A Texas Hill Country Christmas (22 page)

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.

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.”

“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.”

“Sounds like we're in worse shape than I thought we were,” Ace said with a frown.

“We would be if we stayed here. What we're doing, though, is giving Brant enough time to get away with that boy. Then we'll pull back and get out of here.”

“Those outlaws are liable to come after us.”

“If they want a running fight in weather like this, we'll oblige them,” Luke said. He looked back over his shoulder. Even through the rain, he was able to see a huge, dark hump looming about a mile away. “I've even got an idea where we can make our stand.”

“Ever see rain like this before?” Matt asked as he and Smoke rode toward Enchanted Rock from the north.

Smoke shook his head, which made water spray around him from the brim of his hat.

“I'm not sure I have,” he said, raising his voice so his brother could hear him over the storm's racket. “Sort of like riding through a river, isn't it?”

“We might as well head back to the ranch headquarters. We're not gonna be able to find anybody in weather like this!”

Smoke hated to admit defeat, but he had a hunch Matt was right. They had spent the previous day out here and hours today, and all they had done was gotten wet. They hadn't found any sign of Chet Fielding.

“This is no way to spend Christmas Eve,” Matt went on.

“It won't be much of a Christmas for Mrs. Fielding if we don't find her husband,” Smoke pointed out.

Matt looked a little crestfallen as he said, “Yeah, I know. I don't mind staying out here as long as you want, Smoke.”

Smoke thought it over and then said, “We'll look a while longer.”

There was stubborn, and then there was downright mule-headed, he thought. But he was going to err on the side of persistence.

After a while he pulled out his rifle, aimed it at the sky, and fired three shots, spaced out regularly one after the other. Out of habit, he replaced the rounds he had fired, and he was sliding the Winchester back in its sheath when he suddenly heard something.

The reports were faint and muffled by the rain, but they were unmistakable. Matt stiffened in his saddle just like Smoke did and exclaimed, “Those were shots, Smoke!”

“Yeah, and it sounded like they were responding to the ones I fired,” Smoke agreed. He heeled his horse into motion. “Come on!”

They rode toward the huge rock, urging their mounts to a faster pace that sent drops flying as the horses splashed through standing water. After they had covered several hundred yards, Smoke reined in, pulled out the Winchester, and once again let off three rounds.

The answering shots were louder this time.

“That way!” Matt said, pointing. They rode toward a thick stand of live oaks.

The next time they heard something, it was a shout. A man limped into view, propping himself up by using the rifle he held as a crutch. He steadied himself, took off a black hat with a drooping brim, and waved it over his head.

Smoke and Matt rode up to the man, who wore a big grin on his freckled face. Smoke could see now that the man had hurt his leg somehow. Broken branches were bound to it as crude splints.

“Lord a' mercy, I'm glad to see you fellas!” the man said. “Didn't know whether I was gonna drown out here or starve to death first!”

“Chet Fielding?” Smoke asked. The man was stocky and ruggedly built, a typical Texas pioneer cattleman.

“That's right,” he said. “Who might you be?”

“Smoke Jensen,” Smoke said. “This is my brother Matt.”

“Smoke—! Land's sake, I didn't expect to see you, Mr. Jensen, but like I said, I'm mighty glad to. Reckon you came down to see about buyin' that ol' bull o' mine.” Fielding waved the hand he wasn't using to brace himself on the rifle. “He's around somewhere. I followed him down here, don't know how come the wanderlust to get hold of him like it must've, but I was gonna haze him back closer to home when my horse dang near stepped on a rattler and spooked so bad he threw me off.”

“A rattlesnake?” Matt said. “At this time of year?”

“There are a few around,” Fielding said. “The ground's so wet, the water must be runnin' 'em out of their dens where they'd normally be holed up for the winter. Anyway, I busted my leg when I fell. Fixed it up best I could, but I knew I couldn't walk all the way back to the ranch on it. Dang horse ran off and I ain't seen hide nor hair of him since. I figured somebody'd come lookin' for me sooner or later, though, if the whole country didn't wash away, so I been waitin' and stayin' out of the rain as best I could.”

“We figured you might need a mount, so we brought an extra with us,” Smoke said. “We've got a few supplies left, too, if you're hungry.”

“Gimme a knife and fork and that pesky ol' Diablo Rojo bull, and I'll show you how hungry I am!” Fielding said. Then he waved his hand again and went on, “Naw, I'm just joshin'. I'm too fond of the old boy to ever eat him. But I'm a mite peeved with him for gettin' me in this predicament.”

Smoke started to swing down from his horse but paused as more shots blasted through the air. They weren't that close, but they weren't evenly spaced signal shots, either. In fact, it was an explosion of gunshots that sounded like a dozen or more weapons going off.

Smoke knew the sound of a desperate battle when he heard one, and so did Matt. They looked at each other. Matt said, “Am I crazy, or does it sound like all hell's breaking loose on top of that big rock?”

“That's what it sounds like, all right,” Smoke agreed. “You know anything about that, Mr. Fielding?”

“Not a blasted thing,” the rancher said, “but it sure sounds to me like somebody needs help.”

“I was just thinking the same thing . . .” Smoke said.

“Well, don't hang around here!” Fielding exclaimed. He waved a hand toward Enchanted Rock. “I can tell you boys want to take cards in that game. I can wait a while longer to get rescued!”

Smoke and Matt nodded to each other, then galloped toward the massive rock formation. With that much powder being burned close by, they had to see what it was all about.

Jensens just couldn't do anything else.

 

 

Luke had been right about Oliver Hudson being smart enough to find some other way to get at them. Only a few minutes had gone by in the standoff when bullets began zipping into the rocks from a different direction. Some of Hudson's gang had climbed up the bluff where horses couldn't go, but men could.

“Reckon we'd better get out of here,” Luke had said as he ducked a slug that whipped over his head. He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted through the rain to the trio in the live oaks, “Give us some cover!”

Chance, Porter, and Evelyn opened up with their guns, throwing as much lead as they could at the outlaws. Luke and Ace burst out of the rocks and sprinted toward the trees. They really didn't have that much ground to cover, but the dash for timber seemed a lot longer than it actually was with all that lead flying around.

Luke thought he spotted more muzzle flashes than he should have, and when he and Ace reached the trees he saw the reason why. Sam Brant was still there, joining in the fight with the others.

Luke ducked behind the tree, pressed his back against the trunk, and called, “Where's the boy, Brant?”

“I sent him home to his ma!” the outlaw replied as he fired one of his Colts toward the edge of the bluff. “Do I know you?”

“No, but I know you!” Luke said. He turned, thrust his rifle past the tree trunk, and cranked off three more rounds. “We'd better get out of here while we still can.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Chance agreed, “but we're short one horse now.”

“Evelyn can ride with me,” Porter said. “My horse can carry double.”

“I hope you're right, mister,” Luke said, “because we don't have any time to waste. Let's go!”

Luke and Ace kept up the covering fire while the others got mounted. Then they swung up into the saddles, and they all took off at a gallop toward Enchanted Rock.

“That's mighty big to go around!” Ace called to Luke.

“We're not going around it! We're going up it!”

“Good idea!” Brant said. “I've been up there! We can stand off an army from the top!”

From a distance, Enchanted Rock looked like a smooth dome, but as they drew closer to it, Luke saw that it was anything but. The massive hump-backed rock was littered with boulders, dotted with brush, and split by fissures. The cracks in the rock weren't deep in most places, but they were big enough to break a horse's leg and had to be avoided.

Rifle shots cracked behind the riders as they started up the slope. Bullets whined off the rocks. Luke and Ace fell back a little behind the others and twisted in their saddles to return the fire. They weren't going to hit anything from the backs of struggling horses, but maybe their shots would make the outlaws leery and cause them to hang back for a few more seconds.

Luke halfway expected their horses to collapse underneath them from the strain of climbing the rock. Somehow all the animals made it to the top with their riders.

“Here!” Brant cried. “This is as far as we can go. If we start down the far side, they'll have the high ground and be able to pick us off!”

Luke agreed. He dismounted and handed his reins to Will Porter.

“You and the lady will have to hold the horses,” he said. “Can you do that?”

“We can,” Porter said. “Can't we, Evelyn?”

“Will, you wouldn't be in the middle of this mess if it weren't for me!” she said as he helped her down. “Can you ever forgive me for being so stupid?”

“There's nothing to forgive,” Porter told her. “We all make mistakes about people.” He looked at Luke. “We'll hold the horses, sir, don't worry.”

Luke just grunted.

A little ridge of rock near the top was the only cover up here. Luke motioned Ace, Chance, and Brant over to it. The four men knelt there and reloaded their guns.

“You seem to know this part of the country, Brant,” Luke said to the outlaw. “Do you think Hudson will split his forces and send some of them around behind us?”

“I don't think he can,” Brant replied. “There's a creek that runs along the base of the rock in places, and it's bound to be flooded by now. I'm not sure they can get behind us with all that high water in the way.”

Luke grinned tightly.

“Looks like it's gonna be a head-on fight then,” he said. “A fight to the finish, more than likely.”

Brant looked over at him and said, “I reckon you know me from wanted posters.”

“That's right.”

“You're a lawman?”

“Not exactly.”

“A bounty hunter, then.”

Luke shrugged.

“I don't care,” Brant said. “If Charlie got back to his mother all right, that's all that matters.”

“Made friends with some of the folks around here, have you?” Luke asked.

“It's a long story.”

“Maybe I'll get to hear it when this is all over. Right now—” Luke brought the Winchester to his shoulder. “Here they come!”

Hudson was canny, Luke saw as he opened fire at the muzzle flashes coming from below. Instead of a foolhardy charge up the rock on horseback, the outlaws had dismounted and were using every bit of cover they could find as they advanced. They took turns dashing from boulder to boulder, from gully to clump of brush, and the ones who weren't moving kept up a steady fire toward the defenders at the top of the slope. So many bullets buzzed through the air that it sounded like someone had disturbed a hornet's nest. They wouldn't be able to hold off the outlaws for long, Luke realized. When Hudson and his men reached the top, it would be a close-quarters shootout as the defenders were overrun . . . a shootout that Luke and his companions would almost certainly lose since they were outnumbered more than two to one.

The battle seemed to last a lot longer than it really did. Blood dripped from a bullet crease on Brant's cheek, and the bandage around Chance's leg was red with blood where the wound had broken open again, but other than that the four men were still unscathed. That wouldn't hold true for much longer, because the outlaws were almost right in their laps by now. One more barrage of covering fire, one more rush, and it would all be over....

Luke wasn't aware that it had stopped raining until a gap suddenly appeared in the clouds overhead. Brilliant rays of sunshine slanted down and illuminated the top of Enchanted Rock. For a moment the battle paused as men squinted and let their eyes adjust to the unexpected light.

Then Hudson bellowed, “Wipe 'em out!” and guns began to roar again.

 

 

Seth didn't know what prompted him to turn his head and look over his shoulder at that particular moment. Divine guidance, maybe. But he saw the two tall, stalwart figures striding out of the light. For a second he would have sworn he saw wings behind them, and he couldn't help but think that somehow a pair of guardian angels had found their way to the top of Enchanted Rock.

But those weren't wings. They were slickers that had been thrown back to give the two men better access to their guns, and those revolvers leaped into their hands and began to roar. He heard Luke Jensen exclaim, “How in the world—!” then Luke was up on his feet, as were Ace and Chance, and Seth joined them, the Colts roaring and leaping in his hands, and a storm of lead unlike any ever unleashed in this part of the country swept the rocks clean of evil.

Charging outlaws suddenly spun off their feet as bullets ripped through them. Others doubled over as lead punched into their guts. They fell and rolled back down the slope.

Seth found himself facing Oliver Hudson. The leader of the gang was already bloody where he had taken some hits, but he stalked inexorably toward Seth, roaring blasphemies as he triggered his guns. Seth felt the hammer-blow of a slug rock him back, but he stayed on his feet. He knew that within moments he would die, knew that his soul would plummet to the depths of the fiery pit where it belonged, but at least he would take Hudson to hell with him. Both of Seth's Colts blasted as another bullet hit him, but even as he toppled back into the waiting darkness he saw Hudson's face turn into a smear of red as the bullets bored through his diseased brain.