Rockwell’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You got him to back down? I didn’t think that was possible.”
“I offered him an arrangement he liked better, that’s all.”
Rockwell took another drag on the smoke. “I can tell you who’s
“Chamberlain’s going to send someone to town to spread the word.” Frank swung up in the saddle. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d pass it along, too, Rockwell.”
The gunman shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Sure. Some of the boys have been going out into the woods to do some hunting during their spare time. I’ll tell them not to bother anymore.”
Frank rested his hands on the saddle horn and looked down at Rockwell. “Something else I’m wondering about…why does Chamberlain need to hire so many bodyguards?”
“He’s a rich man. Rich men have enemies. Chamberlain does especially. You ever hear of Emmett Bosworth?”
Frank pondered the question and then shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.”
“He’s the boss’s biggest competitor. He’s got the second biggest logging operation in northern California…and he’d like to have the biggest. Bosworth’s managed to get some leases that Chamberlain wanted to get his hands on. Those two gents don’t cotton to each other.”
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
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
