“That’s right, they don’t,” she said coldly.
“But that’s what happened with me. I was good at it, too. Turns out I had a knack for figuring out the best way to pull a job. Other fellas threw in with me because of that.”
“You mean you put together a gang.”
“You could call it that,” Seth said. “And one of them was Oliver Hudson. We got along well, worked together just fine. But he always had a mean streak in him, and that worried me.”
“Because you were so innocent.”
The words were scathing. Seth almost winced as they lashed at him. He said, “No, I wasn’t innocent, but I never killed anybody, either. I stole plenty. I wounded some lawmen who were chasing us. I have blood on my hands, no doubt about that. But Hudson shot to kill, and he didn’t need much provocation to do it, either.”
“And that’s why you abandoned the gang?”
She didn’t sound quite so skeptical now. Seth nodded and said, “I won’t lie. When I left and took the money with me, I didn’t have any intention of trying to do good with it. I just wanted to use it to start a new life somewhere. It wasn’t until I came to Enchanted Rock that I changed my mind.”
Delta frowned slightly, looking confused, as she said, “The church?”
“The rock,” Seth replied with a faint smile. “The actual Enchanted Rock. When I first laid eyes on it, something about it seemed to call to me. I’d never seen anything so . . . so big and impressive. I left my horse there at the little creek that runs beside it and climbed to the top. I remember it was a beautiful day and I could see for miles and miles around.” Seth took a deep breath. “And while I was standing there, just looking, it was like a voice spoke to me. I could hear it clear as a bell inside my head. It told me that the Lord made everything I was looking at, and if He could do something so magnificent, He could save a no-good outlaw like me.” A shudder ran through him. “I dropped to my knees right there, Delta, on top of that big old rock, and I asked the Lord to forgive me and show me what I needed to do, and by the time I walked back down to my horse, I knew He’d take me in the right direction. I turned around and rode back this way, and a little while later I came to the church. . . .” He smiled and spread his hands. “You know the rest of the story.”
She had listened intently to him, and he thought he saw belief in her eyes. But she was still upset and scared for her son, of course, and those emotions quickly won out over any sympathy she might be feeling.
“You’re wasting time,” she snapped. “That man, Hudson or whatever his name is, he and the rest of the gang still have Charlie. They’ll kill him if you don’t give them what they want . . . and you don’t have it.”
“I don’t have the money,” Seth agreed. “That’s true. But I can give Hudson something else he wants—my life.”
“He’ll kill you.”
“Even if I had the loot to give him, he’d do that because I double-crossed him.” Seth’s voice hardened. “Or at least he’ll try to.”
“He’ll kill Charlie, too.”
Seth shook his head and said, “No. Wouldn’t be any point in it. Once he’s got his hands on me, he’ll let the boy go.”
“I don’t believe it. Charlie could tell the law where they’re hiding. Hudson wouldn’t take that chance.”
“They’ll light a shuck as soon as I’m dead and leave this part of the country behind. They won’t need their hideout anymore, so killing Charlie wouldn’t serve any purpose.”
Delta’s forehead creased in another frown. She said, “You talk about them killing you like it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Compared to Charlie’s life and your happiness, it doesn’t.” Seth’s clasped hands clenched tighter together. “But once Charlie’s clear, I don’t intend to go down without a fight. I’ll take Hudson with me if I can, and any of the others I can get in my sights.”
“Your gunsights.”
“That’s right.” Seth stood up then and walked over to a cabinet. He opened it, reached inside, and took out a coiled shell belt with a pair of holsters attached to it. Snugged down in those holsters were matching walnut-butted Colt revolvers. Seth ran his fingers over the smooth wood of one gun butt, and Lord help him, he thought, it felt good.
Delta stood up. Her clothes crinkled a little now that they had dried some. She took a step toward him and lifted a hand.
“They’ll kill you,” she whispered.
“More than likely. The odds are against me. But not until I’ve seen Charlie safely on his way back to you.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t want. . . .”
“Sometimes there are no good answers, Delta,” Seth said as he swung the gunbelt around his hips and buckled it. “I was foolish to think that I could change. All I can do now is try to keep things from getting worse.”
“But you did change. I saw the truth in you. I saw the man you . . . you became. A good man.”
“A good man never would have done the things I did.” He slid the right-hand gun from leather, checked the loads, and then pouched the iron again so he could repeat the process with the left-hand gun.
“You need to get some help. Find the deacons. They’ll go with you—”
“I can’t do that,” he said sharply as he holstered the second Colt. “They’re good men, but they’re not lawmen or gunfighters. If I asked them for help, they’d give it to me—and then they’d just wind up getting killed. Besides, if Hudson sees me coming with a posse, he actually might hurt Charlie because he’d think I was double-crossing him again.” Seth shook his head. “No, I have to do exactly what he told me to do.”
“You mean give up your life—”
“Some things are worth it,” he told her.
Then, before she could try to stop him, he swung around and stalked to the door. He grabbed his hat and slicker from their nails and put them on as he stepped out onto the porch. He would take Felix Dugan’s horse instead of saddling his own, he decided. It was a good mount, and that way Delta couldn’t follow him. He wanted her to stay far away from Hudson and the rest of the gang.
“Seth, wait!” she cried behind him.
He paused at the edge of the porch. The rain was coming down so hard now he could barely see the church, even though it was close by. He turned and she came into his arms and lifted her mouth to his. The kiss took him by surprise, since she had been so angry with him only a few minutes earlier, but he responded and his arms went around her.
“Bring my son back to me,” she whispered when she took her lips away from his.
“I’ll send Charlie—”
“No. You bring my son back to me. I want both of you back.”
He couldn’t promise that. But he could kiss her again, hard and urgent, so he did that before he pulled away, stepped out into the rain, and jerked the horse’s reins loose from the hitching post where they were tied. He swung up into the saddle and rode away without looking back, but he knew Delta was there on the porch anyway, watching him as he disappeared into the deluge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
One of the outlaws who had been keeping an eye on Evelyn Channing in the cave accompanied Tully back up onto the bluff to resume standing guard up there. The man Chance had shot through the shoulder, whose name was Shaw, stayed below so the other outlaw, Deke, could clean and bandage the wound. Shaw spent a lot of time glaring at Chance.
“I reckon that fella would like to return the favor and put a bullet in you,” Ace said quietly to his brother as they sat on crates and leaned against the wall of the cave. A few feet away, Porter sat likewise with Evelyn, holding her hand.
“I just wish my aim had been a mite better,” Chance said. “We might have been able to get away from the other one.”
“But then Miss Channing would still be a prisoner here.”
“She is still a prisoner here,” Chance pointed out.
“Yes, but she would have been on her own,” Ace said. “Now she’s got us to help her when the time comes.”
“Yeah, and it needs to be soon.” Ace’s voice took on a grim edge. “What do you think’s going to happen when Hudson gets back with the rest of the gang?”
“He won’t be happy to see us,” Chance said.
Outside, the rain poured down harder and harder. It sounded like a rushing river. More than likely, the rivers around here were rushing right about now, thought Ace. At the rate the rain was coming down now, flash flooding was inevitable, and it would probably be widespread. That was going to be dangerous.
On the other hand, it might help slow down the pursuit if he and the others were able to get away from the outlaws.
Their hands weren’t tied. Deke and Shaw were a little too over-confident, Ace mused. If he and Chance could get their hands on some guns....
Porter suddenly stood up and walked toward the two owlhoots, who were sitting on the other side of the fire drinking coffee. Deke set his cup down and put that hand on the butt of his gun.
“Hold it right there, mister,” he warned Porter. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I want to offer you men a proposition,” Porter declared.
Shaw let out an ugly laugh and said, “I don’t think you’ve got anything to bargain with.”
“Actually, I do,” Porter insisted.
Evelyn said, “William, no. Please, it won’t do any good.”
He looked back at her, smiled, and said, “We’ll see.” Then he turned to the outlaws again and went on, “You men are bandits.”
Deke chuckled and said, “I reckon you could say that.”
“You’ve robbed banks in the past?”
“Sure. Won’t hurt anything to admit that.”
Because they figure we’ll all soon be dead anyway, Ace thought.
“It just so happens I work at a bank in Austin,” Porter went on. “So I propose an arrangement. You let Miss Channing go, and I’ll help you gentlemen loot every penny in the vault.”
Deke and Shaw stared at him for a moment before Shaw said, “You’d help us rob a bank in Austin?”
“That’s right. Strictly quid pro quo. Something for something. My help in return for Miss Channing’s safety.”
Deke thumbed his hat back and said, “There are two things wrong with that idea, amigo. Our boss is sweet on the lady, and he ain’t a man you’d want to cross. If we was to let her go, he’d likely kill us. And the second thing is, Austin’s a big town. The chances of ridin’ in there, robbin’ a bank, and gettin’ away with it are too blasted slim, even if it was an inside job like you’re talkin’ about.”
“Then perhaps I could steal the money and turn it over to you. I’d give you my word—”
Deke shook his head and snapped, “Go back over there and sit down. You’re wastin’ your time.” He leaned forward to pick up the coffee cup he had set down.
As the outlaw did that, Porter did something that none of them expected, not even Ace and Chance.
He kicked the coffee pot off the rock where it was sitting near the edge of the fire, keeping warm, and sent it right into Deke’s face.
Deke howled as the heated metal burned his skin. He jerked back and toppled off the crate where he’d been sitting. Beside him, Shaw cursed and clawed at the gun on his hip. His left shoulder was bandaged and that arm hung in a crude sling, but his gun hand still worked just fine.
However, Ace and Chance lunged forward from their crates as soon as Porter made his desperate move. Shaw had barely cleared leather when Ace threw himself across the fire in a diving tackle. Shaw was half-standing as Ace caught him around the waist and drove him backward. When they landed, the back of Shaw’s head slammed against the rocky floor of the cave. He went limp.
Chance went after Deke, hurtling past Porter. Deke was still yelling in pain from his burned face, but he had his gun out and swung it up. Chance grabbed the barrel and thrust it aside just as Deke pulled the trigger. The bullet thudded into the cave’s back wall.
Chance swung a hard right to Deke’s jaw. The blow landed cleanly with all of Chance’s lithe strength behind it. Deke’s head jerked to the side, and he folded up as limply as Shaw had.
Ace and Chance scooped up the outlaws’ guns while Porter ran back over to Evelyn to make sure she was all right. She embraced him and exclaimed, “Oh, William! That was so brave!”
“Foolhardy and desperate, you mean, my dear,” he said. “But there was nothing else I could do.”
“The two up on the bluff will have heard that shot,” Ace said to Chance. “We’d better grab our guns while we can.”
They hurried over to where the outlaws had piled their gunbelts and quickly buckled on the weapons.
Chance said, “Maybe it’s raining so hard they didn’t hear that gun go off—”
The sharp crack of a rifle shot destroyed that hope. The bullet whipped through the air between the Jensen brothers.
“Will, get down!” Ace shouted to Porter, who grabbed Evelyn and dived to the ground, taking her with him. They scrambled on hands and knees behind some of the supply crates.
Ace and Chance split up, heading for different sides of the cave as fast as they could move. More shots rang out. The brothers returned the fire on the run. They couldn’t see the rifleman but knew he had to be close to the cave mouth.
Chance found cover among the half-dozen horses in the rope corral, while Ace made himself as small as he could behind a little shoulder of rock. Ace had hoped they could get out of here before the other two outlaws closed off the cave, so they could fight in the open, but that wasn’t going to happen. They were pinned down in here, and it wouldn’t be difficult for Tully and the other man to keep them trapped until Hudson and the rest of the gang returned.
When that happened, Hudson would have even more reason for wanting the Jensens and William Porter dead. . . .
“Chance!” Ace called to his brother. “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to make a break for it.”
“How?” Chance asked. “They’ve got us bottled up.”
“Cover me. I’m coming over where you are.”
Chance opened fire with his own Colt and the gun he had picked up. As he blasted shot after shot toward the entrance, Ace sprinted across the cave toward the corral. A couple of bullets smacked into the ground near his feet and two more whined past his head, but he made the corral without getting hit and ducked under the rope.
All the shooting had made the horses skittish. Ace knew it wouldn’t take much to make them bolt toward the opening. In fact, he was counting on it.
“We’ll stampede them out of here and be hanging on the sides of a couple of them, the way the Indians do,” he explained his plan to Chance. “Once we get outside, we’ll take our chances with the other two.”
“Reckon there’s not much else we can do,” Chance agreed. “Better tell Will what we’re up to, though, so he and Evelyn won’t think we’re running out on them.”
Ace knew the men outside couldn’t hear them in that steady downpour, but he kept his voice down as much as he could anyway as he called over to Porter and Evelyn and quickly explained the plan.
“Do I need to come with you?” Porter asked.
“No, it’ll be better if you stay there and look after Miss Channing,” Ace said. He knew that Porter was a decent rider but didn’t think the would-be writer was up to the sort of thing he and Chance were going to attempt.
“Good luck!” Porter called.
“We’ll need it,” Chance said under his breath.
There was no time to saddle the horses. The brothers swung up bareback on their usual mounts and jabbed their boot heels into the animals’ flanks. The horses lunged against the others, and that was all it took to send all of them pressing against the ropes until the barrier gave way. Like a wave, the spooked horses dashed toward the open air.
Ace and Chance slipped down on the sides of their mounts, clinging to the horses with one hand and one foot. It was a dangerous ride. If they fell off
, they stood a good chance of being trampled.
As they burst out of the cave, the horses scattered. That gave Ace and Chance room to drop off. They rolled and came up with their guns ready. The rain was coming down so hard it was difficult to see, but then muzzle flame spurted through the gloom from near the cave mouth. Ace and Chance returned the fire and heard a man yell in pain. At least one of them had scored a hit.
Another rifle crack sounded and Chance’s left leg went out from under him. Ace leaped to his brother’s side and knelt there as he slammed a couple of shots toward the second rifleman. He triggered again, but the hammer fell on an empty cylinder. The other gun he had picked up was already empty.
A menacing shape loomed out of the downpour. The outlaw called Tully stood there in his slicker, rain running off his hat brim like a river as he pointed a Winchester at them.
“Blast it, this is no weather for foolin’ around,” he snapped, raising his voice to be heard over the rain. “I think you killed Packy. I’m tired of this, and I know now you were just lookin’ for that gal. The boss’ll have to be satisfied with that—and your carcasses.”
The rifle barrel came up a little as the outlaw brought the weapon to his shoulder. Ace knew he was going to kill both of them and was ready to try a last-ditch leap that probably wouldn’t get him anything except a bullet in the face—when another shot roared and Tully was driven back by the bullet that hit him. He didn’t fall, though, until two more shots blasted from somewhere behind Ace and Chance.
Ace had no idea who had come to their rescue. He glanced down at Chance, who was conscious and holding his wounded leg, then turned his head to look behind them.
A tall, dark figure strode out of the curtains of rain. The stranger wore a poncho of some sort over black clothes and had a black hat pulled low over his face. The light wasn’t good, but Ace was able to make out roughhewn features and a neatly trimmed mustache. The man held a Winchester pointed in the general direction of the Jensen boys.
A Texas Hill Country Christmas Page 23
