However, in a vast expanse of timber like this, finding any landmarks was difficult. Even steering by the sun wasn’t easy once you were under the trees, because it wasn’t very visible. The branches diffused the sunlight, so that it might have come from any direction, and gave it a greenish tint.
Frank was pretty sure they were headed north, though. If they kept going in that direction, sooner or later they would reach the coastline, and he could follow that all the way to Humboldt Bay and Eureka if he had to. That wasn’t what he wanted to do, though. He wasn’t sure if he could persuade Ben to enter the town, and if he did, the sight of him would be liable to set off a riot. If Frank could get Ben to the Chamberlain mansion, he was counting on Nancy’s presence to keep him calm enough to deal with.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it, Ben?” Frank said. He wanted to keep talking to Ben, keep making contact with the man inside the monster.
Ben didn’t say anything, but he looked around at the trees for a moment, and Frank would have sworn he saw the giant nod and smile a shy little smile.
Definitely like a child, Frank thought.
They moved on, Frank talking about nothing in particular, and after a while they came to a rough road, one of the logging roads that Rutherford Chamberlain’s men had cut through this wilderness. Ben stopped short and acted like he didn’t want to venture out onto the road. Frank had to coax him onto it with promises that it would be all right, that nothing would hurt him. Finally, Ben began to trudge along beside Goldy.
They hadn’t gone very far, though, when Frank heard axes ringing against trees somewhere not far off. Ben heard it, too, and reacted violently. He drew back, shaking his head from side to side, and rumbled, “Baaaad! Baaaad!”
Frank reined in and quickly dismounted. He stepped toward Ben, holding out a hand in a calming gesture. “Take it easy, Ben,” he urged. “They won’t hurt you. If you leave those men alone, they won’t bother you. I won’t let them. I swear it.”
“Baaaad!” Ben rasped again. Frank could tell that he was about to bolt, and he knew that if Ben started running through the woods, he would be so caught up in his frenzy that he would attack anyone who crossed his path.
But as Ben took several stumbling steps backward, he suddenly swayed as if he couldn’t keep his balance. He tried to turn, but as he did so, he fell to one knee. A deep groan came from him. He tried to struggle up, but couldn’t do it, and Frank didn’t dare get too close because he might startle Ben and set him off on a rampage. Frank remembered how Ben had collapsed in the cave the night before. He never had found out why that happened.
Ben tilted his head back, groaned again, and then toppled over. He crashed to the ground on his side and didn’t move. Frank circled him warily. Dog came up and sniffed at him, equally wary.
“Looks like he’s passed out, Dog,” Frank said. Ben’s eyes were closed. For a second, Frank couldn’t even tell if he was still breathing. The bulky coat make it difficult to determine if his chest was rising and falling. As Frank leaned closer, though, he heard the raspy wheeze of air moving through Ben’s throat.
What the hell had happened to him? Frank risked reaching for the coat. It was held together with crude fasteners made of gut and bone, probably from the small animals that provided Ben with his food. Frank worked at them until he was able to spread the coat open.
His breath hissed between his teeth at what he saw. Under the coat, Ben wore a shirt that might have been a red-checked flannel at one time. It was so dirty that the original color was hard to determine.
But it wasn’t just dirt that stained the fabric. In several places, large black blotches stood out. Frank knew those were dried bloodstains, and as he touched them, he could tell that they weren’t too old. Ben had been wounded recently, and more than once. He might have matching wounds on his back where the bullets had gone through, but Frank would have been willing to bet that the giant was carrying around some lead inside him, too.
No wonder Ben wasn’t moving as fast now. He was badly injured. He must have been hit during that battle with Bosworth’s men the day before. As Frank hunkered there beside him, he knew that he had to get some medical attention for Ben, and soon, if the young man was going to have a chance to pull through.
There had to be a logging camp somewhere close by. He could still hear the axes. The loggers would probably have a wagon, and with their help, Frank could load Ben into the vehicle and take him to the Chamberlain mansion. Chamberlain could send someone to town to fetch Dr. Connelly.
Frank straightened to his feet. He didn’t like it, but he was going to have to leave Ben here. He couldn’t just ride off and abandon him in the middle of the logging road, though. He fetched his rope from the saddle and went to work getting it looped around Ben’s massive chest, under the huge arms. Frank’s own injured arm made that difficult, and he was sweating by the time he finished, but he finally managed. Then he tied the other end of the rope to his saddle horn and took up Goldy’s reins.
“Come on, boy,” he urged. “You can haul that much weight without any problem.”
In a few more minutes, Frank had used Goldy to drag Ben off the road and into the thick undergrowth. He pulled some brush and fallen branches around and used them to conceal the unconscious behemoth as much as possible. Most likely, anybody passing by wouldn’t notice Ben, at least as long as he remained passed out.
Frank coiled his rope and then swung back up into the saddle. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Ben,” he said, even though he knew Ben couldn’t hear him. Then he set out to find those loggers.
They might try to argue with him when they found out they were going to help save the Terror’s life. He would persuade them to cooperate, though, Frank thought…at gunpoint, if necessary.
At least the rain had stopped, Jack Grimshaw thought as he led the other ten men toward the spot where they had last seen Frank Morgan the day before. It wasn’t much of a starting place, but it was all they had.
“If Morgan don’t show up back in Eureka with the Terror by three o’clock this afternoon, Chamberlain’s bounty is back on,” Radburn said as he rode alongside Grimshaw. “Only it doubles to twenty thousand. I heard some fellas talkin’ about it.”
“I know, I know.”
“If that happens, we’ll have a hundred men out here pokin’ through the woods, lookin’ for that monster so they can collect. We won’t be able to do anything without somebody noticin’, Jack.”
Grimshaw nodded. “I reckon in that case, Bosworth will want us to lay low for a while.”
“What about Morgan? He’ll still be huntin’ for the Terror, too.”
“Hell, I don’t know!” Grimshaw exploded, taking Radburn by surprise. The whole thing had been simple starting out. Bosworth wanted what Chamberlain had, and he was willing to pay tough men, men good with their guns, to take what he wanted. To force Chamberlain out. Then Bosworth had gotten cold feet for a while, because of what had happened early on, and now that he’d finally decided it was time to start moving against Chamberlain again, Frank Morgan had to come along and foul everything up.
It sure wasn’t like the old days, when you loaded up your guns and went out to fight, and the ones who lived took what they wanted and everybody else could go to hell. Grimshaw missed those days.
The way he understood it, Chamberlain had some big house in the woods, guarded by gunmen he had hired. If Grimshaw had been running things, he would have taken his men and gone there and shot it out, maybe burned the place to the ground. If Chamberlain survived, he would know better than to stay around here. He’d turn tail and run, and then Bosworth could move in and take over. Simple. No deception, no making things look like something they weren’t.