by Eric Red
Bonny Kate was silent for long minutes then Noose heard her softly crying, and this was no act this time.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Why did you do it? Why did you come back and save me back there? You coulda died. Died hard. Died painful. You could have burned up or been shot and for what? For what? For nothin’! I’d’ve been dead by that fire or that posse’s bullets same as I’ll be dead at the end of that rope in a few hours! You don’t make no damn sense to me, Joe Noose.”
“I told you. Told you before, last time you asked. Same thing each time.”
“Tell me again! Make me understand.”
“I swore an oath to get you where I’m taking you. I have my word.”
“People’s word don’t mean shit. What makes you so different? Nobody’s word means nothing in this crazy world.”
“Mine does. Least it does to me.”
“Why?”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
“People don’t do the right thing!” she suddenly screamed.
“I guess I ain’t most people, then.”
“No, I reckon you surely ain’t. I can’t figure you. Just can’t.”
Copper’s hoof slipped in a ditch and Joe Noose was distracted for no more than a split second righting his balance and that of his horse but that was all the time Bonny Kate Valance needed to snatch the Colt Peacemaker out of his holster—she was fast, very fast—and get it cocked with the muzzle pressed against the back of his neck before he could lift his hand to prevent her. He froze. Exhaled.
“Get off the horse,” she said with a vacant coldness in her voice. “Real slow. If you make any sudden moves I’ll blow your head clean off. You know I’ll do it. Nice ’n easy. Dismount.”
Noose dismounted, hands raised. She didn’t have to ask him to do the second part. His spurs clinked as his boots met the earth. He stood on the ground, hands up, back to her.
“Now turn and face me. I know you and your horse are married or something but don’t try to whistle or signal him to throw me or I’ll shoot it before I shoot you, but I will shoot you both.”
Noose turned and faced Bonny Kate with his hands up by his ears. She sat calmly in the saddle, her expression dead, her gaze blank—the face of a killer. The big pistol, held in a steady, small hand with a firm grip on the stock, finger on the trigger, was leveled at his head, five feet away. “Now you’re gonna unbuckle your gun belt, real slow, and let it drop. Then kick it away. Gentle.”
Very carefully lowering one big mitt to his buckle, Noose undid his belt and let it drop with the remaining pistol, stepping out of it, sliding the gun belt away with the tip of his boot. He didn’t take his eyes off hers and he didn’t blink.
Neither did she.
“I done everything they said I did, Joe Noose. I stole that money. I left my gang to get shot. I even shot that sheriff’s son in the back like he said I did. I done all that and more. And I’d do it again. People don’t know half of the stuff what I done. I’m telling you this because I want you to know what you went back and saved. Want you to know just exactly who and what I am. Because I ain’t sorry for none of it. Ain’t sorry for nothing I done in this dirty world. This is what I’m going to do now. I’m taking your horse. I’m riding out of here. Not telling you which way I’m going. By the time you walk to Victor I’ll be a day’s ride away. I know you love this horse and as soon as I can find another I’m gonna leave him for you to find. I may be bad to the bone but I ain’t that cruel. And I’m not going to shoot you.” Her gaze flickered. “I should, though. Shouldn’t take no chances with a man like you.” Her eyes became black holes. “Yeah, I best believe I better shoot you.”
Bonny Kate raised the gun to fire.
Her thumb cocked back the hammer, forefinger tightening on the trigger. Joe Noose knew he was dead, braced to hear the blasting discharge of the pistol, but was surprised to hear the synchronous sound of a second cocking hammer instead.
So was she.
“Lower the gun, bitch,” a familiar Arizona drawl intoned. The recognizable figure of Waylon Bojack stood unsteadily in the shadows behind Bonny Kate. His arm was outstretched and the muzzle of his Colt Dragoon pressed hard against the base of her spine above her rump in the saddle. Sweat and blood gleamed on the sheriff’s ravaged face.
“You don’t kill so good, mister,” Bonny Kate hissed, but lowered the pistol into her lap with a flinch.
Noose flicked his gaze past the looming figure of the lawman behind Copper and saw another horse standing fifty yards back in the darkened trees. The fires rising high into the blackened sky over the forest cast it in glimmering silhouette. Bojack had obviously escaped the flames, but he hadn’t escaped Noose’s bullet—he saw the rip in the right side of Bojack’s shirt, drenched with glistening blood. His badge, crooked and bent, had partially deflected the shot and gleamed in a deformity of its original shape. The Arizona lawman looked like a bronze statue, framed with the epic firelight behind him that glimmered on his beard, but he was almost dead and his body was powered and animated by the last dregs of his will. Waylon Bojack was a dead man walking. Noose didn’t move, knowing he would never get to his gun before the sheriff gunned him down, so he stood and watched, waiting to see what would happen next.
Bonny Kate, jaw grindingly set, stared straight ahead as Bojack spoke quietly to her from behind, his voice hard as lead. “This bullet will blow you in half, bitch. Bust out your spine and gut-shot ya. You’ll die screaming and you’ll die for a long time and it’s just what you got coming. You shot my boy in the back. Heard it just come out of your own lips. I promised his mother I’d kill you and now I got you under my gun. You’re gonna die, bitch. So say your prayers.”
“Ain’t nothing to pray to or for, old man. Do it.”
“Loosen the hammer of that pistol in your hand.”
The female outlaw did as she was ordered and there was a slow, low snick of a hammer being replaced.
“Toss your pistol to the marshal.”
Noose cocked his head, surprised.
Bonny Kate chucked him the gun and Noose caught it. Flipping it around in his hand, Joe Noose had it pointed at Sheriff Bojack so quick he might have stood a chance of shooting the old lawman before he shot him if that was what Bojack had in mind, except he didn’t, so Noose didn’t shoot.
Staggering to his knees, the sheriff holstered his pistol as he dropped into a kneeling position and looked up at Noose with failing, dying eyes. “Take her to the gallows, Marshal. I’m truly sorry I got in your way and tried to interfere with you doing your duty. Vengeance got the better of me and my sworn oath but you’re a good man and you got a job to do like I would have done once, like I used to do.”
Noose shifted the aim of his Colt up at Bonny Kate as he walked up to the kneeling Bojack, and he wasn’t looking at Bonny Kate but could feel her paralyzed figure on the horse, knowing he didn’t need to look at her to shoot her in the head. Noose stood and looked down at the broken man. “We all make mistakes, Sheriff. It’s easy to go astray. You did the right thing, right here, right now, and that’s what counts.”
The lawman coughed blood. “My mistakes killed my men. That can’t be forgiven. But I want to go out clean like I did my job most of my career, do that for them. Means I can’t kill this woman as much as I want to and I got to let you take her in. I’m dying, Marshal, and I know you got no reason to but want to ask you one favor.”
“Name it.”
“My wife, Margaret, is ailing at our home in Phoenix, Arizona. When they hang Bonny Kate Valance, when her neck is good and broke, will you send word to her that justice has come to the woman who shot our boy?”
Noose nodded. The life was draining from the fading, pale-eyed gaze of the dying sheriff looking up at him. “I will do that, sir,” Noose said. “You have my word.”
“Thank you, son,” Bojack said in a final grateful whisper as Noose realized he was looking down at the old man’s open eyes that had no life left i
n them.
Sheriff Waylon Bojack lay on his knees, dead, head raised, eyes open to the sky.
Joe Noose reached out and closed the lids gently with two big, respectful fingers.
A wad of saliva splattered the old man’s bullet-mangled sheriff’s badge, spat from the saddle.
Noose’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“You men make me so sick with all your manly hero talk about right or wrong, it just makes me wanna puke—” Bonny Kate Valance didn’t finish her sentence because Joe Noose’s closed fist punched her right in the face, very hard, knocking her out cold. When the female outlaw regained consciousness two hours later Sheriff Bojack was already buried, miles behind, and she was roped hand and foot and tied to the saddle of Joe Noose’s horse as he rode into the outskirts of Victor, Idaho.
He could already see her gallows rising up like a steeple against the dawn sky from here.
CHAPTER 30
“Do you smell smoke?”
Bill Tuggle looked up from the sheriff’s office desk in Victor, where now he wore the sheriff’s badge. He had been leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk, pretending to catch a little shut-eye, Stetson tilted over his face. Comstock stood by the door, sniffing, a funny look on his face. It was he who had spoken. The impostor sheriff smelled the air. He shrugged.
“I’ve been smelling it all morning,” Comstock complained. “You can’t smell that?” he asked again, fingering his nose. “There’s a fire somewheres.”
Tuggle sniffed. “Now that you mention it.”
The gang had occupied the sheriff’s office for exactly four hours and twenty-three minutes since they had dispatched Al Shurlock and his three deputies with the guns, using the potato silencers. Nobody in town had heard a thing. The first hour after the murders, after assuming the purloined badges and identities of local law enforcement, the gunmen had been busy as they worked hastily to clean up the blood before dumping the bodies in the back room and locking the door. The gang was quiet and efficient and three hours ago had finished their work while the town slept without a soul on the street and none of the citizens the wiser.
Now the phony lawmen were killing time waiting for daybreak and the approaching morning hours when the package would be delivered. It had been a long train ride before the Victor gunwork and Tuggle knew he and his crew had to be sharp for the job that lay ahead today—he had told his boys to catch some sleep and said he would wake them at sunrise.
But now it appeared a problem had arisen. One they had not expected and could not have anticipated.
The impostor sheriff looked back at Comstock. “Looks like you were right. There is a fire. Let me see.” He got up from the desk and walked to the window.
Bill Tuggle acted like he could scarce believe his own eyes. The mountains to the south were on fire.
But he already knew that. In fact, he had been up before dawn, awakened in the safety of the sheriff’s office by the ominous red glow blossoming through the window curtains and filling the inside of the room with a pulsating evil glare—the light of the forest fires on the top of the Teton Pass was turning the night into the day before the sun rose. The smell of burning timber was acrid in his nostrils. Tuggle had looked over at his sleeping gang, whose slumber seemed undisturbed, then soundlessly trod to the window of the office.
The view past the curtains looked out south, and the fires and smoke billowed against the sky ten miles away. Bill Tuggle knew this posed no imminent threat to his person or to the safety of the town of Victor, but his stomach churned with dread nonetheless. It wasn’t from fear of being caught in the fire—there was scant chance of that because there would be plenty of time to evacuate by railway by the time the conflagration grew close enough to worry about—he guessed that time was a day away at least.
What caused Bill Tuggle such severe apprehension instead this morning was the possibility that there would be no hanging for the woman who was scheduled to swing today. She could not have made it through the forest fire and was undoubtedly reduced to ash by now.
Bonny Kate not arriving in Victor was bad for Bill Tuggle and his gang of thugs for a lot of reasons.
Dawn would soon be upon them. Varney, Gannon, Flannery, Mesa, and Hondo were waking up, checking their pistol loads, ready for action. One by one, they noticed their leader standing with Comstock by the windows framed with fire and they got up to take a look.
Restless and queasy with tension, Tuggle paced the office, gesturing his gang away from the window and with a series of hand signals directing them to appointed tasks in the interests of readiness.
There came a knock on the door of the office.
“Excuse me,” the impostor sheriff said. Going to the door, he opened it.
Standing in the doorway on the boardwalk was a well-dressed man.
“Can I help you, sir?” Tuggle inquired.
“Where is Shurlock?” the man replied, taken aback.
“Who’s asking?” retorted Tuggle.
“I’m Ralph Wiggins, the mayor of this town,” the official huffed. “And I’m here to see our sheriff, Al Shurlock. This is a momentous day, you understand.”
Tuggle was glad he had scrubbed and shaved himself before posing as the lawman. He doffed his Stetson and assumed the appropriate deferential attitude and demeanor. Clearing his throat, the impostor sheriff kept his watchful eyes fastened on the mayor’s. “Sheriff Shurlock was unavoidably called away on urgent business last night, Mr. Mayor. My name is William Tuggle. Call me Bill. Al’s my friend and colleague in the Teton County Sheriff’s Association and I’m his temporary replacement, acting in his stead until he returns. Shurlock’s orders, sir. My regular duty is acting sheriff of Swan Valley and Al called me in last night to keep an eye on things so everything goes smoothly with the hanging today.”
“I see.” If Wiggins was surprised or taken aback by Tuggle’s rehearsed patter, it didn’t show on his well-fed, none-too-bright face. The mayor simply said, “Fine. Is everything in order?”
The impostor sheriff smiled a little too confidently. “It is indeed, sir. The hanging will go off without a hitch. I’ve added three additional deputies so we have things well in hand.”
Scratching his head, Mayor Wiggins looked confused as he saw six new faces wearing deputy badges and carrying firearms. “So our deputies Chance, Fisk, Sturgis, and Fullerton, they will be here today?”
“Unfortunately they had to ride with Shurlock, sir. I brought six new men today on temporary assignment.”
The mayor peered in at the six new faces standing inside the sheriff’s office, looking back at him with competent and respectful expressions, awaiting orders. The politician nodded to them and awkwardly smiled at Tuggle. “You all look like good men, capable and competent indeed.”
“The best that money can buy,” Tuggle retorted with a smile.
The mayor shook the new sheriff’s hand and took his leave. “Very good. Glad to hear everything is under control.”
“Everything but the fire on the pass, sir. That’s a bit of a concern.”
“Indeed so.”
Exiting the building into the street, the cold fresh Idaho air filled Tuggle’s lungs refreshingly even though it was tinged by the acrid stench of burning lumber. The whole sky was aglow with sapphire color, brighter in the direction of the mountains to the south, where the fires rose hundreds of feet in the air in the distance.
Tuggle’s heart sank into his bowels as he gazed blankly at the distant inferno. Nobody could get through that.
There would be no hanging today. Not for her. Not ever.
If Bonny Kate Valance was dead, that changed every damn thing, it surely did.
Then Tuggle squinted. Rubbed his eyes. He thought he detected movement in the smoke, about a half mile off up the trail toward the pass. Couldn’t be. He rubbed his eyes again against the stinging tears from the smoke and he saw it again: someone was out there. Surely his eyes were playing tricks on him, causing him to imagine things in t
he wreaths of smoke weaving ghostly wraiths in the swirling gray smog from the forest fire. It had to be his wishful projections, this phantom in the vapor coming slowly toward him and gradually growing corporeal until the ghost suddenly became flesh as a big man on a burnished gold horse riding out of the smoke onto the outskirts of Victor . . . and on the back of his saddle was a hog-tied woman whose flaming red hair was recognizable even from this distance and identified her indubitably as the lady the waiting gallows had been erected for.
CHAPTER 31
Joe Noose was tired and his eyes were slow to focus. Even so, he didn’t recognize the three lawmen standing on the street at the edge of town, looking in his direction. Noose saw their badges clearly enough, tiny dots of gleaming metal reflecting off the blaze behind him, but the figures that wore them were unfamiliar. They weren’t the faces of the Victor sheriff and his deputies Noose was used to seeing in his regular bounty hunting business. The closer Noose rode to the lawmen, the more he realized there was nothing wrong with his eyes—these were definitely not the same men. In fact, their clothes didn’t even seem to fit.
The welcoming committee was sure glad to see Noose, though. The three lawmen damn near broke into a run and got to his horse just as a weary Copper trod onto the main street, dominated by the austere spire of the gallows. Hands patted Noose’s arms and back and grins flashed in his face and Noose was so exhausted he barely heard the words, which were all congratulatory.
“By God you made it, Marshal!” the sheriff crowed. “You brought this outlaw to face her comeuppance. You have done a man’s job, sir!”
Hog-tied to the saddle behind him, Bonny Kate Valance was stirring, and behind him Noose could feel the surly energy radiating off her. The two deputies had stepped in her direction and she was being roughly handled from the sounds of things, not that Joe Noose cared. He could give a spit.
Pulling up his reins, Noose stopped Copper and leaned forward to give his stallion a guzzle from his canteen before drinking some water himself and splashing some on his face. It poured off him black with soot onto his shirt. Noose got a glimpse of his reflection in his canteen and two white eyes stared out of a mask of char. Noose noticed that Copper’s usually bronze coat was dulled with ash. The horse turned its head to look back at him in relief that they had arrived safely to their destination, and he threw some canteen water on its snout to cool it. He patted the animal: Good job, old pal.