Before mounting up, Frank walked all the way around the clearing, studying the ground. A thick carpet of redwood needles covered it, built up from centuries of shedding by the huge trees. There were also a lot of brittle cones lying around. Frank had hoped that whatever killed those loggers might have left some tracks, but that wasn’t the case. He didn’t see any prints among the needles.
That left Dog’s nose. “How about it, fella?” Frank asked the big cur. “You smell anything unusual?”
Dog trotted around the clearing. He paused in one spot, lifting his head and peering off into the woods.
“What is it, Dog?” Frank asked as he knelt next to the wolflike beast. “You smell some sort of critter?”
Frank studied the ground at this spot. Something might have kicked through the needles, but he couldn’t be sure about that. He whistled for Stormy and Goldy. The horses came over to him, and he swung up on Stormy.
“Trail, Dog!” Frank ordered.
Dog had a scent of some sort, all right, although he still wasn’t reacting like he would if his quarry was a bear or some other sort of wild animal, Frank thought. Dog took off through the woods, nose close to the ground. Frank followed, riding Stormy and leading Goldy.
Dog didn’t move so fast that he got out of Frank’s sight. He weaved through the trees, heading first one direction, then another, as if whoever—or whatever—he was tracking didn’t have any specific destination in mind but was just roaming aimlessly through the forest. That sounded like the behavior of an animal.
Maybe a grizzly bear had wandered over here into California from the Rockies, Frank thought. It wasn’t impossible. That didn’t explain why Dog hadn’t growled when he picked up the scent, but there might be some reason for that. Or maybe the predator was some sort of freakishly large wolf—but again, Dog would have reacted more violently to wolf scent.
Frank had told Karl Wilcox that he wasn’t going monster hunting, but that was exactly what he was doing, he realized. He didn’t believe the so-called Terror was something supernatural, but he wanted to find out who had killed those men anyway. Wholesale slaughter like that rubbed Frank the wrong way and always had.
Dog paused suddenly and lifted his head. He sniffed the air, and now a growl came from him. At the same time, Frank heard a crackling in the brush off to his right. He twisted in the saddle to gaze off into the perpetual twilight under the giant trees, but didn’t see anything moving.
Then something crashed to his left. Dog whirled in that direction and growled again.
Were there two of them, whatever they were? That would help explain how six men had died back there.
Frank felt his heart hammering in his chest. He wasn’t afraid; he had never run into anything that a well-placed bullet couldn’t take down, and he didn’t believe he was going to here. But there was something about the gloom, and the trees towering over him like giants, and the memory of blood and scattered body parts…
Somewhere not far away, a horse nickered, and another answered it. Frank took a deep breath. Riders in the woods were one thing; some bizarre, mysterious something that could rip six men limb from limb was another thing entirely.
But men could be mighty dangerous, too, he reminded himself. He had seen ample evidence of that in his life.
And as if to emphasize that, a gun suddenly cracked not far away on his right, and a bullet whined through the trees, much too close for comfort.
That wasn’t enough trouble, though. More shots blasted from the left in return, and in the blink of an eye slugs were sizzling through the brush and smacking into tree trunks all around Frank.
“Son of a—” He threw himself off Stormy, grabbed the reins of both horses, and led them hurriedly toward a deadfall he had spotted up ahead. Rather than being felled by loggers, the massive redwood had toppled over due to some natural cause, probably years earlier. These trees took a long time to rot, though, so the log was still in fairly good shape. It stood fifteen feet tall, too, so it would offer some protection if Frank and the horses could get behind it. He called, “Stay down, Dog!” to the big cur.
They reached the deadfall. That shielded them from the shots coming from one direction anyway. Frank heard a man shout, “Over here! I got it, I got it!”
The fool didn’t have anything. Frank understood now what was going on. Two separate groups of hunters looking for the Terror of the Redwoods—and that ten-thousand-dollar bounty—had mistaken each other for their quarry and opened fire. They would be lucky if several of them didn’t get killed.
That was one thing about offering a bounty like the one Rutherford Chamberlain had placed on the Terror—it brought out all the greedy, trigger-happy fools who would blaze away at anything in hopes of earning the money. Frank had tried to tell himself that what Chamberlain did was none of his business, but when folks started shooting at him, that made it his business.
He intended to have himself a talk with Rutherford Chamberlain. If he got out of these woods alive, that is.
The guns were still popping. Frank cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” He had to shout it twice more before the shooting began to die away.
“Hey,” a man yelled into the lull, “who’s that?”
“Hold your fire!” Frank shouted again. “You’re just shooting at each other!”
Horses crashed through the brush. Somebody else yelled, “Don’t shoot anymore!”
Frank breathed a little easier now. Both groups of hunters had ceased fire. Maybe they wouldn’t start shooting indiscriminately again before they found out what was going on.
Three riders came into view, carrying their rifles at the ready. Frank stepped out from behind the huge log and raised a hand.
“Was that you we were shooting at, mister?” one of them asked.
“Yeah, but you were also shooting at another bunch over there,” Frank replied, pointing with a thumb in the other direction.
That was where more shots abruptly sounded, and a man screamed at the top of his lungs in sheer terror.
Chapter 3
Frank wheeled in that direction. He had heard shrieks like that not long before, and six men had died. He jerked his Winchester from the saddle boot and broke into a run toward the sounds.
As thick as the woods were, he could move just as fast on foot as the other men could on horseback. He charged through the trees for several moments, then had to leap aside as a runaway horse suddenly loomed up right in front of him. The animal’s eyes were wide and rolling with fright. Foam drooled from its mouth. It wasn’t paying any attention to where it was going, and only Frank’s superb reflexes kept the horse from trampling him.
He heard more crashing in the brush, as if other horses were bolting through the woods in panic-stricken flight. The gunfire had stopped, but the screaming continued. Frank couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was a different voice now.
As if something had already stilled the first one.
Another shape appeared in the shadows before him, coming toward him at a fast rate of speed. Frank stopped and swung the rifle up, ready to fire if whatever it was attacked him. It wasn’t a monster, though, or even some sort of wild animal. It was a man, running for his life like Satan himself was after him. A crimson smear of blood covered his face, and he kept looking behind him as he plunged heedlessly through the forest.
Frank lowered the Winchester and called, “Hey! Stop! You’re all right!”
The man never slowed down. Frank stepped to the side so that the hombre wouldn’t barrel right into him, leaned the rifle against a tree trunk, and then reached out to grab the man as he went by. Frank wrapped his arms around him, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching under the butternut shirt as he jerked the fleeing man to a halt.