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
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
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 around 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
