Gentry looked around at the other outlaws and said, “Somebody take that gun away from her.”
Nobody made a move toward Cara.
“I don't hold anything against these other boys,” she said. “They were just doin' what you told 'em to. But you, Hank, you were supposed to come for me, and you didn't. You let me down, and now you're gonna pay for it.”
Gentry laughed wildly.
“You can't fight all of us!” he said.
“I don't have to.” Cara tossed her head defiantly, like Scratch had seen her do a dozen times before. “I'm the boss of this gang now. Ain't that right, boys?”
Bouchard said, “All we want is our share, Cara.”
“You'll get it,” she promised.
“You bastard!” Gentry screamed at Bouchard. He looked over at Ryan. “Chet, don't let them get away with this!”
“I'm startin' to wonder if we might not be better off workin' for Cara,” Ryan said. “She planned most of our jobs anyway, didn't she, Hank?”
“You ... you ...” Gentry looked and sounded flabbergasted, as well as outraged.
Scratch just watched. Whatever happened now, it was out of his hands.
Cara jabbed the gun toward Gentry.
“Get out of here,” she ordered. “I can't stand the sight of you anymore!”
“But there's nowhere to go!” Gentry protested. “The whole world's on fire out there!”
“That's your problem. Back away from me, Hank. I swear, if you don't I'll shoot you dead where you stand.”
Gentry looked around desperately and tried one last appeal.
“Fellas, I'll give up my share. You can split it among you, just stop this crazy bitch.”
Bouchard smiled thinly and said, “I think you're giving up your share anyway, Hank.”
Gentry backed toward the edge of the area under the overhang. He stared at the blonde and said, “Cara, you can't do this. Not after all we've meant to each other. Please.”
Cara took a deep breath and said, “Oh, hell.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Gentry's mouth. He believed that he had won her over at last, Scratch thought.
He found out a second later just how wrong he was as Cara lowered the barrel of the gun a little, squeezed the trigger, and blew his right knee apart.
CHAPTER 32
The blast was deafening in the close confines under the overhang. Gentry screamed in agony as his wounded leg folded up underneath him. Blood welled like a crimson river from the shattered knee. Somehow he pushed himself to his feet and said, “Cara, pleaseâ”
The gun in her hands roared again as she blew his other leg out from under him.
Bone and blood sprayed in the air as the bullet demolished his left knee. Screeching from the inhuman pain, Gentry went over backward. The slope was steep enough that he started to roll, out of control as he bounced and plunged.
He landed in the middle of a stretch of blazing brush.
Scratch wouldn't have thought it was possible, but Gentry's screams grew even louder as the flames engulfed him. Like a tortured soul trying to escape from the pits of hell, Gentry used his burning arms to pull himself forward since he couldn't stand up on his destroyed legs. His clothing was ablaze, and his hair was on fire. He kept screaming.
Ryan muttered a curse. Holding his rifle, he stepped forward and asked, “Cara, you mind?”
Cara had moved up to the edge so she had a better view of her former lover's torment. She lowered the gun as she stared raptly at Gentry.
“He had it comin',” Scratch heard her say quietly. “He let me down, and he had it comin'. But I reckon he's been punished enough.”
She looked over at Ryan and gave him a curt nod.
The burly man lifted the rifle to his shoulder, took a second to make sure of his aim, and then fired. Gentry's head snapped back as the slug drilled cleanly through his brain, putting him out of his misery.
Cara turned to face the other men, obviously putting Gentry behind her for good.
“Anybody have any objection to me runnin' things from now on?” she asked. They could all hear the defiant challenge in her voice.
“We never did have any objection,” Bouchard said. “As far as we were concerned, you and Hank were always both in charge of this bunch.”
“All right,” she said. “We'll wait until the fire dies down, and then we'll head west.”
Mutters of agreement came from the men.
“Scratch,” Cara went on, looking at the silver-haired Texan, “you're welcome to ride with us if you want to.” She glanced around at the others, again challenging them to disagree with her. “Ain't that right?”
Nobody spoke up.
The last thing Scratch wanted to do was join up with an outlaw gang, especially one ramrodded by a beautiful but pure-dee loco blonde.
He had a hunch that if he said that, though, she'd just shoot him, too.
So instead he grinned and said, “I'm much obliged for the invite, Cara.”
She smiled at him, and when she did, she appeared as sweet and innocent as ever.
Until you looked past her down the slope and saw the smoking husk of Hank Gentry.
For now, Scratch thought, he had to play along with her. But Bo might be out there somewhere, and Scratch intended to find out what had happened to him.
Until then he would do whatever he needed to in order to stay alive.
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Bo kept slipping in and out of consciousness, aware only of the heat, the cold water and mud in which he lay, and the shortness of breath that made his lungs ache. Finally it was water going up his nose that brought him back to sputtering, flailing awareness.
He saw a streak of blue overhead, and it seemed to take him an hour to figure out what he was looking at.
The smoke was thinning. That was a strip of blue sky up there above him.
That meant ... he struggled to hold the thought ... that meant the fire had moved on.
And he was alive.
Coughing and hacking, he rolled onto his side. His hat had started to float away on the creek. Without thinking too much about what he was doing, he reached out to snag it. Then he lifted his head and looked around.
Jake Brubaker was still lying in the little stream, too. At first Bo thought the deputy was dead, but then he saw Brubaker's chest rising and falling and knew that he had just passed out, the same way Bo had.
He pulled himself through the mud until he was lying next to Brubaker. Putting a hand behind the lawman's head, he dipped up some water in his hat and splashed it in Brubaker's face.
Brubaker thrashed and shook his head violently. He shoved himself up on his elbows and looked around like he was searching for someone to fight.
“Take it easy, Forty-two,” Bo told him. “You're all right. We both made it through the fire.”
“Wha ... what ... Creel? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” Bo said. “We're both alive. The smoke's thinning out overhead. The fire's moved on.”
With Bo's help, Brubaker managed to sit up. The clothes of both men were soaked and covered with mud.
Brubaker declared, “We look like a couple of hogs in a wallow.”
A grin stretched across Bo's muddy face.
“At least we're not a couple of dead hogs,” he said.
“Yeah.” Brubaker hunched over and coughed. “Feels like my insides are blistered.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” Bo said. His voice sounded odd to his ears because it was so hoarse. “We both breathed too much smoke. It'll be a while before we get over it.”
“That won't keep me from tryin' to find those varmints we're after.” Brubaker shook his head. “We should've just taken those prisoners to Tyler and been done with it.”
In hindsight, that was probably right, Bo thought. But Cara's approach to Scratch had given them the chance to recover that missing loot, so he had thought it was a gamble worth taking.
Not all bets paid off, though.
And this one might have cost Scratch's life.
That thought made Bo's face settle into grim lines. As he climbed to his feet, he said, “We need to see if we can find Scratch and the others.”
“The fire's bound to have gotten them,” Brubaker said with a shake of his head. “Nothin' could've lived through that inferno.”
“We did,” Bo pointed out.
“That was just a stroke of blind luck. If we hadn't found this creek, we'd be dead now.”
“Maybe they had some luck, too,” Bo said. “We have to find out.”
“I don't know how we're gonna do that without horses.” Brubaker sighed. “But I guess the first thing to do is climb out of this gully, ain't it?”
Bo helped Brubaker to his feet. Both men clapped their dripping hats on their heads and picked up their rifles. They kept sliding back down as they tried to make their way up the bank, but eventually they reached the top and crawled out of the gully that had saved their lives.
They found themselves looking at a landscape out of a nightmare.
Except for the patches of blue in the sky, all the color appeared to have been blasted out of the world. There was nothing but gray and black as far as the eye could see. Ashes covered the ground. Gaunt black skeletons of trees jutted up here and there. The brush was just a tangle of charred limbs, and in some places it had burned all the way to the ground, leaving sharp little stobs sticking up.
“Good Lord,” Brubaker muttered. “I ain't never seen anything like this before.”
“I have,” Bo said. “Scratch and I rode through the Yellowstone country a while back after they'd had a big fire like this one that was probably started by lightning. It looked about like this. Miles and miles of nothing but destruction.” Bo summoned up a smile. “But it grew back. The next time we were there, you couldn't even see any signs of the fire unless you looked for them, and even then it was hard to find them. New growth had come along and repaired all the damage. Nature's like that.”
“Maybe so. But this sure looks terrible right now.”
“I can't argue with that,” Bo said. “We'll have to watch where we're walking. There are still places that will be pretty hot. Might burn right through our boots.”
Brubaker nodded and said, “I reckon we should head for the ridge. That was the last place we saw Morton and that bunch.”
Bo agreed with that decision. They started trudging toward the ridge, which was about half a mile away. With every step, fine gray ashes puffed up around their feet and swirled in the air.
They hadn't gone very far when Bo stopped short. He put a hand on the deputy's arm and said, “Listen. Do you hear that?”
Brubaker lifted his head and listened with a look of intense concentration on his face. After a few seconds, his eyes widened in surprise.
“That sounds like horses!” he said.
Bo nodded and said, “Those are hoofbeats, all right. And I don't think anybody else is likely to be moving around out here except the folks we're looking for.”
“How in the world did they survive?” Brubaker asked. “And with their horses, too.”
“I don't know, but maybe we can find out. We'd better hunt some cover until we're sure what we're dealing with.”
Brubaker jerked his head in a nod.
“Damn right.” More ashes swirled around his legs as he hurried toward some rocks. “Come on.”
The rocks weren't big enough to provide much cover, but they were better than nothing and certainly better than the burned trees and brush, which wouldn't conceal much of anything. Bo and Brubaker knelt behind the largest of the boulders and waited as the steady thudding of hoofbeats came closer.
Bo's breath caught in his tortured throat as the first rider came into view around a little knob. He recognized Cara LaChance instantly. She rode with a rifle held across the saddle in front of her, and she had gotten hold of a holstered revolver and gun belt, which she had strapped around her waist.
The next rider was the slender, redheaded, foxlike man Brubaker had called Bouchard. Bo's heart sank. He had hoped to see Scratch following Cara.
Then his spirits leaped as the third rider appeared. The fancy duds and the cream-colored Stetson were grimy from smoke and ashes, but there was no mistaking Scratch. As far as Bo could tell, his old friend was all right. He didn't see any bloodstains on Scratch's clothes, and the silver-haired Texan was riding easily enough.
Big, shaggy Chet Ryan came next, followed by the three hard cases leading the packhorses. Brubaker leaned closer to Bo and whispered, “Where in blazes is Gentry?”
“Blazes is probably right,” Bo replied, equally quietly. “The fire must have gotten him.”
All the other members of the gang seemed to be fine, other than some coughing and sniffling from breathing too much smoke. At the front of the group, Cara rode with her head held high, and her attitude made it clear that she was now in charge of this bunch. Bo supposed that she had inherited leadership of the gang from Hank Gentry.
That didn't really matter. What was important was that the surviving members of the gang were here, and so was the loot they had come after. This was the chance to round them up and recover the stolen money. They wouldn't be expecting anyone else to be around in this burned-out devastation.
Bo looked over at Brubaker. The deputy nodded, tightened his hands on his rifle, and suddenly stood up, leveling the Winchester at the outlaws.
“Hold it right there!” Brubaker bellowed. “You're under arrest!”