none of your business.”
Grimshaw lowered his voice so the others couldn’t hear. “Lookin’ for your brother maybe?”
Nancy gasped in surprise. “How did you know—”
“Never mind about that. Where’s your buggy?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t bring a buggy. I came out on horseback. My horse is hidden over there in the trees. I…I wanted to come up to the cabin on foot.”
“Didn’t want to spook him if he was here, eh?” Grimshaw nodded. “I understand.”
Nancy lifted a hand as if she wanted to reach out and touch his arm, but she drew it back in fear. “What do you know about what happened to him?”
“Like I told you, never mind about that. Anybody know you’re here?”
She hesitated, and he knew she was thinking about how she ought to answer that question. When she said, “I told the men who work for my father, Rockwell and Cobb and the others,” he knew she was lying. Nobody knew she was here.
“Well, we’ll see about that. Go over there and sit down on that log.” Grimshaw pointed. “Don’t budge until I get back, and then we’ll figure out what to do with you.”
By that time, he thought, he would have his orders concerning her—and he had a pretty good idea what they would be. She didn’t have to know that just yet, though.
Nancy sat down where he told her. Grimshaw said to the men, “Don’t forget what I told you,” and mounted up again. He rode off toward Eureka.
It took about an hour to reach the settlement, and Grimshaw didn’t feel a bit better when he got there than he had when he left the cabin. He went straight to the Eureka House and up the stairs to Bosworth’s suite. He pounded hard on the door of the sitting room. Bosworth jerked it open and demanded angrily, “What?” He looked surprised when he saw Grimshaw standing there in the corridor.
“We got to talk,” Grimshaw said. He didn’t wait for Bosworth to invite him in. He bulled into the room, forcing the timber baron to step back. Bosworth’s face flushed even darker.
Grimshaw smelled coffee and glanced around, spotting a breakfast tray sitting on one of the tables. Bosworth was still in his nightclothes. The bastard was just getting up, Grimshaw thought, when he and his men had been out on the trail for hours.
Bosworth closed the door and snapped, “What the hell is this? You’re supposed to be out looking for Morgan.”
“Forget about that,” Grimshaw said. “You’ve got more to worry about than Frank Morgan. While we were lookin’ for him this morning, we came across something else.”
“The Terror?”
Grimshaw shook his head. “Nancy Chamberlain.”
Bosworth looked confused for a second. “You mean Chamberlain’s daughter? What does she have to do with anything?”
“She was at that old cabin her brother used. The one where he was staying when—”
Bosworth lifted a hand to stop him. “I told you before, I don’t want to hear about that.”
“Well, you’ll want to hear about this even less. We didn’t know the girl was there when we rode up. She heard us talking about Morgan…and about you.”
Bosworth’s face hardened. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean she knows that we’re working for you. She knows that you sent us out to kill Frank Morgan. She knows that we’re the ones who attacked her pa’s logging camp yesterday morning, and that we were followin’ your orders. In other words, she knows the whole damn thing, and she can put your neck in a noose right along with ours.”
Bosworth just stared at him for a long moment, looking almost as horrified as if the Terror had just waltzed into his hotel room. Finally, he said, “How…how could everything go so wrong?”
“That’s why they call it bad luck, I reckon,” Grimshaw said with a shrug. “Question now is, what are we gonna do about it?”
“There’s only one thing we
Grimshaw swallowed the bitter, sour taste that welled up under his tongue at the death sentence for Nancy that Bosworth had handed out so casually. He had known the girl would have to die as soon as he saw her, but to hear Bosworth talk about it like that…
But then Bosworth said suddenly, “Wait a minute. We don’t need to kill her just yet.”
“What?”
“That would be wasting an opportunity.” Bosworth began to pace back and forth as he thought. “Fate has dropped Nancy Chamberlain in our laps. We’d be fools not to use her.”
Grimshaw shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Get the girl. Meet me at that crazy mansion of Chamberlain’s in the woods. He’s going to sign his timber lease over to me in exchange for the safe return of his daughter.”
“That’s loco!” Grimshaw burst out. “Maybe he’ll sign, sure, but then he’ll run to the law as soon as he’s got the girl back safe and sound. The papers won’t hold up in court, and we’ll all wind up stretchin’ rope when the girl gets through tellin’ her story.”
