The Last Gunfighter

by William W. Johnstone

  Frank edged Stormy forward. He dismounted and walked over to the dead man, carrying the Winchester with him. The man had landed facedown. Frank hooked a toe under his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The body moved limply. The fall seemed to have broken numerous bones. The man’s throat was torn open, and there were deep wounds on his chest as well. His face was relatively unmarked, though. Frank recognized him as one of the loggers who had come into Peter Lee’s place with Erickson and the others the night before.

  So now there were only five men out here hunting for him. Still respectable odds, Frank mused, but nothing he hadn’t handled on many occasions in the past.

  Frank left the body where it had fallen. There was nothing else he could do. Mounting up again, he called out to Dog, “Find that scent again, boy. Find the critter.”

  Dog circled wide around the tree where the corpse lay, and then trotted back and forth until he picked up the scent again. Then he took off eagerly, still heading toward the coast.

  Fifteen minutes later, Frank rode out into a clearing that ran along the top of a cliff. The open area was narrow, only fifty yards or so wide, but it ran for hundreds of yards, as far as Frank could see in both directions.

  And directly in front of him, stretching out endlessly, was the gray, restless sea. He heard the never-ceasing waves pounding against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, a hundred feet below.

  The clearing had a nice carpet of grass on it. Frank rode across it toward the sheer rock face where land ended and sea began. He had seen the Pacific before, on numerous occasions, but it never failed to impress him. Even though he was much more comfortable on land, he could see why some men talked about the ocean’s majesty. It was bleak today, but no less majestic.

  Dog had trotted right over to the brink, and now stood there staring out at the ocean, the wind ruffling his thick coat. The wind blew harder here, without the trees to block it. Frank rode up to join Dog. He dismounted and peered over the cliff as he hung on to Stormy’s reins. He had no special fear of heights, but he believed in giving natural dangers the respect they deserved.

  “Nothing down there but rocks,” Frank said. The constant action of the waves had rounded the large gray stones. Waves foamed and hissed around them. It was an impressive scene. Frank didn’t see what it had to do with his quarry, though. The Terror wasn’t down there, and there was no place for the thing to hide along this rugged cliff.

  Had it come here, to stand and gaze out over the water, as Frank was doing now? He couldn’t help but wonder about that. Everything he had seen so far suggested that the Terror was nothing more than a mindless monster, whether it had started out as human or not.

  But if Nancy was right and the Terror really was her brother, was it possible that a spark of humanity was still buried somewhere inside the creature? In the midst of all the brutality and killing, were there occasional moments of reflection as well?

  Frank didn’t know, and considered it highly unlikely that he would ever find out. And as starkly beautiful as this scene was, he didn’t have time to stand around appreciating it.

  “Where did it go, Dog? Find the scent. Hunt, Dog.”

  The big cur started searching for the scent again. He seemed to have it in short order and began trotting along the edge of the cliff. Frank mounted up and followed. After a hundred yards or so, Dog turned and headed toward the trees again.

  So the Terror had come out here, stood at the edge of the ocean for a time, and then gone back to its woodland home. Frank didn’t think the creature was all that far ahead of him now, and he hoped that the chase wouldn’t last much longer.

  Frank had just pulled Stormy’s head around to start after Dog when flame suddenly lanced out from the shadows underneath the big trees. He heard the crack of a rifle, the whistle of a slug past his ear. Then more shots blasted from the trees, a whole volley of them, and as Frank braced himself for the horrible impact of bullets smashing into his body, he knew that out here at the edge of the world, with bushwhackers in front of him and the endless sea behind him, there was no cover, no place to fort up.

  He was trapped.

  Chapter 20

  Frank kicked his feet free of the stirrups and threw himself out of the saddle as lead stormed around him. He felt a couple of bullets tug on his shirt, and heard the wind-rip of another as it passed close by his ear. Miraculously, though, he hit the ground without being wounded.

  “Go!” he shouted at the horses. “Stormy! Goldy! Get out of here!”

  Both of them took off at a gallop as they recognized the command Frank had given them. At the same time, Dog turned around and started to come back toward him.

  “No, Dog!” he called. “Into the woods! Go!”

  Dog hesitated, then whirled around and raced toward the trees, angling away from the gunfire as he stretched out in a dead run. Bullets kicked up dirt around his paws, but didn’t slow him down. He vanished into the thick shadows under the redwoods.

  By this time, Frank was rolling desperately toward the edge of the cliff, toward a spot where the ground sloped slightly toward the brink. He had caught sight of it as he was diving off Stormy’s back, and he knew it represented the closest thing to any cover he was going to find out here. Bullets still sizzled through the air around him.

  Pain suddenly lanced into his left arm, and he knew he was hit. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it, just as he had been ignoring the pain from those bruised ribs. He reached the place where the ground fell away toward the cliff, and rolled onto it. It was no more than ten feet by ten feet, just a slight depression, but it was enough to put some earth between him and the men trying to kill him.

  Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go from here. He was pinned down about as securely as a man could be.

  But he still had hold of his rifle and had quite a bit of ammunition in his pockets, so if those gunmen hidden under the trees decided to rush him, he could make them pay a price for killing him.

  Frank lay stretched out on his belly on the damp grass, which grew all the way to the cliff’s edge. He tried not to think about the fact that only a couple of feet behind him lay yawning, deadly emptiness with rocks and sea at the bottom.

  As the mist continued to fall and make his clothes even wetter, he looked over at his left arm to see how badly he was hit. Blood stained the sleeve of his shirt about halfway between his shoulder and elbow. Frank moved the arm, and even though doing so hurt like blazes, the muscles still obeyed him and he didn’t feel anything grating together.

  So the bullet had missed the bone, he thought—the humerus, he remembered Dr. Patrick Connelly calling it—and had just torn through flesh. And it had gone all the way through as well, Frank knew, because he could feel distinct entry and exit wounds as they throbbed.

  The loss of blood could still be dangerous, but from the rate at which the crimson fluid leaked onto his shirt, he could tell that the slug hadn’t nicked any veins or arteries. With even rudimentary medical attention, the wounds ought to heal. His arm should be fine.

  Of course, there was still a little matter of surviving this ambush.

  The shots died away as the men in the trees realized that they couldn’t see him anymore. Now they would be debating what they ought to do next, whether to rush him or try to wait him out.

  Frank cast a glance at the sky, which was completely gray and overcast by now. There were still a number of hours of daylight left, but if the bushwhackers waited too long and night fell, Frank might be able to slip away in the darkness. They had to be as aware of that as he was.

  He wondered who they were. Erickson and his friends were the most likely suspects, but they had been going in a different direction the last time Frank heard their shouts in the distance.

  And although it was difficult to tell because everything had happened so fast, he would have sworn that more than five men had been shooting at him, too. More like twice that many, maybe more.

  It was possible that Erickson and the others
had run into some other would-be monster hunters who wanted Frank dead and had thrown in with them. A lot of folks had been upset about Chamberlain lifting the ten-grand bounty, and today those same hombres were licking their chops over the prospect of a bounty twice that size, with only Frank Morgan standing in the way of it.

  Another possibility was that the killers hired by Bosworth had ventured back into the woods today after all. But if that were the case, why would they be after him? Frank wondered.

  There was one good reason, he realized as he thought about it, and it tied in with other things he suspected. Bosworth was staying at the Eureka House, according to Dr. Connelly, so it was entirely possible, even likely, that he had heard about Chamberlain giving Frank twenty-four hours to find the Terror. If the men who had wiped out the logging camp that morning worked for Bosworth, as Frank believed, then Bosworth was taking advantage of the fear everyone felt concerning the mysterious monster in the woods.

  But if the monster was dead or caught…then whatever future atrocities Bosworth had in the works would be ruined, because they couldn’t be blamed on the Terror.

  Yeah, now that he’d thought it through, it made sense, Frank decided. Bosworth had a different reason for wanting him dead than Erickson and the other would-be monster hunters, but it was no less valid.

  Silence still hung over the woods. Frank knew better than to think the bushwhackers were gone, though. They were still there, hidden in the shadows, waiting to kill him if he showed even the slightest glimpse of himself.

  “I never saw a man move that fast in my life, Jack,” Radburn said to Grimshaw. “With more than a dozen of us openin’ fire on him at the same time, how in the hell did he manage not to get hit? He should’ve been filled full of holes!”

  “There’s some sort of guardian angel lookin’ out for Frank Morgan,” Grimshaw replied with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Always has been, ever since we were kids. Why do you think I always tried to make sure him and me were on the same side every time we got mixed up in some ruckus?” He grunted. “Until now, that is.”

  Grimshaw had been afraid things would turn out like this. He hadn’t wanted to come after Frank Morgan in the first place. Morgan was too slick, too quick-witted, too fast on his feet, to say nothing of his speed with a gun.

  But the money Emmett Bosworth was offering was just too damned much to turn down, Grimshaw thought, so he and the other men had left Eureka a short time after Frank, and they had been on his trail ever since. They had been close enough to hear some sort of uproar going on earlier, and when they found a torn-up body at the base of a tree, it hadn’t taken much of a guess to know that the Terror was involved somehow. Frank was on the trail of the Terror, but he had danger coming up behind him, too. He just hadn’t known it at the time.

  Now he did, and Grimshaw couldn’t help but regret the fact that they hadn’t killed Morgan with their first shots. That would have gotten an unpleasant task over with quickly, before Morgan even knew for sure what was going on.

  Letting Frank Morgan know that you were gunning for him, and then failing to kill him, was one of the worst mistakes a man could make.

  From behind one of the other trees, Hooley called, “You reckon he fell off the cliff?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know,” Grimshaw said. “Why don’t you mosey out there, Hooley, and see if you can tell?”

  Hooley moved slightly, as if he were about to follow Grimshaw’s suggestion, but then he stopped short and glared over at the older man.

  “You’re tryin’ to get me killed!”

  “Thinnin’ the herd,” Radburn muttered. Grimshaw could hear him, but Hooley couldn’t. Grimshaw chuckled.

  “Chances are, Morgan found some cover, even though from here it doesn’t look like there is any,” Grimshaw added. “He’s the best I’ve ever seen at using whatever luck gives him. The best I’ve ever seen at anything, period. But he’s still human. He can’t sprout wings and fly off that cliff, and there’s nowhere else for him to go.”

  “But if we leave these trees, he’ll have a clear shot at us,” Radburn pointed out. “I don’t want to try crossin’ fifty yards of open ground while I’m in The Drifter’s gunsights. Seems like a good way of committin’ suicide.”

  “None surer,” Grimshaw agreed.

  “Then how are we gonna get him outta there?” one of the other gunmen asked.

  Grimshaw rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought. They had a Mexican standoff here, and he couldn’t see any way to resolve it short of charging Morgan’s position. If they did that, Grimshaw was confident that Frank would die in the end—but not before quite a few of them got ventilated as well. The rest of the men would be like Radburn; none of them would want to be the one leading the charge.

  An idea glimmered to life in Grimshaw’s brain. He looked up at the trees towering above them. The redwoods were all at least a hundred and fifty feet tall, and many of them were taller than that.

  “Any of you boys know anything about cuttin’ down trees?” he asked.

  No one spoke up.

  “None of you ever worked as a logger before?”

  “I always had better things to do with my hands than swing an ax,” Hooley said with a sneer in his voice.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet,” one of the other men said, “con-siderin’ how the ladies feel about you.”

  Hooley turned angrily toward that hombre, but before a squabble could break out, Grimshaw snapped, “Settle down, damn it. We got a real problem here. If we don’t deal with Morgan before it gets dark, he’ll have a lot better chance of giving us the slip. I want some of you boys to head for that logging camp we hit this morning and bring back all the axes and saws you can carry.”

  “What if the law’s there, or some guards or somebody from Chamberlain’s company?” one of the men asked.

  “Then wait until they’re gone, or find another camp, or figure something out, damn it!” Grimshaw took a deep breath to calm himself. “Just get axes and saws and, oh, yeah, some of those steel wedges loggers drive into the trees when they’re cuttin’ ’em down. Mallets to drive them, too.” He remembered more than he would have thought from the few times he had seen logging crews at work.

  “What the hell you got in mind, Jack?” Radburn asked.

  Grimshaw nodded toward the trees. “We’re gonna use the weapons that the Good Lord was so thoughtful in providin’ for us.”

  Radburn grinned as understanding dawned on him. He said, “How hard can it be to cut down a tree?”

  They would soon find out, Grimshaw thought.

  An hour went by. Frank’s clothes were soaked by now. The fine mist in the air might not amount to much in the way of actual rainfall, but it would get a man wet if he were out in it long enough.

  A while earlier, he had heard hoofbeats in the forest, fading into the distance, but he knew better than to think all the bushwhackers were gone. Maybe they were trying to lure him out by making him think they had left, but he doubted that. If they were professional enough to be hired by Emmett Bosworth to commit mass murder, they probably weren’t fools, and they wouldn’t think he was one either.

  Still, the idea that some of them were pulling out was puzzling…and a mite worrisome.

  Later, the riders came back. Frank heard the horses, although the hoofbeats were muffled by the carpet of needles under the redwoods and the damp, heavy air.

  A few minutes after that, he heard the ring of axes biting into wood.

  What in blazes were they doing? Cutting down a tree? That was the only explanation for the sounds. The steady chunk! chunk! continued until Frank had to risk raising his head just enough to take a look.

  As soon as his eyes came over the level of the ground, muzzle fire lanced from several places under the trees as shots cracked out. He ducked and felt the dirt kicked up by the bullets spray over him.

  Even that quick glance he had gotten had been enough to tell him that several of the men were working with axes on one of the trees at
the very edge of the forest.

  Frank studied the tree, tilting his head back enough so that he could run his gaze all the way up the thick trunk to the top. It was close to two hundred feet tall, he estimated, which meant that when it fell, if it toppled in the direction of the cliff, it would reach the spot where he had taken cover…

  The bastards were going to drop a tree on him!

  A grim smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He’d had folks try to kill him in a heap of different ways, but as far as he could recall, this was the first time anybody had attempted to flatten him with a giant redwood.

  That was exactly what would happen, too, if the tree landed on him. He’d be squashed flatter than a flapjack. And if he jumped up to run out of the way when the tree started to fall, the gunmen would be waiting for him, waiting to cut him down with rifle fire, instead of saws and axes.

  He had to make them think twice about continuing with their plan. Moving fast, he raised himself enough to thrust the Winchester toward the trees and trigger a shot. That was the only round he got off, though, because the men who weren’t working on the tree opened fire as soon as they saw the first flicker of movement from him. He had to hunker down again as bullets slammed into the ground just above him. He had no idea if his shot had come anywhere close to the men cutting down the tree.

  The axes continued to ring, and a few minutes later when they stopped at last, they were replaced within moments by the rasp of a long, crosscut saw.

  Frank bit back a curse. They had him trapped good and proper, with no way out that he could see. He edged back a little, so that he could turn and peer over the edge of the cliff. Maybe he could climb down there somehow, work his way along the rocks at the base of the cliff, and find another way up.

  He saw instantly that wasn’t going to be possible. The cliff was too sheer, too slick, with few if any handholds. And in this mist, it would be even slicker than usual. Trying to climb down was certain death.