“How do you know?” Chamberlain demanded. “You’re nothing but one of Bosworth’s cheap gunmen!”
“Not so cheap,” Grimshaw muttered. He went on. “I rode up to that cabin one day, not long after I’d come to these parts to work for Mr. Bosworth. I had another fella with me, named Macklin.”
Bosworth said, “There’s no need to go into all this.”
Grimshaw tightened his grip on Nancy’s arm. “I reckon there is,” he said. “I know you pay my wages, Mr. Bosworth, but I think these two deserve to know the truth after all this time.”
And it wouldn’t matter anyway, Grimshaw thought, because in just a little while, Chamberlain and Nancy would both be dead.
Nancy turned toward him and pleaded, “Tell me. I…I was afraid the Terror was Ben, but I could never be sure…”
“He’s your brother, all right, miss. Macklin and I found him there at that cabin where he’d been stayin’. We were out scoutin’ around, lookin’ for some way to cause trouble for your pa. When we met your brother and realized who he was, Macklin got the idea we ought to scare him a little. He thought that might convince your pa to sell out to our boss here.” Grimshaw shook his head. “But it didn’t work out that way. Things got out of hand. Macklin used to do a little rustling, so he had a runnin’ iron in his saddlebags. He heated it up and used it to singe some of your brother’s beard off and burn his face.”
Nancy let out a sob as she listened to the story. Chamberlain stood there stony-faced.
“Before that, your brother wouldn’t fight no matter what we did to prod him,” Grimshaw went on. “Even after Macklin burned him, he just wanted us to leave him alone. But then Macklin got into a trunk your brother had in the cabin and started tearin’ up the books he found there…and that set your brother off good and proper. He went wild. He jumped Macklin and, well, started tearin’ him apart. I took a shot at him and hit him in the head. I thought I’d killed him. I was so shook up, I lit out of there and didn’t even try to take Macklin’s body with me. I didn’t tell anybody what had happened except Mr. Bosworth, and he said we ought to just lie low for a while, see if anybody found out about it. I went back a week later. Macklin’s body was still there, what was left of it…but Ben Chamberlain was gone. I hadn’t killed him after all.”
“My God, man,” Chamberlain breathed. “A head wound like that can do things to a man’s brain…”
Grimshaw nodded. “I reckon it did, sure enough. Because after that, there wasn’t any Ben Chamberlain anymore. There was just the Terror.” He sighed. “I gathered up all of Macklin I could find and took the remains and buried ’em. Hadn’t been back to the place until today.”
“All right,” Bosworth said harshly. “You’ve told your little story and gotten it all off your chest. Now stay out of it while Chamberlain and I finish our deal.” He pointed to the document on the desk again. “Sign it, Chamberlain, and we’ll get out of here and leave you and your daughter alone.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Nancy warned. “We know too much. He’ll never let us live now.”
Chamberlain squared his shoulders. “I’m well aware of that, my dear. I don’t intend to let this man win.” He faced Bosworth. “Go to hell, Emmett. I won’t sign your paper, now or ever.”
“Well, that’s a damned shame,” Bosworth said as he took a pistol from under his coat. “I guess I’ll just have to forge your signature and take my chances in court, after you and your daughter have met with an unfortunate accident…”
Outside, with no warning, guns blasted. Men began to yell as more and more shots rang out. Grimshaw turned instinctively toward the window.
That was when Nancy twisted in his grasp and lunged at him, clawing his face with both hands, trying to get her fingernails in his eyes. Grimshaw let out a curse and swatted her away. His gun came swiftly and smoothly from its holster, swung toward Nancy.
Behind him, Frank Morgan called, “Jack!”
So this is how it ends, Grimshaw thought as he started to turn. After all these years, and not even a proper test of speed between the two of them. He was already pulling the trigger as he turned, smoke jetting from the barrel of his gun, but the crashes of Morgan’s shots blended with his own, and he felt the hammer blows against his body driving him back. He stumbled against something, fell over it as a great, searing heat washed through his body, and as he lay there, he realized that he had collapsed on Rutherford Chamberlain’s desk. The timber lease document lay beside him, with crimson splashes of blood on it now. A bitter laugh welled up in Grimshaw’s throat. All this for a damned piece of paper. All the death and fear and misery, for a piece of paper that represented trees that men would cut down and use to make more paper that didn’t really mean anything…
“Frank,” Grimshaw croaked, “I wish…we could’ve…gone out fightin’…side by side…”
No one heard the words, or the rattle of breath as Grimshaw died.
The room was still full of gunfire.
Chapter 27
By the time Frank, Ben, and the loggers reached the mansion, their group was even larger because they had run into another half dozen of Chamberlain’s men along the way. It was a pretty formidable, well-armed bunch, in fact, even if the loggers weren’t professional fighting men. They were plenty tough anyway, and when they found out what Bosworth was up to, they were more than willing to put aside their distrust of Ben, who was on his last legs from the bullet wounds he had suffered over the past couple of days. Frank saw the haggard look on Ben’s face, the dimming fire in the giant’s eyes, and knew that he wouldn’t have to worry about figuring out what to do about Ben.
Fate was going to do that for him.
With Frank leading them like a general, the loggers had spread out, slipped up on the mansion, and launched their attack when Frank gave the signal. As the guns began to roar in front of the mansion, Frank and Ben headed for the back.
They had just gotten inside when Ben groaned and collapsed. Frank managed to prop him up so that he was sitting with his back against a wall and whispered, “Stay here, Ben. I’ll go find Nancy and bring her to you.”
“Nan…cy,” Ben said, the name barely audible now because his voice was so weak.
Frank figured Bosworth would be in the library with Chamberlain and Nancy, and maybe Jack Grimshaw. Sure enough, that was the way it had played out. Frank had fired to protect both himself and Nancy, and now Grimshaw was down, lying motionless in death on the big desk.
Bosworth was still alive, though, the pistol in his hand spouting fire as he swept it across the room. Chamberlain grunted as one of the flying slugs winged him, but he managed to grab Nancy and drag her to the floor, out of the line of fire. Frank snapped a shot at Bosworth, but the timber baron was already moving. With a huge crash of glass, he flung himself through the window behind the desk and toppled out of sight.
Frank was about to go after him when another shot blasted and a bullet whipped past his ear. Still in the doorway of the library, he twisted to look down the corridor, and saw a couple of Grimshaw’s men charging toward him, guns blazing.
Before he could return their fire, Ben loomed up behind them, roaring defiantly. He grabbed them and jerked them back. The men screamed and twisted around in his grip so that they were able to shove their guns against his body. They fired again and again, the close-range impacts forcing Ben to stumble backward as more slugs ripped through his insides. He found the strength to slam the heads of the two gunmen together, though, again and again until those heads were so broken and misshapen they didn’t look human. Their guns were long since emptied. Ben shook the corpses one more time, then let go of them, dropping them to the fancy redwood parquet floor that would never be the same after so much blood had been spilled on it.