“I thought you told me you couldn’t come back tonight,” he said.
“If you’re disappointed, I can leave.”
“Not at all.” Bosworth stepped back. “Come in, please.”
She did so, and as he closed the door behind her, she lowered the hood so that the lamplight in the room reflected off her thick, shiny, auburn hair. “He’s asleep,” she said as Bosworth turned toward her. “He won’t wake up until morning.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’ve seen what the opium does to him.”
She shrugged out of the cape. Bosworth took it from her, hung it on a brass hook near the door. The rain had beaded on it. The droplets rolled slowly down the oilcloth fabric, then began to form a wet spot on the rug.
“Rather irresponsible of him, isn’t it?” Bosworth asked as he ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders. She wore a plain dress tonight, not the sort of gaudy thing she sometimes slipped into when she was visiting him. “What if his services are needed? He swore an oath after all.”
“What does an oath mean when a man craves what he wants?”
“What indeed?” Bosworth murmured. He pulled her toward him, brought his mouth down hard on hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body to his.
When he drew back, his eyes burned with desire. For a while now, he wouldn’t think about monsters, or his rivalry with Rutherford Chamberlain, or all the money he would make when that lease was his and all those beautiful logs were flowing into his sawmills. He wouldn’t even think about that gunfighter, Frank Morgan, and the threat Morgan represented to his plans. All he would think about was the woman in his arms.
And, well, maybe…just a little…about all that money.
Chapter 24
By morning, Frank’s fever had broken. The rugged life he’d led, plus his own naturally hardy constitution, gave him the ability to throw off illness fairly quickly. His left arm was mighty stiff and sore, though.
Ben Chamberlain hadn’t come back to the cave during the night, at least not that Frank was aware of. When Frank walked out into the morning sun, he saw Stormy and Goldy not far away, cropping at the grass. A whistle brought them both trotting toward him.
He had jerky and coffee in his saddlebags, both of which he craved this morning. He carried a small silver flask of whiskey in there, too, which he also wanted, but for a different reason.
As soon as he had rekindled the fire in the cave and started the coffee brewing, he tore the sleeve of his shirt back, washed away the dried blood with water from his canteen, uncapped the flask, and dribbled whiskey into the bullet wound on his arm. The pain caused by the fiery liquor made him grunt and grit his teeth, but he kept it up until he was confident that the whiskey had run all through the wound. Then he got a spare shirt from his saddlebags, tore a strip of fabric from it, and used that as a bandage, wrapping it around his arm and tying it tightly with the help of his teeth.
The efficiency with which he carried this out was a grim testament to how many times he’d been shot over the years. He’d had plenty of experience at patching up bullet wounds, including his own. Too much experience.
By then the coffee was ready. He drank from the tin cup he always carried with him and ate a couple of strips of jerky. The simple breakfast made him feel almost human again.
He switched the saddle from Stormy to Goldy, and was trying to figure out the best place to start searching for Ben again when Dog growled. Frank saw the big cur staring into the woods as the hair ruffled up on his neck, and when Frank looked in the same direction, after a moment he spotted Ben standing there. With the long, shaggy hair and the crude coat of pelts he wore, Ben blended into the shadows so that it was hard to see him. But he was there, and Frank put a smile on his face as he said, “Come on out, Ben. We need to talk.”
Ben took a tentative step toward Frank and said, “Nan…cy?”
“You want me to take you to Nancy?”
“My…siiiiister.”
Frank kept smiling as he nodded. “That’s right. Nancy is your sister, and she loves you, Ben. She wants to see you. I’ll take you to her.”
If he could get Ben back to the Chamberlain mansion, then maybe Rockwell, Cobb, and those other hardcases who worked for Rutherford Chamberlain could keep any mobs from storming the place and killing him once word got out that he was there, as it was bound to do. That might buy Frank some time, until he could consult with Chamberlain and the law and figure out what needed to be done. Maybe Ben could be locked up somewhere, in a place where he couldn’t hurt anybody anymore.
But being locked up like that might be an even worse punishment than death for someone like Ben, Frank reflected. He still wasn’t sure that a bullet in the brain wouldn’t be the most merciful course.
He was damned if he was going to be judge, jury, and executioner, though, at least not without knowing the full story. He motioned for Ben to come closer and said, “Come on. We’ll go see Nancy. I’ll take you to her.”
Ben stepped out into the sunlight. Frank got his first really good look at the man who was now known as the Terror of the Redwoods.
It was a fitting name. Ben’s appearance was enough to strike terror into anyone’s heart. With the long, tangled hair that fell around his shoulders and the thick, bushy beard that reached to the center of his chest, plus the bulky coat, he looked more like an animal than a human being. He was so hairy that not much of his face was visible except for the deep-set, burning eyes and a few patches of pink, sick-looking bare flesh. After a moment, Frank realized that those pink patches were scars. From the looks of them, Ben has suffered some severe burns on his face, sometime in the past.
Ben was at least six and a half feet tall, maybe a little more. It was difficult to judge his weight because the
