Bo laughed. He said, “Tell you what, Scratch. I’ll think about it. Lauralee, I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Scratch said with a nod. “You think about it, and then for once in your life, Bo Creel, you do what’s best for you, not for everybody else in the whole dang world.”
After breakfast the next morning, when everybody was getting ready to ride, Bo went over to Lauralee just as she picked up her saddle to put it on her horse.
“Let me take that for you,” he said.
“I can do my own saddling,” she said.
“I know that, but I’m old-fashioned. I was raised to be a gentleman.”
She swung the saddle out of his reach and lifted it onto the horse’s back.
“I tighten my own cinches,” she said as she did exactly that.
“Sure, but I just thought . . .”
She turned her head, looked at him, and said, “Good Lord, Bo, are you trying to be nice?”
“Well, that’s sort of what I had in mind—” he began.
The roar of a gunshot interrupted him. He heard someone cry out in pain and jerked around to see Lee collapsing with blood on his shirt. Samantha screamed, tried to grab him, and they both went down in a tangled sprawl.
“Don’t hurt the women!” a man yelled. “But kill the Creels!”
Samantha must have recognized the voice, because she cried, “Danny, no!”
Then more gunshots drowned out her protest.
The group had stopped for the night at the base of a wooded knoll. The shots came from the trees that overlooked the camp. Ambushers, evidently led by Danny Fontaine, must have crept up there during the darkness and waited for dawn to launch their attack.
Riley and Davy were already in the buggy. Riley leaped out of the vehicle and crouched behind it to return the fire. Davy made it out, too, although with his wounded leg his exit amounted more to rolling off the seat and falling to the ground. He pulled himself up with one hand, braced himself, and started shooting with the other.
Bo, Scratch, Lauralee, and Jason scattered. Bo and Lauralee went to ground behind a log while Scratch and Jason took cover behind some brush. Neither of those places provided much shelter.
Samantha huddled over Lee, shielding him with her own body. Bo couldn’t tell how badly his nephew was hit. Lee wasn’t moving, though, so he was out of the fight at least for the moment.
Bo knew they were in a bad spot with the enemy holding the high ground. But if he could flank them somehow . . .
His horse and Lauralee’s mount were close by, and both animals were already saddled. He said, “If Scratch and Jason cover us, we might be able to get on our horses and get around on the other side of that knoll.”
“Sounds good to me,” Lauralee said. “Let me fill up the empty chambers in my Colt.”
A moment later she gave him a grim nod to indicate her gun was fully loaded and she was ready. This was loco, risking her life this way, Bo thought. And yet she would be in just as much danger if they stayed where they were.
“Scratch!” he called. “Cover us!”
The silver-haired Texan nodded to show that he understood. He and Jason started firing even faster, pouring lead toward the gunmen hidden at the top of the rise.
Bo and Lauralee leaped to their feet. They saved their bullets for the moment and concentrated on running. Their horses hadn’t spooked—yet—but they needed to hit the saddle as quickly as they could.
A few bullets whipped around Bo’s head, but the fusillade from Scratch and Jason had made the killers duck for a moment. That gave Bo and Lauralee just enough time to leap onto their horses. They kicked the animals into a run and leaned forward over the horses’ necks to make themselves smaller targets as they raced toward the other side of the knoll.
As they rounded the rise, Bo saw flame spurt from a gun muzzle as the man who had been holding the horses opened fire on them. He leveled his Colt and triggered it, and Lauralee fired an instant later. The man dropped the reins and spun off his feet as both slugs ripped through him.
“Good shooting!” Bo yelled over the thunder of hoofbeats.
“You, too!” Lauralee replied.
They started up the far side of the rise, and as they did, several of the bushwhackers appeared to meet this new threat. Bo fired again and saw a man double over as the bullet punched into his guts.
Beside him, Lauralee had holstered her revolver and pulled the Winchester from its sheath. The rifle cracked again and again as she sprayed the hilltop with lead.
As usual, hired gunmen had no stomach for a fight when the odds turned against them. Bo saw men running through the trees, fleeing. At least one of them caught a horse, because a moment later Bo heard swift hoofbeats rattling away. He couldn’t see where the man had gone.
He reined in and told Lauralee, “Hold up a minute.”
She followed suit, hauling back on the reins and bringing her mount to a stop.
It sounded like only one gun firing from the hilltop now, and those shots seemed rather aimless. Bo shouted, “Hold your fire up there! You’re surrounded, mister!”
“Go to hell, Creel!”
This time even Bo recognized Danny Fontaine’s voice. He called back, “We don’t want to kill you, Danny! Throw your gun down and come out of those trees!”
“I’ll never surrender to a bunch of damned kidnappers!”
Lauralee repeated, “Kidnappers? What in the world is he talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Bo said. “But if his sister can’t talk some sense into him, he’s not coming off that knoll alive. I reckon we’ve knocked the other bushwhackers out of the fight, except for the ones that lit a shuck.”
“Danny!” Samantha cried shrilly from the other side of the hill. “Danny, stop this, please!”
“Don’t worry, sis!” he shouted back to her. “I’ll get you away from them!”
“I’m not their prisoner! Please, Danny, don’t be crazy! I’m with the Creels because I want to be!”
“The bastards’re makin’ you say that—”
“No!” Samantha insisted. “No, it’s true. I swear, Danny! Please stop shooting!”
Bo and Lauralee had their guns trained on the growth where Danny Fontaine’s voice came from. Bo figured that on the other side of the hill, Scratch and the other men had their sights on the same target. Danny’s only chance now was to surrender.
A few moments of tense silence went by. Then Danny called, “You’re not lyin’? Lee Creel didn’t kidnap you?”
Bo heard a sob in Samantha’s voice as she told her brother, “Of course not! Lee wouldn’t have to kidnap me! I’m in love with him, and he’s in love with me!”
“What!” Danny roared.
“It’s true,” Samantha insisted. “Please throw your gun out, Danny, and come down from there. Please. I don’t want to lose you.”
Several more heartbeats went by, stretching out painfully, before Danny finally said, “Hold your fire, damn it! I’m comin’ out!”
Bo saw a revolver sail out from behind a tree, and a second later Danny stepped into sight with his hands raised. He started slowly down the hill toward the camp, and after a few steps Bo and Lauralee couldn’t see him anymore.
“We’d better get back around there,” Bo told her.
“What about the others?” she asked. “At least one of them got away.”
“I don’t reckon we have to worry about them. Once a hired gun knows he’s not likely to get paid anymore, he’s finished.”
They rode back around the knoll, and Bo felt relief go through him when he spotted his nephew Lee sitting up with his back against one of the buggy wheels. There was a bloodstain on his shirt where he’d been wounded, but he didn’t appear to have been hurt too badly.
Danny stood nearby with an angry but confused look on his face as his sister confronted him. Scratch and Jason had their guns pointed at the young man in case he tried to cause any more trouble.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Danny wa
s saying to Samantha. “I thought Lee Creel had carried you off to . . . to molest you.”
“Why in the world would you think that?” she asked him.
“Because . . . because Nick said . . .”
“Nick,” Samantha said bitterly as her brother’s voice trailed off. “Danny, there’s a lot you don’t know about our big brother.”
“I know you shouldn’t be here with these damned Creels,” Danny snapped.
From horseback, Bo said in a flinty voice, “Shut up and listen to your sister, Danny. She’s got a lot to tell you, and when she’s finished you might see things a little differently.”
CHAPTER 37
While Samantha was talking to her brother, Bo and Scratch checked the bodies of the other gunmen Danny had brought with him. Four of them were scattered around the top of the knoll, all dead. A couple of them looked vaguely familiar to Bo. He decided he had probably seen them with the Fontaines in Bear Creek.
“We leavin’ ’em for the coyotes?” Scratch asked.
“It’d serve them right,” Bo said. “But I reckon we’ve got time to bury them.”
“Before somebody else workin’ for Nick Fontaine tries to kill us, you mean.”
Bo shook his head and said, “I think Nick may have shot his bolt when he tried to trick Danny into killing us. I’m not sure he has any hired guns left.”
“Besides the one or two varmints who got away,” Scratch reminded him.
“That’s true,” Bo said. “I guess we’ll have to keep our eyes open.”
“We’d be doin’ that anyway.”
They rounded up the horses that had belonged to the dead men and then slung the corpses over the saddles to take them back down the hill.
When they reached the camp, Danny Fontaine looked more confused than angry, as if he were having trouble grasping what Samantha had told him. He also appeared to be stone-cold sober, which was unusual for Danny.
“You understand now that nobody kidnapped your sister?” Bo asked the young man.
“Yeah, I reckon so,” Danny said grudgingly. “That don’t mean I like you Creels, though.”
Riley said, “I don’t care whether you like us, as long as you’re not trying to kill us.”
By now Lauralee had bandaged the bullet hole in Lee’s shoulder. He came over to Danny and asked curtly, “Was it you who shot me, Fontaine?”
“Well . . . no,” Danny admitted. “When I left the Rafter F to come after you, I was mad enough to shoot you on sight, but I guess I’d calmed down a mite by the time we got here. I saw you standin’ there with Samantha and she didn’t seem like she was upset or scared, so I was tryin’ to figure things out when Trace Holland drilled you.”
Bo said, “Holland started the ball, did he? That doesn’t surprise me. He’s been Nick’s man right from the start.”
“Yeah . . .” Danny said slowly. “I guess Nick gave him some orders before we left.”
“Like making sure when you found us that it turned into a fight.” Bo nodded. “That makes sense. He wanted all of us dead, and he didn’t care if you and your sister got killed, too.”
Samantha began, “Nick wouldn’t—” but she stopped short before she finished. After a second she went on, “After everything we’ve found out, I don’t suppose there’s any point in saying Nick wouldn’t do anything, is there?”
“He doesn’t seem to draw the line, as long as he thinks it’ll help him get what he wants,” Bo said.
Danny said, “We have to go back. We have to talk to Pa and straighten all this out.”
Bo had a feeling that it would take more than talking to settle this affair. He was afraid more powder would have to be burned.
But he nodded and said, “That’s where we’re headed.”
Around the middle of the next afternoon, Trace Holland rode into the Rafter F on an exhausted horse. He was pretty worn out from the long, hard ride himself.
Seemed like he was making a habit of that, and he didn’t much like it.
Jed Clemons came out of the barn and met him. The old wrangler asked, “Where’s the rest of the bunch you left with?”
Holland didn’t answer. It was none of Clemons’s business. Instead he asked, “Is Nick in the house?”
“Far as I know. I ain’t his keeper.”
Holland curled his lip at the old-timer and gave him a cold stare. Clemons took the reins and hurriedly led Holland’s horse toward the barn.
Holland turned and went up onto the porch. He didn’t knock, just opened the door and walked into the house. He was too tired and disgusted for niceties.
“Nick!” he called. “Nick, you around?”
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall leading to the study. Nick Fontaine stalked toward Holland with an irritated frown on his face. He said, “Keep your voice down, damn it. My father’s resting. Where’s Danny? Did you stop the Creels?”
“Everything went to hell—again!” Holland snapped. “Those Creels are the luckiest bastards on the face of the earth.” He added grudgingly, “It doesn’t hurt that they’re some of the best shots I’ve ever seen, too.”
“Then they’re not dead,” Nick said in a hard, flat voice. “They still have the money to pay off that note.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so. I heard some of ’em talkin’ about it before the ruckus started.”
Nick’s fists clenched. He made a visible effort to control himself and asked, “What about Danny and my sister?”
“They’re all right, as far as I know. I’m pretty sure the Creels captured Danny.”
“Where are the rest of the men?”
“Dead, most of them,” Holland said grimly. “A couple of them took off for the tall and uncut rather than stay there to get killed.”
“And you did the same thing,” Nick said in an accusing tone.
Holland shrugged.
“I wasn’t going to take on the whole bunch by myself. That’d be loco. Besides, I figured you needed to know what happened, so you could figure out your next move.”
Nick laughed hollowly and said, “There is no next move. Bo Creel has beaten me at every turn. This scheme was my best chance to ruin the Star C and take it over, and now—”
“What?” The question came from the top of the stairs. “What are you talking about, Nick?”
Holland looked up, saw Ned Fontaine standing there. The old man’s face was drawn taut with pain, and he seemed shocked by what he had just heard, too.
“Pa, you should go back to your room and rest,” Nick said quickly. “I’ll handle this—”
“Nick, what have you been doing?” Fontaine persisted. “What’s this damned gunman talking about?”
“What have I been doing?” Nick repeated. Rage darkened his face. “I’ve been doing what you wanted. I’ve been trying to make the Rafter F the biggest ranch around here! The biggest in all of Texas, one of these days!”
“How are you doing that?” Fontaine demanded. “I won’t abide anything illegal—”
Holland couldn’t help himself. He laughed.
Fontaine started down the stairs. His face was flushed now, like Nick’s. He said, “By God, Nick, what have you been doing? All that rustling over on the Star C . . . were you behind that?” He waved a hand at Holland. “I thought you hired all those hardcases to protect our ranch, not to break the law and go after the Creels!”
Nick’s lip curled in a snarl as he said, “I don’t care what you thought. I did what was necessary. I did what you never would have had the guts to do!”
Fontaine stopped halfway down the stairs. A shudder went through him, and he gripped the banister tightly to brace himself. After a second he continued, “Your sister is mixed up in this somehow, isn’t she? And your brother? Are they in danger, Nick? Have you done something that’s going to get them killed?”
“They’re fine,” Nick snapped. “Nobody’s going to get killed—except Bo Creel.” He looked at Holland. “Get a fresh horse, and tell Clemons to saddle one for me, too.”
> “What are we doing, boss?” Holland asked softly.
“Creel will take that money straight to the bank. We’re going to stop him.”
Holland shook his head and said, “It’s over, Nick. If they’ve got your sister and Danny, they can figure out you were behind the whole thing. They’ll have the law on you.” The gunman started to turn away. “Reckon it’s time I pulled my freight.”
“Damn you!” Nick shouted. “Whatever money Creel’s got on him, it’s yours if we stop them before they get to the bank, Trace. It’s bound to be more than ten grand. You could go a long way on that. California, Mexico—hell, wherever you want to go! Just side me on this.” He paused. “Unless you’re afraid of Creel and Morton.”
Holland had expected him to play that card. Being accused of cowardice didn’t really matter to the gunman. He knew that wasn’t true.
He was a lot more interested in the money, and he had a grudge to settle with Scratch Morton, too. It would be a big gamble . . .
But hell, life was a gamble, wasn’t it?
“All right,” Holland said. “I’ll go to Bear Creek with you.”
“Fine,” Nick said with a curt nod. “Let me get my gun.”
Holland supposed he would finally get to see if those stories about Nick being fast on the draw were true.
“Stop,” Ned Fontaine said from the stairs. “Nick, you can’t do this. I don’t understand all this talk about money, but if you kill Bo Creel you’ll be an outlaw.”
“Yeah—but the ranch will be bigger and more successful than ever when the Star C goes under and the Rafter F takes over. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it, Pa?”
“Not by breaking the law! I never wanted my son to go insane and—”
Fontaine’s face twisted as his words broke off. All the color washed out of it. He started to double over, and as he did, he lost his balance.
“Pa!” Nick yelled as his father fell forward and toppled the rest of the way down the stairs.
Fontaine came to a stop almost at Holland’s feet. The gunman muttered, “What the hell—” and stepped back.
Nick’s momentary concern had evaporated. He said again, “Let me get my gun belt,” and started toward the study.
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