The Last Gunfighter

by William W. Johnstone

  Those thoughts went through his head for a second when he saw the steam engine mounted on its low, wheeled platform and lashed in place with thick ropes between several stumps. The other things he saw around the clearing drove everything else out of his mind.

  Bile rose in Frank’s throat at the sight of the bloody heaps that had been men. It looked like the Terror had gone on another killing spree. Frank counted the corpses, feeling sicker with each one. There were eleven dead men in this camp.

  Dog stood stiff-legged a short distance from the carnage, still growling. The coppery reek of fresh blood probably bothered him as it mixed with the sharp tang of powder smoke lingering from the shooting. The smell bothered Frank, that was for sure.

  Sitting still in the saddle, Frank gazed around the clearing. The Winchester was in his hands. He was ready to snap the rifle to his shoulder and open fire instantly if he caught sight of the thing that had done this.

  Then he remembered his promise to Nancy Chamberlain. He had told her that he would do his best to bring her brother home safely. He couldn’t just gun down Ben Chamberlain.

  Yet, how could he try to capture a thing that could do…this?

  Nothing moved in the woods. After several minutes had gone by, Frank was convinced that whatever had carried out this mass murder was gone. Even so, he kept the rifle in one hand as he dismounted.

  He stepped over a man’s arm that had been sheared off cleanly at the shoulder and flung across the camp. A few feet away lay a man who still had both arms, but no head, only a stump of a neck like the tree stumps that dotted the clearing. Frank moved on past several more bodies, all of them awash in gore from the deep wounds that covered their bodies. He had never seen anything like it in his life.

  And as he looked closer, he realized that was true. He hadn’t seen anything exactly like this before, not even the previous day when he had stumbled across those victims of the Terror. With a puzzled frown on his face, he turned and went back to the first body he had looked at, the one without a head. After studying it for a moment, he forced himself to ignore the revulsion he felt and picked up the severed arm nearby so that he could take a closer look at it.

  “Well, what do you know about that?” he said softly.

  Carefully, he bent over and placed the arm back on the ground where he had found it. The authorities would need to take a look at this scene of death and destruction, and it might be a good idea to leave it as much like he’d found it as possible.

  There was nothing he could do for these men except try to find whoever was responsible for their grisly deaths. He mounted up again, called Dog, and then rode into the woods. Dog whined in complaint. He wanted to pick up the trail he had been following earlier. But Frank had something else in mind. He started making a circle around the clearing where the logging camp was located, trying to stay about fifty yards out from it. If he hadn’t found what he was looking for by the time he rode all the way around the camp, he would move out a little farther and try again.

  It took him about half an hour of careful searching before he found a spot where a number of horses had stood not long before. He couldn’t see their hoofprints on the thick carpet of fallen needles, but to his experienced eye, the fresh droppings told the story as plainly as if it had been written out with pen and ink or printed in a book.

  A number of riders had made their way through the forest to this point, then stopped their horses and left the mounts standing here for a while. Probably one member of the party had been given the chore of holding the reins. The others had crept forward, using the trees for cover, until they reached the edge of the camp where the loggers were working.

  Then they had opened fire with rifles, taking the woodsmen by surprise and probably killing several of them with the first volley. The loggers who hadn’t been killed outright had put up a fight—Frank had heard the evidence of that with his own ears—but they hadn’t been able to mount enough of a defense to keep the bushwhackers from cutting them down one by one. Finally, all of Chamberlain’s men were dead.

  Then, the riflemen had come out of hiding to take care of the second part of their job. With axes that they had either brought with them or found in the camp, they had walked among their victims, swinging the keen-edged weapons again and again as they chopped their victims to pieces.

  Frank had noticed that something was different about the severed arm he’d found, but it had taken him a few minutes to realize what it was. The day before, he had seen what the Terror of the Redwoods left behind after an attack. The wounds were ragged, not clean. Flesh that had been torn and shredded looked different from flesh that had been cut.

  Men had committed murder here, not a monster.

  But would anyone else have noticed that? Frank wondered. Or would they have seen just more evidence of the Terror’s bloodthirsty rage? Would they have been blinded by blood and revulsion and failed to see the truth?

  Frank thought there was a pretty good chance that was exactly what would have happened.

  “Come on, Dog,” he said. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

  Chapter 12

  The men kept a sharp eye out as they rode through the giant redwoods. Even though none of them had ever actually seen the Terror, they had heard plenty about it. Everybody had, in this neck of the woods. The Terror was the talk of every saloon and whorehouse and logging camp.

  After what had happened today, that would be even more true. The news of the Terror’s latest massacre would spread like wildfire.

  That was exactly what their boss wanted.

  One of the men, named Radburn, spoke up. “Hey, Grimshaw, when do we get our money?”

  Jack Grimshaw, who was ramrodding this gang of killers, leaned over in the saddle and spat. “You anxious to get paid, Radburn?”

  “Damn right I am. You know doin’ this didn’t sit well with me.”

  One of the men, a lunger everybody called Hooley, gave a mean-sounding laugh. “Why, I thought you’d killed men before, Radburn,” he said. “I didn’t realize you was a blushin’ little flower.”

  Radburn was a chunky man with a squarish red face that got even redder when he was angry, like now. “I’ve killed my share, and you know it,” he snapped. “That don’t trouble me. I’m talkin’ about what happened afterward.”

  “Without that, folks wouldn’t think the Terror was to blame,” Grimshaw explained patiently. He was a gaunt-faced, middle-aged hombre with iron-gray hair under a black Stetson. “You know as well as I do why it was necessary.”

  Hooley cackled, then coughed. “Because the boss paid us to do it that way,” he said in a voice wet with sickness.

  “That’s right,” Grimshaw nodded. “If that bothers you too much, Radburn, I don’t reckon you have to take his money.”

  Radburn muttered for a couple of seconds under his breath, then replied, “I never said anything about not takin’ the money.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  They rode on, fifteen hard-faced men, all of them with plenty of blood on their hands even before today.

  But there was more blood staining them now, a lot more, Grimshaw reflected. He had seen a lot of ugly things in his life, but right offhand, he couldn’t think of anything uglier than taking axes and chopping a bunch of dead men into pieces.

  Would it fool people when they found the bodies? Grimshaw thought it would, since everybody in these parts was so worked up to start with about the monster in the woods. But the important thing, as far as his boss was concerned, was that more damage had been done to Rutherford Chamberlain’s logging operation. Whatever had been killing men out here in the woods was doing Grimshaw’s employer, Emmett Bosworth, a favor, but Bosworth wasn’t a patient man. He had decided to push things along a little faster, and for that reason, he had recruited Grimshaw and the other gunmen.

  Grimshaw, Radburn, Hooley, and the others had all been involved in range wars in the past. A timber war was really no different. Rutherford Chamberlain had the tree
s, and Emmett Bosworth wanted them. Simple as that. Grimshaw had assumed at first that he and his fellow gunmen would be carrying out the same sort of campaign they had waged on behalf of various cattle barons—ambushing Chamberlain’s men, sabotaging his equipment, generally making life hell for anybody who worked for Chamberlain.

  Bosworth had come up with another idea, though. He wanted to take advantage of the fear that was spreading through the forest. The so-called Terror already had men plenty spooked. If the Terror seemed to be going on an even worse killing spree, Chamberlain’s men might finally start refusing to venture into the woods and do their work.

  A man couldn’t cut logs without loggers. That was Bosworth’s idea, and it was a good one, as far as Grimshaw was concerned. When Chamberlain had to give up his lease on this prime area of timber, Bosworth would move in, and then Grimshaw and the other men would have a new job.

  They would go into the woods, hunt down the Terror, whatever it was, and kill it.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  The disgusted words came from one of the men toward the rear of the group. Grimshaw reined in, hipped around in his saddle, and asked, “What is it, Nichols?”

  The man’s horse had slowed almost to a stop, taking each step gingerly.

  “Damn horse has gone lame. I’m gonna have to get off and walk for a spell, see if he can shake it off.” Nichols looked around. “Unless I can ride double with one of you fellas.”

  “I don’t think so,” Grimshaw said.

  Nichols’s lean, beard-stubbled face got a worried frown on it. “You’re gonna get ahead of me, though.”

  “Afraid of the Terror, Nichols?” Hooley asked.

  Nichols flushed. “Well, wouldn’t you be?”

  Hooley hunched over in his saddle as a fresh fit of coughing struck him. When it was over, he straightened and shook his head.

  “I ain’t afraid of anything. No reason to be.”

  The rest of them knew what he meant. Hooley coughed up blood a dozen times a day. He wouldn’t last another six months, no matter what. Probably not another three. When a man spent all his waking hours staring down that particular barrel, he really didn’t have any reason to be scared of anything else.

  “Well, then, why don’t you stay with me, so I won’t have to ride on in to Eureka by myself?” Nichols suggested.

  “You think I won’t?”

  “I’m hopin’ you will.” Nichols looked around. “I don’t much cotton to the idea of bein’ out here in the woods by myself.”

  Hooley thought it over for a second, then shrugged. “Sure. Why the hell not? The rest of you fellas go on. Me and Nichols will be there later.” He frowned at Grimshaw. “You better not spend our part of the money on hooch and whores before we get there, though.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get your dinero,” Grimshaw assured the lunger. “Come on, boys.”

  Nichols dismounted as the others rode on, with the exception of Hooley, who sat there with his hands crossed and resting on the saddle horn. While Hooley waited, Nichols examined the horse’s front legs and hooves.

  “I was hopin’ maybe he’d just picked up a rock or somethin’ in his shoe,” Nichols said. “Looks like he’s gone lame, though.” He sighed. “It’s gonna be a long walk back to town.”

  “We might as well get started.” The other gunmen had already gone out of sight. Hooley licked his lips. “I’d just as soon not stay out here any longer than we have to.”

  Nichols picked up his horse’s reins and started leading the animal as Hooley turned his mount to follow the others. Grinning, Nichols said, “Thought you wasn’t scared.”

  “I ain’t. I just don’t care much for the woods, that’s all. I’d rather be in town where I can get a drink and rest my eyes on a nice-lookin’ woman if I want to.”

  The two men made their way through the towering trees, moving slowly because of Nichols’s horse. They had gone maybe half a mile when both animals began to act a little strange. Hooley’s horse lifted its head and pricked up its ears, then gave a violent shake of its head. Nichols’s mount started pulling back on the reins, as if it didn’t want to go forward anymore.

  “What’s got into these damn jugheads?” Nichols asked.

  “They act like they smell somethin’ they don’t like.” Hooley sniffed the air. “Can’t say as I smell anything, though.”

  “A horse’s nose is more sensitive than yours.” Nichols dropped his hand to the butt of his gun. “I don’t like this, Hooley.”

  “Don’t go scarin’ yourself. You know how horses can get all spooky for no good reason. One of ’em starts to act up, and then the other one has to do the same thing. There’s nothin’ to worry about.”

  “You don’t know that,” Nichols insisted. “There’s so many damn trees, you can’t see fifty yards. You don’t know what’s out there.”

  “Neither do you.”

  Nichols tugged on the reins. “Come on, damn it,” he snapped at his horse. “You want the Terror to get you?”

  “We don’t know there’s any such thing as a Terror,” Hooley pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, somethin’ killed all those other men. We didn’t take cards in the game until today, remember?”

  “Probably a bear, or maybe a mountain lion.”

  “I don’t think they have mountain lions around here, or bears big enough to—”

  Nichols’s horse suddenly reared up on its hind legs, jerking the reins out of his hands. The horse whinnied in fear as it pawed at the air with its forehooves.

  From the corner of his eye, Hooley caught sight of something moving in the trees to his left…something big, and fast. He exclaimed, “Son of a bitch!” and jerked his horse around. His gun seemed to leap into his hand. He might be sick, but his illness hadn’t affected his speed with a Colt. His head snapped from side to side as he looked for the thing, whatever it was. He wanted something to shoot at. Hooley had never run into anything he couldn’t kill, except for the thing that was eating him up from the inside out.

  Nichols was yelling curses at his horse as he tried to grab the reins and bring the animal back under control. Despite being lame, fear gave the horse some unexpected agility. It twisted away from Nichols and bolted, running around one of the giant redwoods that was close to twenty feet in diameter.

  The horse didn’t come out from the other side. Instead, it screamed in pain.

  “It got my horse!” Nichols babbled. “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch! My rifle’s still on my saddle!” He turned and lunged toward Hooley. “Pull me up behind you! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Hooley was having trouble keeping his own mount under some semblance of control. The horse danced back and forth skittishly as the screams continued to come from behind the big tree. Nichols clawed at Hooley’s leg and tried to climb up behind him.

  “Get off!” Hooley cried. He slashed at Nichols with the six-gun, raking the barrel across the other man’s face. Nichols fell back with a cry of pain as blood flew from the gash on his forehead opened up by the gunsight.

  “Hooley!” he yelled. “Hooley, you gotta help me!”

  “I’m not ridin’ double,” Hooley said. “That damn thing’s too fast.” He hauled his horse’s head around and jammed his boot heels into the animal’s flanks. The horse broke into a frantic run.

  “Hooley!” Nichols shrieked behind him. “Hooley, don’t leave me out here! Don’t let it—”

  The desperate plea was cut off abruptly by a gurgling cry. Hooley leaned forward in the saddle and didn’t look back as he sent his horse racing around and between the giant tree trunks. He didn’t want to see what was happening back there. All he wanted was to get out of here before whatever that thing was caught him, too.

  Funny, he thought as his heart pounded heavily in his chest, maybe the time he had left to him, however long it might be, was still precious to him after all.

  Frank heard yelling in the distance. In this thick forest, it was hard to judge how far away
such sounds were. Couldn’t be too far, though, he told himself, because the thick vegetation tended to muffle noises and keep them from carrying as well.

  “Stay with me, Dog!” he called as the big cur tried to bound ahead out of sight. Frank didn’t know what they were heading toward, but it couldn’t be anything good.

  There were no shots. Frank didn’t know what that meant. He had a feeling it wasn’t a good sign. It was like the man who had gotten into trouble hadn’t even had time to pull his gun, only to scream in fear and pain.

  Dog had been tracking the bushwhackers who had attacked that logging camp, and Frank had been following. He estimated their numbers at more than a dozen, so he didn’t plan on jumping them. He had more in mind following them, finding out who they were and, more importantly, who they worked for. He thought he had a pretty good idea, but he needed confirmation of that.

  The sounds had died away quickly. Without them to guide him, Frank wasn’t sure if he was headed in the right direction or not. But then Dog dashed ahead, as if he had caught a familiar scent again, and Frank pushed Goldy hard to keep up.

  A minute later, Dog stopped short, planting his feet and stiffening his legs as he growled. Frank reined to a halt behind him and pulled the Winchester from its sheath. Up ahead, lying next to the base of a tree, was a horse. The animal lay still. Blood still welled from a gaping wound in its neck.

  “Back, Dog,” Frank said quietly. The big cur obeyed, backing up until he was next to Frank and Goldy. Frank sent the horse forward at a slow walk.

  He circled to the left, around the tree and the body of the horse. The horse wore a saddle, so Frank had a feeling that its former rider was around here somewhere. A moment later, he saw he was right. A man lay on the ground on the far side of the tree, face down. He was as motionless as the horse. The back of his shirt was shredded and soaked with blood.

  The man had lost so much blood, it had formed a pool around him on the ground. Frank knew he couldn’t still be alive. So for the next couple of minutes, instead of dismounting, Frank sat there, looking and listening intently, taking in everything that was going on in the woods around him.