The Crimson Trail

by Eric Red

  Peering over a boulder, all six of the posse came into view, thirty yards away, not looking in his direction, all of them firing madly down at the outfit below. Behind the great Gatling gun on the tripod was Cole Starborough, his body jerking with the vibration of the machine gun as he furiously clenched the triggers, bombarding the wranglers and cattlewoman with rounds and mercilessly pounding their position.

  Edging forward in a low crouch along the rocks, Joe Noose slowly made his way closer, nearing his enemies step by step. He approached with Indian stealth. They didn’t see him and certainly couldn’t hear him in all the din.

  When Noose was thirty feet directly behind the henchman, he spotted a fist-sized stone that would serve his purpose. Joe picked up the rock and threw it with all his strength at the back of Cole’s head. It flew through the air. Starborough shifted position the instant before the stone hit him, so it smashed into his shoulder instead of busting his head open. The stunned henchman cried out in pain and the bounty hunter charged the gun emplacement.

  Hearing Noose’s boots pounding against the ground, Starborough lumbered sideways, swinging the Gatling gun around to shoot his attacker and as Joe dived at him, the three-foot barrel swung and clubbed him in the face, the searing hot metal of the muzzle burning his flesh. The force of the impact knocked Noose head over heels and he hit the ground hard, rolling on his back with a grunt.

  His eyes blazing with savagery, emitting a bloodthirsty roar, Cole gripped the trigger handles and swung the barrel down to point the twelve muzzles right between Noose’s eyes. Joe kicked the cannon upward with his boots just as Starborough pulled the triggers, the muzzle swung up, and a blazing volley of rounds shot into the sky. Jumping up on his feet, the bounty hunter dived over the top of the machine gun and got both hands around the henchman’s throat, dragging his hands off the triggers and throwing him to the ground. The two men brutally punched and rolled and kicked each other in clouds of dust, both crawling and reaching for the unmanned Gatling gun. Cole’s fingers touched the trigger handle first. Clenching both fists together on the ground, Noose clubbed Starborough in the spine using the muscles of both arms, and when his enemy dropped, Joe hauled him off the machine gun and lunged behind the triggers himself, grabbing them with both hands.

  Joe Noose now manned the Gatling gun!

  Cole Starborough was already up on his feet running for dear life in the other direction a split second later when Noose swiveled the machine gun on the tripod and got his fleeing enemy in his gunsights, centering the aim on his back and letting loose a barrage of .50 caliber rounds. Seeing the enforcer’s flapping duster diving behind the rocks before the clouds of dust and rocks from the bullets obscured his view, Joe knew he barely missed.

  Hearing running boots behind him, the bounty hunter hauled the weapon sideways on the rotating axis of the tripod, swinging the smoking barrel of the Gatling gun fast around 180 degrees to point it directly at the two posse men rushing him. And Noose pulled the triggers and let them have it. The twelve-barrel cylinder rotated with a clanking clamor, spitting fire as the ammo belts rattled through the breech, ejecting rivers of casings.

  RATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!

  The hundred .50 caliber rounds instantly blew both posse men to bits in grisly explosions of blood, bone, and guts, flying arms and legs and pieces of their torsos went in all directions, gory chunks of butchered meat splattering the ground in a splashing rain of bright oxygenated blood.

  Joe Noose grinned savagely.

  He liked this weapon.

  It was his kind of gun.

  Standing up, Noose wrapped his kerchief around his left hand. He lifted the weapon off its chassis, kicking away the tripod, so he held the Gatling gun free in his arms; it was cumbersome and heavy, a hundred pounds, but Joe was very strong. And now his blood was up, the weight felt good because he was going to kill every last man with it. The ammo belts flopped out of the breech of the machine gun, and he let them drape over one arm, getting his grip on the hot barrel with his left hand and holding the trigger with his right, getting the machine gun wrangled just as bullets whizzed past his face from rifle shots fired by three posse men occupying the lower gradation of the cliff roof.

  Swiveling his hips, Noose swung the Gatling gun around to his right and trained the barrel on the operatives with rifles socked to their shoulders shooting at him fifty feet away. Joe clenched the trigger and the gigantic machine gun bucked in his arms, staggering him as he sprayed slews of rounds at the gunmen. It was like they’d been caught in a dynamite blast—the fearsome fusillade blew the four men to smithereens, liquefying them in gruesome eruptions of blood, flying limbs, shattering bones and entrails, and when he released the trigger, mounds of bloody, shredded meat on the ground were all that remained; the gunmen had been vaporized. Empty shell casings clattered to the rocks as Joe Noose marched forward with the Gatling gun in his bulging muscled arms, on a search and destroy extermination mission for the last men of the posse and the man they worked for, one Cole Starborough.

  “Nobody gets out of here alive!” Joe roared at the top of his lungs. “You hear me, Starborough! I’m coming for ya! I’m gonna kill all you sons of bitches!”

  His ears were ringing from the eardrum-bursting sounds of the machine gun, and Noose couldn’t hear much, so he kept his eyes peeled for any movement in the ridges and contours of the roof of the cliffs as he patrolled the area with the Gatling gun, ready to shoot at the first sign of any movement. A foggy wreath of gun smoke hung like noxious miasma over the area and visibility was limited.

  He had killed four of the posse by his count. There were four more, including Starborough, who he knew was still out there.

  Three shots rang out to Joe’s right. A bullet ricocheted off the steel against the side of the machine gun, the impact nearly knocking the unwieldy weapon out of his grip, but he got the barrel around and delivered a staccato string of .50 caliber fire in the direction of the shots. Over the sound of the gun, Noose heard hideous high-pitched agonized screams and wet sounds of splattered meat. No more shots came his way.

  Two more down.

  Two left.

  Seeing a flash of movement, Joe swung at the pelvis, carrying the weight of the weapon, heaving the barrel of the Gatling gun around on a last posse man standing by the edge of the cliff above the chasm, not ten feet away. As the gunman raised his pistol, Noose squeezed the trigger.

  Clickclickclickclickclick . . .

  The Gatling gun was out of ammo. The empty bullet belts clattered around, in and out of the breech. Looking up, Noose saw the posse man flinch, then when he realized Joe was out of bullets, crack a nasty grin and laugh before he pulled his trigger.

  That split second of hesitation was all the time Noose needed. Joe hurled the Gatling gun at him, tossing all hundred pounds of solid steel of the empty weapon into the gunman’s chest standing a few feet from the brink of the cliff, so when the massive machine gun struck him it carried him right over the edge, knocking him off the cliff. The falling man’s fading screams were sweet music to the bounty hunter’s ears until a distant wet thud abruptly silenced them.

  Slowly, Joe Noose turned, eyes full of hell as they scanned the area.

  One left.

  He went after him.

  * * *

  Joe Noose stepped onto the ledge where Cole Starborough was waiting for him, like Noose knew he would be. The henchman’s guns were holstered. Somehow Noose knew that, too. That’s why both his own revolvers were in his holsters.

  It was time for their long-awaited showdown. The contest needed to be clean not messy. They were professionals. It had to be a good kill. The bounty hunter took another few steps out of the canyon into the bright sunlight so his whole body was exposed to his enemy, like his enemy’s was to him. No tricks. Just the fearsome tradecraft of the gunfighter practiced by two experts.

  They took position and stood five feet from one another.

  Cole Starborough faced Joe Noose and bot
h men understood at last the moment they had been waiting for to kill one another had arrived and they were ready for it. Their hands hovered over their guns. The bounty hunter’s were empty, but he figured it didn’t matter because a gunfight was not what the henchman had in mind.

  “Any last words?” Noose said.

  The gentleman fixer grinned with a truly nasty and vicious camaraderie, his voice betraying actual feeling. “I know you, Joe Noose, we’re the same, you and I. Smelled it on each other the first time we both traded glances.”

  “I ain’t nothing like you, asshole.” Noose never drew first. Standing braced, ready to pull, Joe held his enemy’s gaze because a man’s eyes always told you when he was about to draw, but before he drew his gun, Starborough had some talking to do, for Cole’s bright eyes gleamed with grandiosity. “Oh yes, but you are, Noose. We share the beast. We both have the beast inside. The beast in us is us, our true savage nature, because we’re killers and we love the taste of blood. So we keep the beast caged because we desire to be civilized and live in civilized society.”

  “That’s a whole lot of rhetoric.”

  “Oh, I know we both have different reasons for wanting to be civilized: you want honor and I want the money. But we both let the beast loose, don’t we? Yes, you know what I mean. Because on those rare occasions when we need the beast, we let him out of his cage, unleash the beast and get savage. Get uncivilized. I’ll show you my beast if you show me yours. Now is as good a time as any, I think, don’t you?” Starborough unbuckled his guns, let the belt drop, kicked it over the cliff, showed his empty hands, curled them into fists, then extended his arms pugilist style. “What do you say, Joe? Let’s get uncivilized.”

  “First thing you’ve said makes any sense.” Noose tossed away his guns and raised his fists, ready to go. “Uncivilized it is.”

  The gentleman villain smacked his lips below his waxed curled mustache as he declared, “I want to feel your spine crack in my fingers when I kill you with my bare hands.” With a bloodthirsty cry, Starborough charged.

  “You got to hit me first.” Noose ducked a roundhouse punch and, clenching both fists together, sledgehammered Starborough in the back of the neck as his center of gravity shifted with the missed thrown punch. The gentleman henchman slammed facedown into the dirt, but before the bounty hunter could hit him again, his enemy was up on his feet, fists up, his grinning mouth full of sharp teeth red with his own blood.

  “That’s the spirit.” He spat blood. “Now it’s my turn.” Starborough moved in on Noose with lightning speed, bombarding him with blinding fast combination punches, his big fists pummeling Joe’s head and face with hammering blows that staggered the bounty hunter, who couldn’t get a punch in. Then Cole’s fisted combination punches beat Joe’s stomach, buckling him over, and a knee to the face knocked Noose clean off his feet. He hit the ground hard, dazed and punch-drunk. Joe shook his head to clear it and saw Starborough standing a few feet away, chest heaving and fists tightly clenched, bristling with violence like a wild animal. No trace of gentleman remained. Noose saw the beast. “You promised me a fight, Noose. On your feet.”

  The bounty hunter jumped up on his boots, and the two men circled with fists raised. Joe Noose saw he had size and muscle on Starborough but Cole had speed on him; the man was dangerously quick with his fists and threw punches the way his Gatling gun fired bullets. Noose didn’t want to get caught in that blizzard of blows again.

  Baring his teeth in a mustached snarl, Starborough launched an attack, stepping in swinging his fists, and Noose was ready for him. Leaping on the gentleman henchman, Joe wrapped his arms around Cole’s torso, pinning those arms and fists in a crusher vise of his own muscular biceps and forearms. Starborough was not expecting that. The two seconds it took for Cole to react was all the time Joe needed, driving his whole body against Starborough with the force of a locomotive, knocking him off balance, using all his weight to keep his arms pinned as Noose smashed Cole back into the canyon wall with a bone-crunching impact when Starborough’s spine struck the stone.

  Roaring in rage and frustration, Cole struggled to free his arms to no avail, trapped in Joe’s muscular grip as Noose heaved himself against Starborough again and again, pounding Cole’s body against the granite canyon wall over and over with punishing force, throwing him a serious beating, until Cole’s eyes suddenly bulged like a berserker.

  Cole Starborough bit Joe Noose’s ear.

  Baring his sharp teeth, stretching his mouth wide, his face lunged against the side of the bounty hunter’s head, took his left ear in his mouth and bit down hard.

  Blood flew. Joe saw it was his, the left side of his head exploding in searing agony; his shocked disbelief a man was biting his ear off made Noose react fast before he lost the ear.

  Brutally head-butting Starborough in the face with his forehead gave Cole’s skull a nasty crack against the stone wall and the mouth and teeth let go of Noose’s ear.

  Joe staggered back, releasing his grip on Cole, his hand flying to his left ear. It was still attached, but he was bleeding like a steer. Now he had to finish this business with Cole, because when Starborough attacked this time, he wasn’t trying to fight Noose anymore, he was trying to eat him.

  Joe backed away as Cole tried to rip his throat out with his teeth, eyes glazed over with blood sport, lunging again and again mouth first, no longer using his fists, regressing into animal savagery,

  “Fight like a man!” Noose snarled, but it was a beast that growled back. Revolted, Noose kept his distance, repulsed by Starborough’s shocking visage struggling to bite him with a bloody mouth filled with sharpened incisors, and worse, the noisy clatter of his upper and lower molars that collided inside his palate with every snap of the jaws trying to chew a piece off him.

  Knowing he had to keep his hands away from Cole’s mouth, Noose locked eyes with him but the gaze had gone feral.

  Lunging his head, Starborough’s jaws snapped at him like a wolf.

  He was an animal.

  Enough, Noose thought in disgust.

  This time when Cole Starborough lunged forward at him, Joe Noose feinted and stepped in with a left uppercut, putting his whole shoulder into it, aiming his fist at the point under the jaw it would do the most damage and drove a piledriver blow up into Cole’s chin with such force it broke his neck. An ugly muffled crack, and Starborough’s head flopped loose on his neck and his limbs turned to rubber as he collapsed like a marionette with the strings cut, slumped on the ground sprawled on his back, paralyzed from the neck down. His face faced the sky and bore an expression of utter surprise and dismay.

  The bounty hunter stood over his fallen enemy, watching the gentleman henchman’s eyes come to grips with his condition; a plethora of emotions passed across the paralyzed man’s pathetic gaze until a single tear rolled down his cheek. Unable to move his head, Cole was immobilized looking straight up into sky at the vultures circling above, knowing they were coming for him.

  Noose crouched over Starborough, looking him square in the eye, the only parts of himself besides his lips he could still move. The mouth moved. “You killed me, Noose. With your bare hands.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Not really.”

  “Pity of it is, old boy, in another life we could have been friends.”

  “No, I’d have killed you in that life, too. Some men need killing, Cole. You’re one of ’em.”

  “Then finish the job.” Starborough grimaced; after a few seconds passed and Noose did nothing, his enemy coughed blood, his eyes narrowing. “Kill me, Noose. Do it. You taste my death. The beast in you must be served.”

  Flapping winged shadows fell across the two men below on the ground, shadows that circled in a dread rotation. The crouching bounty hunter threw a laconic glance back up over his shoulder, squinting up at the kettle of hungry vultures flying above them. More buzzards joined the congregation. Noose returned his hard gaze to the paralyzed man l
ying on the ground with eyes forced to look at a sky full of carrion birds blocking out the sun. “Nah. Those buzzards circling will finish you off,” Noose said. “While you can still move your eyes, Starborough, you might want to close ’em.”

  Fear filling his trapped gaze looking up at the vultures coming for him, Cole broke down and begged. “Mercy.”

  “Fresh out.”

  “Please, you can’t leave a man to get eaten by vultures like a-a . . .”

  “Beast?” Joe Noose smiled with cold irony.

  Cole Starborough’s gaze registered self-awareness devoid of pride or shame and without apology. “True, I am a beast. But even a wounded beast deserves to be put out of his misery. You are an honorable man, sir. Do the right thing.”

  The bounty hunter returned a pitiless gaze and shook his head slowly. “Not this time. I’m leaving you for the vultures.”

  “Why?” Starborough croaked.

  “Because you remind me of me,” Joe Noose replied gravely, his eyes shuttered.

  Rising to his feet, the bounty hunter picked up his gun belt and strapping it on, turned his back on his enemy, walking away never to lay eyes on him again.

  Behind, Noose heard Starborough’s dying words, “Ave tenebris Dominus,” before there came a great flurry of wings and the terrible screams began.

  * * *

  The bounty hunter found the leather satchel with the money in it that Calhoun’s gang tried to buy Laura Holdridge’s cattle with a few weeks ago by the war wagon after a brief search. He took it with him.

  When the exhausted Joe Noose climbed down the cliff, it was so quiet after the ceaseless gunfire filling the ravine the last hour, amplified off the canyon walls to deafening decibels, that its sudden cessation was disorienting. His ears were ringing. The bounty hunter was hurt and bleeding but still on his feet. Making a slow descent to the base of the ravine carrying the satchel, Joe saw no movement in the draw ahead where the outfit had taken cover and as he approached, feared the worst. The cattle and surviving horses were milling peacefully outside the opening of the chasm. A haze of hanging gun smoke and dust hung in the air, making him cough. As Noose reached the lip of the draw, he saw down in the murky miasma the outlines of six figures and they weren’t moving. His heart sank.