Hanging Fire

by Eric Red

  “Thanks for keeping her warm for me.”

  The voice woke Joe Noose suddenly and he snapped open his surprised eyes to see Johnny Cisco wearing a big old grin, looking him square in the eyeballs. The barrel of the Colt Dragoon pistol in the shootist’s hand looked as big as a cannon. Then the outlaw’s finger pulled the trigger, there was a huge, blinding flash like a bolt of lightning, and it felt like Noose was being kicked in the chest by a horse as he was hammered back against the tree then flung to the ground by the bullet’s impact, and that was all Joe Noose remembered.

  CHAPTER 21

  The streets were quiet and dark when the seven riders entered the town of Victor, big men on big horses silent as shadows.

  The one named Tuggle, who was the leader, in the forefront, held up his hand and the other men quietly brought their horses to a standstill. Their clothes were dark and weathered and their gait was alert. They all looked around at the empty street that ended in the town square. Nobody was on the sidewalks at this late hour of the night, or early hour of the morning, depending on how you looked at it. All the train passengers and railroad crew had by now checked into their lodging. Tuggle opened his rusty pocket watch and checked it: 3:34 A.M. Outside of a few oil lamp flickers in the top windows of the two hotels in their view down the block, the structures were all dark.

  Far down the block it fell off into darkness where the street intersected the town square, but even in the gloom the foreboding austere platform and crossbeam of the gallows erected there was visible as a darker shadow against the shadows.

  3:35. Tuggle snapped closed his watch. The whole town was getting some shut-eye so folks could be rested for tomorrow’s big event less than eight and a half hours away . . . the hanging by the neck until dead of the notorious female outlaw Bonny Kate Valance.

  The seven men were weary from travel but had no plans on resting this night. They had work to do. Everything had been rehearsed. They each knew their jobs.

  Sunrise would be in three hours, and they needed to be in place by then.

  Tuggle gestured with a brisk hand signal and the men on the big horses moved forward at a slow stealthful trot, Stetson hats pulled down over their eyes. Varney, Gannon, Flannery, Comstock, Mesa, and Hondo rode alertly behind their leader.

  The layout of the town was very familiar to them, for it had been scoped out earlier in the week by Tuggle, who blended in with the other people that had come to Victor. Tuggle had drawn them a map when he returned to Ohio a few days later and made them commit it to memory. There wasn’t much to the place, just a few streets and a square and a train station. Across town in the distance, the darkened behemoth of the steam train sat at repose, hulking and motionless against the stars, like a slumbering dinosaur, moonlight gleaming off the black-iron-and-steel Pacific Northern locomotive. As they were in most of the other buildings in the rest of Victor, all the lights in the train cars were extinguished.

  The street ahead the seven men rode down T-boned into a side street to the left, and a soft burnished glow in the square shape of a window loomed large against the opposite storefront. Tuggle could see from his saddle that would be the light from the sheriff’s office next to the jail. No surprise there, since none of the men who just rode into town expected the Victor constabulary to be sleeping on the job. Not this of all nights.

  Even ridden quiet, the horses were making noise and the men did not want to attract unwanted attention, so the sooner they were on foot, the better. The town corral would be around the corner to the right, down a block, across from the train tracks. The plan was to go to the stable directly, stash the horses, then do what they came here to do. Tuggle put two fingers together and pointed the way. Careful and quiet, the men rode very slowly around the corner onto the next street, staying to the shadows, which were plentiful.

  Nobody had spotted them, as far as they could see.

  Three minutes later, the seven men had ridden down the side street that kept them parallel with the stationary steam train, looming huge and dark against the buckshot pattern of bright stars in the clear night sky. No light came on in the windows of the wagons, and the horses were not making too much noise. Ahead, the gated fence of the corral and stables grew closer, the heads and bodies of many unsaddled horses jam-packing the stockade coming into view. The owner of the corral was getting all the business he could handle from the care and feed of the dozens of horses carrying the spectators who had come from far and wide to witness the first hanging of a woman in the territory, or maybe it was the whole United States, Tuggle wasn’t sure. One thing he was certain of was that this corral would be almost twice as full when the rest of the folks came to town that morning. Luckily, it looked like there was room to put their horses, if not much.

  The single file line of riders stopped their horses at the gate, and Tuggle dismounted, barely making a sound. He kept his movements to a minimum, patiently crossing to the gate and unhitching it. The men received blank or disinterested stares from rows of sleepy equine faces as one by one the men led their horses into the corral and shut the gate. All of the steeds were in the stable now. Moving with the smooth precision of a well-oiled machine, each of the seven men unbuckled their saddles and removed them with the tack from their horses, then carefully carried their gear into the large, darkened barn and stowed them on the wall pegs by the hay bales. Numerous empty saddles were already hung there, of all sizes and expenses. Tuggle doubted when the owner of the corral checked the barn and corral when the sun rose he would even notice the added horseflesh and saddles because so many were already in his place.

  With that the men departed, taking nothing with them from their saddles and saddlebags but their guns—an arsenal of pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and enough ammunition of different calibers to fight an army. Tuggle opened the bag of potatoes and handed each one of his men two spuds, which they pocketed. Loaded down with firearms and cartridges, the seven men slipped out of the barn into the cold clear air of the night, back into the shadows again.

  * * *

  The Victor sheriff’s office was quiet and dark, glowing amber shadows jumping in the flicker of the oil lamp on Sheriff Albert Shurlock’s desk. The small room was fragrant with the smell of fresh brewing coffee, a toasty scent from the stovetop fire of the small cast-iron potbellied stove where the coffeepot bubbled. The lawman was drinking a lot of it because he needed to stay up all night, and he was a little on edge.

  He was going to be plenty angry if Bonny Kate wasn’t delivered as promised. The Jackson U.S. Marshal’s office had telegraphed two days ago the prisoner had set out under armed accompaniment of a deputy marshal and she was due to arrive this morning. As it happened, Shurlock knew the man who landed the assignment—Joe Noose, whom he had done business with several times and whom Shurlock personally knew as the toughest and most reliable bounty hunter he had ever known. So if Noose was in charge of the escort duties, the female should be here on time and in one piece because Noose had a reputation for bringing them in alive. The ride across the pass was two days in the summer—it could take weeks in the winter but that was six months off. The Victor sheriff was confident he’d see Joe Noose riding in with Bonny Kate Valance right around breakfast time, and had no doubt her hanging would proceed on schedule at noon.

  But it was late, he was jittery from too much coffee, and the town was so damn quiet—the mind plays tricks. His stomach was tied in knots, dreading that something was going to happen. If anything did, he would be out of a job. The whole damn town of Victor was full of out-of-towners, over a hundred reporters and visitors from across the country who had come out to see the hanging. They’d come in by horse, by buggy, mostly by train. Victor’s railway line connection had been one of the reasons the town had been selected as the site of the hanging because the politicians and the state capital had wanted to make a big show. The hotels in Victor were full. The restaurants were sold to capacity. Homes were being rented and the owners were charging exorbitant rates to people who had t
raveled here. The carnival atmosphere had been in full swing the whole last week and the town was raking in money. The economy of the little outpost was booming, and the township of Victor was officially on the map.

  But Sheriff Shurlock couldn’t help but worry and fret at his desk during the Hour of the Wolf—the name for the anxiety-prone hours after midnight his Swedish relatives called this time of night. What would happen if anything went wrong and the hanging didn’t come off as planned? Let alone if it was because of something he and his deputies did or didn’t do that he could or should have done as the local lawman in charge on whose shoulders the responsibility fell.

  The sheriff of Victor sipped his coffee and regarded his haggard reflection in the window to the empty street outside, the glow of the gas lamp creasing his craggy face with shadow as beyond the glass the street was a void, black as pitch. Shurlock was alone in the office. His young deputy Bob Fisk he could hear sweeping up the empty cell in the jail next door, getting it cleaned up and ready for the brief stay of its new occupant in just a few hours. The sheriff’s other older and more seasoned three deputies, Bill Sturgis, Lewis Chance, and Martin Fullerton, were armed and out on patrol, walking the streets and keeping an eye on things. All three were due to return shortly. They’d check in, have a cup of coffee, and go out again—mostly because there wasn’t much else to do but wait until sunrise. Maybe he’d switch off with Sturgis or Chance and take the next patrol so he could stretch his legs and get some fresh air, because sitting around the tiny office thinking too much was making him nutty.

  It sure was quiet.

  * * *

  Rolling a cigarette in his tired fingers, Deputy Lewis Chance was a little distracted as he turned the corner onto 4th Street. The rangy Idaho lawman was bored, this having been the fifth time in the last hour he had patrolled the darkened block. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not even a dog. The wooden one- and two-story buildings stood dark and still against the dim moonlight. The sounds of his own footfalls were all he heard. Licking the paper and tapping in the last of his tobacco, he rolled up the cigarette and put it to his lips, striking a match. Puffing smoke, he resumed his rounds, looking up at the darkened windows on the Rose Hotel. Through the closed doorway, he saw the front desk was empty, all the staff gone home or asleep. The night was cool, but the town was so empty it felt like he was out in the country, which he practically was. Normally he enjoyed solitude, but the long hours he had been working for Sheriff Shurlock with the hanging come to town, and all the people who had poured into the small five-block community had frayed his nerves the last week.

  Chance hadn’t gotten much sleep what with all the celebratory atmosphere and was half-awake on his feet. His two Navy pistols hung heavy and untouched in his holsters, weighing him down. Just to be thorough, he peered down the alleys but they were just as empty now as they had been the last five times he had checked. A few minutes ago, Deputy Chance had strolled past the corral, and it looked quiet if filled with more horses than he had ever seen in town—and nothing looked out of the ordinary. One more patrol of the streets the sheriff assigned him and Chance would head back to the office and get a much-needed cup of coffee. His dusty boots were the only sound he heard as he walked wearily around the corner into the town square, and there it was.

  The gallows.

  The platform and crossbeam with the dangling noose reared black and foreboding against the night sky, an instrument of death lying in repose.

  The sight of it chilled him.

  It was a woman they were killing today.

  Chance wasn’t comfortable with that. Sure, he’d heard all the stories about the notorious Bonny Kate Valance and about the many men she had supposedly shot in cold blood—the talk was she would as soon murder you as bed you—but she was a woman, nonetheless. The way he was raised, society didn’t raise a hand to a lady, let alone execute one. It wasn’t right. The twentieth century was almost upon him as the 1800s came to a close and this was a new world, and killing women seemed to be part of it. Certainly that was the example all the politicians were trying to set. As far as Lewis Chance of Victor, Idaho, was concerned, if they had to do it, he damn sure wished they hadn’t chosen to spill a woman’s blood in his town, where he made his home.

  A long, ominous shadow of the gallows in the moonlight passed across him as the lawman walked by, and he shivered, feeling like he was whistling past the graveyard. He hurried out of the square, feeling the air grow suddenly colder.

  Chance knew the hangman. His neighbor and friend Jethro Askew had been tasked with the job, having served as an executioner during the Civil War. He was a good man, although a quiet and introspective one, who worked as the town grocer with his wife, Mary. If today’s duty putting the rope around the neck of a woman bothered Askew, he didn’t let on, but as Deputy Chance walked past the hangman’s house just past the town square, he was guessing Askew wasn’t getting a lot of sleep tonight, either. The lawman picked up his pace as he approached the house, figuring if he saw a light on, he’d stop by and offer a few words of fellowship to his friend.

  A few steps farther and the deputy saw that past the picket fence the hangman’s house was dark, and he felt relieved that Askew was at least getting a good night’s sleep before the big day.

  And that’s when he saw the back door hanging open.

  Jethro Askew always closed and locked the doors and windows of his house at night for protection—one of the few in town who did. The war had made him cautious and circumspect—no way he would leave it open, especially with all the strangers in town.

  Something was wrong.

  Drawing his revolver, Chance grew alert and looked over the exterior of the small frame home as he stepped through the gate and approached the back porch. Not a sound did he hear. No movement. He looked left and right, moving the pistol back and forth in a slow sweep where the barrel went where his nose went. His boots creaked on the loose boards of the porch when he reached it. Chance touched the open door and swung it open all the way. Inside, the one-room living area and kitchen was very dark except for a will-o’-the-wisp shaft of moonlight treacling through the lace curtains.

  “Jethro? Mary? It’s Chance.”

  Silence.

  That’s when he saw the blood glinting blackly on the walls above the shot-away head of the familiar body of the man lying dead on the floor.

  But he hadn’t heard any gunshots.

  A creak of a floorboard sounded to his rear.

  Deputy Lewis Chance felt the men behind him before he saw their faces as he turned too late, raising the barrel of his pistol. He felt the bullet smash through his chest. He felt himself hit the floor. In his remaining few seconds of consciousness before he died, Deputy Lewis Chance wondered why he never heard the gunshot and why the hell he was covered with wet chunks of potato fragments.

  * * *

  His men were late.

  Sheriff Shurlock was up and pacing, his nerves raw.

  Chance, Sturgis, and Fullerton should have been back by now. It wasn’t like his deputies to be tardy, and all they had to do was a quiet walk-around through the town. The lawman looked at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes ago they should have returned. The front door to the sheriff’s office was cracked open to let in the cool night air, there hadn’t been any noises outside, and Shurlock had ears like a bat. The town had been silent, the streets deserted. He was going to have a word with these boys. If one or more of them had fallen asleep . . .

  His coffee cup was empty. The fresh pot was percolating on the cast-iron stove. Time for a refill. Tossing a glance to Bob Fisk, who had returned from cleaning the cell, the sheriff saw his deputy was now lazing in a chair, wearily whittling a stick with his knife, trying to stay awake.

  “Coffee, Bob?”

  “No thanks, Sheriff.”

  “Looks like you could use a cup. Don’t be nodding off on me.” Shurlock scowled at the young man.

  The deputy sat bolt upright. “I’m awake, sir. I’ll ta
ke the next patrol. Aren’t the boys supposed to be back by now?”

  “Yes, they are,” the sheriff said, carrying his empty coffee cup to the front door and sticking his head out, looking both ways.

  “Here they come. About damn time,” Shurlock grumbled to Fisk as he watched the street.

  Up the block, he saw the silhouettes of three men in the familiar baggy clothes and deputy-issued lawman vests. Shurlock couldn’t make out their faces halfway down the block in the dim, but didn’t need to. Badges gleamed on their chests. Sturgis, Chance, and Fullerton were on their way back, finishing their rounds, carrying their guns at ease and coming toward the office in a casual stroll. The cold, stark moonlight behind them extended and exaggerated their elongated shadows on the dirt street in front of them.

  The sheriff waved, relieved.

  The figures waved back.

  Stepping back inside the office, Shurlock turned his back on the door and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. It would be daylight soon and in a few hours it would all be over, he was thinking.

  Behind him he heard the door creak open and the sound of jingling spurs.

  He didn’t remember his deputies had their spurs on.

  Then he saw the stricken look of surprise on Bob Fisk’s face and the color drain from his cheeks like milk from a pail.

  The sheriff rounded, the coffee cup in his gun hand preventing him from reaching for his holstered Colt Dragoon.

  Three strangers wearing his deputies’ clothes were standing inside the doorway. All three had big pistols leveled and cocked. They had unshaven, hard faces and cold, dead eyes.

  The one in the front, the leader, took a step forward. Putting his finger to his lips in a hushing gesture, he made an upward motion with the barrel of his pistol and Shurlock and Fisk put their hands up and didn’t say a word.

  The sheriff of Victor wasn’t unduly concerned. Didn’t think he would get shot. He didn’t know who these men were or what they wanted but he was fairly certain they would not dare fire off their guns and make all that noise in a town so full of people. He could see in the leader’s cunning eyes he wasn’t stupid.