“What are we doin’ here?”
“I think maybe the Terror comes here sometimes. If Morgan gets on the thing’s trail, then he may show up here, too.” They rode up to the cabin and reined to a halt. Grimshaw went on. “Hooley, you and Darrell and Whiteside are gonna stay here. Find some place to hide your horses, then hole up inside that cabin in case Morgan comes along. If he does, he won’t be expectin’ anybody to be in there. You can ambush him and be done with it. Just be sure you kill him.”
Hooley frowned as he looked at the cabin’s empty doorway. “I dunno,” he said. “Looks sort o’ snaky in there to me.”
“There aren’t any snakes, and even if there are, you can shoot ’em.”
“What about the rest of you?”
“We’re gonna keep on lookin’ for Morgan,” Grimshaw explained. He was starting to lose his patience.
“What if the Terror comes along?” Whiteside asked. “Do we kill it?”
“No, blast it, I told you Bosworth wants the damn thing alive for now, so it can take the blame for things like us wipin’ out that camp of Chamberlain’s yesterday. It’s Morgan he wants dead. That’s how we’re gonna proceed until Mr. Emmett Bosworth his own self gives us different orders.” Grimshaw jerked a thumb toward the cabin. “Now get in there.”
“All right, all right,” Hooley muttered. He swung down from his mount and drew his rifle from its saddle boot. “I’ll check the place out while Whiteside and Darrell hide the horses.”
Grimshaw nodded. He didn’t care how they went about it, just as long as they went ahead and got hidden in there so they could bushwhack Frank Morgan if he came along.
Hooley gave his reins to Darrell, then stalked into the cabin, pausing at the door to look around for a second first. He went out of sight, then a second later exclaimed, “What the hell!”
Grimshaw stiffened in the saddle. “Hooley!” he said. “What’s wrong?”
A woman’s scream came from inside the cabin. The men outside drew their guns. They didn’t have anything to worry about, though, because Hooley reappeared in the doorway a moment later, one arm looped around the neck of a pretty blond woman about twenty years old. She was well dressed and looked scared out of her wits.
“Look what I found!” Hooley crowed with a lecherous grin. “You didn’t tell me this ol’ cabin was furnished with its own pretty little gal, Grimshaw.”
“Son of a…” Grimshaw breathed. He recognized the young woman. He had seen her in Eureka the day before in Rutherford Chamberlain’s carriage. She was Chamberlain’s daughter.
And if she’d been hiding in that cabin for some reason, then she was bound to have heard them talking about how they worked for Emmett Bosworth—and how Bosworth wanted Frank Morgan dead.
As if things hadn’t been complicated enough already, Grimshaw thought bitterly.
Now he was going to have to kill a woman, too.
Chapter 25
Frank followed the sound of axes for several minutes until he came to a clearing where several trees had already been felled. Four men were working on another of the giant redwoods. Frank recognized them as the crew he had met a couple of days earlier, when he first became aware of the Terror. Karl Wilcox was their leader, Frank recalled, and the other three men were named Neville, Peterson, and Trotter.
The loggers heard the hoofbeats and stopped what they were doing, turning toward the road to see who was coming. Each man wore a revolver, Frank noted, and he saw several rifles and shotguns lying nearby on the big stumps. The air of tension about the men eased slightly as they recognized him.
“Mr. Morgan,” Wilcox said. “Lots of talk about you in town this morning, since you didn’t come back last night. Folks were wonderin’ if you’d run into the Terror.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Frank said as he reined Goldy to a stop. “He’s less than half a mile from here.”
The men stiffened again. “You found the damned thing?” Trotter asked.
“You killed it?” Neville added.
“No, he’s hurt, but he’s still alive,” Frank said. “That’s why I need your help.”
Wilcox frowned and said, “You keep callin’ it
Frank took a deep breath. People had to know the truth eventually. He might as well start revealing it now.
“The Terror’s not a monster. He’s a man. A man who’s done some awful things, but he’s still human.”
The four loggers stared at him in disbelief. Finally, Wilcox demanded, “Who is he? Who’d do the sort of things that the Terror’s done?”
“He’s Ben Chamberlain,” Frank said. “Rutherford Chamberlain’s son.”
That revelation made the men stare even more. Gus Trotter exclaimed, “Hell, that can’t be true! Old Man Chamberlain’s boy ran off to San Francisco a couple of years ago!”
Frank shook his head. “I know Chamberlain believes that, but it’s not true. Ben has been living out here in the woods since he left home. Something happened to him, though. His mind’s not right—”
Wilcox snorted. “I’ll say it ain’t right! The Terror is a mad-dog killer! It’s worse’n a rabid skunk!”
