by Eric Red
“Then what difference does it make whether you tell me or not? Who am I gonna tell, swinging from the end of a rope?”
“It’s none of your business is what it is, outlaw.”
“I gotta use the crapper.”
“There’s a bucket in your cell,” Bess shot back.
“I need to use the outhouse,” the prisoner complained.
The marshal socked the stock of the repeater rifle under her armpit and lurched fiercely over to the bars. “Miss Valance, you know damn well you can’t leave that cell without an escort and you see perfectly plain I’m in no shape to provide you one. Use the bucket.”
Bonny Kate’s twinkling eyes slid contemplatively to Joe Noose still leaning against the door frame, all six foot three of him, his arms crossed on his big chest as he returned her look idly. “Why can’t your friend give me an escort to the commode?”
Marshal Bess switched her gaze to Noose, back to Bonny Kate, then back to Noose. He shrugged. She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be leaving this cell, Miss Valance.”
Noose watched the exchange, observing with interest the two women. Bess limped to the front door, and his pale-eyed gaze that missed nothing saw her uncharacteristic nervousness with this woman prisoner, so Noose inquired about it. It was all about letting Bonny Kate out of her cell long enough to use the outhouse under escort but Bess seemed unduly worried about it. Bess came right out and said, out of earshot to Bonny Kate, that she did not trust this woman and everything about her was wrong.
“Hell, woman,” he said. “The latrine is right outside the window over there. You can stand with a rifle and keep a bead on it the whole time she’s using it.” Noose grinned when he said he was feeling better and could handle her so Bess gudgingly let Bonny Kate out of jail. The female marshal keyed open the lock and spread wide the cell door. Then she leaned back against the edge of the desk and rotated the Winchester repeater rifle out from under her armpit into her hands, business end squarely trained on Bonny Kate. Noose reached over and took the prisoner by a strong hand, towering over her as he guided her out the front door to the outhouse, the barrel of Bess’s gun tracking her midriff the whole way. The lady outlaw was hot to the touch and a sweet heat of a perfume radiated off her when his hand closed on her bare bicep. Noticing all the looks and glances, Bess, with a conflicted mixture of misgiving and jealousy on her face, watched them go outside; then she grabbed her rifle and took up position by the window. It afforded a clear view and clean shot at the outhouse, and she waited at the window until their uneventful return.
Some unspoken challenge passed between them, the marshal saw, but the cowboy returned the condemned outlaw safely to her cell. Bess, seeing Noose could handle Bonny Kate Valance, got an idea. She had been reviewing Swallows’s orders to deliver the outlaw to Idaho for her date with the gallows. Bess was the only law in the area, but she was in no shape to escort the outlaw, even armed. She decided to ask Noose if he would accept the job if she deputized him.
Bess limped back to the doorway Noose stood against laconically, his arms crossed, and addressed him deferentially. “Listen, Joe. I’m in a bit of a fix. The Victor office telegraphed again. They can’t get any lawmen over the pass to take this hussy to the gallows. It’s two days from there to here and back again and her hanging is set for three days from now and they won’t change it. They need us to do it. The U.S. Marshals’ headquarters in Cody ordered the Jackson Hole marshal’s office to take her. Mackenzie and Swallows were all set to go before they got shot but the orders still stand, and right now I’m the marshal so . . .”
With a friendly, regretful sigh, Noose shook his head. “We both know you ain’t going anywhere with that leg, even in a saddle and definitely not over that pass.”
“I know that, Joe. Thing is, I don’t got nobody here in town I can trust with that job.” Bess pursed her lips and fixed Noose in a level stare. “But you.”
“Take Bonny Kate over the Teton Pass to her hanging in Idaho. That’s the job,” he said.
Bess nodded.
The cowboy shrugged. “Reckon I can manage that.”
“The job pays three hundred dollars.”
“Deal.” Noose spit in his palm and held out his hand. Bess spat in her palm and they shook on it.
The marshal smiled tightly, less pleased than she might have been. “I’ll deputize you for the job. It’s there and back over the pass. Need to get the prisoner to the gallows by Thursday. Get her to Idaho, hand her off to the hangman, turn around, ride home. Drinks will be on me.”
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks.”
“After Butler and his boys, this’ll be a vacation.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. You be careful, Joe. That bitch is a piece of work with an ugly reputation. And she’s got nothing to lose.”
“Bess, with me she’s got two choices: she can go the easy way or the hard way but either way Noose is getting her to the noose.”
Bess stared at him flatly. “That supposed to be some kind of joke?”
“Just a plain and simple fact.”
“Well, I’m betting she’ll pick the hard way and you should, too.”
“I’m twice as big as she is.”
“Bet the other ten men she killed said the same thing.”
“I hear you.” Noose nodded to Bess and both turned their gaze across the room of the U.S. Marshal’s office to the corner cell where Bonny Kate lay curled on the mattress, snoozing away. He said, “It’s too late to start now. We should leave in the morning when the sun is up.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Bess smiled and went to a shelf, taking out a five-star metal deputy badge and tossing it over to Noose, who caught it. “Raise your right hand.”
On the mattress on the dusty wooden floor of her jail cell, Bonny Kate Valance had one eye half-open. She was only pretending to be asleep. The eavesdropping woman outlaw had heard every word that had just been uttered.
With a taut cunning little smile, her eye slowly shut.
* * *
Dawn broke and the morning air had a cold snap.
Marshal Bess Sugarland stood at the window of the U.S. Marshal’s office, cradling her loaded rifle. The sun was in her face while she looked far across the plain where Joe Noose rode with Bonny Kate Valance out of Jackson Hole toward the mountains. He had begun his journey escorting the condemned outlaw over the Teton Pass to her date with the hangman in Idaho. Bess watched the two figures on the horses getting smaller and smaller in the distance and the sight filled her with unease that she would never see her friend again.
Bess had the window open so she could get an unobstructed shot if necessary. While Noose had Bonny Kate in the outhouse yesterday, Bess had stood in this same spot right by the window with her loaded Winchester ready to drop the woman with one shot. This morning, standing at the same window with the same rifle in hand, the female marshal saw the woman and man were now far enough away that they were out of range of her weapon and she was seized by a sense of powerlessness.
Because now Noose was outside her immediate protection, alone with an infamous female outlaw—a bad-to-the-bone woman Bess’s gut told her was capable of anything. The lady marshal couldn’t shake a free-floating dread that Joe Noose wasn’t going to make it out of this one. It was irrational, she told herself: Bess had seen firsthand how well her friend could take care of himself. Joe Noose was the toughest man she had ever met—he had handled Frank Butler and his gang of marauders and could handle one woman. So what if she was a notorious outlaw with nothing to lose?
Then suddenly it came to her in a flash.
Those bounty killers had been men.
This outlaw was a woman.
And hell hath no fury.
From the award-winning author ERIC RED
comes the newest western adventure
of bounty hunter Joe Noose!
A beautiful but dangerous female outlaw has a date with the hangman, and Joe Noose is working as a U.S. m
arshal, escorting her fifty miles across a treacherous mountain pass to the gallows. A bloodthirsty posse, led by a vengeance-seeking rogue sheriff with a grudge against the condemned outlaw, want to gun down the prisoner escorted by the lawman on the long ride themselves.
Noose is on what seems like a fool’s errand: risking his life to protect a woman he is taking to die and killing a lot of men in the process—but he’s the law, it’s his job—and he’s driven by his own code of honor. And an already deadly situation is about to get a lot more complicated when Noose begins to fall for his seductive prisoner . . . and he starts to believe she may be innocent.
Which just might be her plan.
HANGING FIRE
A JOE NOOSE WESTERN
by Eric Red
Coming in February 2019, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.
CHAPTER 1
Joe Noose had heard to never trust a man with three names. He wondered if the same held true for women.
Bonny Kate Valance stood there in handcuffs. The wrist restraints were shackled loose with a two-foot chain because she would be riding a horse the next two days. It would be her last ride. Their point of departure was the U.S. Marshal’s office in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At the end of the trail fifteen miles across the Teton Pass over the Idaho border lay the town of Victor. The gallows there were Bonny Kate’s final destination. The notorious female outlaw had been sentenced to execution by hanging and it was Joe Noose’s job to get the woman there safe and sound so the state could kill her.
The irony was not lost on Noose.
The cowboy was a big man, a very big one. He towered six foot three on a broad, muscular, and rugged frame. His handsome, leathery, unshaven chipped face some said looked like a picture of a Roman gladiator. Noose had never seen a gladiator so he didn’t know, but it had always seemed like a compliment and he took it as such. On his massive block of a head his unkempt brown hair had need of a clipping. His giant hands, big as steer hooves, were encased in leather gloves against the cold. A heavy worn brown duster covered his upper torso over a checkered shirt and a red bandanna around his neck. The coat had dark stains that could be mud or blood, likely both. His Stetson was tipped low over his pale blue eyes to shield them from the sharp Wyoming sun breaking over the mountain range near Hoback.
It was there by the fork in the Snake River a month ago that Noose had spent a fateful and violent few days. At the end of that misadventure fifteen men lay dead, all but three by his own hand, but the men he had killed were responsible for the murders of the three lawmen and it was justice because they had it coming.
Joe Noose had come out of it with two bullet holes in him and a few broken bones, but his resilience was high; the massive cowboy was healthy and strong and healed quick. Now, save for a few lingering bruises and scars on his person that made him look even tougher, folks would never know the hell he’d been through.
The best thing the cowboy had gotten out of the nasty Hoback business with the Butler Gang was he had made two friends.
The first was standing on four legs right in front of him, sixteen hands high, saddled up, and ready to ride: his horse, Copper. The mighty and fearless stallion was aptly named for his bronze coat; when the light was right as the morning sun was now, its hide gleamed with the metallic magnificence of a suit of armor on a medieval steed. Copper’s smart eyes were moist and brown, and powerful muscles rippled beneath its smooth tawny hide. The horse had saved Noose’s life, and the love and loyalty it had for its owner, and its owner for it, were palpable.
The other friend Joe Noose had made was walking on her own two legs out of the Jackson Hole U.S. Marshal’s office right now. Sort of walking, anyhow. Marshal Bess Sugarland was a hardy young woman, strong and attractive with vigorous outdoor looks and flashing intelligent brown eyes. Her gaze was straight and forthright and her manner the same, although her gait was presently crooked from the wooden leg brace she hobbled on and the Winchester repeater she was using as a crutch. A bullet had nearly taken off her leg in Hoback and the wound was healing slower than Noose’s wounds had, but Marshal Bess didn’t let it slow her down. She was the law in the town of Jackson now, whether she liked it or not. The seven-star badge on her small chest glinted in the morning sun. Her chin was firmly set and her composure determined as she limped across the stable behind the U.S. Marshal’s office up to the cowboy and the outlaw standing alongside their horses getting ready to embark on their fateful journey. Bess nodded to Noose, then turned her gaze to Bonny Kate, choosing her words and tersely delivering them. “It ain’t for me to judge you, Miss Valance. It’s for the Lord to do that. But let me tell you one thing and you listen so you hear it good. Nothing better happen to my friend, or else.”
Bonny Kate smiled darkly. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” There was haughtiness in the condemned outlaw’s posture with her large bosom stuck brazenly outward in her denim shirt and her shapely blue-jeaned hips cocked in a defiant pose above her black rattlesnake-skin cowboy boots. Her demeanor displayed neither respect nor regard. Everything about the doomed Bonny Kate Valance seemed to whistle past the graveyard.
Bess leaned in nose to nose with Bonny Kate and spoke in the kind of low, quiet way that got people’s attention. “I don’t make threats, I make promises, Miss Valance. And I promise if Joe Noose don’t come back from your hanging in one piece, I’ll dig you up and kill you again. That’s a promise I’ll keep.”
The bemused female outlaw stared at the marshal in disbelief, shook her head in resignation, and chuckled. “The ideas folks have about me. None of ’em true. I swear.” The outlaw sighed ruefully and shrugged her soft and delicate shoulders. “But folks best believe what they best believe and bein’ as they all believe me to be the Antichrist in petticoats there’s no telling any of ’em otherwise, so off I go to be—” Bonny Kate made a pulling gesture by her neck with her closed fist, cocked her head sideways, crossed her eyes, and stuck her tongue in her cheek, making a popping sound with her lips in a grotesque imitation of hanging. Then she rearranged her face back to normal again and wore a perplexed, confounded expression that was almost comical. “Now, here’s the part I don’t get. My mama always told me to wear clean drawers, and my whole life that has been just what this girl has done only to end up hanged as an adult and soil myself like an infant. You know that’s—”
“Shut up, Bonny Kate. Get your posterior on that horse. You got a date with the hangman and we don’t want to keep him waiting.” Marshal Bess turned her tight, worried gaze to Joe Noose, who stood calm and patient beside Copper, brushing the horse’s golden withers with his big, rough hand. The two friends made eye contact, and in their shared gaze was an unspoken shorthand born of friendship. The conversation was had in simple glances.
A nod from Noose telling Bess he was going to be all right.
A returned nod and then a second one from Bess told him to be careful.
A grin and friendly touch of his finger to the tip of his Stetson from Noose told Bess to stop being foolish and quit her worrying. The big cowboy never had to say a word as in one easy, powerful sweep of his leg he swung into the saddle of his bronze horse and was mounted up.
This time Bess smiled back. She rounded on Bonny Kate Valance and swept up the barrel of her Winchester, now a loaded weapon not a crutch, aimed right at the convicted woman’s narrow gut below her ample bosom. Again, Bess didn’t need to speak. A quick levering of the repeater and couple of quick up-and-down motions of the rifle barrel communicated the message perfectly well and Bonny Kate took the meaning clearly. With her relative freedom of mobility in her handcuffs, the woman outlaw grabbed the saddle pommel of her tough old loaned chestnut quarter horse and slung a boot into a stirrup. After a few unladylike grunts and ungraceful clambering of her shapely legs, she struggled into the saddle and sat the horse.
“Let’s ride,” said Noose. A nudge of his lantern jaw indicated the towering gorge of the Teton Pass to the west, just a few miles south from the spectacular snow
-capped peaks of the Teton mountain range rearing majestically against the brightening morning sky to their right.
“Farewell, Bonny Kate Valance,” Bess said.
Bonny Kate ignored Bess and with a toss of her fiery red mane of hair skillfully spurred her horse and headed off at a trot west across the field.
“See you soon, Bess,” Noose said to the fretting female lawman below him, cradling her rifle and watching up at him with worried eyes.
“You do that,” she said. Noose reined Copper around and patted its muscular flanks and the big majestic bronze horse took off at a steady trot, falling in right behind the nag carrying the condemned woman. Together, the two rode toward the pass, beginning their long and hopefully uneventful journey to the steep rise of the towering pass a few miles distant. The sunlight still hadn’t touched the mountain range and the staggering sloped gradients carpeted with pine trees and yawning rock ravines lay in wait, cloaked with foreboding shadow.
The morning air at the Wyoming high elevations was cold, crisp, and clear, rich with the scents of soil and birch.
Joe Noose looked back only twice.
The first time he saw Bess now stood at the window inside the U.S. Marshal’s office, capably cradling her Winchester as she watched him go. The woman looked confident and calm, for she could still get a clean shot off at Bonny Kate from there.
The second time Noose looked back was half a mile farther on and Bess still stood in the window, a tiny speck, but her gun was down because they were out of range of the rifle. Perhaps it was just how small Marshal Bess’s little figure appeared in that window but Noose felt the pain in his friend’s forlorn bearing so he didn’t look back again. Dutifully, the cowboy returned his gaze to the fetching, wild, redheaded woman prisoner on the horse ahead. Bonny Kate Valance struck him as pretty damn unconcerned about being hanged by the neck until dead, like she was cocksure that was never going to happen.