CHAPTER 30
Brubaker uttered an emphatic, heartfelt curse as he lowered the field glasses from his eyes.
“That's Gentry, all right,” he told Bo, who had been watching the men through field glasses of his own. “The big fella with the shaggy gray hair is his second-in-command, Chet Ryan. The redheaded hombre is named Bouchard. He's been with Gentry for quite a while, too. The other three are just run-of-the-mill hard cases. I've probably got reward dodgers on 'em somewhere, but I can't recall their names.”
“I thought Gentry had more than a dozen men riding with him,” Bo said.
“He did. I reckon the others must've split off on their own up in Indian Territory.”
“I thought he was going to try to rescue those prisoners, too, and yet he's here in Texas. From the looks of the loads on those packhorses they've got with them, they've already been to the hideout and recovered the loot.”
“Don't ask me how some damn outlaw thinks,” Brubaker snapped. “But if I had to guess, I'd say he was plannin' on leavin' Cara and the other two to the hangman and takin' off for parts unknown with the money. Once Cara figures that out, I'd sleep with one eye open, if I was Gentry.”
“We can't give them enough time for that to happen,” Bo said. “They're taking Scratch with them. We have to go after them and help him.”
Brubaker nodded and said, “That's the plan. And if we can kill or capture the whole bunch while we're doin' it, that's even better.”
The deputy didn't fool Bo. He knew that if it came down to the nub, Brubaker would sacrifice Scratch's life in order to kill Hank Gentry and the other outlaws.
And Bo would let them escape if it meant saving Scratch's life, so he supposed things sort of evened out.
Had it not been for the glint of sunlight on metal as they topped the rise where they sat their horses now, they might not have noticed the men on the other side of the valley. But Bo's keen eyes had spotted that reflection, and he and Brubaker had reined in while they were still in the shadow of some live oaks. The trees were clinging to life with a few green leaves still on their branches, but the drought had caused most of the leaves to turn brown and drop off.
If the wildfire reached this spot, the dry, dying trees would go up like torches.
Bo and Brubaker didn't have time to worry about that. They had to figure out a way to get the drop on those outlaws and hope that the fire gave them time to do so.
That might be a forlorn hope. The huge clouds of smoke filled fully half the western sky now, and they towered so high they were starting to block the sun. It was like a biblical apocalypse, Bo thought as they put away the field glasses and started riding southwest, angling across the valley toward the ridge on the opposite side so that their course would intersect that of the outlaws.
They stuck to whatever cover they could, not wanting Gentry's men to spot them as they closed in. The smoke grew thicker, causing both Bo and Brubaker to cough from time to time. Bo kept a wary eye on the gray clouds, and after a while he said, “It looks like Gentry intends to skirt the southern edge of the fire, but I'm not sure they can get around it.”
“Yeah, I was thinkin' the same thing,” Brubaker said. “If they'd headed east, they would've come right to us. We could have set up an ambush.”
“They're abandoning Lowe and Elam, like you said,” Bo speculated. “Taking that loot and heading west for greener pastures.”
Brubaker snorted. “No honor among thieves, that's for damned sure,” he said. He let out a curse and pointed. “Look yonder.”
Bo looked to the south. Like a giant gray finger pointing to the heavens, another column of smoke had sprung up.
“This wind can carry sparks a long way,” he said. “Looks like another fire has broken out.”
“And it won't take long at all for that bigger one to join up with it,” Brubaker predicted. “They'll never get around the fires goin' that direction now. They're gonna have to turn back.” He reached for the butt of his Winchester and drew the rifle from the saddle boot. “And when they do, we're gonna be ready for them.”
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Hank Gentry and Cara LaChance were riding in front of the group, and they both slowed their horses as gray smoke began to climb into the sky ahead of them.
Scratch saw it, too, and knew what it meant. The wildfire had been spreading rapidly, and the main body of smoke now loomed over the valley where they rode. But this was a new fire, caused no doubt by sparks flying from the first conflagration and carried by the wind, and once the blazes linked up they would bar the way completely.
The gray-haired man called Ryan said, “We better turn around, Hank. Looks like we can't get through to the south and west anymore.”
Gentry and Cara had brought their mounts to a halt, causing the others to follow suit. The outlaw leader frowned at the smoke in the sky. Cara lifted a hand to point at the gray columns.
“Look,” she said. “Those are still two separate fires. We can go between them.”
Gentry's lieutenants cast apprehensive glances at each other. Ryan cleared his throat and said, “It's too risky. We'd have fires closing in from both sides.”
“But if we make it, no one will ever catch us,” Gentry said. He nodded as he came to a decision and heeled his horse into motion. “Come on.”
He rode toward the open area between the massive clouds of smoke to the right and the smaller column to the left. Cara didn't hesitate. She urged her horse forward right alongside his.
Scratch saw Ryan and Bouchard look at each other again and knew that Gentry's men were considering a mutiny. That might be his best bet for getting away.
But then Ryan shrugged and Bouchard nodded. They sent their horses after Gentry and Cara.
“Get movin', Gramps,” one of the other outlaws ordered Scratch in a hard voice. All three of them were behind the silver-haired Texan, so he knew he had no choice but to go along with what they said.
The riders headed more toward the southwest now, angling for that narrow gap and moving fast. It was a race against the flames and the wind, a race that Scratch figured they were destined to lose.
He wasn't going to let the fires claim his life. That was no way for a man to cross the divide. If it came down to it, he thought as the smoke stung his eyes and rasped in his nose and throat, he would whip out the Remingtons and open fire, gunning down as many of the outlaws as he could before they killed him. At least that way his death would accomplish something, and it would be quick.
They all had their eyes on the sky as the fire to the west advanced. The column of smoke in front of them was spreading to the east with the wind whipping it onward.
“This is crazy!” one of the owlhoots behind Scratch suddenly yelled. “We can't make it, Hank! We've got to turn and head for Weatherford!”
Gentry slowed his horse enough to twist in the saddle and look back at the others.
“We're not turning back!” he said. “We have to keep moving. That's our only chance!”
He was wrong, Scratch knew. They had already lost their chance. The wildfire was moving too fast. The two areas of smoke were almost touching ahead of them now.
The outlaw who had objected said again, “Hank, we can'tâ”
Gentry hauled back hard on the reins, wheeling his horse in a tight turn that left him facing the others, who also brought their mounts to a stop. Reaching down to his holster, Gentry pulled his gun and leveled it at the man who was complaining.
“You want to cut and run the other way, go ahead, Temple. But you'll go without your share of the loot, understand?”
“Damn it, Hankâ”
Gentry eared back the hammer of his gun. Even over the growing crackle of flames that was now audible, everybody heard the sinister metallic ratcheting sound of the revolver being cocked.
“It's up to you,” Gentry said in a low, menacing tone, “but make up your mind fast, because we're running out of time.”
Temple swallowed hard, then said, “All right! All right, blast it. Let's go. I don't want that fire to get me.”
Gentry lowered the hammer of his gun and slipped the weapon back in its holster.
“I'm glad you came to your senses. Let's ride!”
The delay, brief though it had been, had just made the situation worse, Scratch saw. The gap in the smoke had almost closed. As the riders reached the southern end of the valley and started up a long, fairly steep slope, the billowing clouds to the west surged even nearer. Scratch leaned forward in the saddle as a cough racked him.
The heavily loaded packhorses couldn't climb the rise very quickly. The group of riders strung out, with Gentry and Cara in front, followed by Ryan and Bouchard, then Scratch, then the three outlaws leading the packhorses bringing up the rear. As Scratch looked around, he realized this might be his last chance to make a break for it.
Up ahead, Gentry and Cara reached the top of the slope. Scratch saw them bring their horses to frantic, skidding stops. Then they whirled the mounts around and raced back toward the others.
A wall of flame exploded over the rise and shot after them like a thing alive.
“Move, move!” Gentry yelled as he waved an arm toward the east. His stubborn determination to make it through to the other side of the fire and use the flames to cut off any pursuit had vanished in the face of the inferno. They had to flee as if hell itself were after them.
Which it pretty much was.
The riders scattered, spreading out as they tried to outrace the blaze. Scratch glanced over his shoulder and saw that the flames were leaping six to eight feet in the air. The sound from them wasn't a menacing crackle now. It had turned into a roar of devastation.
Trees caught fire and turned into charred, skeletal remains in a matter of instants. Brush disappeared, swallowed up completely by the flames. The dead grass on the ground might as well have been kerosene, it burned so swiftly and violently.
In all his years of living, Scratch had never been this close to such a fire. He liked to think he was a pretty courageous hombre. He had been in plenty of tight spots and never panicked, not even facing Santa Anna's vast army decades ago at San Jacinto, when he was only a kid.
But just looking at the monster blaze coming after him roused a primitive terror inside him like none he had ever experienced before. Every instinct in his body screamed for him to run. He controlled that fear, but it required an iron will and a considerable effort.
“Head for the hideout!” Gentry screamed. “We'll be safe there!”
That wasn't a bad idea, Scratch thought. In a situation like this, being in a cave under the ground might be safer than being above. There was still the danger that the smoke might kill them as it rolled over the ridge where the hideout was located, but they had a better chance of surviving that than they did of outrunning the fire.
The problem was that it might be too late. The flames had advanced to the north, too, and the cave might be cut off from them. The blaze seemed to be closing in on them from both sides, as if it were intent on cupping them in fiery fingers.
The cave was a couple of miles away, and as they drew close enough to see the area of the ridge where it was located, Scratch saw that flames had already engulfed it. The others realized that as well and pulled their horses to a stop.
“We can't make it back there,” Bouchard said. “Now what do we do?”
“We'll make a run to the east,” Gentry said grimly. “That's all that's left.”
There was a good reason for his bleak tone. The two arms of the fire had started angling toward each other, threatening to close off the only remaining escape route. All that the dashing around they had done had accomplished was to put them in a position where the flames might soon encircle them.
Cara let out an inarticulate cry of frustration and fear.
“How can it do that?” she said. “It's like the wind's blowin' from all directions at once!”
There was some truth to that, Scratch thought. The wind was strong enough to start with, and the heat of the blaze just whipped it up more. Folks were mostly helpless in the face of a disaster like this. The fire went where it wanted to go and did what it wanted to do, and people had to just stay out of its way as best they could and pray that they survived.
He wondered where Bo and Brubaker were. They were supposed to rendezvous with him in this area, but surely the smoke had warned them of the danger and they'd had sense enough to stay away.
It was bad enough that he was probably going to die here, Scratch thought. He didn't want his old friend to meet the same fate.
CHAPTER 31
Bo grew more worried as he and Brubaker crossed the valley toward the fire. The column of smoke to the south was getting bigger all the time, and the original fire continued to rush eastward. Any sane man would turn his horse around and ride hell-bent-for-leather away from here.
Bo wasn't sure that Brubaker was completely sane anymore, though. The deputy had a look of intense determination on his face, as if he wouldn't let hell itself stand between him and the outlaws he intended to bring to justice.
And Scratch was still out there somewhere, too, threatened by the fiery onslaught. After all they had been through together, Bo wasn't just about to abandon his old friend without making every effort to find him.
He had tried to keep his eye on the distant riders, but the terrain and the ever-thickening smoke made that impossible. Bo didn't know where Scratch and the others were anymore. He and Brubaker were just riding blindly up and down the valley now, searching for any sign of them.
Brubaker hunched his shoulders and coughed several times before saying, “We ain't gonna be able to stand this much longer, Creel. I hate to say it, but the fire's probably caught up with 'em by now.”
“I don't believe that,” Bo said.
“You don't want to believe that. But it's true.”
“Maybe Scratch
is
dead,” Bo said, although it hurt him to admit that. “But I'm not going to believe it until I see it with my own eyes.”
“And I ain't turnin' back as long as there's still a chance I can corral Gentry and the LaChance gal and the others. So I reckon that means we keep goin'.”
Bo nodded. “We keep going,” he said.
They rode on warily, not wanting to run right into their quarry without any warning, although that was becoming more and more possible as the visibility worsened. Some instinct made Bo lift his head and look up at the top of the ridge. Flames danced among the trees there, giant flames that leaped and cavorted madly as the wind whipped them.
Hades had to look and feel something like this, he thought, and that howling wind might as well have been the devil's laughter.
Like an army charging into battle, once the flames topped the ridge they rushed down the slope. Their speed was incredible. As the heat beat against their faces, Bo and Brubaker were forced to swing their horses around and gallop away from the tongues of fire reaching out for them.
“What the hell?!” Brubaker yelled. “It's on all sides of us now! How did itâ”
His voice was lost in the huge roar of the firestorm.
Bo spotted something in front of them that might represent a faint hope of survival. A line of trees marked what might be the course of a creek. He reined his horse closer to Brubaker's and slapped the lawman's shoulder to get his attention. He pointed to the trees.
Brubaker nodded and kicked his horse into a faster run. Both men galloped toward the trees, which would provide more fuel for the fire when the flames reached them but might also signify a place of sanctuary, perilous though it might be.
As Bo came up to the trees, he saw how the earth dropped away on the other side of them, forming a deep gully. At the bottom of it flowed a creek no more than five feet wide. From the looks of the banks, in normal times the creek was bigger and deeper than it was now, but the drought had shrunk it. It had to be fed by springs in the surrounding hills, or it would have gone dry entirely by now.
Bo was swinging down from his saddle by the time his horse came to a stop. He yanked his Winchester from the saddle boot and swatted the animal on the rump with the barrel. The horse let out a startled cry and leaped forward.
“The horses can't get down there!” he yelled to Brubaker, who had also dismounted and was pulling his rifle from its sheath. “We have to let them go!”
Brubaker nodded. They might be consigning the animals to a fiery death, but there was nothing else they could do. Without the weight of their riders, the horses might be able to outrun the flames. That is, if they didn't panic and turn around so that they raced right into the inferno.
Either way, the horses were on their own now, and so were Bo and Brubaker.
They half-climbed, half-slid down the steep banks of the gully until their boots splashed into the water. The banks were mostly dirt and rock, which was good. Only a few gnarled bushes that had grown there stubbornly would burn.
Cinders began to rain down around the two men.
“Get in the water!” Bo shouted. It only came up to his knees, but it would provide some protection. He set his Winchester on the ground next to the creek and stretched out on his back, letting the water flow over and around him. Just downstream, Brubaker did likewise.
Bo took his hat off and soaked it in the creek, then draped it over his face, which he lifted out of the water so he could breathe. He was starting to gasp. He had heard about men dying from breathing smoke, and also because the fire burned up all the air. The wet hat trapped a little air right over his face, but he didn't know how long it would last.
The creek water was cold, and that helped because the heat of the flames was intense. Even with his ears underwater, Bo heard the inferno's roar. His eyes were squeezed closed, but red sparks shot across his vision anyway. He felt the world start to spin crazily around him and knew he was on the verge of passing out.
“So ... long ... pard,” he managed to whisper, and he prayed that wherever Scratch was, he heard that farewell.
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“Wait!” Cara screamed as they were about to make their desperate, doomed run. “Look! Up there!”
Scratch looked where she was pointing, and hope leaped in his chest. This was a different section of the ridge from the one where the gang's hideout had been located, but the dark blotch on the side of the slope could only be the mouth of another cave.
“Come on!” Gentry yelled. “Bring those packhorses!”
Just like an outlaw, Scratch thought with a grim chuckle. Even caught in the middle of a hellish nightmare like this, Gentry wanted to save the loot.
The nearness of the fire made the horses more skittish than ever. The riders had to fight to control them and send them in the direction of the onrushing flames. They managed to do it, though, and climbed slowly but steadily toward the cave.
It wasn't really much of a cave, Scratch saw as they came closer. It was more of an overhang with a sheltered area underneath it. But the whole area was rock, and that meant there was nothing there to burn.
Right now, that was mighty welcome.
The heat and smoke combined to make every breath searingly painful. Floating ashes filled the air and stung bare skin when they landed on it, as well as charring holes in clothing. If by some miracle he lived through this, Scratch thought as they crowded into the cavernlike space, he would never look at a campfire the same way again.
The area under the overhang was barely big enough for seven men, one woman, and ten horses. The panicky animals presented the biggest problem.
“Whatever you do, hang on to those packhorses!” Gentry ordered his men. “Let your saddle mounts go if you have to, but don't lose that loot!”
Scratch found himself pressing his back against the rock wall at the rear of the protected space. The burly, gray-haired outlaw named Ryan was to his left. To his right were Gentry and Cara. The leader of the gang looped one arm around the blonde while he used his other hand to hang on to the reins attached to their horses.
Smoke drifted through cracks in the rock around them and made it hard to breathe. Coughing, Cara said, “Hank, I ... I have to know something. What made you ... come out here ... to the hideout ... instead of tryin' to rescue me?”
“I was going to rescue you,” Gentry insisted. “You know I never would've let you hang, sweetheart. I planned to save Dayton and Jim, too, while I was at it, but you're the one I really care about.”
“But Brubaker was takin' me to Tyler! That's more than ... a hundred miles east of here. And you weren't followin' us ...”
“I sent men to the crossings along the Red River, once I realized that lawman was cutting across Indian Territory,” Gentry explained. “I had to find out where you were.”
“I know ... about that. We ran into some kid named Nesbit.”
“Early Nesbit,” Gentry agreed. “He was working for me, Cara. I planned to go back and check with all those spies and find out which way you'd gone.”
“That's what the kid said. But it doesn't make sense, Hank. Even if you'd doubled back after you got the loot, you wouldn't have had time ... to find us and get us away from that lawdog ... before we were locked up in Tyler!”
So she had figured it out, Scratch thought. Well, he wasn't surprised. Cara was loco, but she was smart, too, and especially cunning when it came to saving her own hide.
And she had to realize now that Hank Gentry hadn't had any intention of trying to rescue her and Lowe and Elam from the law. Oh, maybe at first that had been his plan, Scratch mused. Gentry might have even been sincere when he sent Early Nesbit and those other would-be owlhoots to keep an eye on the Red River crossings.
But sometime since then, he had decided that it just wasn't worth the time and trouble. He had come to the conclusion that it would be better to let the three prisoners stand trial and hang while he and the rest of the gang lit a shuck for their old hideout, recovered the loot stashed there, and then shook the dust of this part of the country off their boots. Scratch had no doubt that if the fire hadn't interfered with their plans, Gentry and the other outlaws would be riding west right now, headed for California.
A nervous tone had crept into Gentry's voice as he said, “Don't worry about any of that, Cara. We're together now, and that's all that matters. We were lucky enough to find this place, and as soon as the fire goes on past us, we'll get out of here. Folks around these parts will be too busy trying to recover from this disaster to worry about us. We'll be out of Texas before you know it.”
“Maybe,” Cara said, but Scratch thought she didn't sound convinced.
All the outlaws were coughing now. Ryan suggested, “Better get your bandannas out and soak them with water from the canteens. Then tie 'em around your face and breathe through 'em.”
That was a good idea, Scratch thought. He soaked his bandanna and tied it on, and that helped with the smoke. The others really looked like outlaws now with their faces masked, and he supposed he did, too.
This cavelike area was about fifty feet up the face of the ridge. Down below, the flames had reached the valley. The grass and the trees and the brush were burning furiously, sending even more smoke into the air. Scratch's lungs burned and ached. His hope now was that the wind would keep blowing as hard as it had been all day, because then the fire would move on quickly and burn itself out behind the leading edge of the flames, once all the dry vegetation was consumed.
Right now, though, it was still pretty bad out there. If Cara hadn't spotted this sanctuary, they would all be dead by now.
Gentry suddenly exclaimed, “Cara, what are youâ”
“Shut up, you lyin' son of a bitch!” she screamed.
Scratch's head jerked around. He looked over to see Cara holding a revolver in both hands and pointing it at Gentry. Gentry's holster was empty, which told Scratch that Cara had snatched the weapon from it.
He had been pretty sure that Gentry hadn't sweet-talked Cara out of her suspicion of him, and what was happening now confirmed that.
“Cara, stop it!” Gentry said. “Put that gun down, damn it.”
“No,” she said. “You double-crossed me, Hank. I never would have believed it of you, but you did. I kept tellin' Creel and Morton and Brubaker that you'd be comin' after me, and I knew with all my heart that you would. I knew you'd never let me hang.” Even with the heat from the fire making it almost unbearable under here, her voice was as cold as ice as she went on, “But you would have. You didn't care if they hanged me, as long as you got your money.”
She had moved away from him a little and had her back pressed tight against the rock so that nobody could get at her. Gentry held out a hand toward her and said, “Cara, you're not thinking straight. You know I love you. I'd never let any harm come to you.”
“If that was true, you wouldn't have made a beeline for that loot,” she snapped. “You'd have come after me, instead. You're a son of a bitch, Hank. I don't like it, but it's true.”
Gentry's lip abruptly curled in a sneer.
“You think I couldn't find a dozen more women like you, you little harlot? With my share of this loot, I could get a hundred women like you!”
“You're wrong, Hank,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper now. “You don't know how wrong you are, but you're about to learn.”