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
“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 it—”
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.
“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
