well enough to guide the horse. Luckily, the redwood branches didn’t start growing out from the trunks below a height of eighty or ninety feet, so he didn’t have to worry about an unseen branch knocking him out of the saddle.