Crammed into the angle between one of those lower branches and the trunk itself was the body of a man. It dangled there precariously, and as Frank watched, another huge drop of blood fell like crimson rain and splattered at the base of the tree.
He reckoned he’d found the missing Sutherland.
How in the world had the Terror gotten the body up there? At the tree’s base, the trunk was much too big for a man to wrap his arms and legs around it and shinny up, although it narrowed considerably by the area where the branches began growing. The trunk wasn’t smooth; the bark that covered it was rough and seamed with fissures. But it would take an incredible amount of strength to seek out handholds and footholds and scale the tree that way, at the same time carrying a man’s corpse.
One thing the Terror didn’t seem to lack for, Frank reminded himself, was strength. A creature that could rip a man’s arms off his body was capable of some prodigious feats.
Why climb up and hide the body in the tree, though? What purpose did that serve?
But again, this was the Terror, an irrational being if ever there was one. It didn’t do any good to questions its motives as you would those of a normal man. The creature seemed to operate on pure, destructive rage.
It hadn’t done a very good job of wedging the corpse into place either. As Frank watched, the body began to slip. There was nothing he could do to prevent it from falling, so he lifted the reins and backed Stormy away from the tree, getting well out of the way.
“Come on, Dog,” he said.
Goldy retreated as well. A few moments later, the body slipped free. It plummeted toward the earth, turning over once as it fell. It landed with a heavy thud at the base of the tree, in the same place where the blood drops had landed.
Frank edged Stormy forward. He dismounted and walked over to the dead man, carrying the Winchester with him. The man had landed facedown. Frank hooked a toe under his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The body moved limply. The fall seemed to have broken numerous bones. The man’s throat was torn open, and there were deep wounds on his chest as well. His face was relatively unmarked, though. Frank recognized him as one of the loggers who had come into Peter Lee’s place with Erickson and the others the night before.
So now there were only five men out here hunting for him. Still respectable odds, Frank mused, but nothing he hadn’t handled on many occasions in the past.
Frank left the body where it had fallen. There was nothing else he could do. Mounting up again, he called out to Dog, “Find that scent again, boy. Find the critter.”
Dog circled wide around the tree where the corpse lay, and then trotted back and forth until he picked up the scent again. Then he took off eagerly, still heading toward the coast.
Fifteen minutes later, Frank rode out into a clearing that ran along the top of a cliff. The open area was narrow, only fifty yards or so wide, but it ran for hundreds of yards, as far as Frank could see in both directions.
And directly in front of him, stretching out endlessly, was the gray, restless sea. He heard the never-ceasing waves pounding against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, a hundred feet below.
The clearing had a nice carpet of grass on it. Frank rode across it toward the sheer rock face where land ended and sea began. He had seen the Pacific before, on numerous occasions, but it never failed to impress him. Even though he was much more comfortable on land, he could see why some men talked about the ocean’s majesty. It was bleak today, but no less majestic.
Dog had trotted right over to the brink, and now stood there staring out at the ocean, the wind ruffling his thick coat. The wind blew harder here, without the trees to block it. Frank rode up to join Dog. He dismounted and peered over the cliff as he hung on to Stormy’s reins. He had no special fear of heights, but he believed in giving natural dangers the respect they deserved.
“Nothing down there but rocks,” Frank said. The constant action of the waves had rounded the large gray stones. Waves foamed and hissed around them. It was an impressive scene. Frank didn’t see what it had to do with his quarry, though. The Terror wasn’t down there, and there was no place for the thing to hide along this rugged cliff.
Had it come here, to stand and gaze out over the water, as Frank was doing now? He couldn’t help but wonder about that. Everything he had seen so far suggested that the Terror was nothing more than a mindless monster, whether it had started out as human or not.
But if Nancy was right and the Terror really was her brother, was it possible that a spark of humanity was still buried somewhere inside the creature? In the midst of all the brutality and killing, were there occasional moments of reflection as well?
Frank didn’t know, and considered it highly unlikely that he would ever find out. And as starkly beautiful as this scene was, he didn’t have time to stand around appreciating it.
“Where did it go, Dog? Find the scent. Hunt, Dog.”
The big cur started searching for the scent again. He seemed to have it in short order and began trotting along the edge of the cliff. Frank mounted up and followed. After a hundred yards or so, Dog turned and headed toward the trees again.
So the Terror had come out here, stood at the edge of the ocean for a time, and then gone back to its woodland home. Frank didn’t think the creature was all that far ahead of him now, and he hoped that the chase wouldn’t last much longer.
Frank had just pulled Stormy’s head around to start after Dog when flame suddenly lanced out from the shadows underneath the big trees. He heard the crack of a rifle, the whistle of a slug past his ear. Then more shots blasted from the trees, a whole volley of them, and as Frank braced himself for the horrible impact of bullets smashing into his body, he knew that out here at the edge of the world, with bushwhackers in front of him and the endless sea behind him, there was no cover, no place to fort up.
He was trapped.
Chapter 20
Frank kicked his feet free of the stirrups and threw himself out of the saddle as lead stormed around him. He felt a couple of bullets tug on his shirt, and heard the wind-rip of another as it passed close by his ear. Miraculously, though, he hit the ground without being wounded.
“Go!” he shouted at the horses. “Stormy! Goldy! Get out of here!”
Both of them took off at a gallop as they recognized the command Frank had given them. At the same time, Dog turned around and started to come back toward him.
“No, Dog!” he called. “Into the woods! Go!”
Dog hesitated, then whirled around and raced toward the trees, angling away from the gunfire as he stretched out in a dead run. Bullets kicked up dirt around his paws, but didn’t slow him down. He vanished into the thick shadows under the redwoods.
By this time, Frank was rolling desperately toward the edge of the cliff, toward a spot where the ground sloped slightly toward the brink. He had caught sight of it as he was diving off Stormy’s back, and he knew it represented the closest thing to any cover he was going to find out here. Bullets still sizzled through the air around him.
Pain suddenly lanced into his left arm, and he knew he was hit. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it, just as he had been ignoring the pain from those bruised ribs. He reached the place where the ground fell away toward the cliff, and rolled onto it. It was no more than ten feet by ten feet, just a slight depression, but it was enough to put some earth between him and the men trying to kill him.
Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go from here. He was pinned down about as securely as a man could be.
But he still had hold of his rifle and had quite a bit of ammunition in his pockets, so if those gunmen hidden under the trees decided to rush him, he could make them pay a price for killing him.