by Eric Red
“Must have been rough being one boy alone in the world,” Bess commiserated. “No family. No one there for you.”
The cowboy shrugged. “Didn’t need anybody. Could take care of myself. I hurt a lot of folks. Used my fists against anybody who got in my way or had something I wanted, which is how I thought the world was. I had no sense of things. No sense at all. Come to find out, people saw me as a dangerous man and the wrong type of men respect that. In turn I fell in with a bad crowd, a bunch of rustlers and robbers, and we spent one summer in Montana raising all kinds of hell, sticking up stagecoaches, stealing cattle, robbing whores, and a bunch of people died. Some by my gun. Some by theirs. We were dirty miserable low-down sons of bitches, that’s a fact, Bess. I did a lot of things I ain’t proud of now but didn’t know what shame was then. Like I said, I didn’t know good from evil nor right from wrong, just didn’t think that way. Didn’t think at all, truth be told. I was just thirteen.
“Well, come that fall we happen upon this big spread with fields of steer far as the eye can see and we get us a mind to steal a few. We scope the place out. There’s this big ranch house in the middle of plenty of grazing land, nobody and nothing around we could spot. So we set to it, my four so-called friends and I. Guess they must have seen us coming, suppose word had spread about our gang, because out of nowhere this old rancher and his two sons about my age, they started firing from behind some trees near the fence and shot our horses out from under us. We was so busy falling we never had time to get to our guns, and the old man and his boys had us disarmed and hog-tied before we plumb knew what hit us.
“The old man, he had a face like a crow, and I didn’t know much back then but one look at that face I knew pity was not in his nature and he would show us no mercy.
“His boys and him, they tossed ropes over the branch of this big tree, and that’s when I saw the coal fire and irons they’d been branding steers with just before we showed up. Old fella made his boys tie the nooses. Five ropes. Five nooses. One for each of us. He was telling his boys what to do, telling ’em it’s time they took part in a hanging, ’cause they were going to be men soon enough and needed to have the guts to dispense rough justice when it was called for. Got to tell you, Bess, these boys of his weren’t happy about it, taking part in the executions of five men. They didn’t want to be in no hanging party but the old man, he made ’em do it. Them boys was shaking when they tugged the rope around my pal Chester’s neck and stood him up, then put the next noose around Richie’s neck, tightened that, then Ike had a rope around his neck, and Leroy, too. There was my four friends standing side by side about to be hanged from that branch and all I could wonder was why I wasn’t standing there with ’em with a noose around my own neck. Thought maybe they run out of rope. The old man’s sons, they was shaking real hard knowing they were going to have to do this thing and kill some men because their father was standing there with his big scattergun in one hand and a horsewhip in the other. He cracked it hard against his youngest son’s behind when he took too long tying the other end of the hanging ropes to the saddles of the horses under the tree. All the while watching this, I’m thinking that if this is what a father does, then I’m glad I never had me one. Me, I’m lying on the ground, not going anywhere ’cause I’m hog-tied arms and legs behind my back, just waiting for my turn to get a noose around my neck. Sure enough, the oldest son starts for me with the noose and I’m figuring this is it.
“‘Not him,’ the old man says. ‘This one’s underage. Not a man yet. Only a boy. How old are you, son?’ he asks me, walking up to me in his big black boots, and I’m looking up at him against the sky and I say I’m thirteen or thereabouts.
“The old man seemed a hundred feet tall looking down on me like the wrath of God. He had the hardest eyes I’d ever seen and by a trick of the light his eyes was glowing in the light of the coal fire with little flames and sparks dancing in ’em. I remember the thumb and forefinger of his right hand had been shot off, leaving only half a hand and that didn’t make him look any friendlier.
“‘You got parents?’ he asks me not like a question but more like my folks, they didn’t raise me right for me to end up in this situation. I say no. He asks, don’t I know it’s wrong to steal? and, hell, I don’t know what to say ’cause I don’t know what wrong is or right, neither, and the old man suddenly realizes this about me. ‘You don’t know right from wrong, good from bad, do you, boy?’ Saw clean through me with those burning eyes of his. ‘Poor soul. My sons have me to teach them right from wrong but you never had nobody to show you good from bad, and that puts you at a powerful disadvantage.’
“I asked if he was going to hang me and he told me to watch.
“Then he blasted that scattergun at the ground by the horses’ hooves and they took off like their asses were on fire. Those ropes tied to the saddles jerked those nooses so hard my friends flew right off the ground when their necks cracked and Ike’s head tore clean off. They died bad and they died ugly.
“The old man’s sons took the sight of violent death harder than me. They felt bad watching men die but I felt nothing. It was what it was, nothing more nor less. But I saw a change in their faces when they watched my friends die. The old man’s sons got harder and tougher right before my eyes. The rancher’s lesson did what he intended it to do to his boys and I saw he took pleasure in that. Now he turned his attention to me. I didn’t cry. Didn’t beg. Didn’t show that old man nothing. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I just asked him if he was gonna hang me next.
“Old man walks up. Looks down. His words are, ‘You’re too young for me to hang ’cause you ain’t a man yet and it’s wrong to kill a boy. You’re still a boy but you ain’t ever gonna be a man ’less you learn right from wrong, son. A man with no conscience is an animal, no better than cattle, and cattle get branded.’
“Directly the old man gets his boys to hold me down and tear my shirt off. Then he takes a red-hot monogrammed branding iron from the fire and walks back and holds it by my face, that Q brand smoking and glowing in front of my eyes. And now I feel something, fear and plenty of it. Because I know what’s coming next.”
Riding in the saddle behind him, Bess winced as Noose continued.
“He pressed that hot brand hard against my chest and held it there and pressed harder and burned me to where I could smell my own skin sizzling like charbroil. That damn searing brand felt like it was roasting its way right through my whole body, setting my damn heart on fire. It hurt worse than anything I have known before or since. I screamed, all right. You bet I did as the old man pressed down on the handle of the brand and put his mark permanent in my flesh with it. Finally he took the iron off and threw a bucket of water over me and left the brand etched in my chest for all time.”
“Dear God,” whispered Bess.
“Afterward, he crouches down beside me. I can’t move, just half alive. And the old man says to me, ‘Every day you look down at your chest for the rest of your life you’ll see that brand and you’ll remember there’s a right or wrong. Fitting it’s my brand because if you live long enough to grow to manhood you’ll think back that it was me done taught you good from bad on this very day.’”
Bess shook her head, not sure what to say, so she just asked what happened after that.
He shrugged. “They threw me on my horse and sent me on my way.”
“I’d have killed him. Did you ever go back and settle the score? Did that horrible old bastard ever get what was coming to him?”
Noose shook his head. “Never saw him again. Don’t even know his name. But I’m grateful to him. From that day forward I have thought about right and wrong. And have tried to do what’s right.”
“Grateful? You were a boy and he tortured you.”
“I know that rancher tortured me. I realize he was brutal. But even though it don’t make sense, I owe that old man.”
“For what?”
“For making me who I am. For setting me on the right path. For
giving me what some folks call a conscience, I reckon. Making me think about good and bad, right and wrong, hell, just considering the consequences of my actions. I know it sounds stupid, but mean and bad and brutal as that old man was he was right: every day of my life I look upon that brand on my chest and am reminded there’s a right and wrong choice to be made that day. The boy he branded was an animal that might just as well have walked on four legs and if he hadn’t used that hot iron on me I would never have got up off four legs, stood on two, and become a man. In his way, that stranger was the closest thing I ever had to a father.”
“That’s one way to look at it, I reckon.” Bess sighed, remembering. “I was lucky that I had a father who loved and cared for me and never once laid a hand on me. His way was to live by example. And because of who he was and how he was with me I always knew right from wrong, or think I do anyway. Sometimes it’s tough to tell what’s the right thing to do.”
“You said a mouthful, Marshal. Know what I wish?”
“An army of U.S. Marshals are gonna show up any minute?”
“That, too.” Noose chuckled. “But I wish that old man had taken the trouble to explain exactly what is right and what is wrong because ever since then I have been trying to sort that out, just like you said. But maybe that’s the answer right there,” reflected the cowboy. “Each of us got to figure out our own personal right or wrong and act accordingly.”
CHAPTER 43
Frank Butler swung out of the saddle and grabbed his long-range Sharps rifle from his saddle holster, dropping into position by the boulder at the edge of the cliff he already knew would be essential to steady his arm.
Squinting his eyes, he peered over the rock down the steep hill at the distant figures of the horse and its two riders shrinking into the green open valley. Noose and the marshal’s daughter were already a quarter mile away. Their lead would only widen, because a quick glance down the two-hundred-foot-steep, ninety-degree declination showed the bounty killer leader there was no way he and his gang could make a direct pursuit without breaking half of their horses’ legs and likely their own fool necks as well. Plus his men had been badly shot up and were likely to screw up anyway.
No, he and his men had to double back at least a half a mile to catch the lower trail to the valley floor. That would set them back fifteen to twenty minutes and in that time his quarry would be one or two miles ahead and in spitting distance of Jackson Hole. Only the Snake River stood between them. Butler knew Noose was making for the bridge and if he made it across it was a straight shot to town and over for Butler in more ways than one.
Even if the bitch lawdog bled to death—he knew she’d been badly hit—Noose had quite the tale to tell to whoever was manning the U.S. Marshal’s office.
All this ratcheted through Frank Butler’s mind in a matter of seconds and only one possible solution presented itself: he had to drop the fleeing people with his rifle from here in this exact spot and precise position.
Socking the long-range rifle to his shoulder, he flipped up the circular sight and crooked his elbow against the boulder he crouched behind. He jammed a .52 caliber cartridge into the breech and jacked the bolt. The problem with these long-range Sharps was you could fire only one bullet at a time before reloading, but that did not vex him for Butler knew he would probably get only one shot at them anyhow.
One shot and then they would be out of range.
Butler peered down the sight and steadied his aim.
Down the crosshairs, he sighted the tiny horse and riders. Five hundred yards away at least and getting farther every second. His professional and methodical shootist’s mind performed his mechanical and logistical calculations like a machine, mental wheels turning. They were too far. It was an impossible shot. Ten seconds to make this shot, at most.
The breeze on his cheek told him from experience the wind was coming in from the southeast at twenty-three miles per hour.
Butler aimed for the horse because it was the biggest target plus if he could dismount the riders and put them on foot, then he and his boys could catch up.
His rifle barrel tracked the horse, then looking down the gunsight Butler shifted his aim two inches up and an inch to the right, the barrel moving with infinitesimal smoothness and precision, estimating the position of where the horse would be in a couple seconds from now when it was lost from view.
The deadly killer made his final split-second adjustments for the shot trajectory, calculating for windage, elevation, and bullet drop and, decision made, his finger tightened on the trigger.
It was going to be a tough shot.
* * *
When the top of the horse’s head blew off, Noose and Bess flew out of the saddle and were flung headlong over the neck of the falling steed as it somersaulted over itself.
The cowboy compensated for the impact as he flew through the air and spun a few degrees so he landed on his good shoulder, but when he hit the grass it knocked the wind right out of him.
The lady marshal’s piercing scream of agony snapped Noose alert and he was already on his feet, his boots pounding the dirt in her direction, but not before the lifeless horse came to rest on top of the wailing Bess, its entire dead weight crushing down on her leg with the bullet in it. Her face was flushed in pain and helpless agony as she pawed at the ground and punched and tugged at the saddle but she was pinned fast. Seconds later, Noose was at her side and sized up the situation. He had to do what had to be done and do it quick—there was no time for gentleness and he hoped that this woman was as tough as she acted because there was only one way to do this—a quick glance up at the ridge where the shot had come from showed the distant bounty killers were already on the move.
“This is going to hurt,” was all Noose said.
“What are you waiting for?” she screamed at him, which he took for a Yes, she was ready as he crouched down, gripped one huge hand under each of her broad shoulders, dug the spurred heels of his boots into the tundra, and gave Bess one mighty yank to pull her leg out from under the saddle. When the bone snapped it made a muffled crack and Bess screamed her damn head off but Noose kept pulling and her wounded leg slid free from under the horse. She almost passed out and her eyes rolled up as he set her down and took a quick look at her leg.
Bess wasn’t walking anywhere. If she didn’t get some medical attention she wasn’t walking ever again. The leg was not only shot, the bone was broken. Blood soaked the entire left trouser leg. He had to get her out of here. The bounty killers were coming on fast. They were out of sight behind the trees but the cowboy didn’t have to see them to know they were taking the low trail to the valley floor.
Noose was going to have to carry Bess out of here.
No way he was going to leave her behind.
He had to make it to the bridge.
Somehow get across.
If he could just cross over the river before they did, if he just had a minute, even, less than a minute after he and Bess got across, he could end this thing in their favor.
One rifle would be all he could take because his hands were going to be otherwise occupied, so he grabbed the Winchester rifle and a fistful of cartridges from the saddlebag on the dead horse and stowed them. Noose didn’t bother to take any more rounds for the Colt in his holster because he needed a rifle at the bridge, not a pistol, and the revolver had a full load anyway.
Taking a deep breath, the big cowboy ignored all the pain shooting through his own body as he reached down and picked the female marshal up. Noose threw Bess over his shoulder, heaving her onto his back, and bore up under her weight, adjusting her limp body so his right arm cradled her shoulders and his left arm cradled her hips, with his own shoulders and the back of his neck bearing most of her weight. Deciding he had as solid a grip on the woman as he was going to get, and knowing every second counted, he started walking.
Joe Noose made off across the valley, carrying Bess Sugarland draped over his big shoulders. He put one foot after the other, trudging
forward step by exhausted step. His gaze hung on the crest of the hill far ahead across the expanse of grass where he could just make out the embankment that dropped into the Snake River and just about see the ramparts of the sheep bridge that crossed the water.
That structure was more than a mile away.
He was never going to make it, not with a full-grown woman on his back, not with a bullet hole in him and couple ribs broken, not a chance.
It didn’t matter what his chances were.
He was going to try.
The brand on his chest suddenly felt very warm, and again he was reminded a man always has a choice between right and wrong.
The right choice was keeping this good woman alive and that’s what he meant to do with his last ounce of strength to his very last breath.
He took another step.
Kept walking.
The bridge seemed a little closer.
But so were the bounty killers—he could hear their distant galloping hooves in the lower part of the trail to his rear and soon they would reach the valley floor and would run him down.
The hell with them, Noose figured.
He wasn’t dead yet.