A Texas Hill Country Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “You think that’s . . . ?”

  “I think that’s the rest of Hudson’s men,” Luke said, “and they’ve brought Sam Brant with them.”

  Seth hadn’t said anything else as he rode alongside the outlaw called Cameron. He didn’t have any interest in carrying on a conversation with any of these men. His mind was too full of worry about Charlie’s fate and what it would mean to Delta.

  A wry thought nagged at his brain. Maybe he ought to tell them about the Lord and see if he could get them to repent their wicked ways.

  But he supposed his preaching days were over, because what he wanted to do even more was skin out both smoke poles he carried and get to work. He remembered what it was like to hear the roar of shots, feel the guns bucking in his hands, and smell the sharp tang of powder smoke.

  That beat praying any day, he thought bitterly.

  He couldn’t risk any shooting until he got Charlie away from Hudson, though. He could do that as long as he had the leverage of that stolen loot. Delta was the only one who knew he had spent it all on the church and other good works.

  By faith are ye saved, not works, he reminded himself. That’s what the Scriptures said. He wasn’t sure it was true, though. He’d had faith, but it wasn’t enough.

  Some men just couldn’t be saved.

  They rode along a creek that was close to breaking out of its banks. Many of the fields and pastures were already flooded. When the creek overflowed it would just make things worse. This was going to be a great disaster before it was over, Seth thought, because today the heavens truly had opened up. He had never seen rain like this before.

  Cold, wet, and miserable, the men started up a gentle slope. Seth caught his breath as he spotted the dark mouth of what appeared to be a large cave in the base of a rugged bluff rising ahead of them.

  Cameron led the way. Seth hung back a little. He didn’t mean to, but he knew that with each step his horse took, he was that much closer to death. No matter how strong he might be, nearly every man feared the end of his days. That end was approaching rapidly for Seth Barrett.

  Then they were inside, and after the downpour in which they had been riding, it almost felt strange not to have the rain pounding against him anymore.

  Gun-hung, hard-faced men were ranged around the fire. Seth spotted Oliver Hudson among them. Hudson was pacing back and forth angrily and didn’t notice the new arrivals for a second or two. Then he stopped short, swung toward the men on horseback, and a gun swept up in his hand.

  “By God, I ought to shoot you right here and now, Sam,” he said. “You’ve got it coming for what you did.”

  “You pull that trigger and you’ll never get your money, Oliver,” Seth said coolly. He tried not to let Hudson see how desperately his eyes were searching for Charlie Kennedy.

  There! The boy was sitting on one of the crates with an outlaw standing beside him keeping an eye on him. Charlie wasn’t tied up, and he didn’t appear to be hurt, just soaked and terrified. He sat there with the firelight reflecting from his wide, staring eyes.

  “M-Mr. Barrett?” he croaked.

  Hudson lowered the gun but didn’t holster it. He said, “His name’s not Barrett, kid. It’s Sam Brant, and he’s no preacher. He’s an outlaw, just like us. Worse than us, because he stole from his partners. Didn’t you, Sam?”

  Seth ignored the question and said, “Let the boy go. You don’t need him anymore. Put him on a horse and send him home.”

  Hudson let out a cold, humorless laugh. He said, “Send a boy out in a storm like that? You’re loco, Sam. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’ll tell you where the money is, but only after Charlie’s headed back to his mother.”

  Hudson shook his head.

  “You take us to the money, and then the boy goes free. That’s the only way this will work. Otherwise . . .”

  Hudson half-turned. He lifted the revolver again and aimed it at Charlie as he thumbed back the hammer. Charlie whimpered and started to get up, but the man beside him grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back down on the crate.

  “You kill him and you’ll die half a second later, Oliver,” Seth said.

  “Yes, I see you still have your guns.”

  Cameron said, “He wouldn’t give ’em up, boss.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hudson said with a shake of his head. “Look around you, Sam. There are half a dozen guns pointed at you. I know you’re fast, but you’re not that fast. You make a move toward your guns, and you’ll be riddled with lead before you can touch them.”

  Smiling faintly, Seth said, “And again, if that happens you don’t get your loot, do you?”

  Hudson’s lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace. This was a standoff and he knew it. He tipped the gun barrel toward the roof of the cave and lowered the hammer.

  “All right,” he snapped. “I’ve got other problems to deal with right now. Tell me where the loot is.”

  Seth had been thinking about that during the ride here, so he had an answer ready.

  “It’s at the church,” he said. “Buried under the floor where the pulpit stands.”

  Hudson stared at him for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed, a genuine laugh this time.

  “You know, I believe you,” he said. “All that time you stood there preaching, all holier than thou, you were really worshipping your real god, weren’t you, Sam? You were thinking about all that money right under your feet.”

  Seth managed to smile. Let Hudson believe whatever he wanted to believe. As long as it kept Charlie alive, that was all that mattered.

  “All right, I’ve told you. You can let the boy go now.”

  Hudson shook his head and said, “That’s not the way it works, and you know it. I said you had to take us to it, but I’m willing to be reasonable. You and the kid don’t have to go back out into the rain.” He turned toward Cameron and went on, “Take five men and go get that loot. We’ll wait for you here.”

  Cameron didn’t look happy about the idea of going back out into the storm, but he nodded and said, “Sure, boss.”

  Seth started to object, but he changed his mind. Once Cameron and the others were gone, that would cut down the odds against him. They would still be ten to one, but right now Seth would take anything he could get.

  Somehow, in the time that the others were gone, he had to find a way to get Charlie out of here. Then he would take his chances.

  Cameron picked out the men who would go with him to the church. They mounted up and rode out of the cave. Cameron paused at the entrance, though, and called back, “I don’t like the looks of that creek, boss. It’s out of its banks and climbing. I’m not sure it can get this high, but it might.”

  Hudson nodded and said, “We’ll keep an eye on it. If you get back and the place is flooded, you’ll know we’ve moved up on the bluff.” He frowned and turned to one of the other men. “Those gents I sent up there when we got here haven’t come back. Ira, go see what’s keeping them. Then we need to figure out where the others went with those prisoners.”

  “Could be they were worried about the creek getting in here and already went up top,” Ira said. “But I’ll take a couple of the boys and go have a look.”

  “Be careful,” Hudson snapped. “I can’t afford to lose any more men.” He finally jammed his gun back in its holster. “Lord, it seems like everything’s conspiring against me right now!”

  Seth wished he could believe that was true. The rising floodwaters had given him a shred of hope at last. He would have a better chance to save Charlie if they were out in the open, even in this deluge.

  For the first time since the storms had started, he found himself praying that the rain would continue and the water would keep rising....

  Maybe the Lord would hear one last prayer from a man beyond redemption.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Luke wondered if he would ever be dry again. Logically, he knew he would—if he lived through this day, that is—but at the moment it
didn’t much feel like it.

  He waited in the rocks with the kid called Ace. Surviving as long as he had in such a dangerous profession had made Luke a good judge of character, and he instinctively liked both Jensen boys. They were raw, sure. Ace was a little too serious, and Chance was a little too cocky. But they had the makings of something; Luke’s gut told him that.

  Something about them was oddly familiar, too. When he looked at them, he felt like he ought to know them. But he was certain that in all his wanderings during the past twenty years, he had never run into them before.

  He put those thoughts out of his mind as he spotted three more men trudging up the trail to the top of the bluff. Luke nudged Ace to alert him to the outlaws. The young man nodded to show that he had seen them, too.

  This time they didn’t meet the outlaws or pretend to be the sentries. Instead they remained hidden in the rocks and allowed the three men to go past them. They were about to step out and get the drop on the men when one of the outlaws looked back and yelled, “Holy cow!” He pointed across the open area in front of the cave.

  Luke looked in the same direction and saw a wall of water come crashing around a bend in the creek upstream. It was a good ten feet high, and Luke knew it must have rolled for miles downstream, picking up speed as it flowed from the hills to the northwest.

  When the water hit the open area, it began to spread out, but it was still deep and swift. Shouts came from below. The men in the cave must have seen the flood closing in. The three outlaws who had come up onto the bluff started back toward the trail. One of them exclaimed, “We gotta help the rest of the boys get those horses out!”

  Luke leaped from concealment and smashed the butt of his rifle against the back of an outlaw’s head. He and Ace had a chance to whittle down the odds against them, and Luke was going to take it. As the man he had struck collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, Luke pivoted and lashed out again, laying the rifle’s stock against the side of another man’s head. As that man collapsed, too, Luke watched from the corner of his eye while Ace knocked out the third man with a sure stroke of his rifle.

  “That’s more like it,” Luke said, and for a second Ace grinned at the praise. Then they were both serious again as Luke went on, “Let’s drag them into the rocks where the others won’t spot them when they come up here.”

  “You think they’re going to abandon the cave?” Ace asked.

  “That flood’s not going to give them any choice,” Luke said.

  As Seth watched the water rushing toward the cave, he remembered what the Good Book said about floods: the Lord had promised Noah that never again would there be a flood like the one that had almost destroyed the world in the Book of Genesis. The rainbow was a symbol of that promise.

  It was starting to look like this one might come close, though.

  “Get the horses out of here!” Oliver Hudson shouted at his men. “Take them up on the bluff where they’ll be safe!”

  The outlaws rushed over to the rope corral and began throwing saddles on the horses that weren’t already saddled. Even Hudson was distracted by the frenzied preparations to flee the cave before it filled with water.

  Seth knew he might not ever have a better chance to make his move.

  He palmed out one of the Colts as he leaped toward the man guarding Charlie. The outlaw saw him coming, yelped in alarm, and tried to claw out his own gun. He was too late. The barrel of Seth’s revolver smashed against his head and sent him sprawling.

  Hudson twisted around and ripped out a furious curse as Seth looped his left arm around Charlie and picked him up. Hudson’s gun came out with blinding speed and hammered a shot at them.

  Seth felt the wind-rip of the slug’s passage next to his ear as he dashed toward Felix Dugan’s horse. The animal was strong enough to carry both him and Charlie. He twisted and threw a shot back at Hudson, coming close enough to make the outlaw dive for cover behind some of the crates. Hudson fired again as Seth practically threw Charlie onto the big black horse. The bullet burned across the animal’s rump, made him whinny shrilly in pain and rear up.

  “Hang on, Charlie!” Seth shouted. He thumbed another shot at Hudson and saw the bullet chew splinters from the crate where his old enemy had taken cover. Hudson had to duck again.

  Seth used that split-second respite to leap onto the horse behind Charlie and slam his heels against the horse’s flanks. The black horse bolted toward the rain-filled entrance.

  Emerging into the deluge was like riding under a waterfall. Seth had his hands full controlling the horse and hanging on to Charlie. He sent the horse lunging through six-inch-deep water toward the foot of the trail leading to the top of the bluff.

  They started to climb. The trail was a slick, muddy mess, and it took a firm hand on the reins to keep the horse moving. Seth didn’t look back. He knew Hudson and the rest of the gang were probably riding out of the cave by now, and he had no doubt they would pursue him. He had to give them the slip in this terrible storm.

  Hudson had sent men up here to check on the sentries, Seth recalled. That meant he might run into them. He had his right arm around Charlie, and that was the hand he’d filled with a Colt. He was using his left hand on the reins.

  “Grab hold of the horse’s mane, Charlie!” Seth told the boy as they approached the top of the bluff. “Hang on tight! I’m liable to need both hands here in a minute!”

  The horse lunged the rest of the way up the trail and came out on the level again. Seth spotted a flicker of movement in some rocks off to his right and was about to swing the gun in that direction and fire when he saw a man in a black hat and poncho stand up and wave at him.

  “Head for the trees!” the man shouted. “We’re friends! We’ll hold off that bunch!”

  Seth realized he had never seen the man before. He wasn’t one of Hudson’s gang. Seth had no idea who he was, but right now the fact that he wasn’t a murderous outlaw was enough to make Seth trust him.

  “Hold on, Charlie,” he said again as he sent the horse galloping across the bluff toward a stand of live oaks.

  A slender man with a mustache stepped out of the trees and waved encouragement. Seth raced past him and then drew rein as he entered the thicket. Another young man with a bandaged leg was standing with his shoulder propped against a tree trunk, holding a rifle. He grinned and called, “Take the boy and get out of here, mister.”

  There was a young woman here, too, a pretty blonde. She held a pistol but didn’t look like she knew how to use it. Seth didn’t know how many men were hidden in the rocks, but there couldn’t be more than one or two. These strangers were going to be outnumbered by Hudson’s men, a gang of hardened, cold-blooded killers. They wouldn’t be able to hold off the outlaws for long.

  Seth leaned forward and said in the boy’s ear, “Charlie, do you know your way home from here?”

  “I . . . I think so.”

  “I hate to send you on by yourself, but I need to stay here and help these folks.”

  Charlie looked around at him, ashen with fear.

  “I can’t do that by myself, Preacher!”

  “Sure you can,” Seth assured him. “Just stay away from any running water. You can make it if you’re careful.”

  “I . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Your ma’s waiting for you, Charlie,” Seth said. “I know her. She’s praying for you right now. And her prayers are going to keep you safe.”

  “Well . . . if you’re sure . . .”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” Seth told him. Suddenly, he gave Charlie a fierce hug and thought about what it would have been like to have a son like this. He would never know, but this moment was as close as he would ever get so he’d have to be satisfied with it.

  That thought made an unexpected feeling of peace wash through him. He kissed the top of Charlie’s head and then slipped down from the horse. As he drew his second gun, he said, “Go on, Charlie. Go home.”

  The boy gave him
a shaky nod, then kicked the horse’s sides and sent it into a run. Seth watched them disappear into the storm, then turned to the strangers.

  “You’re Sam, I reckon?” the young man with the wounded leg said.

  “I used to be. My name’s Seth Barrett now.”

  Sam Brant was already dead. If he died here today, it would be as Seth Barrett, a man of God.

  “Whatever you say, mister,” the young man replied with a reckless grin. “I’m Chance Jensen. This is Will Porter and Miss Channing. My brother Ace is over there in those rocks, and so is our friend Luke.”

  “You know you’re in for a fight,” Seth said. “There are a dozen outlaws who’ll come boiling up that trail any minute now.”

  “Let ’em come,” Chance said. “We’ll give them a hot lead welcome.”

  “That was Sam Brant,” Luke told Ace as they crouched behind the rocks with their rifles ready. “I recognized him from all the wanted posters I’ve seen of him.”

  “Then he’s an outlaw, too. But you let him go.”

  Luke shrugged and said, “He had the kid with him, and from the sound of what Miss Channing told us, the boy means something to him. Otherwise Hudson wouldn’t have kidnapped him and tried to use him as a hostage. We can hash that out later. I know Hudson and the rest of that bunch are killers. I plan to proceed accordingly.”

  “You mean we stop them from going after Brant and the boy.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Luke said. “And here they come now!”

  The first riders appeared at the top of the trail. Luke and Ace opened fire. Accurate shooting was difficult in this downpour, but they sprayed enough lead across the trail that one of the outlaws pitched from his saddle. The others retreated, firing wildly at the rocks. Luke and Ace had to duck as slugs spanged off the boulders and ricocheted around them.

  “We’ve got them trapped!” Ace said in the lull that followed.

  “Don’t you believe it,” Luke told him. “Hudson’s no fool. He’ll find a way to flank us. Then they’ll catch us in a crossfire and overrun us by sheer force of numbers.”