Sudden Fury. William W. Johnstone

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      “Be careful when you ride up. He’s always got men on guard, and with everything that’s going on in these parts, they’re probably pretty nervous. They might get trigger-happy.”

      Frank nodded. “Much obliged for the warning. I’ll keep it in mind.”

      The loggers made ready to leave for Eureka with their gruesome cargo, but they paused as Karl Wilcox said, “You know, Mr. Morgan, when we first got here, I thought for a second you had done that to our friends. Or rather, that dog of yours. I figured it was a wolf when I first saw it.”

      The other men nodded in agreement.

      “I’m glad you stopped to find out what was really going on before jumping to conclusions,” Frank said.

      Wilcox nodded. “So are we. If we’d gone after you or the dog, I reckon you would’ve shot all four of us.”

      That wasn’t likely, Frank thought, but he couldn’t rule it out entirely. Anybody who came at him with an ax was asking for trouble, no doubt about that.

      “Are you gonna look for the Terror?” Wilcox asked.

      “I’m not in the business of hunting monsters,” Frank said. Especially when he didn’t really believe in them in the first place, he added to himself.

      Of course, just because he didn’t believe a monster had killed those men, that didn’t mean he knew what had ripped them apart like that. That uncertainty was enough to make a trip through these shadow-haunted woods plenty nerve-racking, especially for a man traveling alone. It was a good thing the dangerous life he’d led had given him such icy nerves, he thought with a wry, inward grin.

      The wagon rolled off toward Eureka, loaded down with six corpses and four live, scared men. Dave Neville handled the reins. Wilcox, Peterson, and Trotter gripped their axes tightly and swiveled their heads from side to side, constantly on the lookout for danger.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ