Hanging Fire

by Eric Red

  Shouldering through the branches, the two people saw the way was clearly lit by the fulgurations of flames on all sides, and the congested view ahead began to look like a landscape hung with fog. Orange patches of fire bloomed in the haze. The searing air was getting soupy thick with smoke—both the man and woman were starting to cough and gag, their lungs hurting from the heat. The snapping sound of flames was growing louder.

  Ahead, the outline of a bronze horse materialized in the smoke. A second horse was beside it. Both were tethered to the tree, where they’d been left. Copper’s brown eyes were wide with alarm and it jerked its head urgently in its bridle when it spotted its owner staggering through the smoke. The brown-and-white-spotted Appaloosa was less poised, pounding its front hooves and rearing on its hind legs in a growing panic from the nearby fire. Whipping its head desperately side to side, the reins were shearing the bark on the tree and the bit of the bridle was tearing its mouth. Whinnying and snorting, the Appaloosa’s eyes bulged out of its head in raw terror. Patting Copper quickly to reassure it, Noose saw he needed to calm the other horse, the one Bonny Kate needed to ride, if he could. Letting go of the woman, he took the mustang’s face in his strong hands and hushed and stroked it.

  The effort accomplished little, so Noose rounded on the woman. “You need to saddle up before this horse can’t be ridden. C’mon now, move!” Grabbing the woman’s arm, he tugged her to the horse but she hardly needed added incentive getting her boot in the stirrup and swinging a leg over the saddle.

  “I got it!” Bonny Kate yelled, settling in her seat and unlashing the reins from the tree. “Get on your horse and let’s get the hell out of here while the getting’s good!”

  Sprinting a few yards to Copper, Noose saw the stallion turn to him helpfully as he undid its reins from the tree and vaulted into the saddle. “Yee-ahh! ” he shouted, and tugged the bridle, rotating the horse around in a half circle and giving it some spur, charging it through the smoke-wreathed trees where the fires hadn’t reached yet. Swinging his head to look over his shoulder, he saw Bonny Kate riding like the devil right behind him, controlling her horse by sheer ferocity. The two of them galloped over the uneven ground, logs and ruts appearing in the billowing smoke seconds before the twin horses cleared them. Noose prayed one horse or both wouldn’t break their legs. The conifer trees were fully on fire to their rear—gargantuan pillars of roaring, crackling, snapping flames reaching fifty to a hundred feet or more as the dry pines incinerated—the woods had become a raging firestorm.

  Noose and Bonny Kate bore down in their saddles and rode hard ahead into the darkness and smoke when suddenly there was a whoosh of fireball and heat and Cisco’s blazing horse ran directly across their path in front, flames shooting off the saddle and dragging the burning corpse on the ground, tangled in the stirrup in its wake. The banshee screaming mustang was half-burnt alive, flesh and coat charred, and as it passed, torched the pine trees ahead that exploded suddenly into an impassable wall of fire.

  Yanking tight on his reins, Noose charged Copper to his left into a section of forest that was still not ablaze. He looked quickly over his shoulder and saw Bonny Kate drive her horse directly after him, although the Appaloosa seemed to be staying right on Copper’s sure heels.

  A huge loud crack above them made Noose duck his head. Just then a giant flaming branch fell from the heavens and crashed on the ground a few feet from his horse’s hooves in a fireworks shower of smoldering, flying sparks from the glowing cindered log. Behind him, Bonny Kate veered her horse around it at the last second and narrowly avoided being tripped up by the fiery fallen tree limb.

  A gruesome obstruction lay on the trail ahead and Noose saw exactly what it was as his bronze horse came up on it and his nostrils filled with the sweet sickly smell of roasted human and horse flesh: the crisped horse and rider lay in a steaming, blackened pile of bone and burnt meat in the dirt, human and horse skeletons knotted and fused, the blackened saddle twisted with the metal of the stirrups, bridle, and rifles into a melted mass of steel and leather.

  Cisco and his mustang were gone but not before setting a catastrophic forest fire, the outlaw ending his life as he had lived it—in mayhem and destruction. Gesturing his arm to Bonny Kate behind him, Noose alerted her to the trail blockage and signaled for her to ride around the corpses of horse and rider as he rode ahead, showing the way. The two people on their horses rode safely up the trail but the fires were everywhere, it seemed.

  That’s when the first bullet whistled past their ears.

  CHAPTER 23

  Three miles south back down the pass, a long way away from everything, the Jackson cabin was a one-room structure at the edge of town, a few hundred yards from the U.S. Marshal’s office. Bess Sugarland had purchased it for its proximity to where she worked for the foreseeable future and her need to hobble a three-minute distance on her bum leg was the best feature of the cabin. It was a humble, simple place. A sink. A bed. A log fireplace. A cupboard and dresser. Gun rack. She had moved a lot of personal effects of her lawman father and hers that she’d inherited after he was killed. She had grown up with him in a small house attached to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Hoback and this place reminded her of home. She lived alone.

  Bess had left her office just after sundown. Much of her afternoon had been dedicated to giving her new deputy, Nate Sweet, a brisk but thorough orientation of the local marshal’s duties; showing him where everything was in the office from guns to maps to files, then riding around the town of Jackson with him in a horse-drawn wagon giving him a tour of their jurisdiction. Introductions had been made to several local passersby and the men seemed happy to see a man wearing a lawman badge in Jackson even if their wives were less happy about it, being inclined toward the woman who was the first female marshal. Sweet seemed a quick study during Bess’s peace officer orientation and after she had dressed him down during their abrasive first meeting his rough edges had softened a bit; Nate Sweet basically kept his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut. But this was only day one and the marshal knew the kid had a long way to go to earn her genuine confidence.

  Bess, by nature reserved and brusque around people, had become cantankerous now she wore a marshal badge and didn’t like shotgun weddings like the U.S. Marshals Service headquarters in Cody had given her with this deputy who likely was here to stay. After his first day of work today, she had assigned him the night shift, and Sweet was presently on post next door until she relieved him at daybreak.

  Through her window, Bess could see the oil lamp burning in the office. It actually gave her a sense of security knowing somebody was minding the fort while she was off duty and everything did not rest on her capable if weary shoulders.

  Tonight, as she sat in her chair reading a book and drinking a single glass of whiskey as was her nightly custom, Marshal Bess was gripped by a peculiar and uncharacteristic loneliness. The isolation felt tangible as a cold emptiness permeated the room. It was a case of nerves. Her skin felt too tight. She was unable to shake a sudden irrational sense of free-floating dread. Bess was still wearing her work jeans and shirt and couldn’t bring herself to put on her nightgown.

  It did not take long for her to realize why: There had always been a man in her life every day of her life. Not a romantic figure but a familiar, protective one. First her father, Nate Sugarland, filled that role and then the big, tough, and friendly bounty hunter Joe Noose, who she fatefully had met the first time the day her U.S. Marshal father was murdered; it was as if one had replaced the other.

  Her father was no longer with her. His pictures—photographs of him that had been taken and paintings she had done of both of them together as a little girl—were placed all around her house, reminding Bess of his absence while keeping him close in her heart. But he was gone.

  Now, for the first time, so was Joe Noose.

  Bess realized that for the last three months since the day they had met, difficult and trying though those times had been, Noose was always ther
e, always near her, always in close physical proximity. After the battle with the evil Butler Gang, he had gotten her to Jackson and safety, been there every day while she healed, been around every day when she was assigned the new U.S. Marshal’s job she now held.

  Noose wasn’t always in the same room or on the same street, yet he always felt near. She always felt safe, like he could get to her if she needed him. Like a big and powerful but gentle and protective guard dog you always knew was around. She was cranky to him half the time, and there was nothing romantic between them—they were friends, true friends, was what it was. The marshal hadn’t realized until tonight—

  She thought to throw another log on the fire but then noticed the huge glow of fire on the wall and smelled the burning pine, thinking even though the logs looked burned out the fireplace must need no stoking.

  Taking another sip of whiskey, Marshal Bess faced the fireplace and felt the good numbing, warming burn of the liquor going down her throat.

  Noose was gone now, too. She had sent him away.

  On that fool’s errand riding that crazy outlaw wench over the pass. Bess blamed herself—it was all her fault. Why did she send him? She could have deputized any one of—But she didn’t send him; he offered to do it. Made the offer because he knew it would help her out and she couldn’t do it herself because of her damn bum leg. Helped her out because he was a friend. Did the same thing for her she would have done for him had their roles been reversed. She would not have had to be asked.

  But Marshal Bess had a bad, bad feeling about that female outlaw Bonny Kate Valance and knew the minute she saw Joe Noose ride off out of sight with her there was going to be trouble. But by then it was too late.

  Those shots Bess thought she had been hearing all day had been rattling her, too, but she couldn’t place them as far as direction, and the lady outlaw didn’t have a gun, so the marshal kept telling herself it was hunters in the mountains.

  Still . . .

  Too much whiskey. She needed sleep.

  The pulsing fire glow seemed oddly to be growing— it bloomed hungrily around the fireplace, andirons, and wall. The ominous effect of the baroque luminescence was grandiose and infernal.

  Her senses numbed by alcohol, things took too long to register for Bess.

  Her toes were freezing. The logs on the fire were blackened char. Her fire was completely out.

  Yet the reflected firelight reared diabolically up the cabin walls and ceiling in flaming shapes like hellish demons. And her nostrils were filled with the stench of burning logs.

  No!

  Marshal Bess Sugarland whirled around and saw the windows behind her brightly ablaze with the enormous glare of a gigantic fire, the view of the Teton Pass her shutters faced obscured in a titanic fiery glow outside, fogging the glass with heat.

  Leaping out of her chair, Marshal Bess staggered to her door and threw it open. The heat and overwhelming stench of the forest fire in the fresh Wyoming air hit her like a kicking horse and knocked her back. She clung to the door and threw herself forward into a hurricane of light, smoke, ash, and cinders, hobbling out onto the grass to behold hell itself.

  It was as if night had turned to day and a biblical apocalypse had come. The Teton Pass was on fire.

  The sky was bright with flames consuming the forest in a raging conflagration, a towering firestorm reaching a hundred feet high. The whole mountain was burning.

  Covering her nose and mouth, staring in speechless shock and awe up at the vast blazing tableau of the whole mountain range engulfed in flames, Marshal Bess stood small and alone outside her cabin, dwarfed by the staggering forest fire only a few miles off.

  That bitch Bonny Kate Valance was responsible somehow, Bess just knew. But that didn’t matter right now.

  Joe Noose was up there. And there was nothing Bess could do.

  But she had to try.

  Wild with panic, Bess Sugarland screamed her lungs raw until her chest hurt and she had no voice or spit left. She was screaming, “Sweet! ”

  It didn’t matter that her leg hurt like a railway spike had been driven through it, didn’t matter that she could barely walk, she did anyway. Her mare was a hundred yards off in the corral behind the office, the buck-and-rail fence incandescent in the hellish bloom of the distant forest fire. Glad she had decided to stay in her clothes, Marshal Bess staggered to her doorway and jammed her bare feet into her cowboy boots she left on the porch, grabbing her coat and hat from inside the doorway and throwing them on as she force-marched herself limping across the grassy field. The wooden brace on her leg began to splinter and crack from the pressure but Bess didn’t care, shoving aside the gate of the stockade with both big hands and gimping her way to her new horse, a powerful paint. Her saddle was set on one of the wooden rails of the corral. Bess snatched a saddle blanket and tossed it over the back of her mare then half stumbled to the heavy saddle and hauled it into her arms, an effort that caused her leg to collapse under her—she tripped and fell on her face in the mud with a cry of agony. The wooden leg brace shattered but she ignored it as she pulled herself up the stockade fence and climbed to her feet, heaving the saddle over the blanket on the back of the frightened horse, whose eyes were riveted on the fires in the mountains rearing over the town of Jackson.

  “Sweet !” she roared, buckling the saddle under her mare’s chest. “Sweet, get your damn ass out here! Where the hell are you?”

  Finally, the U.S. Marshal’s office door was flung open and Deputy Sweet staggered out, clenching his rifle, looking like he’d just woken up, and immediately he stopped dead in his tracks, transfixed by the great forest fire to the north.

  Cinching the saddle, Bess stuck her good leg in the stirrup and heaved herself onto her horse with a gritted-teeth grimace. “Sweet! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Grab me a rifle and get us some ammo then get your ass on your horse!” Hauling hard on her reins, Marshal Bess wheeled her horse around and rode over to Sweet to glare commandingly down at him.

  The deputy, realizing how tough his boss had to be, getting on her horse like that with a badly wounded leg, and cognizant of the fearsome fury in her face, gave her no argument and scrambled into action. Ducking into the office, he snatched the rifles and bandoliers of cartridges and had his hat on and was back out the door in less than a minute. Tossing her up a Winchester and an ammo belt, Sweet vaulted onto his own horse he had left saddled, then rode up beside her, his gaze still drifting over to the roaring fires on the pass. Sweet indicated it with a nod and looked Bess a question.

  “Yes. That’s where we’re going.”

  He looked her another question.

  “My friend is up there. We’re gonna go save him.”

  And it was in that moment as Marshal Bess Sugarland saw fearlessness in Deputy Nate Sweet’s strong eyes as he nodded dutifully and his horse fell in right behind hers as she galloped straight for the pass, that she liked him right down to the ground as they rode into the breach.

  CHAPTER 24

  Somebody was shooting live ammo at Noose and Bonny Kate.

  A fusillade of gunfire immediately followed in a thundering series of staccato reports that boomed over the crackling roar of the forest fire. With a quick look back Noose saw that Sheriff Waylon Bojack and his posse of Arizona deputies were hard-charging their lathered horses through the leaping flames like a pack of demons unleashed from hell, guns drawn and muzzles flashing in hot pursuit. Bullets zipped and zinged, ricocheting off the fire-wreathed trees ahead of Noose and Bonny Kate as the two of them drove their spurs into the horses and galloped on ahead.

  Out of the frying pan and literally into the fire.

  “Ride!” Joe Noose yelled.

  “Damn straight!” Bonny Kate shouted back.

  They dug in their spurs but the horses hardly needed incentive, dashing like their asses were on fire. Noose rode ahead in the lead, hugging his horse, bent close to the saddle as Copper skillfully navigated its speedy, sure-footed escape through the
forest fire, dodging trees and low-hanging branches, placing its galloping hooves well, somehow finding a clear trail through the confusing maze of forestland. Bonny Kate’s horse followed Copper step for step, trusting the bronze stallion’s alpha leadership. Trees came rushing at the people’s faces, more and more now on fire.

  Hell was in front and hell was behind. Getting burned or shot or both seemed an absolute certainty. The smoke was getting so thick in the woods it was hard to see more than fifteen yards ahead.

  The air was cacophonic with deafening sounds of raging fire and gunshots but suddenly there was a gigantic boom that sounded like a stick of dynamite going off. It came from behind Noose and Bonny Kate, who turned their heads in alarm just in time to see the blazing hundred-foot pine tree burn through and collapse, falling like a giant flaming pillar onto the trail behind them, showering fire and sparks and shaking the ground in its colossal impact. The sheriff and his deputies had abruptly stopped shooting and were looking in raw terror upward toward the ten-ton tree’s fiery descent toward their very heads.

  Bojack and his men picked up their pace on their horses, riding for their lives. He and one of his men got through, the other didn’t. The tree landed right on top of Jed Ransom. Bonny Kate averted her eyes and Noose winced as the titanic, fiery beam crashed down on horse and rider, squishing the lawman into his saddle as the impact broke all four of the stallion’s legs like toothpicks and both horse and rider were crushed flat and consumed in a billowing combustion of exploding fire from the crash of the blazing, fallen tree. Sparks and smoke plumed.

  Catching a quick glimpse of a mask of bitter grief on Sheriff Waylon Bojack’s fire-emblazoned bearded features, Joe Noose ducked as he saw the lawman’s head quickly snap his way as the old man raised his Winchester one-handed and fired, spinning the rifle around his hand and levering another round into the chamber and firing again. Copper was running in a zigzag pattern to avoid the pine tree trunks that lay like an obstacle course in their way, throwing Bojack’s aim, and the Arizona sheriff’s shots went wild.