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’t—”
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, Hank—”
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.
