Texas Bloodshed

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 never. I feel the same way.”

“Well, at least the job’s done now,” Brubaker said as he put away his handkerchief. “And none too soon to suit me. I’ll be glad to get back to Fort Smith. I plan on headin’ that direction as soon as I’ve seen the sentence carried out, so I can tell Judge Parker I saw the last of the Gentry gang swing with my own eyes.”

“Only it ain’t the last of ’em, is it?” Scratch asked quietly.

“You said you thought you hit Cara with your last shot,” Bo pointed out. “She may not have made it.”

The three of them had just come from Judge Josiah Southwick’s courtroom, where the esteemed federal jurist that Bo and Scratch still knew from their youth as “Bigfoot” had sentenced Dayton Lowe, Jim Elam, and Cutter Brown to be hanged by the neck until dead. Brown was the outlaw who had surrendered in the violent aftermath of the wildfire, but he had only postponed his fate by doing so.

Bo had galloped over the hills and found Scratch lying unconscious on the slope overlooking the Brazos River. Blood and ashes had painted a ghastly pallor over Scratch’s face, but he’d been breathing, and once Bo had cleaned up the wound he had seen that his old friend was only grazed on the side of the head, enough to knock him out but not enough to kill him. When Scratch had come to, Bo had informed him that that cast-iron skull of his had saved his life again.

“Cara got away,” Scratch had said then, bothered by that more than he was the head wound.

“I know,” Bo said. “But wherever she is, she’s somebody else’s problem now.”

It had taken the rest of the day to round up some horses and recover those pack animals loaded down with stolen loot. Bo found his horse, which had survived the fire although its hide was singed in places. They never found any sign of Brubaker’s mount.

Nobody wanted to spend the night out there in that smoky wasteland, so they had ridden through the darkness back to Weatherford with their prisoner. The wildfire had burned itself out before it reached the town, but it had left a wide swath of devastation through the Cross Timbers. The area would be a long time recovering from this ... but as Bo had said, it would recover.

From Weatherford, Brubaker sent a wire to Fort Smith explaining the situation to Judge Parker. Brubaker kept the details of the judge’s reply to himself, but Bo got the feeling that Parker had pretty well burned up the telegraph wires.

Brubaker didn’t seem worried, though. With the exception of Cara LaChance, the entire Gentry gang was either scattered, wiped out, or due to hang, so they no longer posed a threat to Indian Territory.

Losing Cara was a bitter pill to swallow, but telegrams would go out to the chief marshals across the frontier, warning them to have their men keep an eye out for her. If she was still alive, she would turn up sooner or later.

The local sawbones had insisted on keeping Scratch in the hospital for a couple of days “to make sure that bullet didn’t addle your brain any more than it already was to start with,” as Bo put it. When the doctor pronounced Scratch well enough to travel, the three of them set out for Gainesville, taking their prisoner with them.

Once there, they had picked up Brubaker’s wagon, loaded Lowe and Elam into it along with Brown, and headed for Tyler to finish the long journey at last. Brubaker told the local lawman to go ahead and release Early Nesbit, since they didn’t have to worry about Hank Gentry coming after them anymore.

Scratch had told them how Cara killed Gentry, confirming for all of them, as if they needed confirmation, that the blonde was plumb loco.

When they reached Tyler, Bo and Scratch had had a rather uproarious reunion with Bigfoot Southwick, who momentarily lost the dignity that normally accrued to a federal judge and slapped his old friends on the back, boisterously bellowing, “Bo Creel and Scratch Morton! Hell, I figured some other judge would’ve hung you sidewindin’ scoundrels a long time ago!”

“There wouldn’t be no justice in that,” Scratch had told him with a grin. “If anybody should’ve shook hands with the hangman, it’s you, Bigfoot.”

“You can call me that once,” the burly, white-bearded Southwick had said, holding up a finger, “but if you do it again, I’ll have to hold you in contempt of court!”

Now as the three men paused on the steps of the courthouse following the conclusion of the speedy trial, Brubaker asked, “Are you gonna stay to watch the hangin’, too?”

Scratch made a face and shook his head.

“I’ve never cared overmuch for hangin’s,” he said.

“We’ll trust you to see that justice is done, Forty-two,” Bo added.

A rare smile appeared on the deputy’s face.

“You know, we never did play a game,” he said.

“You need four people for that,” Scratch pointed out.

“I know. One of the jailers said he’d be glad to sit in and make a fourth. We’d have to play at the jail, though, while he’s on duty tonight.”

Bo smiled and said, “I guess we could stay around that long.”

They started down the steps. As they did so, a buggy pulled up in the street. A little old lady in a black dress and shawl was handling the reins. Beside her sat another elderly woman dressed the same way.

Bo’s eyes suddenly narrowed as he caught a glimpse of bright yellow hair under the second woman’s shawl. His instincts shot a warning through him, and he was already reaching for his Colt as he shouted to his companions, “Look out!”

Cara LaChance leaped from the buggy, throwing back the shawl so that her blond curls spilled free around her shoulders. Her hands dipped and came up with a pair of revolvers from the folds of her dress. Her beautiful face was twisted in a snarl of bloodlust that turned it ugly as she began to fire. Flame jetted from the muzzles of both guns.

Brubaker rammed a shoulder against Scratch and knocked him aside. The deputy grunted and stumbled as lead thudded into his body. Scratch caught his balance and whipped out both Remingtons. Bo’s Colt was already in his hand. Gun-thunder rolled across the courthouse steps as the three revolvers roared in unison.

The bullets smashed Cara to the ground. Behind her, the old woman who had driven up in the buggy shrieked, “Don’t kill me! She made me bring her here! Please don’t kill me!”

She didn’t wait to see whether anybody was going to shoot at her. She slashed the whip at the buggy horse and sent it down the street with the buggy careening behind it.

Brubaker had crumpled to the steps. Scratch dropped to a knee beside him and exclaimed, “Damn it, Forty-two, how bad are you hit?”

“I ... I don’t know,” Brubaker said through gritted teeth. “It hurts like hell.”

Scratch pulled the lawman’s coat back and reached inside it to check the wound. He let out a laugh.

Brubaker glared up at him and said, “I’m glad my dyin’ ... strikes you as funny.”

“I don’t think you’re dyin’,” Scratch said. “Looks like Cara only hit you once, and the bullet busted the hell out of that set of dominoes in your coat pocket before it went on in. The slug didn’t penetrate very far. I can feel it with my finger.”

“If that don’t ... beat all,” Brubaker gasped. “Still hurts, though.”

Meanwhile Bo had gone on down to the bottom of the steps, keeping Cara covered as he did so. Her blue eyes still held some life in them when he reached her, but it was fading fast.

“You just had to have your revenge, didn’t you?” Bo said.

“You can ... go to hell!” Cara gasped. She laughed. “You and Morton both! And when you get there ... I’ll be waitin’ for you!”

Her face twisted, her back arched, and when she relaxed a second later, she was gone.

A crowd was gathering, and a lot of people were yelling questions. It wasn’t every day there was a shoot-out right in front of the courthouse.

Bo had a question of his own: what turned a smart, beautiful young woman like Cara LaChance into a mad-dog killer?

He knew he would never have an answer. He wasn’t sure one even existed.

He turned, holstered his gun, and started back up the steps, glad to see that Brubaker was sitting up with Scratch’s arm around his shoulders. The deputy didn’t look like he was hurt too bad.

Maybe they would get that game in, after all, before he and Scratch started south toward home.