LITMIR.BIZ

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dead men, with the addition of caps or narrow-brimmed hats. A couple wore holstered guns strapped high on their waists. After a moment, all four men slowly came forward into the clearing, gazing around at the corpses as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

      Finally, one of them lifted stunned eyes to Frank and demanded, “Mister, did you do this?”

      Frank shook his head. “Do you really think one man could do this?” he asked. “I heard the shots and the screams and rode up to see what was going on. I imagine the same thing brought you fellas here. Did you know these men?”

      “Yeah, we knew ’em,” replied a broad-shouldered man with a bushy mustache that drooped over his mouth. “We were all part of the same crew.”

      “Then I’m sorry you lost your friends. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

      “The Terror,” another man said.

      “Yeah,” a third man croaked. “The Terror of the Redwoods.”

      A frown creased Frank’s forehead. “What’s that?” he asked. “Some kind of animal?”

      “It’s not an animal, mister,” the first man said with a shake of his head. In an awed voice, he went on. “It’s a monster.”

      Frank’s frown deepened. Stories about various monsters that were supposed to live in the West, like the Sasquatch and the Wendigo, were common, but he had never really believed in them.

      He was about to say as much when he heard hoofbeats approaching the clearing. Those gunshots had drawn a lot of attention. As Frank turned toward the sound of horses, three men rode into the clearing.

      These newcomers were dressed very differently from the loggers. They wore range clothes and broad-brimmed Stetsons. They had gun belts strapped around their hips and thonged to their thighs, and they carried Winchesters as well. Frank recognized the sort of men they were: gun-throwers, hardcases…hombres much like himself.

      Frank Morgan was middle-aged, a powerfully built man of medium height. The crisp dark hair under his high-crowned hat was shot through with silver threads. His face was too rugged to be called handsome, but it was the sort of face a lot of women looked at twice. He wore a butternut shirt, faded denim trousers, and boots aged to a comfortable fit. A Colt .45 Peacemaker rode in a plain brown holster on his right hip. A bowie knife with a staghorn handle rested in a fringed sheath on his left hip. The fringe was the only thing about Frank Morgan that could be considered even remotely gaudy. He was a simple man with relatively simple needs.

      The most overwhelming of which was to stay alive, because there were plenty of people west of the Mississippi who wanted the man called The Drifter dead.

      Born and raised in Texas, Frank had returned to the Lone Star State after the Civil War as a young cowboy, figuring he would spend the rest of his life working on a ranch, only to discover that he possessed a natural talent for drawing a gun and firing it accurately faster than most men could blink. Even though he’d never intended to become a gunfighter, once his boots were set on that path, there was no getting off it. Lord knows he had tried from time to time.

      But there were simply too many men, young and old, who wanted to match their speed and prowess with a gun against his. He had been forced to defend himself, and with each would-be conqueror who fell before his gun, the legend of The Drifter grew. Folks spoke his name in the same breath as Smoke Jensen, John Wesley Hardin, Ben Thompson, Falcon MacCallister, Matt Bodine, and all the other famous shootists. He couldn’t shake the reputation that clung to him, and so he was forced to kill again and again.

      The years had rolled by, turned into decades. He had married, tried to settle down. It hadn’t worked. Violence had always reared its ugly head, often with tragic results. Now, thirty years after that young cowboy had returned to Texas from the war, he was alone, and he had vowed to himself that he would stay that way. Never again would he put anyone else’s life at risk by becoming close to them. He had lost Vivian and Dixie, he had lost his friends in the town of Buckskin…From here on out, The Drifter would just…drift.

      He faced the riders who had just entered the clearing. One of them gestured toward the bloody corpses and said, “By jingo! The Terror did this, didn’t it?”

      “That’s right, mister,” the man who seemed to be the spokesman for the loggers replied. “You fellas are huntin’ the damned thing, aren’t you?”

      “Damned right we are. We’re gonna collect that bounty.”

      The word “bounty” made Frank’s jaw clench again. More than once, someone had placed a bounty on his head, most recently an old enemy from back East. He didn’t like the idea of blood money, even when the fugitive in question deserved to face justice.

      “Who’s put out a bounty?” he asked.

      All seven of the men looked at him as if the question surprised them. “Haven’t you heard about it, mister?” one of the loggers asked.

      Frank shook his head. “I just rode into these parts today.”

      “Well, the Terror’s been around here for months now, scarin’ folks. When it started killin’ people, though, Mr. Chamberlain put out the word that there’d be a big reward for whoever kills it.”

      “Who’s Chamberlain?” The name was vaguely familiar to Frank, but he couldn’t place it.

      That question made the men stare at him, too. Finally, one of the loggers said, “Rutherford Chamberlain, the timber baron. He owns the lease on these woods for miles around. It’s his men who have been killed, so he said that he’d pay ten thousand dollars for the Terror’s head.”

      Frank knew now why he had recognized Chamberlain’s name. He had seen it on various documents his lawyers had shown him one time when he visited their offices in San Francisco. No one would think it to look at him, but Frank Morgan was one of the richest men in the country. He had inherited half of the far-flung business empire founded by his late wife, Vivian Browning. The Browning holdings included some logging interests. Frank had never cared about business, and money mattered to him only as long as he had enough to keep him in supplies, so he trusted his attorneys to take care of everything for him. It was possible that he owned stock in Chamberlain’s company. It was equally possible that he and Chamberlain were competitors. Frank didn’t know and didn’t care.

      One of the gunmen who had ridden into the clearing had been staring at Frank with even more interest than the others, and now he said, “By jingo, I know who you are, fella! You’re Frank Morgan!”

      The man’s habitual exclamation told Frank who he was, too. “And you’re Jingo Reed,” he said.

      Reed’s lips peeled back from prominent teeth in a grin. “You’ve heard of me, have you?”

      “Wait a minute,” one of the other hardcases said. “You mean that’s the hombre they call The Drifter?”

      “He sure is,” Reed said. “I saw you gun down the McClatchey brothers in Flagstaff a few years ago, Morgan. You were mighty fast…but I reckon I’m faster.”

      Frank sighed. He figured he knew what was coming, but he hoped he was wrong.

      “Hey, Jingo,” one of Reed’s companions said. “We need to get on the trail of that monster. I want that ten-grand reward.”

      “I do, too, but the varmint’ll wait.” Reed licked his lips. “I got somethin’ just as big right here.”

      “Don’t do it, Jingo,” Frank warned. “I’m not looking for any trouble with you.”

      Reed grinned. “That’s the way life is, Morgan…Trouble comes at you whether you’re lookin’ for it or not.”

      And with that, he clawed at the gun on his hip, his hand moving with blinding speed.

      Chapter 2

      Unfortunately for Jingo Reed, simply being fast didn’t put

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