Bosworth’s men the day before. As Frank hunkered there beside him, he knew that he had to get some medical attention for Ben, and soon, if the young man was going to have a chance to pull through.
There had to be a logging camp somewhere close by. He could still hear the axes. The loggers would probably have a wagon, and with their help, Frank could load Ben into the vehicle and take him to the Chamberlain mansion. Chamberlain could send someone to town to fetch Dr. Connelly.
Frank straightened to his feet. He didn’t like it, but he was going to have to leave Ben here. He couldn’t just ride off and abandon him in the middle of the logging road, though. He fetched his rope from the saddle and went to work getting it looped around Ben’s massive chest, under the huge arms. Frank’s own injured arm made that difficult, and he was sweating by the time he finished, but he finally managed. Then he tied the other end of the rope to his saddle horn and took up Goldy’s reins.
“Come on, boy,” he urged. “You can haul that much weight without any problem.”
In a few more minutes, Frank had used Goldy to drag Ben off the road and into the thick undergrowth. He pulled some brush and fallen branches around and used them to conceal the unconscious behemoth as much as possible. Most likely, anybody passing by wouldn’t notice Ben, at least as long as he remained passed out.
Frank coiled his rope and then swung back up into the saddle. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Ben,” he said, even though he knew Ben couldn’t hear him. Then he set out to find those loggers.
They might try to argue with him when they found out they were going to help save the Terror’s life. He would persuade them to cooperate, though, Frank thought…at gunpoint, if necessary.
At least the rain had stopped, Jack Grimshaw thought as he led the other ten men toward the spot where they had last seen Frank Morgan the day before. It wasn’t much of a starting place, but it was all they had.
“If Morgan don’t show up back in Eureka with the Terror by three o’clock this afternoon, Chamberlain’s bounty is back on,” Radburn said as he rode alongside Grimshaw. “Only it doubles to twenty thousand. I heard some fellas talkin’ about it.”
“I know, I know.”
“If that happens, we’ll have a hundred men out here pokin’ through the woods, lookin’ for that monster so they can collect. We won’t be able to do anything without somebody noticin’, Jack.”
Grimshaw nodded. “I reckon in that case, Bosworth will want us to lay low for a while.”
“What about Morgan? He’ll still be huntin’ for the Terror, too.”
“Hell, I don’t know!” Grimshaw exploded, taking Radburn by surprise. The whole thing had been simple starting out. Bosworth wanted what Chamberlain had, and he was willing to pay tough men, men good with their guns, to take what he wanted. To force Chamberlain out. Then Bosworth had gotten cold feet for a while, because of what had happened early on, and now that he’d finally decided it was time to start moving against Chamberlain again, Frank Morgan had to come along and foul everything up.
It sure wasn’t like the old days, when you loaded up your guns and went out to fight, and the ones who lived took what they wanted and everybody else could go to hell. Grimshaw missed those days.
The way he understood it, Chamberlain had some big house in the woods, guarded by gunmen he had hired. If Grimshaw had been running things, he would have taken his men and gone there and shot it out, maybe burned the place to the ground. If Chamberlain survived, he would know better than to stay around here. He’d turn tail and run, and then Bosworth could move in and take over. Simple. No deception, no making things look like something they weren’t.
But those days were gone now, Grimshaw reflected with a sigh as he ignored the hurt look Radburn gave him. Businessmen like Bosworth didn’t really care whether or not they broke the law, but they wanted everything to
“Who put a burr under your saddle, Jack?” Radburn asked.
“Nobody,” Grimshaw replied. “Just modern times, that’s all.”
“Oh.” Clearly, Radburn didn’t understand. He wasn’t going to press the issue, though.
After a few minutes, an idea came to Grimshaw. He didn’t like it, but it made sense and it might help them find Morgan. Frank was looking for the Terror after all, and sooner or later he was bound to come across the place where the whole business started. Grimshaw intended to leave some of the men there to set up an ambush while the rest of them continued searching for Morgan.
“Where are we goin’ now?” Hooley asked as Grimshaw turned his horse back toward the east. “I thought we were headed over to the coast where we had that dustup yesterday.”
“I changed my mind,” Grimshaw said. He didn’t feel like explaining himself to anyone, least of all Hooley.
“Fine. No need to bite my head off.”
“Yeah,” one of the other men said to Hooley, “the Terror will do that, one of these days.”
“Like hell. I’m gonna blow that damn monster full o’ holes.”
“Bosworth wants him alive for the time being,” Grimshaw said.
“Well, once that twenty-grand bounty goes into effect, Bosworth ain’t gonna have much say in the matter, now is he?”
Grimshaw didn’t reply, but he had to admit to himself that Hooley was right. After today, everything would be different, and there wouldn’t be anything Bosworth could do to change that.
A short time later, they came to the long, narrow clearing next to the bluff where trees had toppled off to form a crazy jumble of logs at the bottom. Grimshaw was the only one who had been here before.
“What’s this place?” Radburn asked. “Is that a cabin over there at the base of the bluff?”
“Yeah,” Grimshaw said. “A fella used to live there, but it’s empty now.”
