by Eric Red
Noose sat in his saddle atop his bronze sure-footed horse, eyes fixed on the daunting crevice rising above him, steering Copper with a touch of his boot or flick of his reins now and again up whatever semblance of path presented itself. Noose could hear Bonny Kate behind him, the clop of her mustang’s fetlocks following in his own horse’s hoof steps. Now and again, Noose swung a glance over his right shoulder to check Bonny Kate was still there and she always was. The subdued female outlaw was very quiet.
Something didn’t sit right with him about this whole situation and he wasn’t sure what it was. Not exactly.
“One thing I don’t get, lady,” Noose said over his shoulder to his prisoner as they rode carefully up the steep, tricky incline.
“There’s a lot of things you don’t get, trust me on that one, mister,” Bonny Kate snorted petulantly.
“One thing mainly.”
She responded with an affected yawn.
“What I don’t get is why that sheriff and your old pal Cisco spook the bejesus out of you but getting hanged don’t.”
The question visibly threw her. She blinked. “Who said I wasn’t scared?” She shrugged with a slippery glance. “Course I’m scared.”
“Then you sure don’t show it. Not like how scared you looked of getting shot by that sheriff back there or by whatever you think Cisco means to do to you. One’s as bad as the other, I’d think. Don’t make sense.”
“You don’t know women.”
“Know ’em well enough.”
“You don’t know me.”
“True. Not more than a few hours, anyways.”
Her flashing eyes drilled into the back of his head. “So don’t judge me. Enough people been doing that already. The whole world’s been judging me my whole damn life and that’s why I’m in this here predicament.”
“You put yourself here. Tied the rope around your own neck by your own deeds.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know. Like you said.”
Noose nodded: Fair enough. “Still looks to me you’re more scared of the men after you than of being hanged and it just makes me wonder why.”
Bonny Kate was off her horse!
She was there and then she wasn’t.
Moved so fast Noose barely had time to react before the woman had flipped herself head over heels over the back of her horse, landed squarely on both boots, and took off at a dead run down the hill.
“Dammit!” Noose swore, dismounting in one smooth movement and hitting the ground and tearing off after her but Bonny Kate Valance was gone.
Noose figured maybe she wasn’t so keen on getting to that gallows after all.
Throwing a quick glance back to Copper and the Appaloosa, Noose saw the horses weren’t going anywhere, so he scrambled down the grassy and rock slope in the direction the flash of color from her denim shirt had disappeared. He had to admit the woman could move when she had to. It was like chasing a jackrabbit.
Where the hell did she think she was going?
Fortresses of pine trees rose on either side of the uneven narrows of the draw they had been riding up. The ground was undisturbed. Noose stopped and took a moment to study the area and realized she had not fled the way they had come.
What the hell way did she go?
A lot of dry brush and parched thicket to the right, just off the horse path. There were broken bushes but it didn’t look like she had run through that. Chaff. Weeds. Scrub. Unnatural beds of parchment-dry fallen leaves crunching under his boots every step he took. The lady outlaw couldn’t get far without making noise in this dried-out terrain. It was like walking on matchsticks.
Listening carefully, cocking his head to concentrate, Noose couldn’t hear much beneath the wind crackling through the dry-as-kindling treetops. Because of the drought conditions, the tree line that would normally be verdant green was brown and arid, dead crackling leaves on the branches. No fleeing footsteps and grunts of exertion came from below. Bonny Kate could be hiding. Keeping her head down. Waiting for him to pass by. Maybe holding a branch she could bushwhack him with when he went by, steal his guns and horse, and make a break for her freedom. Noose thought he might try the same if he was in her position.
He parted the brush and squinted at the descending ridge below. He swung his head and looked up, seeing a flash of blue denim above him farther up the ridge—Bonny Kate was scrambling for the higher ground through a wall of rocks.
She had a good head start to nowhere.
Joe Noose leapt into action and scrambled up the hill after her, charging on his pumping muscular legs in long strides over the rocks and boulders, shoving dehydrated branches and desiccated sticks out of his way. She was a hundred yards directly ahead of him above. That’s why he hadn’t heard her. The clever woman had taken an escape route over the rocks rather than the beds of dry leaves below that would have made so much noise.
Hand over fist, Bonny Kate scrambled up the rocks, but she kept losing her footing and it was one step up and two steps back.
Noose charged up the rocks and clambered over the boulders on his big hands and feet with the speed and prowess of a cougar, quickly gaining ground on her. Down below a few hundred yards away, the horses looked up and watched their two riders with lazy disinterest, then went back to munching on grass that had become as dry as straw.
Throwing a wild look of fury and fear over her shoulder behind her flowing red tresses, Bonny Kate cursed, “Damn you, Joe Noose!” Her hand met a loose rock and it gave her an idea. She stopped climbing suddenly and used both arms to knock the heavy stone loose, sending it tumbling with sharp rhythmic cracks down at Noose. As the rock lifted off the ground and bounced, picking up speed and velocity, Noose dodged it just in time as it smashed past. Had it hit him it would have taken his head off. His face colored with anger as he looked up and saw Bonny Kate rolling more rocks down at him, using both legs to dislodge the small boulders. A second stone tumbled. He rolled to the side to avoid it. Gritting his teeth, he snarled up at her, “Woman, you don’t stop right there, I’m gonna pull my gun and put one in your foot!”
“Do it if you’re man enough!” she crowed, and shook loose another rock from the ridge but this one missed her pursuer by a mile.
“I don’t care about you hitting me, but if one of those rocks hits my horse you’ll be in a world of hurt, lady!”
“Like I ain’t already!” Bonny Kate was climbing again, scampering up the granite face like a lizard.
“Dammit!” Joe Noose swore, and in a surge of strength he cleared the fifty-yard space between them with a few powerful leaps, and his fist closed around her ankle.
“Lemme go! Lemme go!” Bonny Kate was kicking and punching and thrashing with all the fight she had in her, but she was a small woman and Joe Noose a very big man so it took him less than a minute to get her facedown in the dirt with her shackled arms pinned beneath her, his knees on her legs, holding her down. “You big son of a bitch, let me go!” Noose was frustrated and upset with the lady outlaw but he never hurt women and didn’t use any more force on her than it took to subdue her. “Let. Me. Go.”
“Are you done?”
“Just let me go.” It was a bleak, hopeless moan.
“I got a job to do, lady, and you’re it.”
She rolled onto her back and looked up at him with wet lips, radiating raw animal carnality. “What do you want? Me? Go on. Take me. Then will you let me go? Go on, take off my drawers. It’ll be worth it. I promise.” She shimmied her hips against his, licking her lips salaciously, wiggling her thighs, but he stood and put a space between them. She lay back, foiled again, glowering up at him.
“No chance,” Noose said.
“Are you kidding me? I ain’t never had no man ever say no to me.”
“There’s a first time for everything, I reckon. Now, get on your feet, get back down there, and get on your horse.” He pulled her to her feet and began helping her down the rock-strewn slope.
“I’m sick of you bossing me
around,” she grumbled.
“This time tomorrow you won’t have to worry about it. Or much else, I savvy.”
She snorted in retort.
As they reached the trail and he dragged her sulky, recalcitrant figure back to her mare, he said, “Your best bet is with me. The end may be the same but them that are after you want your end to be prolonged and you don’t want that.”
“So you’re protecting me?” she said with dainty sarcasm as he lifted her fitfully back into her saddle.
“As far as it goes,” he replied, swinging into his own.
CHAPTER 14
Johnny Cisco was closer than Noose imagined.
Somewhere in his bloody and storied career the dangerous gunfighter Cisco had picked up the nickname The Ghost because he moved like one—a tricky killer whose movements were invisible. The sobriquet stuck; you never saw him coming and he usually came up from behind. Cisco’s trademark was shooting men in the back, because he always found a way to get behind his target. This wasn’t cowardice on Cisco’s part so much as pragmatism: it was safer to kill a man putting a bullet in his back where he couldn’t face you and draw down on you. The mathematics of the fearsome tradecraft of the shootist were to stay alive and make sure your opponent didn’t, as Cisco understood the basic equation. Honor and fair play had never entered the gunfighter’s thinking—he considered those niceties he couldn’t afford when there wasn’t anything nice about killing a man with a gun to begin with; the killer had no intention of playing the game by different rules now. Stick with what works, was his motto.
An hour ago, as soon as he saw the marshal ride off the trailhead of the pass up into the untamed wild elevations with the woman—a smart move by a capable lawman—Cisco’s respect was growing, for as he grew to realize he had to watch out for this one. Figuring out their plan was to cut straight up the mountain, the outlaw had abruptly backtracked. He began riding hard west and as straight south back up the mountain across the rugged terrain as his horse could manage, thereby closing the space between him and his quarry the quickest way possible. In a quarter mile Cisco would have to cross the pass into the northern elevations the two people he was after had ridden up into, and the southern side of the mountain merged with the trailhead soon.
Cisco double-checked the loads on his guns with his skinny, skeletal, and callused fingers as he perched in the saddle, watchfully surveying the area and keeping his sharp ears alert for any sound of irregular movement. The going was tough, his big brown stallion having trouble clambering up the steep hill over the roots of the tightly packed pine trees, but the rider and his horse were making steady progress and covering ground. He didn’t think the Wyoming lawman would see him coming from his right because he was watching his rear mostly . . . Cisco’s guess was that this marshal was more worried about Sheriff Bojack and his deputies than he was of Cisco.
Just one thing gave Johnny Cisco pause. He’d counted only three deputies a short while ago. Yet he had seen five ride off with the sheriff back in Arizona. Somehow Cisco doubted two of the lawmen had turned back or quit; these were dedicated individuals and the sheriff was a hard-ass tyrant. Cisco had clearly heard crackling reports of gunshots in the distance over the previous hours so it was simple math that two of the deputies had been gunned down by this fearsome marshal already. Cisco figured he had better watch his ass and not underestimate this Wyoming stud who had his woman under escort . . . the heavily armed ape was good.
But Cisco knew he was better—had been up against tougher, gone up against the very toughest, and still lived to tell, which told the whole story.
But something else stuck in his craw. Despite the badge, this Wyoming marshal didn’t look the usual lawman with his wild, unkempt appearance. Instead, he looked like an outlaw himself. Truth be told, Cisco was smart enough to admit he didn’t know anything about Wyoming law enforcement or what breed of individual it employed. About the only thing he knew about the place called Jackson Hole was Butch Cassidy had once hid out here.
Play it careful, play it smart, he told himself repeatedly as he rode across the mountainside, on the lookout with his guns at the ready. With his narrow, saddle-worn face and austere, bony physique, Johnny Cisco looked like a raggedy scarecrow astride his stallion, and his passing scared away a few crows that took flight into the bleached, lowering skies punctured by parched trees that looked like rows of brown arrowheads.
Presently, as he approached the nearing trail of the Teton Pass, the dry forestation thickened and the shootist dismounted with a rusty clank of spurs and led his horse on foot. Ducking down a ravine, sidestepping, his weathered boots kicking loose pebbles and dirt, Cisco made for the trailhead. The ground was uneven and tightly packed with trees and bushes. Prickly, spiky brambles caught and snagged on the loose, stinking clothes on his wiry, lupine frame. Thorns sliced his flesh, drawing drops of blood. Undeterred, still he kept his clench on his big, fully loaded Sharps rifle and forged ahead. Using the weapon’s wooden stock, the gunfighter beat back branches that got in his way and gradually covered the distance. Through the branches, he saw the rugged, excavated dirt road of the pass about three hundred yards ahead. Shouldering through the trees, he strode past some large boulders and made out a clearing between the tree line where he could reach the pass itself.
He was almost there.
Then they were. Ducking down quickly, Johnny Cisco took urgent cover below a pile of rocks just as the four horses of the Arizona posse of lawmen rode up around the bend. Their sudden appearance had been concealed behind a large massif of a granite wall on one of the many sharp bends on the trailhead in the eastern direction leading back down to Jackson. From where Cisco hunkered with his gripped rifle locked and loaded, listening hard, he detected no change in the tempo of the horses’ hoof steps so the sheriff and his deputies likely hadn’t spotted him. Looking up, he brushed a sweaty lank of long black hair from his stinging brown eyes and swept a wolfish gaze over his surroundings. There were titanic conifers on all sides, branches thickly meshed, and he had cover.
The horses stopped. He didn’t hear the sound of their stepping fetlocks anymore. Deciding he had suitable cover, Johnny Cisco carefully risked a cautious glance over the edge of the rock to scope out the enemy.
A hundred yards west, the posse had come to a standstill as the gunfighter had surmised, and weren’t looking in his direction. A swift glance at the barricade of branches and leaves he stood behind told Cisco they couldn’t see him from their vantage point even if they were looking straight at him.
Instead, the deputies’ gazes were focused on their boss, who was getting his fat ass out of the saddle and struggling with his stirrup as he dropped to the ground.
Sheriff Bojack in plain view. In killing range. The shootist could easily drop him with his long rifle. It was too damn good to be true. For a few brief, impulsive seconds, all thoughts of Bonny Kate Valance vanished from the gunfighter’s mind, replaced by a red haze of murderous rage that filled his skull.
Johnny Cisco raised his Sharps rifle to his shoulder, leveled his aim using the boulder for leverage, then stuck his finger through the trigger guard to touch sweet, sweet curved steel.
Take the shot.
Boy, was it tempting. He had that fat old bastard right in his crosshairs. For a moment Cisco didn’t move a muscle, the weapon socked to his shoulder, its long, heavy barrel unwavering in his sure and steady heft. His only movement was the infinitesimal twitches in the touch of his forefinger on the trigger, applying the tiniest smidgen of pressure, just enough to feel the trigger depress a fraction of an inch, one click, a hair away from firing. Down the barrel, between the gunsights, a hundred yards away, Sheriff Waylon Bojack stood beside his horse he had just dismounted, looking up at the rise of sheer, steep mountain topography leading up off the trail. The old lawman was completely unaware of being under the gun whose owner had already adjusted for trajectory and wind velocity and had him dead to rights and a bullet with his name on it aimed right at
his head. Cisco wanted to blow Bojack’s brains out—or his head clean off, which was more likely with this caliber at this distance—he wanted to so much he could taste it.
But Cisco was a careful man measured in his deadliness, who would wait until just the right moment to strike and when he did, it was without hesitation or remorse and fatal as a scorpion. Moments passed as the tarnished Sharps rifle remained trained on the Arizona lawman, muzzle tipping slightly as the heavyset sheriff knelt to check the trailhead of the pass for sign, tipping up again as he rose and looked up at the mountainside above, rubbing his jaw in thought. Cisco’s finger never left the trigger and his aim never wavered off his target.
But there were those three other deputies.
He knew and hated their faces, too, but if he took the shot he’d have to take them on. Cisco did some swift mental calculations: there wouldn’t be time to reload the Sharps before their guns came out, but his own twin Remington 1875 .44 caliber pistols would be out of their holsters and he figured he’d drop one of them before the sound of the rifle shot faded and Bojack hit the ground dead. His position was safe and secluded behind the rocks amidst the copse of trees but there would be an extended exchange of fire as the last two of the Arizona posse took cover and he engaged them. Let’s say he plugged them without incident. Cisco figured he probably would. But there would be a lot of chaos and that damned marshal protecting his woman would no doubt exploit it to his advantage. Might even sandbag Cisco, knowing the shootist was pinned down. No, there were too many damn variables. Johnny Cisco stayed put. And he didn’t shoot.
He dropped the gunsight to resist temptation.
Cisco kept his attention focused on the posse, knowing he could see them but they couldn’t see him.
Did you feel me, Sheriff ? Did you just then feel the hand of death touch your shoulder like some kinda cold breeze? Because you don’t know how close you just come to meeting your Maker. You got no idea in hell, and hell is where you’re going . . . ’cause me, Johnny Cisco, is gonna send you there soon, real soon. Just got some business to take care of first.
