“No reason not to,” Riley said with a disgusted snort. “He doesn’t care about running any fat off them. He just doesn’t want us to have them.”
Lee said, “If they’re only a few hours ahead, we ought to be able to catch up to them tomorrow.”
“Maybe,” Scratch said. “Bo was worried that Palmer would keep on drivin’ ’em into the night, since there’s really nothin’ but open ground in front of them now, all the way to the coast.”
“Then we shouldn’t be stopping to make camp,” Riley said. “We need to keep going, too, if there’s a chance that’s what the rustlers are going to do.”
“Problem with that is, these horses need a night’s rest,” Scratch pointed out. “We’ve already asked a lot of ’ em.”
No one could argue with that. They were all experienced enough riders, even Lauralee and Samantha, to know that their mounts were worn out.
They continued over the gently rolling hills as they approached the river. The bright glow of the departed sun faded to rose. Behind them, blue sky began to turn purple. Another day was done and the timeless rhythm of the universe continued, paying no heed to the doings of the puny humans who populated this world.
There was still enough light for them to see the line of trees that marked the river’s course. The hills sloped inward, forming the gully that provided a good place to ford the stream.
Scratch expected to see the leaping orange flames of a campfire up ahead. Bo had had time to get a blaze going. The ford was still dark, though, and the river’s high banks, along with the rise on the other side, made it even gloomier than the surrounding countryside.
A frown creased Scratch’s forehead. This wasn’t really anything to worry about, he told himself. Bo could have gotten busy with something else and just hadn’t built the fire yet.
That didn’t stop him from slowing his horse and saying to the others, “Hold on a minute. Best let me go take a look around up there before you ride in.”
“I thought you said Bo was waiting for us,” Riley said.
“He’s supposed to be, but I don’t see him.”
“Maybe he found an even better place to camp,” Lauralee suggested.
“Yeah, maybe,” Scratch said, but that idea didn’t make the prickling on the back of his neck go away. He was going to follow his instincts, even if they turned out to be wrong. “Just stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“I’m coming with you,” Lauralee said. Scratch wondered if she was worried about Bo just because he was.
“Get your rifle out,” he told her as he urged his horse forward.
Lauralee drew her Winchester from the saddle boot and worked the lever to throw a .44-40 shell into the chamber. Scratch rode with the reins in his left hand and his right hand resting on his thigh where it was close to the ivory-handled butt of the Remington revolver on that side.
“You think something’s happened to him, don’t you?” Lauralee asked quietly.
“Nope, not really. But he said he’d get a fire started, and I don’t see one up yonder. Whenever Bo says he’s gonna do something, he usually does it. It takes a mighty good reason for him not to. I’ll rest easier when I know what that reason is.”
“He had better not have gone and gotten himself hurt—or worse,” Lauralee said. “Slowly but surely, I’m wearing him down.”
Even in this tense situation, Scratch couldn’t help but chuckle at the confidence he heard in the beautiful young woman’s voice.
“You reckon so, do you?” he asked.
“He can’t keep saying no to me forever.”
“I ain’t so sure about that. Bo’s got his own special brand of stubbornness.” Scratch’s grin disappeared as he grew more solemn. “The grievin’ came on him more than forty years ago, and it’s never let loose of him. Or he’s never let loose of it. Works out the same either way.”
“But I’ve heard him laugh. I’ve seen him smile. I’ve seen pure joy in him, Scratch.”
“Yep, because he’s too stubborn not to go on livin’. But now and then you catch him when he don’t know anybody’s lookin’ at him, and you can see it in his eyes, the way he looks off and sees things nobody else sees. The hurtin’ is buried deep, but it’s still there.” Scratch paused. “I reckon it always will be.”
“That’s no way to be,” Lauralee said.
“Maybe not . . . but those are the cards he was dealt.”
They were close to the river now. In the still twilight air Scratch heard the faint whisper of the water as it flowed over the streambed that was a mixture of sandy soil and rocks. He reined in and looked around, hoping to see Bo or at least his old friend’s horse. Instead he saw only shadows . . .
Shadows torn apart suddenly by the orange flame spurting from a gun muzzle as a shot blasted.
CHAPTER 32
Bo wasn’t too surprised to wake up and find that he was still alive. He had heard Walton tell the others not to cut his throat.
But he expected to regain consciousness to the sound of guns going off, and instead a hush surrounded him. He listened for a minute or so, and the silence was broken only by an occasional rustle as somebody shifted in the brush.
His wrists were tied behind his back. Somebody had looped a cord around them and drawn it tight. His feet and legs were loose, though. A sour-tasting bandanna had been shoved in his mouth as a gag and tied in place with another bandanna.
He remembered the fight with the men Judd Palmer had sent back to bushwhack the pursuers. Did the quiet mean that the ambush hadn’t taken place yet?
Or was it the stillness of death? Had Scratch and all the others been wiped out already?
That couldn’t be, Bo told himself. If the others were dead, the rustlers would have killed him, too.
The fact that he was still alive meant Scratch was, too. The faint noises he heard came from the gunmen who had hidden in the brush to carry out their deadly chore.
Somebody shifted close beside Bo. He sensed the movement as much as heard it. Cracking his eyes open to mere slits and staying absolutely still so as not to give away the fact that he had regained consciousness, he looked around as much as he could to take stock of his situation.
He couldn’t see very well because most of the sun’s light had faded from the sky, leaving the area along the creek even deeper in dusky shadows. He could tell that trees surrounded him. After a moment his eyes picked out a shape that didn’t belong, a human shape crouched behind a bush.
That had to be one of the rustlers, thought Bo. It was obvious from the man’s tense stance that he was waiting for something.
Bo heard the steady thud of hoofbeats as two horses approached the ford.
Only two horses. That meant the whole group wasn’t about to ride into the trap and Bo was grateful for that.
But two of them were, and Bo strongly suspected that one of them would be Scratch. His old friend wanted to take another look around before bringing the others in.
Someone was with him, though. Riley? Lee?
A murmur of voices drifted through the twilight. Bo recognized Scratch’s familiar bass rumble. Then, replying to it, a woman’s voice . . .
Lauralee.
Bo didn’t have any doubt of that. It was just like her to insist that she was coming along, no matter where or when or why. Knowing that she was about to come under the guns of those ruthless killers made desperation course through Bo’s veins.
He heard a quiet metallic sound close by. The man with him had just pulled back the hammer on his revolver . . .
Bo acted on instinct, not planning what he was going to do. He had to warn Scratch and Lauralee somehow, even though he couldn’t yell. He twisted around sharply, drew his knees up, and kicked the man in front of him in the rear end.
Bo put every bit of strength he could into that double-legged kick. The heels of his boots landed solidly, and the impact drove the man forward into the bush that he had been using for cover. The unexpected attack made him jerk his finger on
the trigger, too, and the gun in his hand roared.
Bo could only hope that the weapon wasn’t pointed at Scratch or Lauralee when it went off.
Scratch reacted to the shot with swift deadliness. The Remington seemed to leap into his hand, and flame spouted from the muzzle as he fired at the flash he had just seen.
At the same time, he shouted, “Get back!” at Lauralee.
Somewhere in the gloom along the river, a man yelled, “Get ’em!” More shots blasted.
Scratch didn’t know where Bo was, but finding out his friend’s fate would have to wait. He had his other gun out now, and both Remingtons roared as he twisted in the saddle and sent slugs screaming through the trees and bushes where the bushwhackers were hidden.
Beside him, Lauralee’s Winchester began to crack wickedly. He should have known that she wouldn’t cut and run, he thought fleetingly. She was one gal who just didn’t have any backup in her.
Scratch didn’t want to turn his back on the bushwhackers and give them a better target, so he did the unexpected. He kicked his horse into a run and charged straight across the river. Water splashed up around the animal’s hocks. Lauralee was right behind him.
That took them out of the crossfire the ambushers had set up. Scratch whirled his mount. The man who had yelled the order to get them was still making a racket. Scratch aimed at the voice and triggered.
The yelling stopped.
But only for a second. Another man shouted, “Let’s get out of here!”
Scratch wasn’t surprised. Varmints like that didn’t want to fight unless all the odds were on their side.
Riders appeared on the far side of the river, thundering down the gully toward the ford. That would be Riley and the rest of the boys, Scratch thought. He called, “Bushwhackers in the trees!” and started firing again.
The trap had backfired on the would-be killers. Now they were the ones caught in a crossfire as the Creels charged them and drove them straight toward Scratch and Lauralee. The light made shooting tricky, but the two of them had pretty good shots as the bushwhackers tried to flee.
As Scratch’s guns roared and bucked in his hands, he offered a silent prayer for his friend’s safety. He had no idea where Bo was, and there was a heck of a lot of lead flying around down there.
As soon as the man Bo had kicked accidentally fired his gun, all hell broke loose along the river, just as Bo expected.
One thing you could always count on was Scratch Morton putting up a good fight!
Bo heard a heavy thud and a dark, looming shape fell backward on him. That was the bushwhacker Bo had kicked. He figured the man had been struck by one of the slugs Scratch or Lauralee fired.
However, the bullet hadn’t killed the man. He tried to scramble to his feet.
Bo flung his legs up, threw them around the man’s neck, and caught him in a scissors hold. Growing up, Bo and his brothers had wrestled frequently, as most boys will, and he still remembered how to grapple.
The bushwhacker must have dropped his gun when he was hit. Bo felt both of the man’s hands tearing at his legs, trying to pull them loose. Bo just tightened his grip and hung on with grim determination, squeezing hard on the man’s neck to cut off his air.
The bushwhacker bucked and thrashed, and his increasing panic told Bo that he couldn’t get his breath. That was just what Bo wanted. Eventually the man would pass out from lack of air.
Suddenly Bo felt pain in his leg. The man had gotten out a knife and slashed at him. The thick leather of Bo’s high-topped boot had turned aside the blade without it doing any damage other than what felt like a minor cut, but if the man sank the knife in Bo’s leg, he’d have no choice but to let go.
Bo’s muscles bunched as he rolled over and heaved harder with his legs. He twisted with all his strength and heard a sharp, sudden snap.
The bushwhacker went limp.
Bo knew he had broken the man’s neck.
That was a shame in a way—he wouldn’t have minded questioning the man about Judd Palmer’s plans—but then Bo thought about his nephew Tim and how the young man’s dead face had looked, and he didn’t mind so much that he’d just killed this son of a bitch. He would never know if this man was the one who shot Tim, but he had been there, been part of it.
Around the ford, pistols boomed and rifles cracked. Hoofbeats and shouts filled the twilight air. It was a full-fledged battle now. Bo heard bullets whipping through the branches not far from him, so he squirmed over next to the body of the man he had just killed and hunkered as low behind the corpse as he could, using it for cover.
The shooting went on for several more minutes, then died away fairly quickly. As the echoes of the gun-thunder rolled away, Scratch called, “Bo! Bo, are you around here?”
Scratch sounded like he was all right. That made relief surge through Bo. He raised his head and made the loudest noises he could through the gag.
“Scratch, I think I hear something!”
That was Lauralee, and she didn’t sound like she was hurt, either. Bo closed his eyes and offered up a prayer of thanks for that. He prayed that the rest of the Creels were unharmed, too.
Crashing in the brush sounded nearby. Bo kept making noise, and suddenly some branches parted and Scratch was beside him, followed closely by Lauralee.
Gun in hand, Scratch toed the corpse over just to make sure the hombre was dead. While he was doing that, Lauralee dropped to her knees beside Bo and started working to remove the gag from his mouth.
“Bo, are you all right?” she asked anxiously.
The gag came loose. Bo turned his head to the side and spat a couple of times to get the bad taste out of his mouth. Then he said, “Yeah, I’m fine. A scratch on my leg, but that’s all. If you could get my hands loose . . . ?”
“Roll onto your side,” she told him. She worked at the knots for a minute, then said, “Scratch, I think you’re going to have to cut this cord off of him.”
“Let me strike a match so I can see what I’m doin’,” the silver-haired Texan said. “After all this, I’d hate to cut the old fella’s wrists.”
“Old fella?” Bo repeated. “You’re a month older than me.”
“Yeah, but you were born old,” Scratch said with a chuckle.
He fired up a lucifer and held it in his left hand while he used his right to slide the blade of his Bowie knife under the bonds around Bo’s wrists. A few moments of sawing with the razor-sharp blade had Bo free.
He sat up, rubbing his wrists and hands to get the feeling back into them, and asked, “What about the others? Was anybody hurt?”
“Don’t know yet,” Scratch said, sounding more serious now. “I wanted to find you first before I checked on them.”
“Help me to my feet and let’s go see.”
It didn’t take long to establish that a crease on Jason’s upper arm was the only injury any of the Creels had suffered. Samantha Fontaine was already binding it up with a strip of cloth ripped from the bottom of her shirt.
“Thanks,” Jason told her with grudging gratitude.
“It’s the least I can do,” Samantha said.
No one argued with her about that.
Riley, Lee, and Davy checked the bodies sprawled along the riverbank. When Riley saw his brother approaching with Scratch and Lauralee, he grunted and asked, “Do you know how many of the bastards there were?”
“Six,” Bo replied. Riley hadn’t asked how he was doing, but that came as no surprise. Riley had eyes. He could see that Bo wasn’t hurt bad.
“We got five of’em. Reckon the other one got away.”
Bo shook his head and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the trees behind him.
“The sixth man’s back there.”
Lee said, “You killed him, Uncle Bo?”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
Riley rubbed his chin and said, “The important thing is that none of them got away to warn the rest of the bunch that we’re still alive. I assume they were par
t of the gang that stole our herd?”
“That’s right,” Bo said. “The leader’s a man named Judd Palmer. The more I think about it, the more familiar that name is. I think I’ve heard of him somewhere before. Maybe saw a Wanted poster on him one of the times that Scratch and I were working as deputies.”
“Palmer sent these men back to ambush us?”
“Yeah. So we’ve still got a chance to take him by surprise.”
“If we can catch up to him before he makes it to Rockport,” Riley said.
“We’ve got a better chance than we did before,” Bo said. “We’ve got some extra horses now.” He looked at the bodies of the slain rustlers and added, “These fellas don’t have any use for them anymore.”
CHAPTER 33
Lee had to give Samantha credit. When the shooting started and he told her to stay put, she stayed put. She hadn’t ventured closer to the river until the roar of gunfire ceased.
Later, after the bodies of the dead rustlers had been disposed of—there was a handy ravine a couple of hundred yards downstream—Lee carried a cup of coffee to her where she sat on a cottonwood deadfall not far from the fire. He had a cup for himself, too.
“Here you go,” he said as he handed the coffee to her.
“Thank you,” she said. Her voice had a hollow note to it. She took the cup and sipped the hot, black brew.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be? Six more men are dead, and the man I love was almost killed, too.”
“Now hold on a minute,” Lee told her. “Don’t waste any sympathy on those hombres. They were owlhoots, plain and simple, and there’s a good chance they done plenty of bad things in their lives. They would’ve killed every one of us and never blinked. They got what was comin’ to ’em, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” He took a sip of his coffee. “As for me almost gettin’ killed . . . Well, none of those bullets that were flyin’ around came close enough for me to hear ’em, so I reckon I wasn’t really in that much danger.”
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