Hanging Fire

by Eric Red

  “We’ve met,” Noose said.

  Tuggle watched him through the smoke. “Don’t think so. I’d have remembered.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You make an impression on a man. But I sure am glad to have made your acquaintance. You must be plenty tuckered after that trip. Please relax.” Sheriff Tuggle leaned against the bar, drink and cigar in hand. Noose sipped his whiskey and watched his counterpart very carefully with his steady pale blue–eyed gaze, a gaze that unnerved many, given the size of the man behind it, but if the other man was rattled he didn’t show it. He remained cordial and affable. “She give you trouble, did she, bringing her over the pass?” Tuggle said.

  Noose shook his head. “Her, not much. An Arizona sheriff and his posse, plenty. Seems the sheriff wanted to kill her himself because she shot his son and I had to convince them otherwise in harsh terms.”

  Behind a cloud of smoke, Tuggle’s eyes widened and he sat forward. “Sir, are you saying that you engaged with armed lawmen? Do I understand you correctly that you gunned those men down escorting the outlaw here?”

  Noose sipped his drink and nodded tightly. “They weren’t Wyoming or Idaho lawmen and they were out of their jurisdiction, breaking the law trying to kill a prisoner under U.S. Marshals Service escort to her lawful hanging. I warned them.”

  “Then those were righteous kills, sir! You were doing your duty.”

  “It was the other one that was the bigger problem, the old gang member of Bonny Kate’s come after her to get back the money she stole and hid.”

  Tuggle listened closely. He scratched his ear like he had a nagging itch. “Someone was after her for . . . money? This is the first I’ve heard of this.” He scratched again.

  Leaning his boot against the brass rail, Noose took a slow sip of his whiskey and clinked the ice. He regarded the sheriff over the glass. “A hundred thousand dollars it seems she has socked away. Only the lady knows where it’s hid. Reckon the location of that money is going to die with her in a few hours.”

  Tuggle watched him steadily. “Reckon.”

  “All that money.” Noose whistled. “Never to be spent.”

  The sheriff scratched his ear again. He sniffed, sat upright, straightened his vest, stuck out his bearded jaw, and struck a pose of determined integrity. “And so it should be. It is blood money if her hands touched it. Ill-gotten gains no doubt robbed and stolen. Let the secret die with her, I say, as it should.”

  Noose smiled. And finished his drink. But he didn’t blink. “Sure.”

  Inside the empty saloon, Joe Noose propped up one side of the bar facing Sheriff Tuggle propping up the other side but the atmosphere had changed almost imperceptibly. Noose definitely surmised the lawman was keeping him occupied and stalling for time.

  “Let’s sit. I’m sure you’d like to get off your feet.” Tuggle gestured to a table and chairs. Noose shrugged and took a seat after the sheriff sat down first. “Another drink?” Tuggle asked.

  “You a poker man, Sheriff ?” Noose asked in response.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Not a good one, my guess is.”

  “Care to play a few hands and find out?”

  “I’d beat you.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I already know your tells.”

  “Not sure I take your meaning, sir.”

  “A man has tells when he bluffs. His face, his movements, might be just a twitch, but no matter how good his poker face, his tells give him away.”

  Tuggle scratched his ear again. Noose pointed at his hand. “You scratch your left ear when you’re lying. That’s your tell, friend.” Noose put down his glass on the tabletop with a solid thunk, his hand dropping to his gun belt. “Bonny Kate Valance, she has her tells, too. She was scared of getting killed, sure enough. That’s a fact. When that sheriff showed up and started shooting in her direction, then when her old outlaw buddy showed up and loosed some bullets her way, Bonny Kate, she got a high color to her face and those red freckles of hers got bright as smallpox. Also, Bonny Kate got this quiver in the lip on the right side of her mouth. I saw this happen every time she faced death. That was her tell.” Noose’s face turned rock hard. “You know what never brought those tells from her, friend? This hanging. She was never the slightest bit scared of being brought to this gallows and she always acted not the least bit concerned. I just put it together right this very second. It was because Bonny Kate knew she wasn’t going to be hanged in Victor, not today, not any day.” Noose smiled coldly, his unblinking eyes hard as metal bits as they drilled into Tuggle, who was starting to sweat. “She’d never face death at the end of the rope.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tuggle retorted. He made a big show of checking his pocket watch on the gold fob on his vest. “She hangs at.noon. Three hours, twenty-four minutes, and . . . ten seconds from now.”

  With a slow shake of his head, Noose kept his eyes on the impostor lawman. “Now, you and I both know that’s a lie, friend. She ain’t gonna hang. She made sure of it.”

  “I don’t take your meaning, Marshal.”

  “Did she pay you half up front, the other half when she got away? Bonny Kate tell you she would take you where her stash of money is hid? And like a fool you trusted her. Sure, you know what I’m talking about. Your lips may lie but your eyes don’t. Your tells give you away. The money she stole from that train, the money she got away with and hid in a bunch of different places. The money Johnny Cisco was chasing her to get back. The hundred thousand dollars Waylon Bojack had chased her down for before she shot his boy in the back and then the money didn’t matter to him anymore nor his badge because he was chasing her for revenge. It was her insurance policy to bribe her life back when they caught up with her like she had to know they would. She paid you off to arrange some men to break her out of jail and escape her from the gallows today, didn’t she?”

  Tuggle said nothing. Just glared. All pretense of friendliness was gone from his beady eyes.

  Noose continued, “You don’t need to say nothing, friend, not even nod or shake your head, because I didn’t need to play cards with you to notice your tells and I see all of ’em in your face.”

  Tuggle leaned back and crossed his arms. “You have no proof of any of this.”

  “My question is how Bonny Kate got to you. Must have been somebody came to visit her when she was jailed in Jackson. She gave them a message to give to you. I can’t imagine she got many visitors, so I wonder who it was.”

  “A priest.” Tuggle smiled like a snake. “Least I was pretending to be. Nobody would suspect a man of the cloth. My pappy was a reverend, you see, and I learned everything I needed to know about acting the part, once I heard Bonny Kate was locked up in Jackson. Information travels fast when it has to. How long have you known?”

  Joe Noose’s hand rested on his Colt Peacemaker he had slid out of his holster and had pointed under the table at the sheriff. “I know the lawmen in Victor. You see, outlaw, marshal ain’t my real job, just a favor I’m doing for my friend the marshal in Jackson who deputized me for the purpose. My regular occupation is bounty hunter, and I knew the sheriff and his men in Victor real well. I say knew because I’m guessing they’re all dead by now. I did a lot of business with Shurlock and Sturgis and Chance and I sure as hell know what they look like. The minute I rode in here an hour ago I didn’t recognize the sheriff or his deputies. They were all new men and that didn’t make sense to me because Sheriff Shurlock has been lawdog in Victor forever. The men taking their place I reckoned killed them, starting with you, all of you hired guns enlisted to replace them. The rest of it was easy to figure. In a few minutes, you boys are gonna change clothes and put kerchiefs on your faces and start riding around and shooting and break Bonny Kate Valance out of jail, making like her gang come to bust her free.”

  “You got it all figured out.”

  Noose nodded. “’Cept what I’m gonna do with you since you’re gonna be charg
ed with multiple homicides of Idaho lawmen and consorting with a known convicted outlaw. There’s good news and better news, friend, or maybe I best just call you Bill Tuggle, because I remember your damn face now. The good news is you ain’t sheriff no more. The better news is you’re gonna hang for your crimes, right after Bonny Kate does today. The folks came here to see a hanging and they’ll get two for the price of one.”

  Surprisingly, Tuggle laughed. It actually brought tears to his eyes. “Fact is, you is just a bounty hunter in it for the money. I don’t suppose you’d be open to being paid handsomely to keep your mouth shut, Noose? Say, fifteen thousand dollars to get on your horse and ride away. Your job was to bring Bonny Kate Valance to Victor to the gallows and you’ve done it. What happens to her after she is handed over ain’t your problem. Your record stays clean, and you ride away rich.”

  “Not my style.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t always know what’s right, but I know what’s wrong.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to do the right thing.” When Noose cocked back the hammer of his gun, he heard another gun cock behind him and froze, feeling the presence of the man behind him as he heard another ratcheting hammer. In the mirror behind Tuggle across the bar, Noose saw one impostor deputy step out of the darkness of the closet, aiming a double-barreled 8-gauge shotgun at the back of his head at point-blank range.

  Swinging out of his chair, Joe Noose dived for the floor then turned and rolled and took two-handed aim just as both barrels of the shotgun exploded and filled the room with light and noise.

  Exposed now to the gunmen as Noose dived from view, Bill Tuggle took both barrels of the outlaw deputy’s shotgun blasts directly in the chest, his back disintegrating in messy showers of blood, flesh, bone, and cloth that sprayed across the walls and ceiling as his body was lifted from the chair and flung across the bar, a dead expression of shock and surprise on his face matched the impostor deputy’s own as from the floor Noose shot him once, cleanly between the eyes, and blew the top of his head off. The corpses of both outlaws hit the floor at exactly the same time, equally deceased.

  Jumping up on his feet, Joe Noose snatched the smoking cannon of a shotgun from the outlaw deputy’s lifeless grip and scooped handfuls of shells from the dead man’s blood-splattered pockets, jamming the rounds in his own pockets as he cracked open and reloaded the scattergun, then jacked it closed. Already, outside, there were the sounds of commotion.

  * * *

  Bonny Kate Valance huddled against the side of the door of the sheriff’s office, stuffing .45 rounds in her SA Army revolver. She had a second loaded SA Army in the holster of the gun belt that she had just put on and buckled to her hips and a Winchester repeater slung on a strap on her shoulder. The firearms had been acquired from the rack in the office. Her face was twisted in raw fury as she took cover, listening to the sporadic loud gunfire outside coming from the direction of the saloon. People were running up and down the street, getting the hell out of the line of fire.

  The lady outlaw met the questioning gazes of her armed gang crouching on both sides of the open door and answered in an animal growl, “It’s him! Noose!”

  “What the hell?” Varney was rattled.

  “Tuggle’s dead. So is Flannery. Joe Noose just plugged ’em. Told those fools to watch out for him.”

  “Who is this guy?” Varney spat, unnerved.

  “A pain in my ass,” Bonny Kate retorted, and spat. “Kill him. And when you’re sure he’s dead shoot him again. Noose, he don’t kill good. But he’s one against the six of us. And don’t take any chances. He’s dangerous. You’re professionals so act like it.”

  Poking her head around the corner of the door to sneak a peek, she saw the big shape of the man in the color of shirt she had come to recognize dart out of the bar. She ducked back into the sheriff’s office and cursed a string of profanity, cocking her pistol. “I just saw Noose. He’s alive. That means Tuggle and Flannery definitely ain’t. It’s us now, boys.”

  “The horses are all saddled, Bonny Kate. Waiting for us.”

  She nodded with a toss of her red mane of hair, face flushed with color, blue eyes glittering. “Get to the corral. Shoot anybody gets in our way. Man, woman, or child. Knowing Noose he’s got our whole setup all figured out, figuring we’s a-headed to the getaway horses, so expect trouble. Do not underestimate this man. He’s the best hand with a gun I ever seen or heard of.”

  Bonny Kate respected no man and her accomplices knew that about her—the phony deputies looked at the tense combination of fear and admiration in their leader’s face and took her at her word. So they cowboyed up quick.

  The woman was through the door first, shooting with both guns, one in each hand, at anything that moved.

  CHAPTER 34

  The shot came from above—one direction Joe Noose wasn’t expecting—so he dropped and rolled, hitting the ground on his back, fanning and firing up at the top of the feed store.

  The gunfighter wearing lawman’s clothes staggered back as his chest exploded, revolver spilling from his dead fingers, as he clutched his wound and fell forward somersaulting head over heels off the roof of the building and landed limp and sprawled on the boardwalk.

  Sweeping his gaze to the left, Joe Noose looked up the street and two blocks away saw the corral.

  Behind the fenced pen, over a dozen horses were stomping around in agitation, alarmed by the noise of the gunshots.

  Townspeople were running to and fro on the sidewalks, mostly taking cover. A few well-dressed businessmen fled into the hotel. Several cowboys hid behind some barrels. A mother wearing a shawl and clutching her little daughter’s hand pulled her into an alley. The folks had come to town for a show but this had not been the one they were expecting.

  Taking position behind a post beside the doorway of the saloon, Noose squinted to his right and saw Bonny Kate duck out of the sheriff’s office with four of her gang in tow, all of them heavily armed. The gang were still wearing their stolen deputy clothes and badges but they were clearly outlaws and the badmen looked ready to shoot anything that moved.

  They would be heading for the corral to get their horses and make their getaway, Noose was certain. It was what he would do in their position. The small town was in the middle of nowhere and with a huge, growing forest fire in one direction and low rangelands in the other, and making a break for it they weren’t going to get far on foot.

  The only other way out was the train. The parked and shut-down locomotive lay six wagons down the rails in the direction of the corral. He was closer to it than Bonny Kate and her crew were, but they were on the move. The cowboy knew he had to remove both escape options from the female outlaw. Keeping low, carting the loaded 8-gauge scattergun with his two loaded Colt Peacemakers in his holsters, Noose sprinted down the side of the train, staying trackside to the railroad. No shots came his way, yet, but he was ready to engage in gunfire any second as soon as the outlaws spotted him.

  Looking ahead up the street, Noose saw that most of the horses in the corral were unsaddled. This was good, because if Bonny Kate Valance and her gunmen got there first, they’d be delayed a minute or two saddling up their mounts, which would give Noose all the time he needed to do what he needed to do in the drive cab of the locomotive to disable the engine. He made a break down the train and reached the steam engine in no time flat.

  Clambering up the ladder onto the footplates of the drive cab, he found the tool he needed right beside the boiler. Behind the grate the coals were cold. He set down the 8-gauge shotgun, picked up the crowbar beside the boiler, then swung it hard against the steam gauge and the throttle inside the engineer’s booth, smashing both controls into useless bent metal with a few well-placed blows in a shower of sparks. The locomotive was now disabled and nobody was driving it anywhere without many hours of repair. Grabbing his shotgun, Noose took cover behind the tender and peered over the lip of the coal bin, which provided a c
lear view of the corral and stable across the street.

  Bonny Kate and her gang were coming. He saw their figures two blocks away, running with their weapons drawn like their lives depended on it. Their constant defensive looks in all directions with their loaded guns slowed their approach somewhat, giving Joe Noose all the time he needed. Leaping from the tender, he hit the trackside in a crouch, leveling the shotgun at the five outlaws up the street and firing both barrels. The discharge of the scattergun was deafening and though the lady outlaw and her cohorts were out of range and the pellets fell short, the nasty sound of the blasts gave them incentive to take cover before returning fire. In that space of time, Noose made it across the street, cracking his shotgun, ejecting the smoking empties, and sticking in two fresh shells.

  Noose got to the corral first. Up the street came crackling reports of rifle and pistol fire. Bullets whistled past his ears. Yanking open the gate and leaving it wide open to the street, he dived in and hit the dirt. Looking up as he rolled over onto his back, Noose braced as he saw the stamping hooves of a dozen agitated horses stomping the ground inches from where he lay—it was all he could do not to get trampled. Hearing the shouting male voices of the fast-approaching outlaws and the one female voice of their leader louder than the rest, Noose knew he had to act fast and scatter the horses before the gang could get to them. Aiming his scattergun straight into the air, he triggered two loud double-barreled blasts into the sky and that was all it took.

  The horses bolted. Spooked at the close-range gunfire, they took off at a panicked gallop in the only direction they could—through the open gate of the corral. Noose was up on his feet, tossing the empty shotgun and drawing one of his Colt Peacemakers, which he fanned and fired several times through the fence posts at the shapes of the outlaws running after the horses to try to grab them before they got away, but the added shots gave the fleeing stallions even more incentive: they escaped in a furious gallop up the street in one charging herd out into the open countryside before any of Bonny Kate’s gang got even fifty yards near them.