The Crimson Trail

by Eric Red

  Rutledge shrugged. “Well, I reckon I lost a steer because you’re so damn cocky, but hell yes, it’s a bet.”

  “We’re all in.” The other four agreed.

  “Shall we shake on it, gentlemen, or do we toast?” Laidlaw raised his glass.

  “I’ll give it to you in writing.” Calhoun smiled expansively. He snapped his fingers, and his operative rushed to his private car to fetch a piece of Calhoun Cattle Company stationery, with which he returned forthwith. With a flourish, Calhoun took out a gold fountain pen from his jacket and wrote in elegant script a promissory note giving his marker to his fellow cattlemen for the brazen bet.

  Witnessed this tenth day of February 1887, I, Crispin Calhoun, do hereby wager all ten thousand cattle on my Calhoun Cattle Company Bar T cattle ranch in Amarillo, Texas against one cow each from the members of the Cattlemen’s Association, that Laura Holdridge and her livestock of the Bar H Ranch will not reach Cheyenne, Wyoming in time for the American Cattlemen’s Association auction on February 16th. Signed, Crispin Calhoun.

  The evil cattle baron signed his name with a flourish, and then passed the note and the pen around to each of the five cattle barons, who signed their names to the document in turn.

  “I’ll hold the marker.” Rutledge took the promissory note, folded it, and slid it into his jacket, patting the pocket. “Well, Calhoun, if you’re wrong about this cowgirl, you’re going to lose a fortune.”

  The evil cattleman’s thin lips turned up in an icy smile as he signed for the bartender to bring another round of drinks. He took a cigar from the humidor and pulled out his cigar cutter, disturbingly fashioned from a metal tool used to castrate bulls, and snipped the end of the cigar off like it was a pair of testicles. “Safest bet of my life.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Cole Starborough was thinking of the Spartans.

  He was, after all, an educated man, who had enjoyed the benefits of a classical education. It wasn’t history that brought the Spartans to mind—military history had been his favorite subject—but the strategy and tactics of warfare.

  The narrow gorge that lay before him was a tight fit, a natural corridor walled in by hundred-foot-high canyon cliffs on two sides. The location would have done the Spartans proud at the Battle of Thermopylae where by forcing Xerxes’s overwhelmingly superior forces into a tight space that pinned them, the Spartans took the high ground atop the cliffs and shot their enemies with arrows and spears like fish in a barrel. If it was good enough for Sparta, it was good enough for him. For this identical squeeze tactic was exactly what Cole intended to use on Laura Holdridge and her outfit when they came down the trail as it passed through the tight passage between the cliffs where they would die.

  Cole wouldn’t lose a single cow.

  Calhoun’s henchman walked on the high cliff looking down a hundred feet into the narrow gorge to the dusty bottom below; the space was tight, ten to fifteen feet in width its entire length, barely enough room to squeeze a cow through. The steers were going to have to be marched in single-file formation through the passage. When the bullets from Starborough’s rifles on top of the gorge started flying, and hell rained from above down on the Bar H outfit’s heads, it would be over in a matter of seconds. The rovers would never know what hit them. Hell, they’d never even get a shot off. Not that it would matter if they did. There was no way out.

  Cole looked down into the chasm, switching his thoughtful glance to the entrance and exit of the quarter-mile gorge, mentally determining where to position his gunmen to cut off any escape for the outfit and livestock. He’d have his guns already in position at the exit when the Bar H herd arrived. His riflemen, strategically hidden at the entrance, would have to move into position as soon as all the rovers were in the gorge, so they weren’t spotted, because the element of surprise was crucial. Once the men and cows were inside the chasm, soon as the shooting began, Cole did not worry about a retreat. The corridor was too tight to turn a steer, and cows don’t back up, so the only way for the cowpunchers to escape was forward, right into his artillery. Nobody in the outfit gets out alive.

  Then, once the smoke cleared, Cole Starborough would simply go down with his posse, take possession of the ownerless cattle and drive them to Cheyenne.

  They would leave the corpses of Laura Holdridge, her drivers, and that big son-of-a-bitch Joe Noose for the vultures; the buzzards out here in the Big Empty would strip their bones clean in a matter of days, and that would be the end of them.

  In a matter of hours, the livestock would be his, to be turned over to his boss, cattleman Crispin Calhoun, each cow to be rebranded with the Bar T monogram and become the Calhoun Cattle Company’s property to be sold at the auction in Cheyenne.

  Five hundred head.

  Cole reminded himself to tell his gunmen to place their shots carefully and watch their aim.

  Don’t hit the cows.

  The loss of even one steer would displease Crispin Calhoun very greatly; the cost of that animal would not simply come out of Cole’s salary, it would come out of his hide. Literally.

  But the henchman felt confident there was nothing to worry about.

  “The scout’s back, Mr. Starborough.”

  Looking up, Cole saw Earl Moore gesturing to a rider fast approaching; one of his operatives rode up and dismounted, strode past the rest of Calhoun’s posse cleaning and oiling their guns, and marched right up to Starborough, where he stood and delivered. “Scout reporting, sir. The Bar H herd is up the trail three and a half miles, heading this way. They’re down to six men. Sir.”

  “That makes them due to arrive here in an hour and a half,” Cole calculated, consulting his pocket watch, smile widening. “High noon.”

  Perfect. Casting a look up to the cold blinding sun, he saw it was at eleven o’clock; in an hour and a half it would be directly overhead, in the eyes of the helpless men and woman of the outfit when they looked up at Cole’s gunmen firing down at them with the sun at their backs. Laura Holdridge’s rovers would be too blinded to aim into direct sunlight. It would be over before it began.

  It was a perfect ambush. Cole Starborough grinned savagely with pointed teeth.

  Let’s see you get out of this one, Joe Noose.

  Even the Spartans didn’t have it so good.

  * * *

  “I don’t like it.” Joe Noose lowered the field glasses he had trained on the opening to the gorge beneath the cliffs. He was standing with Laura Holdridge a quarter of a mile away, beside the string of cattle now at a standstill after the bounty hunter spotted the chasm they had to pass through. “This place is wrong.”

  Laura took the field glasses and scanned the inside of the distant gorge and the roof of the cliffs, seeing no movement, adjusting the focus, looking again to see nothing but rocks. “I don’t see anything, Joe.”

  “You wouldn’t until it’s too late. Any fool can see that spot is ideal for an ambush.”

  “You really think so?”

  “We know what’s left of that posse rode on ahead of us. I don’t make Cole Starborough or his boss Crispin Calhoun the types to give up. That fancy son of a bitch could be laying in wait ahead, could have rifles positioned anywhere. It’s what I’d do if I was him. That passage is too narrow. We’ll have to march the stock and our horses and us, single file. Once we’re in the chasm we can’t turn back, there’s no place to go but forward. If they’re waiting for us, once we get inside, we’ll be sitting ducks.” Joe made the finger gesture of a rifle picking off shots, one after the other. “I say no way.”

  Laura believed Joe and shared his worry, but she looked distraught. “Then what do we do, Joe?”

  He shrugged. “Find another route. Take the cattle across the Big Empty another way.”

  “There is no other way! Look around. Nothing but canyons as far as you can see between us and Cheyenne.”

  “We’ll have to find another way around.”

  “You show me, Joe!” In frustration, the cattlewoman reached into her
jacket and yanked out the map, spreading it with a punch of her fist against the saddle, punching her forefinger against the section of the trail on the map. She did it so hard it sounded like a hammer hitting a nail. “Go ahead. You tell me. Where do we drive the herd? You show me. This way? All canyon. Over here, same, all canyon.”

  Leaning over the map with her, Noose heaved a sigh. Couldn’t argue with her, going through the gorge was the only way to get the cows to Cheyenne.

  She locked her piercing blue eyes on the map and brushed her blond hair from her face, tracing her finger on the topographical demarcations. “The only other way is to turn the whole damn herd around and backtrack two hundred miles north then turn south again along the Snake River. It will set us back a week. Days we don’t have.”

  He nodded grimly.

  The cattlewoman stood up straight and met his gaze with fierce authority. “It’s my outfit. It’s my decision. We’re going through.”

  The bounty hunter didn’t even blink. “Let me go on ahead then. I’ll do a patrol of the gorge. Look around. Report back here directly. If it’s safe, we can pass the herd through. OK with you?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Better safe then sorry.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  Noose grabbed his Winchester off the saddle scabbard of his bronze horse and proceeded down the trail on foot to the yawning opening of the gorge. Laura’s mouth was dry, so she sipped from her canteen as she watched Joe’s huge, strapping figure shrink smaller and smaller down the trail as he approached the gorge, until, when he set foot through the opening, Noose disappeared in the shadows. He was there then suddenly he was gone was how it seemed to Laura, who forgot to breathe.

  The rock walls of the canyon were closing in on him, the bounty hunter felt as he entered and stood inside the gorge, as if the tall cliffs were actually physically pressing together to crush him flat; the passage was so narrow it made him claustrophobic, even though he usually had no fear of tight spaces. Reaching out on either side of him, Joe could almost touch each opposite wall at the same time; he had an admittedly long reach, but the space was so tight the idea of pushing five hundred cattle, horses, and wagons through made his sphincter tighten. The gorge had an unpleasant dusty, dank smell with a tincture of dead animal that tickled his nostrils.

  Clenching his rifle, Noose was on high alert, his keen eyes scanning the walls, floor, and entrance to the gorge, looking for any sign of Cole Starborough’s men.

  Nothing.

  He tilted his head back and his eyes traveled up the cliff walls, first one side, then the other, past where the shadowy lower canyon rose into too-bright sunlight that gave him momentary blindness before his eyes adjusted. And then he was looking straight into the sun directly overhead and had to shut his eyes and look away, getting spots in front of his eyes. He rubbed them. Joe didn’t like that he couldn’t see what was above him on the cliff overlooking the gorge passageway—if Starborough had riflemen positioned up there, the outfit would not be able to see them or return fire with the sun in their eyes.

  Noose had a bad feeling about this place, a feeling of mortality about the ground beneath his feet that grew worse with every step of his boots.

  It felt like the place he was going to die.

  He couldn’t explain it.

  But he felt it.

  Looking up, the sun exploded in his eyes, so he averted his gaze.

  And took another step.

  * * *

  Cole Starborough kept Joe Noose in the gunsights of his Sharps rifle, his eye focusing past the circular flip-up sight to the notch on the barrel to the head of the big cowboy, the muzzle inching a fraction left to right with each step the cowboy below took.

  Noose was a professional like he was, Starborough was loath to admit, capable and experienced enough to recognize the gorge was the perfect spot for an ambush, and smart enough to go on ahead of the outfit to scout. The smart, tough son of a bitch wouldn’t see anything with the sun right above him. Cole was smarter than he was, doubting Noose even knew what a Spartan was, but boy, did Cole want to blow those smart brains right out of the back of the man’s skull—he could if he wanted to, right this very second.

  The gentleman henchman relished the thrill of knowing he could kill his enemy here, now, any moment he chose.

  His gloved finger itched on the cocked trigger.

  The slightest pressure and Noose’s head would disappear, blown clean off his shoulders.

  God, how Cole wanted to do it.

  It was animal urge—the beast in him wanted meat, craved blood, this man’s blood; the murderous compulsion that grew harder for Starborough to resist with each step the man in his gunsights took as below he walked through the gorge, closing in on the exit. In these terrible seconds, Cole wanted to kill Noose more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, more than money, more than women, more than power. His enemy’s hide right now meant more than any of that. He simply had to kill Joe Noose.

  His finger tightened pressure on the trigger.

  The first click of the hammer sounded, about to release and slam down on the cartridge and fire the round that would erase his nemesis from earthly existence.

  Only when his other eye saw the moist trickle of perspiration seeping down the canted steel barrel of his rifle did the enforcer realize he was sweating like a pig, his face sopping with it, and saw how close he had come to missing his opportunity to end this whole thing.

  If he took Noose now, the outfit would hear the gunshot, know it was an ambush and stay out of the gorge. Cole and his men could, would, still shoot it out with them directly, but outside the gorge were plenty of places for the rovers to take cover, evening the odds even though he had more men and guns. The chance of casualties of his own men wasn’t what bothered Cole about an open skirmish.

  They’d lose cows.

  Cattle would get caught in the crossfire.

  Bringing the full force of Crispin Calhoun’s wrath.

  No, too risky.

  Stick to the plan.

  It’s a perfect one.

  Just have to wait.

  Just

  A

  Few

  More

  Seconds

  * * *

  Down below in the gorge, Joe Noose had reached the other side, a few steps from the opposite entrance. He kept his Winchester rifle at the ready, looking left and right, front and behind, everywhere but up into the blinding sun. He had patrolled the entire gorge.

  So far seen nothing.

  Heard nothing.

  Death he felt was here, Noose was so certain of it, every nerve ending in his body twitching like antennae from danger, a sense of mortal doom weighing in his guts like a rock in his belly, or so it felt, but still he saw nothing, heard nothing, and as he took his final steps toward the opening, Joe figured he was on edge because he was too damn exhausted.

  Through the exit of the gorge, he saw a cavernous ravine, just more of the Big Empty, and as he was about to emerge from the shadowy chasm Joe stepped into a wall of dazzling sunlight that stung his eyes and made him blink, blinding him for a few seconds.

  Not ten feet away around the corner, three of Cole Starborough’s thugs had their rifles trained on the edge of the opening Joe was just about to step through, itching to pull the trigger the instant a piece of the man appeared, but under orders not to fire until the men and cattle entered the gorge. Noose didn’t see them because they were positioned on the other side of the opening. He didn’t hear them because the men were very good.

  Inside the gorge, the bounty hunter sighed and lowered his rifle.

  There was nothing here.

  Daylight was wasting.

  Turning around, he strode briskly back the way he came to report back to Laura to bring the herd on through.

  CHAPTER 25

  It was high noon.

  The cattle drive entered the gorge.

  Proceeding one cow at a time bec
ause the narrow space was so limited, the herd progressed very slowly. Laura rode in the lead, ahead of the first steer. She led the livestock in single-file succession and Joe rode five steers behind her and the lead cow, on Copper. Only a few yards into the path between the tight walls of the cliff Noose realized a fresh danger he had not considered: the deadly sharp curved horns of the steer behind his horse were only a few feet behind Copper’s haunches. If these cattle spooked for any reason, and cows spooked for lots of reasons, and then took off and stampeded, the bounty hunter and his golden steed would be impaled on those very horns, trampled, and crushed under thousands of hooves. His horse was jittery, realizing the same thing.

  Joe’s face was sweating not just from the heat as he looked over his shoulder and saw, twenty cows back, Curly Brubaker, just as nervous as he was, casting looks back at the horns of the steer behind him. Beyond the foreman, Joe could make out the figures of Billy Barlow, Frank Leadbetter, Joe Idaho, and Rowdy Maddox on their horses in the procession of cattle. Looking ahead, Noose saw they still had a quarter mile of the gorge to pass through.

  Looking up, the blasting sun directly overhead blinded the bounty hunter so he couldn’t even see the top of the cliffs above, and even shielding his eyes with his hand and tilting his hat brim didn’t block the blazing white orb of the noonday sun that made him see spots in his field of vision, so he needed to look away.

  Every nerve in Noose’s body sensed imminent danger. His left hand held the reins, keeping Copper at a patient trot with the pace and rhythm of the cattle. His right hand drew his loaded Colt Peacemaker and his thumb cocked back the hammer.

  Seconds later came the first shot. It was aimed at Joe and barely missed, slamming into the leather of his saddle an inch from his ass. Noose instantly fired upwards.

  Then the real shooting started.

  “Ammmmm-buuuuuu-ssssshhhh!” Joe roared, swinging his head back around to the men.

  The sky rained lead down on the cattle drive. A torrential downpour of screaming bullets bringing death from above exploded around the gorge.