Hanging Fire

by Eric Red

  What he saw next was very peculiar.

  The leader holding the Remington .40-44 revolver with the eight-inch muzzle reached into his own pocket and pulled something out . . .

  A spud potato.

  He brought it to his narrow mouth and bit off the end with a crunch.

  Then he screwed the potato slowly over the barrel of his pistol with a squeak squeak squeak.

  He pulled the trigger.

  There was no gunshot only a muffled pffft as the potato exploded into moist fragments as it smothered the discharge of the weapon.

  Sheriff Albert Shurlock was shot right between the eyes. He collapsed on the fire of the open stove, knocking over the coffeepot, which doused the flames as the fresh coffee spilled, sparing the shocked face of the corpse burn disfigurement.

  Across the room, Deputy Bob Fisk did a lot of praying, getting on his knees and shaking all over as the leader of the gunmen produced another potato, bit off the end, spat it out, and slowly and deliberately screwed it on the wet, steaming barrel of his revolver.

  When he pulled the trigger again and blew Fisk’s brains out, the floor was covered with chunks of spud but there had been no noise.

  The triggerman Tuggle grinned: “Idaho is known for its potatoes.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Joe Noose’s eyes blinked open.

  It was later but still night. The pain in his chest ached bad, real bad, but he did not have a bullet in him, Noose knew that right away.

  Why not? He had been shot point-blank.

  He took inventory. Not moving a muscle, he sensed the feeling in all his extremities, knowing he was intact. He played dead, because that tricky shootist thought he was dead and Noose didn’t want to dissuade him of the notion.

  Eyes slitted, Noose looked down at his chest. That slug sure had put a big enough hole in his coat, but through that hole, he saw metal glint.

  Bent metal.

  The deputy marshal badge had taken the bullet, blocking the slug from penetrating his flesh. The six-star steel plating absorbed the impact. With a slight tilt of his head, Noose could see the flatted slug crammed into the crumpled badge that caught it like a baseball in a glove.

  Noose figured he had Bess Sugarland to thank for making him wear the badge.

  He had her to thank for a lot of things.

  His chest still hurt like hell, but his head was clearing and his mind assessing his current situation, the first step to formulating a survival plan.

  To start with, Noose was slumped against the tree in a sitting position. From the sledgehammering numbness in the back of his skull, he rightly assumed that his head hitting the trunk had knocked him out, not the bullet that blew him off his feet against the tree itself.

  His eyes slid sideways, then down.

  His holsters were empty. Guns and knife gone. Not good.

  Where was his prisoner?

  He saw no sign of Bonny Kate Valance in the darkness, and it was too dark to see anything anyway on the pass.

  So he listened instead. Hard.

  A man’s and a woman’s soft voices spoke somewhere nearby. Difficult to make out.

  Still playing dead until he had a handle on the situation, Noose risked a slight turn of his head to the left. The voices came from that direction. It had to be Bonny Kate and Cisco. The voices were raised in argument, so both were probably not looking his way. Whatever the verbal sparring was about sounded like some urgent business between the two of them. Despite what Bonny Kate Valance had said about her lovers’ relationship with Johnny Cisco, it sure didn’t sound like a lovers’ spat.

  This was business.

  The ringing in Noose’s ears evaporated. His ears were regaining their hearing after the deafening close-range blast of the Colt Dragoon that felled him. The voices were coming from his left side, beyond his field of vision. Noose could make out some words . . .

  “—Money?—”

  “—Kiss my ass!—”

  “—Hid it! . . . Gonna tell me or—!”

  That’s when the female voice started screaming in raw agony.

  Cisco was putting the hurt on her. The brutal tone of his savage voice was that of a man with murder in his heart.

  Noose had no choice but to look. Couldn’t risk playing dead much longer. He had a job to do: save Bonny Kate Valance’s life and stop this man from killing her so he could get her to the hangman and they could kill her. Didn’t make much sense but that was his job. Sometimes you don’t make the rules, you just try to play by them.

  Snapping his head left, Joe Noose witnessed a terrible, shocking sight.

  In the clearing less than a hundred yards away, Bonny Kate Valance was suspended horizontally three feet above the ground. Her ankles and feet were roped together and tied off to the trunk of a big tree. Her extended arms and roped wrists and hands were tied by lasso to the saddle of a huge, mean mustang. The horse was taking another small step forward, adding tensile tension to the tight ropes already pulled taut, straining the female outlaw’s arms and legs in her shoulder and hip sockets, stretching her spine to the breaking point. The ghastly crackling sounds of tortured cartilage and tendons were audible. Bonny Kate’s face was contorted in anguish, tears of pain streaming from her clenched-shut eyelids, teeth gritted against the awful keening mewl forced up from her throat. She was being drawn and quartered!

  Sitting backward on the saddle of his horse, legs spread, smoking a cigarette, was Johnny Cisco. He puffed and tickled his horse’s flanks with his spurs in sadistic amusement as his merciless cold lizard eyes stared down at the lady outlaw roped to his horse. Noose could see one thing plain from the fearsome, pitiless expression on Cisco’s narrow face: this was a very angry man who had been wronged by this woman and he wanted his pound of flesh—and wanted something else. The shootist’s eyes were dead. “You’re gonna tell me what I want to know, bitch, or I’m gonna spur my stud here and rip you apart.”

  Whipping her head in fury, Bonny Kate found the gumption to spit at him, but she missed.

  “Spitfire hellion. Still got that sauce. Can’t say I haven’t missed that spirit. But I want my money you stole, Bonny Kate Valance, and you’re going to tell me where you hid that hundred thousand dollars.”

  Joe Noose’s brow furrowed as he listened closely. From this distance he could see Bonny Kate was biting her lip so she didn’t talk.

  “Still not talking? Okay.” Cisco scowled. He whistled through his teeth and drove his left spur like a blade into the flank of his mustang. The horse took a step forward and the ropes squeaked with torque as they jerked Bonny Kate’s arms in the shoulder sockets. She screamed in pure agony, writhing in pain. Noose winced as he heard something in her crackle and crack, cartilage or bone, he couldn’t tell.

  The feral outlaw, still facing backward in the saddle, fiercely pulled the reins and halted the stallion.

  “Stop it, stop it. I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything.” Bonny Kate wept. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

  Cisco snorted smoke. “You’re a coldhearted bitch, Bonny Kate Valance, and that’s a fact. I rode with you six long years. I was your best gun. Got in the way of bullets for you. And I thought you loved me. Ain’t that what you said to me? But you can look a man in the eye and lie like it was a truth. You left me and the boys back there in that crap Arizona town and took all the money without looking back, leaving your gang to get shot to pieces by that sheriff after it was you who shot his boy in the back and then blamed me. You broke my heart, Bonny Kate, busted it to pieces and that was bad. But you stole my money, everybody’s money, from that train robbery and that was worse. I want that money. I know you got it hid. You’re a piece of work, lady. It’s bad enough there’s one of you in this world, but if you don’t tell me where you stashed my loot, give me the exact location, I’m gonna spur this here horse and there’s going to be two of you but both will be dead.”

  Seeing the icy outlaw’s attention was on his female accomplice tied be
tween his horse and the tree and guessing the two of them still had plenty to talk about, Noose made his move. Sparse moonlight trickled through the tree canopy and he satin a pool of shadow. Noose knew it would hurt when he stood up and was already braced for the pain, locking his jaw shut so he wouldn’t grunt or otherwise make a sound and attract attention. It hurt, all right. Hurt plenty. As his muscular legs lifted him upright a shooting agony tore through his chest and his teeth ground as he swallowed a scream—he could hear his molars grind. Then he was done. Joe Noose was on his feet, leaning against the tree for support, feeling the blood rush back into his legs. Then he put one foot in front of the other and advanced.

  “What do you want me to say?” Bonny Kate choked, spitting blood.

  “I want you to come clean. For once in your life, Bonny Kate, I want to hear the truth come out of your mouth. While you still draw a breath.”

  A shaft of lunar light through the leaves carved a harsh pattern of illumination on Bonny Kate’s pallid face and she looked like a waxwork. The luminescence glinted off the spur on Cisco’s boot poised by his waiting horse’s flank, ready to kick the steed into motion and spectacularly end the lady outlaw’s life with grisly and horrific sadism. Noose moved like a cat, slowly creeping toward the scene in the adjacent clearing, careful to stay in the shadows and watching where he stepped. His gaze swung left and right across the ground, looking for a weapon of any kind, his gaping holsters light on his hips, mocking him. Nothing but leaves and twigs on the forest floor, not even a branch big enough to use as a club. Noose clenched and unclenched his cement-block fists—he was going to have to go bare-handed against the armed shootist and that meant he was going to have to get in close, real close, right next to Cisco to grab him, or if he had a chance, snatch a pistol from the man’s holster if he was quick and tricky enough. Just fifty yards to go now, but soon he would be in Johnny Cisco’s line of sight.

  Noose could hear them clearly now and Bonny Kate was doing a lot of talking. “Okay, okay, yes. I did steal the money, all of it. It was your money and the gangs’. The sheriff and his lawmen had you boxed and the money was just sitting there and I saw my opportunity and I took it. There, I said it. You happy now? I took it. Grabbed the money. Got on my horse and rode.”

  “You never even looked back. Not once.”

  “What was there to see?”

  The shadowed figure of the lean, leathery cowboy slowly shook his head, hissing in disgust. “Just us getting cut to pieces.”

  “I was looking ahead.”

  “Well, it’s like they say, Bonny Kate, don’t look behind you because something might be gaining. Looks like I caught up. You’re getting what’s coming to you.”

  “We all get what’s coming to us.”

  “You stashed the money someplace before they caught you. Where’s it hid?”

  “Idaho.”

  “Where in Idaho? It’s a big state.” Cisco’s yellowed teeth flashed in a cynical grin.

  Something glittered on the ground. Noose saw moonlight glint off glass.

  A whiskey bottle. Half-full and corked. Amber liquid gleamed in the dark glass. It gave Noose an idea. He picked up the bottle and ducked silently behind a tree.

  Just around the other side of the trunk not twenty yards away Johnny Cisco tortured his horribly strung-up cohort for information. “By a river. Under a pile of rocks. I can take you there,” she croaked. Rope creaked. Bonny Kate mewled in pain.

  Pulling out the cork, Joe Noose yanked the kerchief from his neck and plugged up the opening of the whiskey bottle with the cloth, turning the bottle quickly upside down so the alcohol soaked the rag. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a match, striking it with his thumb in a flash of flame under the booze-soaked handkerchief, and the cloth burst into flame.

  At the sound of the struck match and flare of firelight, Johnny Cisco swung his surprised gaze to the tree, already drawing his Colt Dragoon revolver from his holster but by then the burning whiskey bottle was already in flight as Joe Noose leapt out from behind the tree and heaved the weapon at the shootist’s head. Before Cisco could raise his gun the blazing whiskey bottle hit him between the eyes with stunning force, exploding to smithereens of shattering glass and splattering burning alcohol that doused his head and torso with liquid fire as he went up in shrieking, screaming flames. The wet blaze of booze splashed all over the leather saddle and cloth saddle blanket and both those ignited in a fiery roar.

  Johnny Cisco dropped his pistol and it fell on the ground as he swatted at the whooshing flames on his hair and face and arms as he turned into a human torch.

  The mustang suddenly began to rear, pawing the air with its front hooves in terror as the horse began to be burned by the flaming saddle and blanket strapped to its midriff. The panicking stallion’s withers were already licked with orange flames and smoke as it tossed its rider from his backward perch on the saddle. Cisco’s boot got tangled in the stirrup as the outlaw plunged in a smoking fireball off the horse, his billowing arms and legs thrashing in agony as he emitted hideous high-pitched shrieks. The burning man landed on the ground hard, his leg stuck in the stirrup snapping with a loud pop. He was done for. Noose could already smell the ugly stench of burning human flesh.

  Bonny Kate Valance threw a desperate anxious glance to Joe Noose as the violent lunging of the rearing horse jerked the ropes on her hands and feet brutally taut, pulling her arms and legs out of their bone sockets. She screamed her lungs out, feeling herself pulled apart.

  A pair of big hands grabbed the rope.

  Leaping to her rescue, Joe Noose got between Bonny Kate and the horse and caught the rope in both huge fists, holding fast, digging both spurred boot heels into the dirt and throwing his full weight and might into stopping the mustang from advancing. Whinnying in pain and fear as the blazing empty saddle strapped to its back spat flames into its scorched and blackened hide, the horse tried to bolt but Noose struggled to hold it in place. The roasted figure of Johnny Cisco, covered head to foot in leaping fire, half on, half off the mustang with his boot still trapped in the stirrup, was tossed like a fiery rag doll as he pawed the ground with his charred crisped hands.

  “Help! Help me!” Bonny Kate screamed.

  Noose’s boots were dragged in the dirt, his buried heels dredging up soil with each lunging movement of the horse but he hung tight to the rope and pulled back on the mustang with every ounce of strength he had, his face contorted and teeth gritted with the effort, the veins bulging in his neck.

  The knot of the rope on the saddle pommel was on fire, blackened and burning in the licking tongues of flames jumping from the steaming blanket beneath the alcohol-soaked leather. With a few ferocious jerks of his heavily muscled arms, Noose snapped the flaming rope apart at the blaze point, showering cinders. The tension went slack and Bonny Kate dropped heavily onto the ground in a cry of pain, with Noose falling on top of her.

  He covered her body protectively and they both locked their glances on the untethered horse as it broke away and galloped into the forest, dragging Johnny Cisco by the boot of his shattered foot lodged in the burning saddle. His eyes were roasting in his skull looking right at them as he shrank away, scarecrow face contorted in a ghastly rictus within the ball of fire that consumed his head and body. His body, still alive and thrashing, was a second smaller fireball alongside the larger ball of flame that was the horse, now fully ablaze as it took off through the raw fuel of flammable tinder of the drought-dry forest.

  As the burning, bellowing stallion brushed against the packed trunks and branches of the rows of pines it passed during its escape, the flames pouring off the saddle instantly set the woods alight like kindling, igniting a raging inferno as combustions of fire exploded in the trees that lit other trees, the ground behind the mustang erupting in a devil trail of flames in the horse’s wake as the dragged, fiery corpse of the shootist set the dry pine needles ablaze.

  Sweeping Bonny Kate Valance up into his arms, Joe Noose quickly be
gan to untie the knots of rope on her ankles, freeing her from her bonds. Both watched the fiery runaway horse as if hypnotized by the nightmarish surreal sight of the burning, lunging stallion running in a crazy wide circle of blazing agony through the forest around them, torching the trees in a ring of fire in its flight. The fireball dead body of the outlaw was swung left and right behind the horse like a medieval cavalry weapon, his shattered body colliding with trunks and bushes, and everything the burning corpse hit went up in flames.

  Smoke was thickening in the air as Noose staggered away back toward their horses with Bonny Kate swooned in his arms. It was bright enough to see now: the entire surrounding area of woods pulsed with evil orange light that glimmered and danced through the branches, a hellish glare glowing brighter and hotter by every passing second.

  The forest was a deadly inferno, growing in size and danger as the runaway horse with fire and smoke pouring off it touched off one tree after another like lit kerosene had been splashed on the trunks and branches. The engulfed stallion galloped in a doomed looping zigzag generating a labyrinth of wildfire, a searing conflagration spreading with every beat of its scorched hooves. Hell came to earth with lightning speed.

  Noose set down Bonny Kate onto her own two feet and hauled her by the hand through the unburned section of woods, making good their escape, both of them looking overhead at the canopy of trees above becoming a crackling nest of fire. “We gotta get to the horses!” Noose shouted. “That fire’s spreading fast!”

  “I don’t want to burn, Joe!” Bonny Kate wailed, raw terror etched across her features. “Don’t let me burn!”

  “Don’t plan to!”

  They pushed through the woods, feeling the wall of heat on their backs. Swinging his gaze to the left, Noose saw the twin fireballs of the mustang and the man it dragged appearing and disappearing behind the trees, a good distance off. That wasn’t a good thing, he knew, because the farther the burning horse got, the more of the woods it was going to ignite—it had already cut a blazing swath of fiery devastation through the forestation.