Funny, he thought as his heart pounded heavily in his chest, maybe the time he had left to him, however long it might be, was still precious to him after all.
Frank heard yelling in the distance. In this thick forest, it was hard to judge how far away such sounds were. Couldn’t be too far, though, he told himself, because the thick vegetation tended to muffle noises and keep them from carrying as well.
“Stay with me, Dog!” he called as the big cur tried to bound ahead out of sight. Frank didn’t know what they were heading toward, but it couldn’t be anything good.
There were no shots. Frank didn’t know what that meant. He had a feeling it wasn’t a good sign. It was like the man who had gotten into trouble hadn’t even had time to pull his gun, only to scream in fear and pain.
Dog had been tracking the bushwhackers who had attacked that logging camp, and Frank had been following. He estimated their numbers at more than a dozen, so he didn’t plan on jumping them. He had more in mind following them, finding out who they were and, more importantly, who they worked for. He thought he had a pretty good idea, but he needed confirmation of that.
The sounds had died away quickly. Without them to guide him, Frank wasn’t sure if he was headed in the right direction or not. But then Dog dashed ahead, as if he had caught a familiar scent again, and Frank pushed Goldy hard to keep up.
A minute later, Dog stopped short, planting his feet and stiffening his legs as he growled. Frank reined to a halt behind him and pulled the Winchester from its sheath. Up ahead, lying next to the base of a tree, was a horse. The animal lay still. Blood still welled from a gaping wound in its neck.
“Back, Dog,” Frank said quietly. The big cur obeyed, backing up until he was next to Frank and Goldy. Frank sent the horse forward at a slow walk.
He circled to the left, around the tree and the body of the horse. The horse wore a saddle, so Frank had a feeling that its former rider was around here somewhere. A moment later, he saw he was right. A man lay on the ground on the far side of the tree, face down. He was as motionless as the horse. The back of his shirt was shredded and soaked with blood.
The man had lost so much blood, it had formed a pool around him on the ground. Frank knew he couldn’t still be alive. So for the next couple of minutes, instead of dismounting, Frank sat there, looking and listening intently, taking in everything that was going on in the woods around him.
That wasn’t much of anything. The forest was quiet and seemingly peaceful again. Frank knew better, though. He knew the fear and death that lurked in these trees. He had seen it with his own eyes. How many men had died in the past two days? Close to two dozen? He couldn’t even keep track anymore. The deaths blended into a succession of grisly images.
Finally, satisfied that whatever had done this was no longer nearby, Frank swung down from the saddle and hunkered on his heels next to the body. He held the rifle in one hand, took hold of the dead man’s shoulder with the other, and rolled the corpse onto its back. The man’s face was smeared with blood, but not a lot of it. The blood looked like it had come from a gash in the man’s forehead. Other than that, his face was unmarked.
It was a horrifying sight anyway, because it was frozen and twisted in lines of such fear that the man must have died feeling sheer terror all the way down to his soul. Frank’s jaw tightened as he studied the man’s face. He tried to put aside for the moment the fear and the blood and concentrate on what the man must have looked like in life.
After a moment, he came to the conclusion that he had never seen the dead man before.
He had seen the type plenty of times, though. The narrow, unshaven face, the weak mouth and chin, the small, deep-set eyes…This man had been a hired killer. Frank was sure of it. And it didn’t take much to figure out from there that he’d been a member of the gang of gun-wolves that had massacred the men back there at Chamberlain’s logging camp and then mutilated their bodies.
He wondered if Marshal Gene Price would recognize the gunman. Still hunkered beside the body, he began looking around for some broken branches he could use to fashion a travois using one of his blankets. He wasn’t going to load the gruesome corpse onto Goldy’s back, but would drag it back to Eureka on a makeshift sled instead. The blanket he used would be ruined, but Frank could afford to buy another.
Spotting some branches that might work, he straightened to his feet.
And just as he did, a rifle cracked. Frank heard the high-pitched whine of a bullet whistling past his ear.
Chapter 13
Instantly, more shots rang out. Slugs smacked into the tree, spraying bark and splinters into the air.
Frank was already moving, though, his superbly honed reflexes taking over at the first sign of danger. He called, “Dog! Cover!” and threw himself into a dive that carried him behind the tree. He heard bullets thudding into the redwood, but they had no chance of penetrating all the way through the massive trunk.
He glanced over and saw that Dog had darted behind another tree. It was smaller than the one where Frank had taken shelter, but big enough to shield the shaggy, wolflike creature from any harm. And Goldy, he was glad to see, had dashed off out of sight among the trees. The horse was smart, and a quick learner. He hadn’t traveled with Frank Morgan for very long without realizing what those loud, unpleasant noises meant and what he should do to avoid them.
Frank was surprised that neither Dog nor Goldy had scented the bushwhackers creeping up on them. He supposed that the smell of freshly spilled blood—and the stench of whatever had done this—might have masked any other scents, at least enough to keep the animals from noticing anything else unusual. As Frank lay there on the carpet of needles, he wondered who was shooting at him.
Of course, it was possible the riflemen were the same ones who had attacked the logging camp. But they had been headed the other direction, toward Eureka. They might have gotten behind him, but Frank considered it unlikely.
The only other explanation, though, was that there were two gangs of killers out here, as well as something that could claw a man to death or rip him apart with apparently equal ease.
The woods were getting a mite crowded, Frank thought with a grim smile as he cradled the Winchester’s smooth stock against his cheek and crawled to one side so that he could risk a glance around the trunk.
The sound of the shots told him that this was indeed a different group, or at least a smaller one. He estimated that five or six men had opened fire on him. The larger gang could have split up, but again, he couldn’t see any reason why they would have done that and why some of them would have circled around to get behind him. Checking their back trail maybe? He couldn’t rule it out.
The bushwhackers stopped firing. They must have realized that they could throw lead at that tree all day without doing any real damage. Frank looked over at Dog. The big cur was trained to respond to hand signals, too, as well as Frank’s voice. Frank made one of those signals now, a gesture that meant Hunt!
Staying on his belly, Dog crawled out from behind the tree where he had taken cover. Either the bushwhackers didn’t see him, or they didn’t care that he was on the move.
If it was the latter, they might have reason to regret their carelessness in a few minutes, Frank thought.
Dog disappeared into the brush. Frank waited. He knew how to be patient. The ability to remain still and silent had saved his life on numerous occasions.
He heard the crackle of broken branches, and knew that at least some of the bushwhackers were on the move. Dog wouldn’t make that much racket while he was hunting, not on his worst day.
The sounds continued, moving to Frank’s left now. He twisted in that direction and snugged the Winchester’s butt against his shoulder. His eyes narrowed as he searched for any sign of movement that would give him a target. Some of the brush swayed a little, and then he caught a glimpse of a rifle barrel.