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.
He didn’t see the little gully tucked away in a fold of the hills until she fired at him from it. Powder smoke spurted as the shot rang out. At the same instant, Scratch heard the wind-rip of the bullet past his ear.
The Remington in his hand roared as he kicked his horse down the slope toward the gully. He squeezed off three shots that had Cara ducking for cover.
Scratch was on top of the gully before he realized it. Suddenly aware that his horse couldn’t stop in time, he booted the animal’s flanks again and sent it lunging into the air in a daring leap that carried horse and rider all the way over the gully.
The horse landed awkwardly, though, and lost its footing. Scratch yanked his feet out of the stirrups and left the saddle in a dive. A cloud of ashes rose around him and choked him as he landed on his shoulder and rolled. Pain shot through him. His old bones didn’t take kindly to such punishment.
But he was all right, and he came up on a knee with both guns drawn as Cara burst out of the gully mounted on her horse. The revolver in her hand blasted at him. He threw himself to the side and returned the fire as her bullets smacked into the ground beside him, kicking up dirt and more ashes.
She was past him in the blink of an eye. Scratch’s right-hand Remington was empty, but the left-hand gun still held a couple of rounds. He lifted it and squeezed them off just as she twisted in the saddle and flung one final shot back at him.
Scratch had time to see her body jerk as if she were hit, then something slammed into his head with tremendous force, knocking him down so that he was stretched out on his back. He tried to get up, but his muscles refused to obey him. The fire must have started up again, he thought crazily, because red, leaping flames seemed to fill his brain. He was vaguely aware that the drumming of hoofbeats continued, then a terrible roaring sound welled up and drowned them out. That roar was his own blood inside his skull, he realized.
And Cara was getting away. There was nothing he could do to stop her now. Consciousness had started to slip away from him, and when it went, it would probably take his life with it, he knew.
“S-sorry, Bo ...” he whispered through lips crusted with bitter ashes.
Then the darkness took him.
CHAPTER 34
There had been a drought in East Texas, too, but nowhere near as bad as the one that gripped the country west of Fort Worth. So even though it was still winter, the countryside around Tyler was considerably greener than it had been over there in the Palo Pinto Hills where Bo, Scratch, and Brubaker had fought their battle with the Gentry gang.
The three men looked considerably better, too, as they left the courthouse. They were dressed in clean clothes again, Bo had a new hat to replace the one with the hole shot through it, and although Brubaker’s left arm was in a black silk sling and Scratch had a bandage around his head so that he had to wear his hat cuffed back a little, those were the only outward signs of their injuries. Bo hadn’t been wounded at all during the ruckus.
All three men were still a little hoarse when they talked, though, and from time to time fits of coughing seized them.
One such fit struck Brubaker now. The deputy stopped and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, coughing into it until the spasms subsided. He glared at the dark stains on the handkerchief and rasped, “I think I’m gonna be coughin’ up ashes the rest of my borned days.”
“You’ll get over it sooner or later, Forty-two,” Bo told him.
“Yeah, but it’ll be a long time before the smell of smoke stops givin’ you the fantods,” Scratch added. “Maybe
