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!”
CHAPTER 33
Scratch had seldom been more surprised—or more relieved—than he was when Bo and Brubaker stood up from behind those rocks and threw down on the gang.
After leaving the little cavelike area under the overhang and seeing the terrible destruction that the wildfire had wreaked on the countryside, Scratch had figured that nothing could have lived through it. If Bo and Brubaker had been caught out here, surely they had perished.
But that wasn’t the case, he now knew. He had never seen two more muddy, bedraggled figures, but they were definitely alive.
For now.
But that might not be the case for very long, because Cara whipped up her rifle and the other outlaws clawed at their guns as the blonde screamed, “Those damn lawmen! Kill them!”
She kicked her horse and caused the animal to leap aside just as Brubaker fired. The bullet went harmlessly past her.
Cara didn’t return Brubaker’s fire. She let the others do that, as a storm of lead from Bouchard, Ryan, and the other three hard cases made Bo and the deputy leap for cover behind the rocks again.
Cara swung her Winchester toward Scratch instead.
“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
