William Johnstone - Texas Bloodshed

“You double-crosser!” she cried. “You led them to us somehow!”

That wasn’t exactly true. That had been the plan, all right, but fate had intervened. Because of the apocalyptic blaze, Scratch had never had the chance to send any sort of signal to his friends. But that same fate, and stubbornly sticking to the general plan they had worked out, had brought Bo and Brubaker across their trail anyway.

Scratch palmed out his Remingtons and guided his horse with his knees as he sent the animal plunging to the side. Cara’s rifle cracked, but the shot missed. Scratch heard the slug scream past his ear. He brought up both pistols and triggered them. It was too late to worry about the fact that he was shooting at a woman.

Bouchard’s horse gave a skittish leap just as Scratch fired, taking him into the path of one of the bullets from the silver-haired Texan’s guns. The slug smashed into Bouchard’s right shoulder from behind and rocked him forward in the saddle as he cried out in pain.

Scratch’s other shot missed Cara, who whirled her mount and kicked it into a run. A gray cloud of ashes boiled up behind her as she galloped across the hellish landscape.

Scratch hated to leave Bo when he had just seen his old pard for the first time in days, but he didn’t want Cara to get away. He sent his horse leaping past Bouchard’s wildly cavorting mount and leaned forward in the saddle as he pounded after her. He pouched his left-hand iron and used that hand to grip the reins.

He was a little surprised that Cara was fleeing. He would have said that she was crazy enough, she would want to stay and fight it out. But maybe for once self-preservation had gotten the best of the insane rage that filled her.

Regardless of the reason, Scratch knew he had come too far to let her get away now. He urged his horse on as the two riders tore across the burned landscape at breakneck speed.

Bo’s Winchester kicked hard against his shoulder as he knelt behind the rock and fired. He worked the rifle’s lever so fast it was a blur. His bullets sprayed across the space between him and the outlaws. One of the men with the packhorses pitched out of the saddle as a slug tore through him.

Next to Bo, Brubaker kept up a deadly fire as well. Bouchard was wounded, and that made it hard for him to control his plunging horse. The deputy drew a bead on him and pressed the trigger. Bouchard’s head jerked as the lawman’s bullet drilled him.

Outlaw lead whined all around them. Brubaker suddenly grunted and went over backward. Bo glanced over at him.

“I’m all right, damn it!” Brubaker yelled. “Keep shootin’!”

Bo knew that Brubaker was hit, but they were still outnumbered three to two. There wasn’t time to check on how badly the deputy was hurt. Bo swung his rifle and lined the sights on Ryan’s broad chest. Ryan’s six-gun spurted flame at the same instant that Bo’s rifle cracked.

The black Stetson flew off Bo’s head with a neat hole through its crown from Ryan’s bullet. Bo’s shot had found its mark. Ryan rocked back in the saddle as the bullet drove into his chest.

But he didn’t fall. Instead, roaring out his defiance, he sent his horse lunging forward, straight at the rocks where Bo and Brubaker had taken cover. He kept firing, slamming shots at the two of them.

Brubaker had made it back to his knees. His left arm was clumsy because that was where the bullet had ripped through his flesh, but Bo could tell the bone wasn’t broken because Brubaker managed to lift his rifle again. He and Brubaker both fired, and Ryan jerked again, more bloodstains springing out on the outlaw’s buckskin shirt like crimson flowers opening.

Ryan still didn’t go down. His bullets whined off the rock that shielded Bo and Brubaker, coming close enough to make them dive to the sides, one in each direction. Lying on his side on the ground, Bo triggered off the last two rounds in the Winchester. One of them smashed through Ryan’s throat and traveled upward at an extreme angle through his brain.

That was finally enough to kill the big man. He dropped his gun and flew out of the saddle as his horse came to an abrupt, skidding halt. The massive body crashed facedown across the rock where Bo and Brubaker had taken cover.

Lying on his belly, Brubaker sighted in on one of the remaining outlaws and broke the man’s right arm with a well-placed slug. That left just one of them, and as Bo tossed his empty rifle aside and came up with Colt in hand, that man turned to light a shuck out of there. Bo sent two shots racketing over his head. The outlaw hauled back on the reins and then thrust his hands into the air.

“Don’t shoot!” he cried. “I give up, damn it! Don’t shoot!”

Brubaker was already drawing a bead on the man. Bo said, “He’s surrendering, Forty-two. You shoot him now and it’ll be murder.”

“Not if nobody knows about it,” Brubaker said. He growled in disgust. “But I reckon you’re right. I ain’t in the habit of gunnin’ down prisoners, no matter what some of those no-account lawyers back in Fort Smith would have you believe.”

Bo kept the remaining owlhoot covered as he approached and said, “Get your guns on the ground, mister, and be mighty careful about it. I may need an excuse to shoot you, but I don’t need much of one.”

“I’m not gonna give you any,” the outlaw said. He dropped his pistol on the ground, then used his left hand to pull his rifle from the saddle boot and toss it aside, too.

Brubaker checked on the other men and made sure they were dead while Bo got the remaining outlaw off his horse and tied his hands behind his back. He marched the man back to the rocks and had him sit down on one of them.

“All the others are done for,” Brubaker announced, “and those packhorses have run off. We’re gonna have to catch some of the saddle mounts and round them up.”

“What about Scratch and Cara?” Bo asked.

The deputy shook his head.

“They’re gone. She took off for the tall and uncut, and Morton went after her. I lost sight of ’em while we were swappin’ lead with the others.”

Bo’s forehead creased in a worried frown.

Brubaker went on, “I don’t know if he was tryin’ to capture her, or if he’s really thrown in with her.”

“Scratch would never do that,” Bo said without a shred of doubt. “He’ll bring her back ... or die trying.”

A second later, as a flurry of shots rang out in the distance, he wished he hadn’t said that.

The fire had burned off all the vegetation, but it hadn’t had any effect on the basic terrain. The ridges, the gullies, the rocks all remained, and they prevented Scratch and Cara from racing their horses at top speed.

Scratch stayed stubbornly behind her, matching her pace as best he could. At any moment, either of the horses might take a spill in this rugged landscape, but somehow the animals managed to avoid that.

Cara topped a rise and disappeared. Scratch reached the crest a moment later and expected to see her descending the far slope.

Instead, as his eyes scanned the burned-out wasteland, he didn’t spot her. The land fell away in front of him for about a mile in a series of natural terraces, and at the bottom lay a wide stream dotted with sandbars.

That was the Brazos River, Scratch realized. On the other side of it, more hills rose, but these held at least a hint of green. The drought had muted the color, but it was there, signifying that the fire hadn’t burned that side of the river. The blaze must have started somewhere around here, Scratch thought.

He didn’t really care about that. What mattered was that Cara seemed to have disappeared into thin air. That just wasn’t possible, Scratch told himself as he reined in and twisted his head from side to side, searching for her.