Noose

by Eric Red

  First, Joe Noose was going to be the one to kill Frank Butler not his damn horse . . .

  Second, there was something Noose had wanted to do all day . . .

  Taking careful aim, he perfectly lined up his Winchester repeater crosshairs on the evil black stallion’s thrashing head and shot it right between the eyes, killing the horse dead.

  It fell sideways, a jet of blood shooting from its skull, and collapsed on the bridge.

  Empty smoking .52 casings flew from the breech of the Winchester and landed in the grass.

  Looking down his repeater rifle, Noose quickly tracked the barrel back and forth, left and right along the edge of the bridge but couldn’t see any sign of Frank Butler. The leader hadn’t run across the bridge because the cowboy would have spotted him and shot him, and he hadn’t fallen off the structure because Noose would have seen the splash if he had hit the river. A flash of black cloth suddenly appeared and vanished right over the edge of the ropes. Butler was staying below the railing, out of sight. Noose cursed. He couldn’t get a clear shot at Butler on the bridge because the slippery bastard was crawling on his belly and staying down out of his line of fire, making a desperate escape once Noose had shot his horse between the eyes.

  Pulling the trigger a few times, the cowboy fired at him anyway but his shots went wild, punching out chunks of wooden bridge platform and by the time the smoke had cleared, Noose saw just the back of Frank Butler’s duster departing the bridge at a flat-out run, safely disappearing behind the hill on this side of the river.

  Noose cursed that one got away but he had nearly killed them all.

  The butcher’s bill was almost paid in full.

  There was just one left.

  The baddest of them all.

  He had saved the worst for last.

  CHAPTER 45

  Copper was looking at him with big moist eyes as Noose untied the reins and pressed them in Bess’s bloodless hands. She looked at him half-conscious and confused. “Take this horse and get to Jackson,” he said firmly.

  “N-Noose, I—I . . .” she whispered, incoherent.

  The cowboy gently brushed a lock of the woman’s sweaty hair from her eyes. “Just ride Copper straight east. He’ll find the town. Get to a hospital. You’re gonna make it just fine.”

  Woozy, Bess sort of nodded. Her pallid lips tried to form words but he touched his big finger to them to hush her. “Go,” he said. “The rest is mine.”

  Gripping the bronze horse’s muzzle, the cowboy nodded to it, and somehow they understood each other.

  Before the woman could argue, he smacked the stallion on the hindquarters and off it went at a full gallop in the direction of Jackson.

  The cowboy watched Bess and Copper disappear safely in the distance until they were out of sight, then swung his steely gaze to the jagged honeycomb of canyons on his side of the river.

  Joe Noose drew his Colt Peacemaker, cocked back the hammer, and walked into the granite canyon range where Butler was, and would be expecting him.

  He didn’t want to keep his enemy waiting.

  * * *

  Weather changed in Wyoming fast.

  Under the baking relentless heat of the sun, the bounty hunter walked through the bleached and barren high rock formations. His pistol was drawn, his eyes constantly on the move.

  He recognized the raspy voice that viciously rang through the rocks. “Just you and me now, Noose!”

  The cowboy fell into a crouch, listening to his enemy’s voice, directionless in the labyrinth of canyon.

  “I plugged that hot filly deputy and she’s probably dead already, ’n if she ain’t she soon will be! I know she knows it was me shot the marshal and you figured she was going to tell the law, get you cleared! But she ain’t gonna make it and you know that. There’s no witnesses now, Noose! So what are ya gonna do now? Now that there’s nobody gonna get in the way of my big fat reward when I put one in your brain pan and bring in your body slung over a saddle!”

  Noose was blinded with murderous rage. He yelled above and around him, turning his head as he shouted, “I’m comin’ for you, Butler! I killed all your men, you dirty miserable sonofabitch, and now I’m gonna kill you!”

  Butler’s disembodied voice echoed directionless around the rocks. “I owe you a thanks for killing my gang, Noose, ’cause now I got nobody I have to split the reward with! I keep all the money! More for me! I couldn’t have planned it better myself!”

  “The only reward is on your head!”

  Ka-boom!

  Ptang!

  A shot rang out close by and the slug ricocheted off the edge of the granite wall.

  Ptang! Pang! Ptow!

  Noose ducked in alarm as the bullet rebounded in a deadly zigzag around the close confines of the canyon. The ricochet could have killed him.

  He saw a blur of movement across the chasm as Butler’s black-coated figure moved into a better position.

  Drawing a quick and deadly bead, Noose fired twice.

  Ptang!

  Pkow!

  Pang Pang Ptang Pkaow!

  The shot boomed and the ricochets of the two bullets were scary in their violence as they caromed around the ravine.

  A chuckle.

  “Damn, boy!” Butler shouted with mirth from somewhere nearby. “If the shots don’t kill ya the ricks will, bouncing off the canyon like that.”

  Noose moved out and got into a closer position in the maze of the canyon, moving nearer to the sound of his enemy’s voice. “Just keep talking, Butler!”

  The cowboy lifted his revolver and checked the cylinder to see he had three bullets left.

  As if by telepathy, the bad bounty hunter chided him. “So by my count you’re down to three rounds!”

  Noose cursed. Lied. “I got two pistols full!”

  “Don’t talk! Shoot!”

  The dark wraithlike shape leapt out from behind a ravine wall twenty yards away and opened fire with two revolvers and Noose shot back, then jumped back against the rock just in time.

  Blam! Blam!

  Ptow! Pang! Pang! Pkow!

  The terrifying, deafening rebounding bullets showered Noose with rock chips as they careened again and again off the canyon enclosure, whistling past his nose, too close for comfort.

  It was as if people were shooting at him from all sides.

  When the slugs died, he chanced a glance around the edge of the gully.

  Butler was gone.

  On the move.

  Noose moved, too.

  The cowboy squinted, checking his load.

  Down to two bullets . . .

  “You’re good, Noose, I’ll give you that! You made me work for my money this day! But nobody beats me, boy! I’m the toughest son of a bitch ever walked the West!”

  The canyon was quiet.

  Noose moved like a ghost, his boots crumbling gravel.

  Pebbles fell.

  His eyes scanned the deep ruts in the gorge, where piercing sunlight failed to pry, scanning for any movement.

  None.

  A lizard scattered and Noose nearly shot it.

  Catching his breath, slowing his respiration.

  The sun high and hot overhead.

  A cloud passed over the sun erasing all shadow.

  The cloud moved on.

  And then he saw the shadow.

  Down in the crevice.

  Sucking wind, Noose hugged the granite wall like a reptile. Bringing up his pistol near his face, he cocked back the hammer as quietly as he could and lined up the notches on the sight to the man-shaped shadow hiding behind the canyon wall fifty feet below.

  “C’mon . . .”

  His finger tightened on the trigger.

  The flap of the duster appeared around the edge of the rock.

  Noose fired.

  The duster jumped and he fired again, his last round.

  Just as a gust of wind blew the empty duster on the stick.

  It was a trick.

  Noose turned the cor
ner of the canyon base and there Butler was five feet away.

  Both men drew down at the same time pulling the trigger at the exact same instant, pointing their guns at each other’s chests out of pure reflex but Noose knew he was out of bullets.

  Butler fanned and fired.

  His aim was thrown off by his flinching at the click of the empty chamber of Noose’s gun.

  Noose stood his ground.

  The shot went wild.

  Joe Noose and Frank Butler faced off at six feet in the narrow space between the rock crags, frozen where they stood listening to the last deadly ricocheting bullet rebounding off the granite walls past their faces.

  Ptang!

  Ptow!

  They didn’t blink.

  Ptang!

  Eyes locked.

  Guns empty.

  Somehow knowing the ricochet roulette of the zigzagging round against the walls of the chasm would kill one or the other of them in the next few seconds.

  The suspended moment went on forever as time stood still.

  Ptow!

  Ptang!

  A drop of sweat poured down Butler’s forehead like a drip of clear blood.

  Noose wasn’t sweating.

  Not a drop.

  Ptang!

  Butler blew him a kiss good-bye.

  Thud!

  A red dime-sized hole appeared between Frank Butler’s eyes as his brains flew out the back of his skull in a messy crimson mist. The ricocheting bullet had ended its journey, shooting him square in the head, killing him instantly.

  His black eyes rolled up in their sockets, revealing the whites.

  The bad bounty killer tipped like a felled tree in the dirt. Dust settled on his sprawled akimbo, skeletal corpse.

  “Reckon you got your reward, Butler.” Noose smiled, adjusting his hat.

  EPILOGUE

  Two days later, three men in a horse-drawn wagon with four coffins in back rode into Hoback.

  One of the men was much larger than the others and heavily bandaged, wearing freshly cleaned and pressed cowboy clothes on his broad frame. The other two were undertakers and were dressed in black with felt top hats. The coffins in the transom were empty. The wounded man appeared weary and wan but worked tirelessly side by side with the two morticians as they carefully retrieved the body of Nate Sugarland from the small house behind the U.S. Marshal’s office and placed it in one of the wider coffins that had been prepared for his body. Then the three men went into the saloon, carried out the body of the bartender, and he too was placed in a waiting coffin. The men’s business finished, they climbed into the wagon and rode off down the trail west, for they had more stops to make that day.

  It was nearly sundown before the three men carried the sad remains of Jack Mackenzie and Nolan Swallows down from the ridge above the fork of the Snake. In turn, those bodies were placed in the other two coffins.

  The older of the morticians asked the big man who had showed them to the locations of the dead lawmen about the whereabouts of the bodies of the gang of gunmen that killed them so they could be buried, too.

  The big man said he disremembered.

  In truth, they didn’t deserve a proper burial.

  Joe Noose figured he’d leave those corpses for the buzzards.

  * * *

  It was June.

  A month had passed and Joe Noose stood in the open doorway of the U.S. Marshal’s office smelling the fragrant summer air in one of the first days of what promised to be a long, hot summer. Outside the sturdy wooden structure, the streets of Jackson Hole were bustling with wagons and pedestrians. The cowboy had been feeling a lot better the last couple weeks now the bullet wound was healing and the bandages were already off his ribs. Today, he felt healthy, and for the first time in a long while, pretty damn good.

  “You’re taking the money,” Bess’s voice barked from inside the office.

  They’d been through this before.

  “You already paid me,” he replied with a small smile. It was the same conversation they’d been having every day for a month.

  “You been paid the reward for Barrow,” she said. “I checked with the bank again today. You ain’t picked up the reward for my father’s killers you got coming to you. Now, why is that?”

  “I’m letting the money earn interest.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Noose grinned. He could come right out and tell Bess why he wasn’t taking that reward money but he guessed she already knew and just enjoyed arguing with him, which was fine with Joe Noose because he just liked the sound of Bess Sugarland’s voice when she got a high color on.

  Truth was, no way in hell would he take a red cent of that blood money of a reward that that only existed because her father had been murdered to get it. Noose still felt responsible for Nate Sugarland’s death because if he hadn’t messed with Frank Butler in the first place, then, well, he’d been through that over and over in his head. Who knows how things would have gone? Point was Noose felt that money belonged to Bess, that she deserved it and could put it to good use. But it was a tricky subject to broach. So Noose ducked the issue, hoping the woman would forget about it in time. So far she hadn’t.

  There Bess was behind the U.S. Marshal’s desk—she was now by law the acting marshal of Jackson Hole until the Wyoming U.S. Marshals Service’s headquarters in Cody replaced her. Noose didn’t think that was going to happen anytime soon. With the murders of Marshal Jack Mackenzie and his deputy Nolan Swallows, Marshal Bess Sugarland of neighboring Hoback automatically assumed the mantle of interim acting marshal of Jackson Hole. Bess could have passed on the job because of her injury but she didn’t, just like Noose knew she wouldn’t. Her responsible nature and sense of duty saw her at work the day after she’d gotten out of the hospital.

  Jackson Hole had an independent-minded and influential female citizenry who ran businesses and held office and they loved Bess Sugarland. The minute she had come to town, being one of the two heroes who killed the evil gang of outlaws who had murdered three local lawmen in the space of three days, Bess had been a celebrity. Never mind she nearly died from the severe bullet wound in her leg and was still limping around in a leg brace and on a crutch, never mind it was Noose that had done most of the heroics, the point was she was a woman—a hero woman marshal to the women in town. Bess was an inspiration to the powerful female constituency of Jackson, and Noose’s best guess was that this group of women were going to use all of their considerable persuasion to remain damn sure she stayed U.S. Marshal of Jackson Hole.

  Whether Bess liked it or not.

  Noose figured she would eventually.

  Personally, the cowboy thought she’d make a damn good marshal of the growing town. He’d seen Bess in action, seen her under fire, knew what she was made of, and understood her sense of duty, justice, and morality were unbreakable and incorruptible. Noose admired Bess right down to the ground, and was behind her a hundred percent.

  Bess had telegraphed the state U.S. Marshals’ headquarters in Cody telling them about the death of the two local lawmen and they’d ordered her to remain in place as marshal until they could replace her. They had an old Cody marshal they’d send to relieve her as soon as they could get hold of him, but the old-timer was supposedly chasing some gang out in the remote part of the gigantic 70 percent unpopulated least populated state in the union.

  Noose had told Bess not to hold her breath, and said he would help out getting on top of the outstanding warrants and paperwork the previous now deceased marshals had been involved with.

  To her credit, Bess looked like she knew what she was doing sitting straight upright behind the desk, seven-star silver badge pinned to her bosom on the clean leather vest over her denim shirt. Her auburn hair was pulled straight back, her appearance clean-cut, officious, and authoritative. The bruises and scratches on her face still showed, but she was one of those tomboy outdoors girls who a few scuffs looked good on. The spanking-new twin Remington Peacemakers slung in holsters, gi
fts from the town, did not look too big for her, cannons though they were. “What are you looking at?” Bess said with a tone of displeasure, cocking an eyebrow up at Noose across the room. She’d sensed him watching her.

  “Just thinking you look the part, Marshal.”

  “Thank you. We’re not done about this money thing.”

  “I reckon I guessed as much.”

  “We’re gonna talk about this.” Bess got up from her desk, using the barrel of a Winchester as a support for leverage, then, with her leg brace and using the gun as a cane, hobbled stiff-legged to the door and leaned against the frame across from Noose, looking him square in the eye. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

  The big cowboy looked at the woman marshal, sighed, lowered his eyes, looked out at the street, then looked back at her again. He shook his head. “I just want the money for Barrow that I earned. The rest of the reward money is yours. It was your father who died for it, and he would have wanted you to have it, almost like he left you something. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Bess got uncomfortable and bristled. “I resent the implication that my dad got murdered to leave me money and that somehow that justifies anything or means I should have the reward because it was all he left me.” Her eyes were moist.

  Noose, confounded by this difficult woman when he was trying to be nice, spoke plain. “Your father left you more than that. He raised you right, gave you his guts and sense of justice. That’s something money can’t buy. If you don’t want the money, give it to the town of Jackson. Do some good with it. But I ain’t taking it, Bess, and that’s it.”

  A female voice piped up in a husky whiskey cadence from the cell. “How much money we talking about?”

  “What’s money to you, Bonny Kate?” Bess threw a sharp glance to the fiery redheaded troublemaker behind bars. “You got a date with the hangman in three days.”