by Eric Red
“Hope that’s you, Joe, because we’re all out of ammo.” It was Laura’s weary voice.
“It’s me.”
“Did you get ’em?”
“I got ’em. Every last one.”
“Good for you.”
“You all OK?” Hers was the only voice he had heard so far. In the hanging gun smoke wreathing the draw he could see Laura getting weakly to her hands and knees, but the other figures sprawled around the pit didn’t look injured.
“Inventory. Roll call, boys,” the cattlewoman said. “Brubaker.”
“Here.”
“Leadbetter.”
“Here.”
“Maddox.”
“Here.”
“Idaho.”
“Here.”
“Barlow.”
No answer.
“Barlow.”
“He didn’t make it, Laura,” said Joe quietly, reaching down his hand to help the outfit out of the draw.
Over the next hour the last wranglers and their trail boss gathered the cattle and horses, and the bounty hunter lent a helping hand after he had reunited with Copper, who had come through without a scratch. Noose watched with admiration the care and stoicism the rovers of the Bar H displayed in calming the shaken animals under the weight of the loss of Billy Barlow and their own injuries. Laura had proved herself a pretty fair battlefield medic by removing the bullet from Brubaker’s leg, which was now bandaged. By early afternoon the outfit was saddled up aboard the horses they had confiscated from Cole Starborough’s posse who had no use for them anymore. Twirling their lariats, the wranglers got busy moving the cattle into formation and getting ready to pull out.
Laura caught the leather satchel Joe tossed her. She didn’t need to open it, she felt the heft of four thousand dollars inside.
“You earned it,” he said.
“This money is Calhoun’s.”
“He owes it to you.”
“He’s going to want it back.”
“Calhoun can’t claim the money is his. If he does he’ll have to explain what the money was doing here and he doesn’t want the law knowing that. All these dead men work for him, so let him go to the law and explain what his men were doing here with his cash.”
“Wipe that grin off your face, Joe.”
“It ain’t the money that’s gonna piss off Crispin Calhoun, it’s that you have it, and there ain’t a damn thing he can do about it and that, lady, is gonna burn his ass for all the rest of his days.”
“Now you put it like that, I will keep the money.”
“Good. With the sale of the cattle, that cash will get your ranch on its feet.”
“Drivers present and accounted for. You boys still in one piece?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yeah.”
“Yup.”
“Then what the hell you waiting for? Let’s move this damn herd!”
CHAPTER 26
You forgot a killer walks among you but I have not forgotten about killing the rest of you. You ride with the devil, you fools, and you have lowered your guard. Even Noose. You’re next, Joe. Then it’s your turn, Laura. You never knew the man you married, who Sam Holdridge really was, you only thought you did. You didn’t want to know where the meat came from, you just wanted to eat it. Face the truth. Everything you have, you got from Sam. Everything he had he took from me. He took from me everything I have or ever will have. And now, Laura, I am taking everything from you. I already took your husband. That was just the beginning. Then I took the lives of your men. Once I’ve stopped you getting the cattle to auction. your precious herd will be lost, too. Then and only then, when you see you have lost everything you love, will I take the very last thing you have, your life. But before I do, you will know how it feels to have it all taken away from you, and feel my pain. Then you will wish, like I, you had never been born. When you have everything, you have everything to lose, Laura. I have nothing and have nothing to lose. Sam Holdridge got his. Now you get yours.
Will you be surprised to learn your murderer rescued you yesterday? It makes perfect sense.
If I hadn‘t saved your life I would never have been able to kill you. Get ready. Today you die.
Goodbye Laura.
The killer crumpled the letter, balled the paper in his fist, stuffed it in his mouth and chewed. Washing it down with a swig of whiskey, he belched. Like the other letters, nobody was meant to read them; it was written for himself, so he could understand what was inside him that drove him to do what he did. The journal of a murderer. The killer swallowed his final entry.
He lay on his bedroll and looked up at the lightening sky on the dawn of the day he would finish it.
CHAPTER 27
A thunderhead of black storm clouds hung over the horizon as the five hundred head of steers were driven across a vast desolate plain that was nothingness twenty miles in every direction. Far off lightning jags behind the black haze of distant storm weather. The sky was about to drop on them. Laura Holdridge knew from years of experience that her crew and livestock were going to get caught in the storm coming their way, and the best thing to do was rest the herd while she and her hands took cover in any refuge they could find from the lightning.
Snapping the reins of her horse, she galloped by the steers, glancing behind her at the bounty hunter driving the cattle, back down the herd. Knowing he was there made her feel secure, but even this man could do nothing to avert a storm.
Joe Noose cast a grim look up at the unrelieved sky.
Black clouds formed overhead in moving mountains of black obsidian, pressing down on the landscape as the increasing pressure system in the atmosphere built like steam in a kettle, filling the Big Empty with foreboding.
A storm was coming.
It was going to be a big one.
The air in Joe’s nostrils smelled of the ozone-charged atmosphere.
The herd smelled it, too.
The cattle were restless.
Riding in the midst of the processions of livestock, the bounty hunter could feel the antsy nerves of the steers like a volatile electrical charge coursing through their muscles. This wasn’t good. Nothing was as terrifying, unpredictable, or dangerous for a wrangler as a stampede of cattle. There was nothing a rover feared more: hundreds of unstoppable tons of cow flesh, thousands of heavy hoofs and razor-sharp horns out of control, goring, trampling, and crushing anything in their path; right now, the cattle were contained, but storm weather was when stampedes often happened, and although the thunder and lightning hadn’t hit yet, it would very soon.
It was headed their direction from the northwest. Looking back to where the black thunderclouds originated, Noose could see the wall of rain and darkness like a towering curtain of doom reaching from the sky to the earth. It was relentlessly coming their way.
The first lightning bolt crashed to earth a mile in the distance.
It was followed by a low frequency sonic rumble of thunder that lasted almost a minute, and the cowboy could feel the ground tremble beneath the hooves of his horse.
Another lightning bolt strobed the world, an electrical zigzag, closer than the first.
In the desolate wastes of the Big Empty, the cattle drive looked as small as a trail of ants across the tundra below the vast lowering sky. The horizon was a flat unbroken line. There was no escape from the storm about to hit.
Nowhere to take shelter.
They had to just keep riding.
And pray there wasn’t a stampede.
Feeling the volatile tension in the longhorns all round him, Joe Noose figured it was safer not to be riding in the midst of the herd but outside them. Tugging his reins, he eased Copper through the slow-moving cows toward open country.
Switching his gaze to spot the other wranglers, he got a visual fix on Idaho and Brubaker. The first two met his eyes and even across the herd he recognized the apprehensive look in their gaze spelled stampede.
He couldn’t see Laura. Where was she?
The rain arrived in a sudden torrential downpour, turning the dirt to mud and Joe’s clothes to soaking rags in what seemed like seconds.
Another flash of lightning.
The following thunderclap was deafening as an explosion.
So loud it muffled the gun shot.
The bullet felt like a horse kicked him in the side.
The bounty hunter was blown out of his saddle and airborne by the time he registered the assassin timed his shot just after the lightning flash so the thunder would cover it, and then it was too late—he’d been hit.
Then the bounty hunter crashed to the ground, hard. Everywhere he looked were stomping hooves of the marching longhorns above him on all sides. His reflexes were quick. Rolling out of the way to avoid being trampled, Noose jumped to his feet. Copper reared up on his hind legs and Noose’s sudden fear was his beloved horse was going to get shot by the gunman’s next bullet—his only thought was for his best friend’s safety.
Luckily the bullet had passed clean through and he’d received only a flesh wound.
Whoever shot him had missed. This time.
Spooked by the violent gathering storm and picking up their stride, the steers were visibly alarmed by the rearing stallion, and their massive skulls and jutting horns were milling in an ominous way. Grabbing Copper’s reins, Noose patted his horse to calm him and led the stallion calmly as he could through the cattle—at any second the longhorns could charge and gore them or at worst start an entire stampede, trampling man and horse to death in the mud. Hoof step by hoof step, Noose led Copper through the passing rows of cows until the horse was out of peril, safely clear of the cattle on the open plain. Then, guns drawn, Joe got back on his horse.
Turning his head, Noose swung his gaze back in the direction the shot came from, but saw nothing but endless heads of cattle in the dimness of gray overcast light from the gathering storm. Rain was falling in heavy, cold, punishing drops. Giving his reliable stallion a tap of spur, Joe rode alongside the herd.
Whoever shot him was the killer, the man he was after.
It wasn’t Idaho.
Not Brubaker—he already knew that.
He’d had eyes on both when someone had taken a shot at him.
Scanning his eyes cross the sea of rising and falling backs and heads and horns of the horde of cows on the march, Joe searched for the hats and heads and horses of the other four wranglers, but it was getting dark fast. Gripping his Colt Peacemaker in his fist, Noose kept a sharp lookout.
There.
The silhouette of a rover on the side of the herd. The muzzle flash of the wrangler’s gun lit up his hands and weapon but not his face, but the outline of the figure was enough for Noose to take a shot at. They exchanged gunfire. The two gun blasts were drowned out by a peal of thunder that boomed across the terrain. As he rode alongside the herd, Joe fired again over the heads of the cattle at where the figure had shot from an instant before. For a few seconds, he thought he must have hit him because there was no return fire.
When it came it was bigger and louder. Twin flashes. Two loads of a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun blew a horn off one of the cows but missed Joe. Driving his heels into his stirrups, Noose yanked on the reins with one hand, steering Copper directly into the middle of the cattle in the direction of the gunman. He tightened up in the saddle, making a smaller target as the stallion plowed fearlessly into the parting ocean of steers, riding straight for the killer with the shotgun. The man was partially glimpsed past the shadows of the livestock.
Noose emptied his revolver at the figure, then in a swift fluid motion holstered it and drew his Winchester from his saddle sheath, spinning the rifle around his hand, cocking the lever and shooting across the herd at his assailant while he was reloading. Another two shotgun blasts exploded and one of the barrels took the top of one of the steers’ head off in an explosion of skull, brain, blood, and shattered horn as Noose was hit in the cheek with pellets from the other barrel. Ten feet away the felled cow dropped dead in its tracks, collapsing in the middle of the running herd so the steers following it tripped over the body and tumbled to the ground, causing a pileup of falling longhorns. Joe recoiled from the sting of the pellets in his face and blinked blood out of his eyes, hauling on Copper’s reins to get his horse out of the path of the crashing, falling, lowing cattle.
The one cow getting shot was all it took.
Panic sizzled like a lit fuse through the herd and set them off like a thousand tons of dynamite.
The cattle stampeded!
Five hundred bawling steers took off all at once. The cows broke formation and scattered, blindly charging in a mindless flight into the storm. A raging river of longhorns like a runaway train with the power of twenty steam locomotives, row after row of horns and hooves an unstoppable juggernaut of sheer animal mass, flattening anything in its path. The ground shook with pounding hooves and mighty force of the runaway herd. Lightning cracked the sky and thunder bellowed and hell came to earth.
Nearby, suddenly Laura Holdridge was living her worst nightmare. Runaway livestock hurtled on all sides of her in a deafening thunder of hooves, She had a cattle stampede on her hands. Her first thought instantly was only of her men and getting them out of harm’s way from the charging steers. Digging her spurs into her mare, she rode straight for the stampede, waving her hat over her head for her rovers to clear, and hollering at the top of her lungs over the cacophony of hooves. Steering her horse alongside the string of livestock on a rampage.
Maddox, Leadbetter, and Idaho were safe. She saw them as the wranglers rode out of the deadly path of the stampede. They rode alongside it and drew their guns, firing them into the air, to scare the dumb cows back into some semblance of formation.
A few hundred yards back, Joe Noose heard gunshots on all sides now, losing his sonic bead on the killer. He swore under his breath, looking left and right. Hearing the gunfire in every direction, for all he knew the shots could be coming from anywhere. Cocking his Winchester, he brought the rifle up, his eyeballs going one way, his head the other, looking around him as on all sides three hundred and fifty tons of cattle stampeded.
Laura saw that Brubaker was caught in the middle of the runaway herd, and Curly was trapped in the saddle trying to control his terrified rearing horse. It was twenty yards from her. The stallion suddenly froze and came to a complete halt as the rushing cows poured past it, the closer longhorns barreling their way past, battering the horse and rider and knocking the stallion off balance. The horse’s front legs went out from under it. “Curly!” Laura screamed. The ramrod caught her eye from his precarious perch in the saddle as the reins were ripped out of his hands as his horse went down and him with it. The look Brubaker gave Laura said he knew he was dead. Spurring her mare brutally didn’t make her mare go where she wanted, so the cattlewoman fired her pistol next to her horse’s ear, forcing it to ride straight into the stampede, getting her a few yards closer to Curly on the falling stallion, which was just close enough. “Jump!” she screamed to Curly Brubaker and he leaped out of his stirrupts onto the back of her saddle right as his fallen horse was trampled under the stampeding cattle, and Laura rode them the hell out of there.
Once safely outside the stampede, Laura and Curly looked back and saw a riderless horse smashed to bits from the blunt-force impacts of hundreds of longhorns, the mangled mare crushed beneath them as the steers charged past.
“Where’s Noose?” Laura yelled to Brubaker.
Before he could answer, there were two shotgun blasts.
The first barrel hit Brubaker square in the shoulder and blew him off the back of Laura’s saddle.
The second barrel shot the cattlewoman’s horse out from under her.
A sudden explosion of lightning lit up the world like a stick of detonated dynamite for just a split second but in that brief instant, Joe Noose saw two things:
A desert rock formation of rocks and boulders about fifty feet high diverting the runaway herd and above the stamp
eding cattle below was Laura climbing up the rocks to safety.
And the back of the killer stepping out from behind a boulder beside the cattlewoman carrying a very big double-barreled shotgun.
Even at this distance, there was no mistaking his true identity . . .
Drawing both loaded Colt Peacemaker revolvers, Joe Noose tried to pick him off but the mighty wall of stampeding cattle blocked his shot. The barrier of horns and bodies of the steers obscured his view of the two figures on the boulders on the other side of the stampede. He couldn’t line up a shot with those longhorns in the way. Joe swung his fierce gaze down the herd and the cows kept coming. Gritting his teeth in frustration, the bounty hunter holstered one pistol to hold the other Colt in a two-hand marksman grip for bullseye aim, squinting down the notch sight to target the killer across the herd, cocking back the hammer so his finger rested on a hair trigger. Noose only needed one shot. One clear shot. But he had to have a target. If he could just see the killer for one split-second past all those damn horns . . .
The shadow of a man on the rocks made Laura suddenly look behind her . . . when she turned she was looking up both muzzles of a 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun aimed at her face by Frank Leadbetter, licking his lips in anticipation of pulling the trigger!
“You.” She gasped.
“I’m the last face you’re ever gonna see,” Frank Leadbetter’s voice was drowned out by the tremendous noise of the stampede, but Laura Holdridge could read his lips.
Thunder cracked and lightning shimmered in the overcast sky. The lowing cattle were maddened. Joe Noose was caught behind the barrier of rampaging longhorns he couldn’t get past or shoot through. The hooves of the herd would crush him to mush if he got in their way. The cows were panic-stricken by the noise of the thunder and flashes of lightning and their hooves were everywhere. The bounty hunter dodged being trampled struggling to line up a shot with his pistol by dead reckoning and whatever glimpses he could get over the livestock of Laura Holdridge and Frank Leadbetter fifty yards away—already he could see the fear in the cattlewoman’s posture from the loaded scatter-gun the wrangler had aimed point blank on her. Over the vociferations of the cows Noose could not make out what the killer with the shotgun was saying.