by Eric Red
Did she know something he didn’t?
Reckon he would soon find out, the cowboy figured. In his favor, he had a Henry rifle in one saddle holster, a Winchester repeater in the other, two Colt Peacemakers freshly manufactured, cleaned, and oiled in his belt side holsters, plus enough ammo for each firearm in his bandoliers and saddlebags to hold off a small army. And he had just one unarmed woman to contend with. What could possibly go wrong?
Probably plenty, like it usually did.
Already, Joe Noose wanted this over with.
CHAPTER 2
The five lawmen were definitely out of their element and a very long way from home. They were dirty and saddle weary and had ridden for three months from the state of Arizona and the town of Phoenix, cradle of their jurisdiction. It had been a hard ride with more hard miles ahead a certainty, but they had reached their destination and there was relief in that. The officers had a job to do and were close to completing it. Still, all five of the posse had to admit the scenery of the Jackson Hole valley at the base of the gargantuan cyclopean snowy peaks of the Teton mountain range was spectacular and took a man’s breath away with the sheer scope and scale of the sight. None had seen anything like it. It was impressive country beyond question, even if a man did get winded at the eight-thousand-foot elevation, but this was no vacation.
Sheriff Waylon Bojack knew he had no actual authority as a peace officer in Wyoming but believed the piece of paper in his coat gave him plenty: it was a legal judge’s court order—even though the damn government had said the only worth this document had was paper to wipe his butt with.
We’ll see about that, the sheriff thought.
Sitting his horse stoically at the head of the posse of four other Arizona deputies, Sheriff Bojack cut a distinguished figure who inspired respect with his silvery beard and clean-cut hair over a leathery, lined, heroic face deeply tanned from the desert sun. Waylon Bojack looked every inch the honest, tough, and incorruptible veteran professional lawman who had seen many gunfights in his forty-year tenure. He didn’t need a badge to convey that, but wore one on his coat anyway. His sky blue eyes were piercing and direct beneath the perpetual squint he had developed from a life spent under the blazing Arizona sun—while he didn’t need to squint here, it had become his habit. He was a legend in Arizona law enforcement with a formidable reputation and spotless record but nobody in Wyoming knew him from Adam. His suntan made him clearly not from around these parts and he and his men got many inquiring and curious looks from the good people of Jackson they rode past on the streets.
A local grocer walking past on the boardwalk carrying a crate of potatoes passed Sheriff Bojack’s horse and smiled a friendly greeting to the stranger. The lawman tipped his hat and leaned in his saddle with an affable smile. “Sir, may I ask you a question?”
“Sure you can.” The grocer stopped to talk.
“I’m Sheriff Waylon Bojack from Phoenix, Arizona, and these here are my men.” The lawman gestured his hand to the four hearty younger riders as clean-cut and tanned as he was. All of them touched their hat brims respectfully. Bojack fixed the grocer in his manly blue-eyed gaze. “We’ve been told that the U.S. Marshal’s office presently has a prisoner who goes by the name of Bonny Kate Valance.”
“Oh yes, we sure do.” The local gave a smile and Bojack immediately lost his. “Can you direct me to the U.S. Marshal’s office, please?” he said.
“Straight down Broadway on the right. Can’t miss it. Our Marshal is Bess Sugarland.”
“A woman?” Sheriff Bojack was taken aback. He had never met a female in that position of law enforcement authority and if anybody asked him, he would have said he hoped he never would. The Arizona lawman wondered if this would change the equation.
“Yes, sir,” the grocer replied agreeably. “Marshal Bess. She’s the law around here.”
“Then I look forward to making her acquaintance. Thank you for your help and your time, sir.” With another tip of his Stetson, Sheriff Bojack spurred his horse forward and with a fresh sense of urgency rode toward the local U.S. Marshal’s office followed by his men on horseback.
Waylon Bojack knew it was almost finished—he just didn’t know how it was going to play out.
* * *
These lawmen did not look happy when they saw the empty cell, was her first thought.
A few hours had passed since Marshall Bess Sugarland stepped away from the window, feeling weighed down with sadness and dread as Joe Noose and Bonny Kate Valance shrank from view as they headed toward the Teton Pass. The Winchester felt heavy but useless in Bess’s hands because it would do her no good at the present. She didn’t even want to use it for a crutch even though the length of the gun and bend of the wooden stock fit her height and armpit perfectly. With a weary sigh, the female lawman set the repeater on the gun rack and hobbled back to her desk, sat herself, and spent the morning going over paperwork—reports to file, warrants to issue, and such. It had been an otherwise uneventful morning. A few locals came in with various problems she had to give them advice on, but she could do that from her chair.
One thing Bess was happy about was the jail cell was empty, door left open, and that evil slut lady outlaw was out of her purview. It felt like a great weight lifted and the marshal was relieved every time she cast a glance across the room and saw the unoccupied cell.
It was around eleven in the morning when the Arizona posse showed up. The sound of their horses outside caught Bess’s attention and she looked up at the sound of spurs on the porch, laying eyes for the first time on the five respectable, capable-looking peace officers who doffed their hats in respect as they entered her office.
“Howdy. What can I do for you gentlemen?” Bess said brightly, rising to her feet with some difficulty onto her wood-braced injured leg.
That’s when she noticed the dark, malignant looks the entire posse, especially the leader, gave to that empty cell: five sets of cold eyes fixed on it. For an instant, the lawmen’s veneer of polite courtesy vanished, replaced by a bitter, mean-spirited disappointment she could feel as much as see. But the moment passed, and just as quickly, the men assumed the deferential, gentlemanly attitudes they had led with in making their first impression walking through the door.
The tall and lean rugged older man with the silverback hair and sheriff’s badge stepped forward with a confident, aggressive stride and extended his long arm to offer his big weathered hand. He met her gaze squarely with direct twinkling blue eyes the female marshal thought were disarmingly beautiful. Bess shook the man’s hand in a firm solid grip that matched his own even though his huge fingers enveloped her own big hand. His gravelly voice was mellifluous as he formally introduced himself. “I am Sheriff Waylon Bojack and these here are my deputies.”
Bess saw Bojack notice her glance at his badge with SHERIFF. PHOENIX, ARIZONA etched on the metal. “We’re from Arizona.”
She met his eyes again with a clear, unwavering gaze. “Long way from home, aren’t you, Sheriff? Did you get lost?” Bess joked amiably.
Bojack looked at her, not blinking. His grin was frozen.
“Make a wrong turn in Nevada?” Bess quipped again.
The sheriff just held her gaze and kept his plastered grin, but there was no mirth in it.
“I was just making a joke, Sheriff. Wyoming humor,” she said. “No offense intended.”
“None taken,” he replied, and the warmth returned to his grin. “I understand you are Marshal Sugarland and you are in charge around here.”
“On my good days.” Bess smiled but he didn’t smile back so she decided to can the humor with these Arizona boys. “Yes, you understand correctly. How can the Jackson U.S. Marshal’s office help you boys? State your business.”
Holding her gaze and reaching into his coat pocket, Sheriff Bojack pulled out a folded piece of paper that showed much handling, unfolded it, then presented it to Bess. She took the official document from the Arizona State Judiciary and looked it over. He summarized
the contents as she perused it: “This is an extradition warrant for Bonny Kate Valance signed by Judge Warren B. Toller in Arizona ordering the fugitive to be immediately remanded into my personal custody to be returned forthwith to the state of Arizona and there be tried for the crime of homicide.” Marshal Bess read over the official courthouse typeset and while it was more long-winded in its verbose legalese, that was clearly what it said. Sheriff Bojack continued with a steely tone of righteousness. “It is my information that a month ago Bonny Kate Valance was captured by bounty hunters and handed over to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Jackson Hole for the reward and has been in custody here ever since. We have come to collect her.”
Bess looked up and met his eyes with a conflicted gaze.
He shot a hard glance at the empty cell, then looked back at her just as hard. “Where is she?” Bojack demanded.
Tapping the extradition order with her hand, Marshal Bess heaved a sigh. “This presents a problem.” Her leg was beginning to smart fiercely, so she turned and took her seat behind her desk, trying not to show the discomfort she was in. There, she leaned forward with her elbows on the desktop, clasping her fists together below her jaw, and stared away from the men at the opposite wall. She had a lot of things on her mind.
“And that problem is?” Sheriff Bojack loomed over her desk, an edge in his voice now.
Sitting below him standing over her but in no way intimidated by the disadvantage of her position because she wore the badge and these lawmen had no authority in her jurisdiction, Bess Sugarland did not respond immediately. It was clear to her she was on the spot and had to make smart decisions about what came next. The clock on the wall ticked. She did not look at the men or acknowledge their presence, and to them it looked like she was staring at the wall. But Bess was in fact staring at their reflections in the small mirror on the opposite wall, sizing up the five Arizona peace officers—or so they said—invading her space.
They could be impersonating these officers, was the first thing she considered. They could be accomplices of Bonny Kate posing as lawmen trying to break her out of jail. Bess had seen phony badges before and knew how easy it was to make them but she rejected that idea because if they were pretending to be lawmen, they would not say they came from a place giving them no jurisdiction in Wyoming unless they were complete fools. Their being the outlaw’s accomplices was possible but unlikely.
No, these lawmen were the genuine article. Her father was a marshal and she had been his deputy; Bess had been around lawmen all her life before becoming one herself—she knew a real sheriff when she saw one by the way they carried themselves, and this man Waylon Bojack was who he appeared to be, she felt certain. His men likely were legitimate peace officers, too, although her hackles were raised by the reflection of the truculent postures they currently held, which betrayed open hostility since they didn’t think she was watching them.
The clock ticked.
Bess’s brain did, too.
The Arizona lawmen waited.
Her gut told her something about these lawmen was wrong, though, and they were not being forthcoming about whatever agenda they were trying to advance coming here for Bonny Kate Valance. Bess was going to have to speak to these men soon so she guessed their true intentions were they were here to kill the outlaw, not take her back to Arizona for trial. Why, Bess hadn’t a clue. The world had a lot of people who had plenty of reasons to kill Bonny Kate Valance. The point was, Sheriff Bojack was not playing straight with her, so right there Bess made the decision not to tell him anything—nothing about the impending hanging execution in Idaho, nothing about Joe Noose taking Bonny Kate over the pass. The best thing to do, she decided, was to hold back any information, stall for time, and telegraph the U.S. Marshal headquarters in Cody directly about this supposed extradition order and get the official word.
It made Bess uncomfortable to be one wounded woman among five armed men she didn’t trust, even if they were lawmen.
She wished Noose were here.
He wasn’t. She was. And she wore the badge.
At last Bess turned, leaned back in her wooden chair, and with a trenchant gaze looked up at Bojack. “The problem is, this is above my pay grade, Sheriff. I don’t know anything about that extradition order and have no way of knowing. I am not authorized to disclose any information regarding a federal prisoner. What I will do is the following: telegraph the U.S. Marshals Service headquarters in Cody, tell them about this extradition order, request instructions, and get my marching orders from them. I’ll do it now. In the meantime, you boys should go get yourself a cup of coffee and come back in an hour.”
Standing on the other side of the desk, the formidable figure of Sheriff Waylon Bojack seemed to tense like a tightening rope. His eyes darkened and clouded with summer storms of fury, turning the blue of his gaze behind his squint dull and inchoate. Then the storms faded and his eyes calmed but the shine of affable blue did not return. “We’ll wait,” he stated flatly.
“Suit yourself,” Bess said, taking the extradition order, looking it over again, rolling her chair over to the telegraph, and starting to bang out a long transmission to Cody with a steady tap tap tapping.
She didn’t need to look behind her to know Bojack was hovering. And she could hear his deputies cleaning their pistols and checking the loads impatiently. With her face still pointed at the telegraph, Bess spoke to Bojack a few feet behind her. “You’re staring at me,” she said. “Why is that?”
She heard a manly chuckle. “I’ve never met a woman marshal before. Never knew they existed. I want to watch you work.”
“Knock yourself out. But sit your ass down in a chair and stop breathing down my neck, Sheriff,” Bess growled. “I’m the marshal, this is my office, and that’s a damn order.”
Bess Sugarland smiled as she heard the angry creak of a posterior setting itself in a chair behind her.
* * *
Sheriff Waylon Bojack had been grinding his teeth with irritability for thirty minutes, sitting in that damn uncomfortable chair waiting for that transmission to come back from Cody, trying to figure out what to do. He knew what the message from the state U.S. Marshal’s office would say: his extradition order had been overturned by the federal court in Idaho and had no legal validity.
That damn female marshal wasn’t even looking at him, just bent over her desk reading through her paperwork and occasionally signing something or filing some documents in her drawer. She hadn’t paid him or his men the slightest bit of attention since she sent the wire, and if that female rudeness wasn’t proof positive women didn’t have the temperament to wear the badge of a peace officer he didn’t know what was. Bojack did wonder what she’d done to get her leg all bound up in that wooden medical brace, though. Maybe a horse kicked her.
Finally, after another ten minutes had passed and he had no bright ideas how to get the information of Bonny Kate Valance’s whereabouts out of this tight-mouthed Wyoming marshal, the sheriff needed to stand and stretch his stiff legs and wasn’t about to ask permission.
Avoiding the displeased gaze of his deputies sitting around the office, the old lawman wandered around the room, gazing idly here and there.
A big map of Wyoming was on the wall, impressive indeed in its detailed topography of the mountain ranges and the helpful pin showing where Jackson was. He studied that for a few moments because he loved maps, then his legs ached him so he walked away.
Stopping at the cork bulletin board, Bojack saw it almost by accident.
How could he have missed it?
The official U.S. Marshals Service order from the Cody, Wyoming, headquarters addressed to the Jackson Hole office giving written directives for the escort and delivery of the condemned fugitive, one Bonny Kate Valance, to the town of Victor, Idaho, two days from today’s date.
His breath caught.
He knew where she was.
Almost.
Switching a sly glance to the woman marshal, he saw her head was still in he
r paperwork and was purposefully not looking at him like she hadn’t been.
Good.
Victor, Idaho. That’s where the hanging would be. That’s where the other Jackson marshals would be taking Valance right now. He had wondered why the office seemed understaffed, and now Bojack understood.
He just didn’t know where Victor was but figured he could find it on the map.
Acting like he was just idly killing time, Sheriff Bojack walked back to the map, and his pale blue eyes tracked a line from the pin in Jackson Hole to the border denotation line of Idaho and quickly found Victor.
It was right across the Teton Pass, a big mountain range on the map. When he shifted his gaze from the map to the window, Bojack saw through the glass about two miles off, the towering forested canyon gorge rearing against an endless, unrelieved sky.
The pass.
That’s where Bonny Kate Valance was. He couldn’t see her but that’s where she would be.
The sheriff shot his men a steely glance, loaded with purpose.
He tipped his hat to the lady marshal. “Thank you, Marshal, for your help and your time. Meanwhile, reckon we’ll go get that coffee and be back in a few minutes.”
Looking up from her desk, the woman saw the five Arizona lawmen were already out the door in a muscular toxic clanging of spur and pistol.
“I know where she is,” Sheriff Bojack said when the posse were by their horses out of earshot, as he swung up into his saddle while his deputies did, too. He spurred his horse savagely and took off at a full gallop across the plain in the direction of the Teton Pass with his posse right behind him.
Inside the office, Marshal Bess Sugarland was distracted by the telegraph coming in from Cody, her gaze growing more concerned as she read each word, and when her head shot up to ask some hard questions of the Arizona men they were long gone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ERIC RED is a Los Angeles–based novelist, screenwriter, and film director. His films include The Hitcher, Near Dark, Cohen and Tate, Body Parts, and The Last Outlaw. He has written seven novels. The first two of his Joe Noose Western novels, Noose and Hanging Fire, are being published by Kensington Publishing in 2018 and 2019. Red divides his time between California and Wyoming, with his wife and two dogs. Find out more about Eric Red and his books and films on his official website, EricRed.com, on Facebook, OfficialEricRed, and on Twitter, @ericred.