“Twenty grand,” Treadwell said. “A big share of that bounty would go a long way toward making things all right again.”
“Yeah, your balls wouldn’t ache as much if you had a pocket full of dinero, would they?” Erickson asked with a grin.
“Let’s leave my balls outta this. And Sutherland’s ass and Roylston’s nose, too. Let’s face it, all of us have plenty of reasons for wantin’ that bastard Morgan dead, even without the bounty.”
Dawson said, “But twenty grand always helps.”
None of the six men could argue with that.
They had ridden out of Eureka about half an hour after Frank Morgan left town. Roylston, Jenkins, and Sutherland had all worked for Rutherford Chamberlain before the danger from the Terror had spooked them into quitting, so they knew the woods quite well. Erickson intended to put that knowledge to good use.
In fact, he had gotten Jenkins, the smartest of the trio, to draw a map of the timberland southwest of the settlement. There was a low range of hills to the east, the Pacific to the west, and the Eel River running into the ocean about twenty miles south of Eureka. Within those boundaries were some of the biggest trees in the world, and those were also the stomping grounds of the Terror. The three loggers knew every place the monster had struck. Chances are Morgan would be scouting around those same locations. And Erickson and his companions would be scouting for Morgan.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Erickson mused as they rode along. “Once we’ve taken care of Morgan, we’ll go ahead and start looking for the Terror. If we find it, we can kill it and hide the body somewhere. Then we’ll go back to town to wait until Old Man Chamberlain has given up on Morgan and posted that twenty-thousand-dollar bounty. Then we’ll go back to wherever we stashed the body, cut off the head, and take it back to collect.” He grinned at the others. “How’s that sound?”
“It sounds like you ain’t hurtin’ for confidence,” Treadwell said with a dour look. “Hell, it ain’t the middle of the afternoon yet. Plenty of time to hunt down and kill Morgan and the Terror.”
Erickson frowned. “I’m just sayin’, if it works out that way, that’s how we’ll do it.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dawson said. “I’d just as soon get this over with as quick as we can.” He looked at the trees that had started to close in around them. “I don’t much like it out here.”
Neither did Erickson, but he wasn’t going to let the others see that. He kept the confident look on his face as he rode forward.
The wind picked up a short time later. They really couldn’t feel it much where they were, but they could hear it sighing through the branches far overhead, and see the trees swaying a little, too, if they looked up. Dawson asked, “Is it gonna storm?”
“No, those weren’t storm clouds comin’ in from the ocean,” Roylston said. “It might drizzle a little, that’s all. You’d hardly feel it under here.”
“I wouldn’t want to get caught in these trees during a thunderstorm. Too much lightnin’.”
“Hell, you’d be safe.” Roylston waved a hand at the redwoods. “Everything around here is a whole heap taller’n a man. What you have to worry about with lightning is it starting a fire, and we’ve had enough rain lately so that’s not a real threat right now.”
Erickson took the map Jenkins had drawn out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it to study it. He motioned Jenkins up alongside him, conferred with the former logger for a moment, then said, “How about we all shut up for a while? We’re gettin’ to an area where the Terror’s been spotted several times. In fact, the damn thing killed a man not far from here. We don’t want it sneakin’ up on us while we’re busy runnin’ our mouths, do we?”
The men shook their heads as Erickson looked at them one by one. He had just gotten that response from Sutherland when something came flashing out from behind a tree and jerked the man right out of the saddle.
Chapter 19
Frank heard the gunshots from somewhere behind him and reined Stormy to a halt. He hipped around in the saddle to peer through the trees, but of course, he couldn’t see more than about fifty yards in any direction because of all the thick redwood trunks.
Frantic shouts accompanied the gunfire. Those sounds were all too familiar to Frank.
They were the sounds of the Terror going about its bloody business.
Dog had turned around, too, and pricked his ears forward. The hair on the back of his neck was ruffled up, and a low growl came from him.
“Yeah, Dog, that sounds like what we’re looking for,” Frank said. “Go get it!”
Dog took off like a shot. Frank rode after him, leading Goldy and trusting Stormy to find the fastest route through the woods. The shots and the yelling grew louder. It sounded like the men were coming toward Frank at the same time he was headed toward them.
Up ahead somewhere in the brush, Dog suddenly snapped and snarled and then yelped wildly. “Dog!” Frank bellowed. He jerked the Winchester from its saddle sheath and worked the rifle’s lever.
At that same instant, something came crashing through the undergrowth and burst out right in front of Frank. One second it wasn’t there, the next second it was. He didn’t have time to even try to bring Stormy to a halt. The big gray collided with whatever the thing was. Frank caught only a glimpse of it before Stormy went down and he was sent sailing through the air. In that brief second, though, he was aware of its massive size, its shaggy pelt, and its blinding speed as it ran upright with something slung over one shoulder.
Frank thought that something was a man.
Then he crashed into a tree trunk, bounced off, and went rolling across the ground. The impact stunned him, and although a part of his brain cried out for him to get up and find the Winchester he had just dropped, his muscles refused to respond. All he could do was lie there with the world spinning crazily around him.
He was at the mercy of the Terror.
There was no doubt in Frank’s mind that was what he had just seen. The huge, hairy beast was what had been killing men all through these woods for months. This encounter contained something new, though. The Terror had had a prisoner. Maybe that was keeping it occupied. Maybe that was why it hadn’t fallen on Frank already and ripped him limb from limb.
Frank suddenly felt coarse hair against his face. He jerked away from it, some deep, atavistic instinct finally forcing his muscles to work again.
Then relief washed through him as he saw Dog’s face only inches away from his own. The big cur peered intently at him with a mixture of curiosity and concern.
Frank’s muscles were starting to work again after the shock of slamming into the tree like that. He reached up, looped an arm over Dog’s sturdy back, and braced himself that way as he pulled himself into a sitting position. Dog licked his face happily. Frank recalled the animal’s yelp a few minutes earlier, and looked him over for any sign of an injury. He didn’t see any blood. Maybe Dog had just been scared. Such a thing was mighty rare, but not impossible.
Frank had felt some fear of his own during that instant when he’d gotten a close-up look at the Terror.
Unfortunately, everything had happened so fast that he still didn’t know if it was man or beast. The shaggy pelt said animal, but he had never seen an animal move that fast on two legs.
Whatever it was, it was gone now. He didn’t see it anywhere.
He was about to have other company, though. Horses pounded and crashed through the woods somewhere nearby, and a man shouted, “Sutherland! Damn it, Sutherland, can you hear me?”
Sutherland—if that was the name of the man the Terror had been carrying—couldn’t hear him. Sutherland was either dead or a long way off by now, the way the Terror had been moving.