The Last Gunfighter

Sure, according to Nancy he had always been a little eccentric, preferring to live in a world of his own rather than take part in what was actually going on around him. He had gone off to live by himself in the woods, too, and that sort of isolation sometimes wasn’t good for a man. It did things to his mind after a while.

But Ben had had his books, and he had visited with Nancy from time to time. He shouldn’t have gone mad. Something had happened. Something had driven him over the edge of sanity into madness.

Or somebody had driven him over deliberately. That thought made Frank frown. If that turned out to be the case, then whoever was responsible for turning Ben into a rampaging killer was also to blame for those murders.

Yes, there was still plenty of truth to uncover, and Frank was bound and determined to uncover it. For now, though, he sat down and leaned back against the wall with Dog close beside him to wait for morning. After a while, his eyes closed and he slept.

Chapter 23

The drizzle had become an actual rain by the time Jack Grimshaw and his companions rode back into Eureka that evening. They had spent hours looking for Frank Morgan with no success. They were wet and cold and miserable, and about the only thing they had to be thankful for, Grimshaw reflected, was that they hadn’t run into that damned Terror again and gotten any more men killed.

They split up just outside of the settlement as usual. Grimshaw said they would meet in the back room of the Bull o’ the Woods later. He headed for the Eureka House. He knew that Emmett Bosworth would want a report.

Grimshaw also knew that Bosworth was going to be mighty damned unhappy with what he had to tell him.

He paused on the hotel porch to shake as much of the moisture as he could from his hat and his slicker, which he hadn’t gotten around to donning until his clothes were already wet. He went inside, his boots making a squishing sound that drew a frown of disapproval from the desk clerk. The man glanced away hurriedly, though, when Grimshaw returned the look with a cold stare.

It was late enough that Bosworth would be finished with supper. Grimshaw hoped the timber baron hadn’t brought a woman back to his room with him. He didn’t want to have to stand around waiting while Bosworth got rid of some soiled dove.

Of course, Grimshaw reminded himself, Bosworth was too good for a common prostitute. He would’ve found some lonely married woman and seduced her, or maybe some spinster who was pretty good-looking when she took off her spectacles and let down her hair. Grimshaw had been with a few gals like that himself, and he knew how wild they could be once they finally let themselves go.

He shook his head, forcing those thoughts out of his brain. Emmett Bosworth’s love life was the least of his worries. He still had Frank Morgan to kill—and he thought it was possible that Frank might have heard him yelling out there today during that fight with the Terror. If Frank had recognized his voice and knew he was gunning for him…

A chill that had nothing to do with being soaked went down Grimshaw’s back as he paused in front of the door to Bosworth’s suite and rapped sharply on the panel.

Bosworth jerked open the door a couple of seconds later. He wore a dressing gown and had one of those big cigars in his mouth. One hand clutched a squat glass with a couple of fingers of whiskey in it. He didn’t waste any time on preliminaries, instead asking curtly, “Did you find Morgan?”

Grimshaw nodded toward the room and said, “I don’t cotton to standing in the hall.”

“Fine, fine,” Bosworth muttered impatiently as he moved back. Grimshaw stepped into the sitting room. Bosworth closed the door and went on, “Well?”

“We found him, but he’s not dead.”

Bosworth’s teeth clenched angrily on the cigar. “Why the hell not?”

“Because we found something else at the same time. We ran into the Terror.”

Bosworth’s eyebrows went up in surprise. He took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “Really? The damned thing actually exists?”

“I’ve got three more dead men to prove it.”

“But did you actually see—”

“The thing was standing as close to me as you are now. Big as life, twice as ugly, and smelled ten times as bad.”

“Given its history then, I’d say you’re very lucky to be alive, Grimshaw.”

The gunman nodded. “Yeah. Damned lucky.”

“I wish you’d been able to kill Morgan, though. Tell me what happened.”

Grimshaw spent the next five minutes doing that. Bosworth puffed on the cigar as he listened. When Grimshaw was finished, he said, “You’ll be going back out in the morning to resume the search for Morgan, I take it?”

“We don’t know that he’s still out there.”

“He was on foot and possibly wounded. Do you really think he got away?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past Frank Morgan,” Grimshaw said flatly. “He’s done things you wouldn’t think any man could do, and he’s got more lives than a cat.”

Bosworth waved the cigar. “He’s human like anyone else. Put enough bullets in him and he’ll die.”

“Yeah, but how many of us will he kill first?”