Branded

by Eric Red

  That the killer would strike again was a dead certainty, the only question was who was next. For some odd reason Laura Holdridge did not fear for her own life, having an intuition she herself was not the killer’s target, her men were. Why? She trusted her instincts but that didn’t stop her from strapping the massive Colt Dragoon revolver under her coat and lately keeping it under her pillow.

  The five hundred head of prime Wyoming beef stood before her scattered out across the plain, giving her bovine looks that seemed to say, Let’s get a move on. It was time for the outfit to get back on the trail. They had to make time. It was over three hundred miles to Cheyenne and the outfit had a schedule to keep if they were going to cross that considerable distance, the whole of the state of Wyoming, and get there in time for the two-day Cattlemen’s auction three weeks from now. The murders of her wranglers had slowed down the whole cattle drive, already costing several days dealing with the burials. Getting the herd to Cheyenne presented an impossible task now there was a killer in the outfit picking off her wranglers, and there seemed to be nothing she could do about it.

  What the hell was she going to do?

  She knew what she should do. Go to the law. Report the killings. Ride back to the local sheriff in Wind River or ride ahead to the U.S. Marshal, report the deaths, and let the authorities investigate. And the minute she did that, her outfit and the cattle would be detained for an investigation. Guaranteed then she would not make the auction and by this time next year, would have lost the ranch, everything she and her husband worked for, and her men would be unemployed. Going to the law was the right thing to do. But it was suicide for her ranch and those in her employ. She had discussed it with the wranglers earlier in the day before the burial, and they were all agreed to report the deaths once they made it to Cheyenne; it is what McGraw, Johnson, Fullerton, and Wade would have wanted, too.

  There was one other thing she could do.

  Quit.

  Turn the herd and abandon the cattle drive, put them back in her corral. Pay her wranglers what she could. Sell the cows at a huge loss after the auction. Her outfit would lose money but keep their lives. Perhaps then the killings would stop.

  Laura didn’t know what to do at this moment, had never felt so helpless and overwhelmed in her natural life. The entire combined weight of the massive herd of steer filling her field of vision suddenly felt like it was sitting on her bosom—a crushing weight of those tons of cows bore down on her, and Laura couldn’t catch her breath; her heart was pounding, her pulse racing. Pull yourself together, woman! she excoriated herself inside. You will not fall apart in front of your men! Be strong! Through sheer force of will, Laura Holdridge settled down, regaining her composure. Inhaling deep refreshing breaths of the clean Wyoming air into her lungs, Laura willed herself to stand straight and be calm, and her panic attack was carried off in the wind.

  The cattlewoman was not a quitter. She never quit once in her whole entire life. But she had the lives of eight souls she was responsible for as trail boss. She had to ask them whether they wanted to turn back or push on.

  She walked back to the men at the grave. “Listen up.”

  Eight pairs of eyes immediately locked on her, she had the full attention of the hardy cowpokes standing before her. She was the boss.

  Laura Holdridge addressed the drovers as the first among equals, looking each man directly in the eye as her gaze swung across their attentive faces while she spoke. “Boys, we all know we have a killer in the outfit. He’s murdered four of us. That pisses me the hell off, as I’m sure it does seven out of the eight of you. What burns my ass the most? That’s he’s one of you. I trust all you boys with my life, each and every one of you, but unless one of you fesses up now, I got no idea in hell which one of you has our outfit’s blood on his hands.”

  As she stood before them by the oak tree, Laura witnessed paranoid, distrustful glances traded by men who had always been friends. It broke her heart to see. But she remembered what her mother always said: Nothing wrong with a broken heart so long as it don’t break you. The cattlewoman looked perspicaciously into the eyes of each and every cowhand—not one had the eyes of a killer.

  For the first time Laura doubted her faculties.

  “How do we know it’s one of us?” Leadbetter asked, looking at his fellows. There were a few nods.

  “We don’t,” she replied evenly. “But who else could it be?”

  “Not us.”

  Laura hadn’t thought about that but now she did. “You mean a killer who’s not part of the outfit, not riding with us, but shadowing us, watching our every move, and when our guard is down and this individual sees an opening, that’s when he strikes.”

  “Could be.”

  “Smells like Injun to me,” Kettlebone, the cook, offered. “Them Injuns is so quick when they attack they don’t make a sound and you never see ’em. One minute you’re reaching up to scratch your hair, the next minute you’ve been scalped, your hair and skin is gone on the top of your head, and all you is scratching is skull bone.” A few of the men groaned in disgust. “I have seen Apaches do this with my own eyes, boys.”

  “Ain’t no Apache in Wyoming, Fred,” Brubaker argued. “Just Shoshone. And that tribe ain’t warlike and they don’t scalp. I count a bunch of ’em as friends.”

  Laura shook her head. “Brubaker’s right. The Apaches are three states away, our cold doesn’t agree with them. Like the man says, the only Indians we have around these parts are the Shoshone and they’re a peaceful tribe. Nope, this isn’t Indian trouble. It’s something else, or someone else.”

  The wranglers all muttered agreement.

  “Boys, maybe it is a killer stalking our herd murdering us, or maybe the killer is one of you boys, though I hope it ain’t because I’d hate to have to hang one of you boys. Except for you, Leadbetter.” She pointed at the youngest wrangler, Frank Leadbetter, a hulking kid probably no more than nineteen, whose beard was just growing in. She was teasing him to lighten the grim mood and shake off some of the dread they all were experiencing as best she could.

  “It don’t make no sense,” Sykes mumbled.

  “Why is this happening?” Idaho moaned.

  “Ain’t it obvious?” Laura faced her men soberly. “Somebody doesn’t want us to get our cattle to market. They’ll do anything to stop this cattle drive. That’s what’s happening. What do you boys think?”

  Every head nodded in agreement.

  “Who you think is behind it?” asked Kettlebone.

  “We all know who’s probably behind it,” Laura spat. “Calhoun, who else? But I can’t be sure. Don’t make no difference, it doesn’t matter who it is. Somebody’s got it out for us. That’s the situation. Way I see it we got two choices: turn back or push on. We can go home. That’s one choice. The other choice is we get the herd to Cheyenne or die trying. I’m putting it to a vote.”

  “It’s your herd, Mrs. Holdridge. You’re the boss,” Curly Brubaker, the new foreman, insisted. “It’s your choice.”

  The cattlewoman shook her head, fairness in her gaze. “It’s your lives. It’s your choice, too. The Bar H Ranch isn’t just me, boys, it’s all of us. We ride or die.”

  “Ride or die!” several drovers repeated. Moved by her words, the wranglers’ spirits were lifted, the outf it’s morale boosted by fellowship and cowboy orneriness.

  “Let’s vote,” the cattlewoman said.

  “Wait.” Billy Joe Barlow put up his hand, looking at the others. “Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to interrupt, but if I may, before we vote, if it were just up to you, Mrs. Holdridge, if it was, what would you do?”

  Laura Holdridge was on the spot. All eyes were on her. She searched her soul before she spoke, and when she did it was what she truly believed with all her heart. “If it was just up to me, I’d think to myself: This is my herd, am I going to let any man stop me from getting my herd to market like I got a right as a free American to do? And I’d answer: Nobody is going to take away my fre
edom. I’m moving my herd and if they want to stop me they’ll have to shoot me, and let them try, because I’ll shoot right back because I’ll fight to the death for what’s mine. You asked me what I’d do if it was up to me, Barlow? I’d drive these longhorns to Cheyenne. Ride or die.”

  The outfit’s faces had not a dry eye.

  “Okay. Let’s have us that vote.” The cattlewoman took a deep breath. “Anybody wants to turn back, raise your hand.”

  No hands went up. Not one.

  “Votes are counted.” Laura grinned. “We’re going to Cheyenne.”

  The entire outfit let out a huge cheer, throwing their hats in the air, and Laura Holdridge never loved her boys more than she did right then.

  * * *

  The mood grew somber once more as they gathered again around Luke McGraw’s shallow grave, because Billy Joe Barlow and Rowdy Maddox hadn’t had the chance yet to say their piece, and Rowdy was going on and on.

  It was then Laura saw something that caught her attention. Stepping away from her men, the cattlewoman looked out across the valley, raising her hand to her brow to block the sun so she didn’t have to squint.

  Far in the distance, two horses had crested the rise above the sprawling valley across the five hundred head of steers standing stationary on the plain. She swore she recognized the two riders.

  Could it be them?

  What were the chances of running into them again, out here of all places?

  The cattlewoman had eyes like an eagle, and sure enough, she recognized the two riders as Joe Noose and Bess Sugarland, a bounty hunter and lady U.S. Marshal, who had stopped by her ranch a few weeks ago, and she had liked them very much. They’d stayed the night in her house and left the following day on U.S. Marshal business tracking a killer. Joe Noose had left quite an impression on Laura. A third man had been their companion, another marshal, Laura recollected, but she disremembered his name or anything else about him. Whoever that man was, he wasn’t with them now. Laura could see Noose and Bess up on the rise looking in her direction but figured they couldn’t recognize her from this distance so she’d better catch their attention before they rode off.

  Laura Holdridge smiled, her face brightening like the sun, as she whipped off her Stetson and flagged it over her head at Joe Noose and Bess Sugarland, and they waved back and rode down the ridge toward her.

  Feeling a weight lift off her bosom, the cattlewoman heaved a sigh of relief. It was the perfect time for a talk with a friendly U.S. Marshal, given everything that was going on with the murders in her outfit. Plus Bess was a woman, the only lady marshal Laura had ever met, and the two of them had gotten along famously at the Bar H Ranch. Maybe the law could help. Laura kept her gaze fixed on the small figures of the riders and horses as they approached at a comfortable stride, growing larger in her field of view as they skirted the sprawling herd and rode her way. Friendly faces.

  The bounty hunter Joe Noose was a very big man, she had almost forgotten how big. The mountain of a cowboy rode tall in the saddle toward her, a formidable figure who would physically intimidate lesser mortals. Nobody would mess with this man, Laura thought admiringly. Today the bounty hunter wore a heavy leather coat over a bright blue denim shirt and a yellow kerchief. He was close enough now that when his broad brown Stetson hat lifted, his pale blue eyes flashed in hers and Laura remembered the kindness and goodness she saw in that gaze when they had last met, because beneath his tough dangerous exterior, the biggest thing about the man was his heart. Laura was very glad to see Joe Noose.

  His riding by was the first stroke of good luck the cattle drive had enjoyed since departing on their unlucky journey. Joe Noose was exactly the man she needed in her most desperate hour.

  If she could only convince him to stay.

  That gave her an idea.

  Slipping into her big cowgirl personality as easily as a pair of blue jeans, Laura became her loud and gregarious extroverted self as the two rode up to her. “Joe Noose and Marshal Bess Sugarland. I’ll be damned,” the cattlewoman hollered out. “What are the odds of running into you way out here?”

  “Good to see you, Laura.” Bess leaned down to shake hands. The cattlewoman exchanged a warm grin with her. “I see you’re getting your cattle to market.”

  “Yeah, well, hoping to, anyhow. It’s a long way from here to there to Cheyenne.” Laura’s gaze darkened as she slid a sidelong glance at her wranglers. “We ain’t exactly off to an auspicious start. Did you catch that man you were after?”

  “We did. Up in Destiny.”

  “But . . .” Laura had noticed Bess’s shuttered expression. The third man who wasn’t here now.

  “It was complicated.”

  “Weren’t there three of you before?”

  “I’m afraid now there’s just two.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We are, too.”

  Laura saw Joe Noose observing the drovers standing around the freshly dug grave beside the shovel stuck in the ground. She saw him glance at the Bible in her hand. His somber expression made it clear he understood the outfit had been holding a service interrupted by his arrival. “Looks like you lost one of yours, too,” Noose said.

  “Four. So far,” Laura replied sadly. “One a day out of my ranch near Consequence. One back in Sweetwater Station. One by Muddy Gap. Ox Johnson, Jed Wade, and Clyde Fullerton were their names. Luke McGraw here today makes four.”

  Bess traded what the hell? glances with Noose.

  As they swung their gazes down to her, Laura stood planted on both boots, fists on her hips, looking back and forth boldly up at both of them on their horses, taking their measure. The cattlewoman’s mind was working behind her eyes. “Take a ride with me.” She made it less a request than a friendly order and her tone broached no refusal. Noose and Bess shrugged and nodded, and Laura mounted her horse in one swift, strong motion. She tossed the Bible down to her foreman, Brubaker, who caught it. “Curly. Finish reading over Luke. Rest of you men, pay your respects and be back in the saddle in fifteen minutes. We’re moving out in twenty.”

  Spurring her horse and riding in the lead back toward the herd. The marshal and bounty hunter rode after her. Laura slowed her mare so Noose and Bess could catch up on either side of her saddle. She didn’t speak until they were well out of earshot of her crew. “Those deaths were no accident. My four drovers were murdered. Somebody on my crew is killing my wranglers. I can’t prove it. I don’t know who the killer is. Somebody doesn’t want me to get my cattle to market. I believe this individual or individuals will murder every one of my outfit including me to be sure these steers don’t make it to Cheyenne. So I’m asking for your help.”

  Bess looked at Noose.

  Noose looked at Laura.

  Who was looking at Joe.

  “You’re a bounty hunter, Mr. Noose. A damn good one, I understand. I will pay you five thousand dollars cash reward for you to discover the killer on my crew and stop these terrible murders. A dead-or-alive bounty.”

  The lady marshal raised her eyebrows.

  The bounty hunter tightened his jaw, swinging his glance back at the receding figures of the cowboys standing around the grave. “You positive your drovers were murdered, and it wasn’t just accidents?”

  “Five thousand dollars positive.”

  “Saying you’re suspicions are true, it ain’t as easy as just asking them which one of them is the killer, Mrs. Holdridge. I’d have to ride along with you a spell, sniff around, for starters. You know I’m a bounty hunter. Do any of them?”

  Remembering Joe’s stay at her ranch, Laura thought back about any encounters the bounty hunter had with her hands, and didn’t remember any offhand. “No. Don’t think so. They’ll recognize the marshal here as the law because she was wearing her badge, but they don’t know who you are.”

  “What are you thinking, Joe?” Bess asked.

  “I’m thinking I sign on with Mrs. Holdridge’s cattle drive as a replacement wrangler, go undercover, and fin
d me a killer.”

  Laura’s heart leapt in her chest with hope and beat faster with excitement, but the cattlewoman didn’t want to say the wrong thing and screw this up so she kept her mouth shut and let the two friends talk among themselves.

  “You don’t know the first thing about cowpunching.” Bess laughed.

  “I’ve done a little,” Noose replied.

  “When?”

  “Ten, maybe twelve years ago.”

  “Joe.”

  “Nothing to it.”

  “You will be kicked in the skull or trampled or gored by a bull the first day out, if whoever the killer is on this drive doesn’t put a bullet in your back first.”

  Noose gave Bess a knowing look and she rolled her eyes. He swung his gaze to Laura, his pale eyes steady as he extended his hand. “I like you, Laura. Think you got guts running these cattle and crew to Cheyenne by yourself and I don’t want to see you fail. I’ll take the job.”

  Laura Holdridge shook his hand with a firm grip, brushing her windblown blond hair out of her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Thank me later.”

  “We move out in ten minutes,” the cattlewoman said, outwardly all business but inside so excited she could bust. She wanted to throw her arms around Noose and Bess and kiss them, so happy and relieved was she. But habit and prudence told her to keep her feelings hidden behind her boss lady demeanor. And with that, Laura brusquely yanked her reins and swept her horse around, riding hard back to the livestock and wagons, as her men turned from the grave back to their horses and mounted up, ready to move the herd.

  Behind her back as she rode off out of earshot, the last words Laura overheard the marshal say to the bounty hunter were, “Joe Noose, what the hell are you getting yourself into?”

  Plenty, the cattlewoman thought as she rejoined her wranglers and the herd, yelling, “Move ’em out!”

  * * *

  “Guess this is farewell for now.”

  The time had come for them to split up. Joe Noose and Bess Sugarland sat in the saddles of their horses and said their good-byes.