Hanging Fire

by Eric Red

  More and more, Bonny Kate seemed to grow fascinated with Noose. Like she had encountered some new animal species not previously known to exist. “You’re big on the right thing to do,” she observed frankly. “You always done the right thing?”

  Noose became distant for a reflective few moments, then said, “Not always. Now I try to. When I can figure out what the right thing is. That ain’t always easy.”

  “You said a mouthful, Joe Noose.” The female outlaw unexpectedly smiled warmly then spoke softly and sincerely when she said, “And if it means anything, I do appreciate it. I feel safe with you. Not for long, maybe, but safe for right now.”

  “Good.”

  “It is good.”

  Noose let Bonny Kate’s hand go now the footing was more steady in the crevice and returned the Winchester to his left hand, returning his gaze to the receding opening to their rear over his prisoner’s shoulder. So far there was no sign of the posse. “Maybe you best tell me the long story of why that sheriff wants your hide. Pardon the language, Miss Valance, but that man has one hell of a hard-on for you. Why is that?”

  She sighed, lock-jawed.

  Noose shrugged. “I got all day. The night, too. Then the first part of tomorrow. That’s about it.” He grinned.

  She didn’t. “Sheriff Bojack believes I shot his son, his own deputy, in the back and killed him outside of Phoenix about nine months ago. The deputy was part of Bojack’s posse that was chasing me and my gang for a train robbery we pulled in Arizona, where we stole a bunch of money. A hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars was the take. That part of what they accuse me of is true. We robbed the train. And the law came after us. It happened in Bojack’s jurisdiction and he and his boys chased us hard for a week, damn near drove our horses into the ground. Them Arizona lawdogs is some tough honchos, that’s a plain fact. After a week we thought we had lost ’em in the desert but we was wrong.

  “My gang and me, we had hid out in some pueblos and the sheriff and his boy and probably those men back there shooting at us ambushed us while we were sleeping. The bullets were flying and it was hellfire. I ran. Didn’t even have time to strap on my gun belt, and that young deputy, good-looking boy that he was, gave chase and he had me boxed in with his gun on me, but he was an honest lawman, he didn’t shoot me though he could have ’cause he was just a kid. I knew when I heard the shot it wasn’t his shot, and when the deputy fell with a big hole in his back I saw Johnny Cisco standing behind him with a smoking weapon. Cisco was my man and was always sweet on me but as the good Lord God is my witness it was Johnny Cisco shot the Bojack boy in the back, not me. I was unarmed, didn’t even have a gun on me, Joe!”

  Noose listened, backing his way up the draw, didn’t look at her, keeping his eyes alert for trouble behind them, didn’t speak.

  “You probably don’t believe me, either.” Bonny Kate shrugged in resignation.

  “Don’t matter if I do or don’t. Point is, Sheriff Bojack believes it enough to travel three states to come gunning for you. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”

  “It happened just like I told it.”

  “Why you think he thinks that?”

  “Because Cisco told him I shot the deputy. And all those buzzards in that old gang of mine backed up his story. Sheriff Bojack and his deputies captured or killed all of my gang that night. I’m the only one who got away.”

  “What happened to the money?” Noose asked.

  “That hundred grand from the train, you mean?” she retorted.

  Noose nodded. “What else?”

  Bonny Kate shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. My gang had it and the law got them. I got away with two dollars and one buffalo nickel in my britches, and not a damn thing else. ’Cept my life. What I have left of it.”

  “That was a lot of money.”

  With a wistful smile, the lady outlaw nodded, whistling nostalgically. “Sure was. Most cash I ever seen or touched. While I was on the run I don’t know which I missed more: that money or my beau Johnny Cisco’s handsome face, them mooning looks he’d always give me ’cause that man loved me something fierce. Truth be told, I got powerful lonesome in the days since then, knowing I’d never have a man worship the ground I walked on like that again, and I still miss Cisco. He’s probably dead now, but maybe he got away with that money and is living in luxury. I rightly don’t know. Soon all my worries are over anyhow.”

  “Reckon.”

  They had reached the top of the gap and Copper stepped ahead of Noose out onto the top of the cliff face. Noose put his hand out for Bonny Kate to stop so he could check the area was safe. He peered carefully over the edge of the gap that opened up onto a stark plateau, both his rifles at ready as he swung them in a quick 360, his nose going where the muzzles went.

  Nobody was up there, nothing moving except the odd birds flying overhead. Insects buzzed. The air smelled hot, dry, and dusty. From Noose’s vantage, the rock face ended at a sheer cliff on one side of the draw and on the other side stretched for fifty yards to a scattered tree line of browned and thirsty pine trees that rose high into the colorless sky before the mountains continued straight up beyond in a series of dizzying, jutting crags. A rugged, untamed wilderness. The drought conditions had been severe the last month. The landscape was one big fire hazard, Noose observed grimly; a single spark could set the entire mountain ablaze. Endless patchwork quilt carpets of once-lush conifers now dun and withered from thirst, green leached from their dried branches, blanketed the steep rising slopes of the Teton Pass in clumps of dead and dying forestation.

  Noose could not see the excavated trail everyone traveled across the pass from up here—it lay below out of sight to the south—and there was nothing remotely resembling any kind of trailhead in this remote area; he was going to have to improvise a way on up through the mountains, pushing south, left, with his prisoner and hoping to reconnect with the regular trail without incident.

  Time was wasting.

  The sheriff and his deputies were after them, and men like these meant to see things through. It was a long way to Idaho across hard country and they had to get moving.

  Stepping up out of the crevice onto solid ground, Joe Noose took another look around and then gestured with his rifle to Bonny Kate it was safe to come out. With a few swift, sure steps, she egressed the gap with her Appaloosa in tow and stood beside him on the plateau, looking around in dismay, unsure of where they were to go. A brief, refreshing breeze scented with dry pinecones cooled their faces and dried the sweat. Noose pointed toward what seemed like some kind of natural path in the woods heading west in the general Idaho direction.

  He swung into his saddle. She climbed into hers. They rode on. So far, nobody was on their trail.

  For now.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lucky bastard.

  Keeping his drawn and cocked SA Army pistol up by his fist, Sheriff Bojack advanced step by cautious step up the narrow gap between the hundred-foot cliff face, leading his horse. His four deputies, on foot like he was, led their horses in single file behind him. The fifth was slung facedown over his bloody saddle, bringing up the rear. The leathery tough old lawman had his eyes fixed to the top of the cliff above them, keenly observant, ready to shoot at the first sign of any movement.

  “Eyes sharp, men,” he said just loud enough for his deputies to hear. “If he starts shooting at us, it’ll be from up there. Soon as we make it up this cliff, remount.”

  Bojack moved the muzzle of his revolver back and forth with the movement of his head, the barrel going where his nose went, advancing one foot at a time. His gut instinct was the big Wyoming marshal wasn’t lying in wait. Instead, he was riding fast away up the trail with his female prisoner, knowing full well Bojack and his lawmen would be delayed having to proceed cautiously through the same narrow gulch they just went through, because the posse didn’t know if the marshal would be drawing a bead on them from the high ramparts of the rock formation. The marshal wouldn’t be, thou
gh, because Bojack, who could read people, figured this one for some by-the-book straight-arrow badge just doing his job, getting the woman to the gallows and not trying to kill Arizona marshals unless he was defending himself and absolutely had to.

  Tough, smart son of a bitch.

  This Wyoming stud was good. Bojack knew right away not to underestimate the stubborn local marshal he was up against. The U.S. Marshals Service must be paying him a lot of money to be risking his neck to save the life of a prisoner who was a dead woman walking anyway. But it wasn’t about the money. Bojack knew what marshals earned in salary and what the states paid to escort prisoners and it wasn’t about the money for this man; it was about doing his job. The sheriff understood and admired that.

  Bojack instantly respected his adversary. Lawmen like this were hard to come by. He respected any peace officer who did his duty and didn’t bend because Waylon Bojack had been that very man himself before he became someone who would kill any man, woman, or child that got in between his gun and the woman who murdered his son. The sheriff felt a stab of deep regret and remorse. He shook it off. Bojack had been proud of who he used to be, proud of all those years of honorable, fearless service and irrationally he envied, if just a little, the marshal he was up against now. In the past, he’d have bought him a drink but now the best the sheriff could hope for was not having to shoot him.

  Of course, things could go the other way. This marshal was a dangerous man with brass balls who knew how to shoot—that much was clear. It would be prudent for Bojack to shoot first and ask questions later with this individual.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

  The Arizona constabulary was halfway up the crevice, rifles and pistols drawn, hammers cocked, heads and eyes swiveling, watchful of the ridge above as they led their horses at a snail’s pace through the shadows of the rock face. Up ahead in the lead, Sheriff Bojack gestured with his hat for the men to pick up the pace. Nobody was going to take any shots at them—the man and woman they pursued were riding hard and making time. The posse needed to get to the top of this gulch and get after them directly before they fell too far behind.

  The lawmen doubled their speed, rigorously trudging up the steep incline leading their horses in single file, their dusty boots dislodging rocks and gravel. The men behind dodged or ducked the stones that came tumbling loose from the feet and hooves of the men and horses above them. One deputy, Jed Ransom, slipped and with a sputtered curse skinned his knee badly through his trousers. The steeds snorted and yanked against their reins, skittish and recalcitrant in the narrow space sometimes so tight the stallions and mares could barely squeeze through. Just a little farther. Another seventy-five yards, Bojack saw, they would reach the top and get back on their horses.

  Something gold fell out of his coat and hit the ground with a tiny metallic clink. With a sharp intake of breath, the lawman quickly bent down and grabbed it up like it was a fragile, precious treasure.

  In his rugged, leathery hand was a small gold locket. Blowing off the dirt, his shaking fingers opened the locket to be sure the contents were intact. Bojack sighed when he saw they were unharmed.

  Two photos, one on each side of the oval locket. One a black-and-white photograph of a clean-cut young man in his Arizona constabulary service uniform: his boy, Jim.

  The other a photo of a small, lovely woman when she was ten years younger in age, still in full health with light still in her eyes. Margaret Bojack. His wife. His loved ones.

  The locket held pictures of a mother and her only child, his son, whom he had let get killed on his watch.

  Every good thing Waylon Bojack had done in his life—and there had been too many valorous deeds to count—meant nothing after that. Not to him. And not to Margaret.

  She hated him and would hate him until the day he avenged her only boy and took the life of the woman who took Jim from her. His wife told him this every day in her words and her black looks and the grieving and anger that consumed her once-vibrant spirit. Bitterness destroyed her health as she refused to eat and couldn’t keep anything down when she did. The great weight of her sadness and misery ground the sheriff down in the early days after Jim’s death and he didn’t come home to face it, staying out on the trail for weeks on end in the hopeless pursuit of the murderess he knew was long gone.

  Half the reason he didn’t go home, Bojack knew in his heart, was seeing the accusation in his beloved wife’s pained face every time she looked at him. Because every glance reminded him of the lost son the sheriff had loved so much, the boy who was going to take his place and carry on the Bojack lawman family legacy; the son he had gotten killed from one careless mistake he would carry with him to his grave.

  The pain was too much for one man to bear, but it would get worse when he came home the last time three months ago and found Margaret Bojack close to death in her bed, wasted away almost to a skeleton, her beauty ravaged by inconsolable mourning. She was attended to by the doctor, who told the sheriff there was nothing he could do for Margaret, who he guessed had a month to live.

  Over the entire night, Sheriff Waylon Bojack sat beside Margaret Bojack’s bed somberly keeping vigil, holding her hand, which she was too weak to pull away. He made her a vow then, one he swore on the graves of his own father and mother and their lost son, that he would kill the woman Bonny Kate Valance who shot their son in the back and he would do it while Margaret still drew breath, so before she shed this mortal coil she would know her husband had avenged them.

  His wife had nodded. Smiled the first time since Jim’s death. He saw love in her eyes for him flicker like a candle in the wind.

  And she had squeezed his hand, holding on to his instead of pulling away.

  Dawn brought a sign from God. His deputy Ransom rode up to the house and burst in, yanking off his hat as he breathlessly delivered the news: Bonny Kate Valance had been captured by bounty hunters in Wyoming and was presently being held in custody in the Jackson Hole jail.

  Waylon had woken the judge and had him draw up and sign the extradition order. By noon, Sheriff Waylon Bojack and his five-man posse were saddled up, fully armed and loaded, and riding hard north-east toward Wyoming.

  CHAPTER 7

  Noose had the high ground—that was in his favor even if his being one against five of those Arizona boys weren’t odds on his side.

  Hell, it was nothing but high ground ahead, Noose thought, gazing up at the towering Teton Pass trailhead rearing before him. But difficult as the going was for him, it was more difficult for the men chasing him because Noose was above them and in any kind of armed engagement a man did not want to occupy the low ground. Everybody knew that, and Noose figured the sheriff did, too.

  Noose gave Copper a tap with his boots in the stirrups and the good horse picked up the pace up the ridge, its hooves clopping against the loose rocks but finding stable footing with each step. In his right hand, Noose clenched his big revolver, in his left he held the reins to Bonny Kate’s mustang.

  She was right behind him, throwing a nervous look over her shoulder every few seconds, it seemed like, with a big toss of her red hair. “They’re coming after us,” she said not for the first time in the last five minutes.

  “Thank you for informing me of that,” Noose retorted with a roll of his eyes.

  “There’s six of them, by my count, and just one of you.”

  “Five now. One’s dead.”

  Bonny Kate took that in. “Okay, five, then. But there’s still one of you.”

  “Your point?”

  “I think you should give me a gun.”

  “Why would I do a dumb thing like that?”

  “Because then it would be five of them against two of us instead of one.”

  He laughed and shook his head no.

  “I know how to use a gun!” she insisted, her cheeks getting high color.

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Damn straight.”
Her eyes flared. “And I ain’t gonna shoot you in the back if that’s what you’re thinking because what would be the sense in that? Them men back there want to kill me. You know it. They said so. If I shoot you then it’s one against five again and that would be stupid. I may be many things, Joe Noose, but I sure ain’t stupid.”

  “Never said you was, Miss Valance. Never thought it, neither. I thought anything, it was you may be smarter than me.”

  “And there it is. I am. You said so yourself. So give me a gun, Joe Noose.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The female outlaw stewed. “So what happens if you get shot and kilt and they’re coming and I’m unarmed?”

  Without looking back, Noose swept his hand in a gesture to the rifles and pistols on his belt and in his saddle holsters. “If I get killed then you are five feet away from all my weapons, and upon my unfortunate but unlikely demise you have my express permission to avail yourself of any and all firearms you deem fit in the defense of your person.”

  “Well, that’s very big of you.”

  “Least I can do.”

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  “Think of it as my spoken last will and testament with you being the sole beneficiary.”

  “You giving me a pistol now might save your life. Just give me a little one.”

  “I don’t have any little guns.”

  “True.” Her smile had sauce. “I noticed that. Everything about you is too damn big.”

  “Big guns make holes and stop what they hit,” he stated flatly. “You might want to remember that if you have any ideas of trying to pull anything. That is, if the hours you have left mean anything to you. Meanwhile, rest assured none of those men back there are gonna touch you. I’ll kill any of ’em that try. While you are under my watch, you will be safe until I deliver you to the gallows.”

  She exhaled an exaggerated sigh of relief.

  “Glad we got that sorted,” he chuckled.

  “I need to pee,” she complained.

  “Hold it in. Another ten minutes, anyways, till I get us atop yonder ridge. I spy some big rocks and boulders at the crest I can dislodge and roll down on the trail. Give that sheriff a bad surprise if that’s the way he’s coming.”