by Eric Red
About fifteen feet to go.
Her boots hit the floor of the canyon.
Like a shot, she ran straight for the crushed body splattered on the rocks, its shattered limbs jutting akimbo at unnatural angles and hanging loose in their sockets like a doll stomped to pieces by an unruly child. It had landed face-first and lay on its stomach. In the florid bloom of the firelight, she could see the corpse was bathed head to foot in blood as a result of the fall, but the messy bullet hole exit wounds in its back were visible.
No, please, no was all Bess Sugarland was thinking as she reached the body and took it in.
She turned the body over.
CHAPTER 28
It wasn’t Noose.
The corpse’s face was crushed in, a red pulp of bone and cartilage, but she instantly knew from the clothes and size of the body it was another one of the Arizona deputies.
Bess exhaled in relief.
Joe Noose was alive. That was all that mattered. That the second deputy died by Noose’s gun was a certainty, as was the fact that the posse was running out of men. Less and less Bess worried for her friend.
What happened next happened so fast she barely had time to react . . .
One moment the body was there, the next instant it wasn’t as the sweep of the huge claws raking across the dead man’s back tore the body in half in two clean pieces that flew in both directions, dousing her face and chest with cold, sticky blood. Suddenly everything was cacophonic noise and her eardrums almost burst from the assault of deafening sounds that followed: the savage, ferocious animal roar answered by booming gunshots from above that made the gigantic grizzly bear bellow even louder in raging agony as Sweet’s pistol shots slammed into the beast’s hairy shoulder and hammered it back.
For a dangerous few seconds Marshal Bess stood paralyzed frozen in terror, eyes widened in shock as the colossal grizzly rose on its hind paws, towering over her, its gaping fanged jaws bared, ready to sink into her flesh. The world went black around her in the darkness of the predator’s rearing shadow, a monstrous silhouette blotting out the roaring forest fires on the mountain above.
The bear stood fifteen feet high on its back legs. Its yellow saucer eyes rolled around in their orbits in feral whorls of bloodthirsty panic—its whole world was on fire and the wounded beast’s brain was an unstable confusion of fight-or-flight impulses. Trapped in the gorge, the disoriented grizzly didn’t know whether to run or kill. The marshal just stood there, knowing what everyone did, that no human being had a chance of outrunning a full-grown grizzly and all you could do was lie down and play dead and hope it wouldn’t tear you limb from limb. The stench of the grizzly’s filthy matted coat and roasting flesh and fur stung her nostrils and Bess could see smoke wafting off the burned-bare blackened patch on its chest where the bear had been scorched by the fires.
Unable to make her limbs move, her body not responding to her mental commands, Bess was thinking she was about to die very badly.
“Get out of there! Use the rope! Now! Move, Marshal!” Deputy Nate Sweet’s loud, urgent shouts from above snapped Bess out of her fog. She grabbed the rope with both hands, used her arms to pull herself upward, and jumping with all her strength was off the ground, boots and spurs finding purchase on the face of the cliff. Looking up desperately, Bess saw her deputy ten feet above her on a ledge, holding the rope with one hand, his other fist pointing his smoking revolver down past her toward the bear. “Climb! Don’t look down! And duck!”
His Colt Peacemaker boomed again.
The slug clipped the grizzly as it launched itself up at the scrambling woman, both paws striking the granite wall where her legs had been an instant before, dragging its claws down the rock, sending up showers of sparks like struck flint. The bellowing creature sounded to her terrified ears like the beast was on top of her and it nearly was. The dead-meat stink of its breath was all Bess smelled as she imagined its teeth sinking into the flesh of her back with each desperate hand-over-hand pull of her fists up the rope and every clank of her spurs as her boots scaled the cliff face. Until, suddenly, she felt Sweet’s strong arms close around her and heave her safely onto the outcrop where he stood.
Marshal Bess gasped for breath, her heart racing, seeing spots in front of her eyes. Catching her breath, she swung her gaze over the edge of the ledge and bore witness to the biggest grizzly bear she had ever laid eyes on pacing below, snarling up at them with baleful eyes, a string of red drool spilling from its snout. The grizzly wanted to eat them in the worst way but both were now safely out of its reach.
The gargantuan blaze burning its way through the dry tinder of the pass way above kept getting closer, towering steeples and spires of fire climbing hundreds of feet into the sky—the dreadful orange radiance emblazoning the grizzly made it look like it came from hell.
As far as Bess was concerned, it did. She had a coughing fit. It was hard to breathe with the soot and char in the air and every breath made Bess’s lungs burn, a searing pain that got worse with every physical exertion. She huddled on the ledge as Deputy Sweet drew his second revolver and took careful, deadly aim on the bear below them, aiming straight between its beady eyes—but before the lawman could pull his trigger, the grizzly suddenly bounded off with a purpose, charging on all fours around the bend in the gorge where it ascended to the pass. The bear vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Sweet slowly released the hammer of his unfired pistol and slid the gun back into his holster. “I think it had enough. It ran.”
“Bears don’t run toward fire. Bet that grizzly has something else in mind.”
They exchanged urgent glances.
“We better get back to the horses. Right now.”
Both using the rope, the two lawmen began to climb back up the side of the gorge with all possible haste, clambering up the ascending ledges of granite outcrops, keeping tight grips on the line. Sweet stayed in the lead this time, Bess close behind. The base of the gorge fell away behind into a deep chasm the higher they climbed, each officer gasping and grimacing with exertion. Ever upward, the two scaled the face of the cliff.
Marshal Bess’s eyes were fixed on the brow of the ridge fifty feet above them past Sweet’s shoulders. The rope was pulled taut against the jagged edge of the lip of the crevice, the line vibrating under the strain of their combined weight. Here the outcrop ended—it was a straight climb up a sheer perpendicular rock face the remaining distance to the top. As if reading her mind, Sweet shot a glance down at her and nodded Ready? Bess nodded tightly and both lawmen kicked off the ledge, each now dangling off the side of the cliff in midair above a hundred-foot gorge with nothing but boulders far below.
It didn’t take much to imagine what they would look like if they fell, for she had lately seen the condition of a body that did. She used every ounce of strength she could muster to climb upward, foot over foot up the granite wall, hand over hand up the rope, gaining a few feet each time. The heat was incapacitating but her deputy was managing the climb better than she.
Thirty feet from the top now. Almost there.
Sweet chose that moment to look over his shoulder to check on her progress.
So Sweet did not see the falling, burning tree branch toppling onto the edge of the cliff and suddenly setting the dried scrub brush on fire along the lip of the chasm.
The climbing line lay in the center of the burning bushes, stretched to the breaking point with torque.
The rope was now on fire. Flame sizzled on the coiled twine that was starting to blacken and unravel.
And it was burning through quick.
“Climb!” Bess shouted. “The rope is burning!”
Turning his gaze upward, Deputy Sweet put his back into clambering hand over hand, hauling himself up the rock, cowboy boots dug in against the face of the gorge. Aching with pain, Marshal Bess dragged herself up after him, her lungs seared by the heat and clogged with ash, choking for breath. She felt for sure she wasn’t going to make it.
He
r fellow lawman was ten feet from the top now, the lip of the cliff nearly in reach, when the rope lurched sickeningly and the line jarred and slipped a few feet—the jagged edge of the rock slicing through more of the smoldering rope with every strain on it from the weight of the officers. Sweet almost lost his grip and plummeted to his doom, but some reservoir of strength inside the stubborn young man fueled a burst of sudden movement and looking up Bess saw Sweet had one hand on the top of the gorge dangling by it when he released the rope and grabbed onto the brink of the cliff with both hands. Then with a struggle the deputy hauled himself back up onto the solid ground of the trail and was leaning over the edge, reaching down, extending his open hand to the marshal.
“Grab my hand!”
Bess was almost there—a few more feet to climb. The energy had drained from her limbs and her body was going numb. She slackened, certain she could go no farther, and was about to fall when she locked eyes with Sweet and saw the steel determination in the young deputy’s glance, so in the force of his gaze the marshal absorbed his strength and made it the last two feet. Reaching up her hand, Bess felt both Sweet’s hands clamp her wrist as he heaved her up over the edge of the cliff and onto the dirt of the Teton Pass beside him. Both lawmen rolled onto their backs and caught their breath.
“Much obliged,” she said.
“Just doin’ my job, Marshal.” He nodded.
“I think you’re going to work out just fine, Deputy.”
“Happy you feel that way, ma’am.”
They both got up and stood and stared off at the apocalyptic fires reducing the trees to burning matchsticks on top of the mountain less than a mile before them. Blasts of heat hit them from the inferno that lay ahead. At the tree, the frightened horses reared and whinnied in raw terror, front legs pawing the air with their hooves.
Bess looked to Sweet. “We’ve gone as far as we can go. No way those horses gonna go further. We gotta turn back. That posse or what’s left of ’em is the least of Joe Noose’s worries now. He’s either got to safety past the flames, and if there’s a way to do it for sure he has, or his fate is out of our hands now. Let’s get mounted and get on back to Jackson.”
“Good plan, Marshal.” The deputy nodded. Both of them sprinted across the trail to their tethered horses and swung into the saddles. The steeds were relieved to be getting the hell out of there and cooperated as from the saddles the riders, leaning forward in their stirrups, untied the reins from the tree.
As she swung her horse around facing down the trail, Marshal Bess tossed a last dread-filled glance up at the fire on the mountain and had a bad feeling she was never going to see Joe Noose again.
The bear’s paw came out of nowhere—its claws struck the side of her mare’s skull with savage force and the surprised horse’s head was ripped clean off its shoulders in a gruesome mess of jetting blood and tearing meat with a sound like tearing canvas drowned out by the ferocious roar of the giant grizzly. Bess Sugarland’s horse went down instantly, lifeless legs collapsing beneath its heavy torso as the decapitated mare fell sideways onto the trail, smashing the woman hard on the ground and pinning her leg beneath the saddle.
Bess’s sudden view of the towering grizzly bear she had met at the bottom of the gorge was flipped sideways as her horse flung her to earth and stunned her—terrifying jumbled glimpses of yellow eyes, gaping maw, slashing claws, scorched flesh still steaming and matted, punctured fur wet with blood from Sweet’s bullets. The bear was rearing up on its hind legs—it wanted a piece of her, or more accurately, her in pieces.
Marshal Bess ducked and covered her head as the grizzly dropped on top of the horse, swiping both front paws, raking its claws through the headless mare’s chest and belly, splintering apart bone and digging through intestine, disemboweling the horse while trying to get at the woman. An oceanic wave of blood showered Bess, who didn’t know if the blood was the mutilated horse’s or her own.
The weight of the saddle pinning her wounded leg, made much heavier with the bulk of the bear combined with the crushing mass of the horse, became agonizing—Bess imagined she could feel the bones of her left leg splintering as the pain from bullet wound she had already sustained became unbearable and caused her to almost pass out as unconsciousness overtook her.
Then she heard the thunder of the Winchester rifle shots close at hand—five sharp blasts in swift staccato rapid-fire succession and just like that the bear was off her.
Looking up blearily from the ground, her sideways vision blurred with blood, Marshal Bess saw Deputy Nate Sweet in the saddle of his horse with his repeater rifle socked to his shoulder, quickly levering and firing round after round into the grizzly in a precise string of head and chest shots that hammered the beast back toward the edge of the gorge. Again and again Sweet fired, empty casings ejecting from the breech of his trusty Winchester, gleaming spent shells glittering in the glow from the forest fires and the muzzle flash discharges, the grizzly staggering upright on its haunches, balance unsteady as more bullet holes punched through its face and barrel chest as the beast tottered by the edge of the precipice. Dead while it stood up on hind legs, the giant grizzly bear disappeared from view as it fell off the cliff and dropped into the deep gorge with sounds of hard impact that grew distant until they stopped altogether—it was the last thing Marshal Bess Sugarland heard as she blacked out.
The next thing she knew, it was some time later and she was having a dream she was riding a horse down some darkened trail but strangely she wasn’t holding reins yet somehow staying in the saddle anyway. It didn’t feel real but somehow it was. A man was behind her holding her up as she leaned against him, and it was his competent hands reaching around her hips, clenching the reins, and driving the horse, his arms holding her in the saddle, and it was real.
When she spied the faraway lights of Jackson Hole she knew her deputy Nate Sweet had ridden her to safety and her last thought before she passed out again was she had misjudged the young man and would have to make it up to him.
CHAPTER 29
The heat lessened on their backs.
The spreading fire had not as yet reached the woods ahead and before them lay an unburned phalanx of trees as Joe Noose and Bonny Kate Valance galloped through the forest on the sure-footed horse whose path was clearly lit by the baleful glow of the inferno to their rear. The air was wreathed in smoke, but the haze thinned the farther they got. Out of harm’s way for now, they had ridden beyond the reach of the flames and were leaving the fires behind.
She sat behind him in the saddle with her arms wrapped around his massive torso in a vise clench, her exhausted head resting against his big shoulders. Every tense muscle in Noose’s body screamed We’re not out of this yet. He was still in a state of high alert until they were truly clear of the encroaching blaze. His control of his horse, Copper, was absolute—rider and stallion were like one animal as they rode with precision and sped through the clearly lit gaps between the trees, out of danger for now.
A half an hour had probably passed before the air began to cool and the cover of darkness descended again. Noose slowed his tired horse to a trot. Disengaging his canteen from his saddle, he uncapped it with his teeth and leant forward to give Copper water to drink. The horse tilted its big head sideways to receive the spout and gulped down half the water in the container thirstily through slobbering lips into its parched gullet. When the stallion had been refreshed Copper politely stopped drinking, seeming to know it had to leave some refreshment for its passengers.
Noose then passed the canteen back to Bonny Kate. She shook her head. “You first.”
“Ladies first.”
“I ain’t no lady.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
“Stubborn—” She took the canteen and sipped, passed it back. He took just a swig. “You hurt?” he asked.
“Nothing a hanging won’t fix.”
“I have medical supplies. You ain’t hanged yet.”
“I’m okay. Thank you.
”
Noose nodded and gave Copper a tap with his spurs and the horse set off at a brisk trot. Noose was staring straight ahead. His voice was low. “You been lying to me, Bonny Kate. About everything. You’re gonna tell me the truth now.”
“What difference does it make?”
“That man Cisco wasn’t after you because he was in love with you and he wasn’t trying to rescue you. He was trying to steal you away because he was part of your gang and you ran off with their robbery money and he wanted it back. Wanted to know where you had the loot stashed. Ain’t that the truth?”
“I’m too tired to argue,” Bonny answered. “Yes, that’s the truth. I took the money. I left them to get captured. Had my reasons.”
“A whole money bag of ’em, I reckon.”
“It warn’t just about the money.”
He said nothing. She sighed, then said, “Okay, it was all about the money. I saw my opportunity and I took it.”
“It took you to the gallows.”
“I still have the money, Joe.”
“Figured you did, Cisco trying to find out where it was from you ’n all.”
“You listening to me, mister?” she demanded. “I still have the money. I’ll split it with you, you let me go.”
Noose shook his head. “Not interested.”
“Ain’t interested in fifty thousand dollars?”
“Nope.”
“All right, I’ll give you all of it, then. A hundred thousand dollars. You promise you let me go, I’ll take you right to it. Three, maybe four days’ ride from here.”
“I don’t want your money, Bonny Kate. I already got me a job and I’m doing it. I didn’t shoot them lawmen back there so I could profit from stolen loot, I did it because they were breaking the law to stop me from delivering you to the gallows, and that wasn’t right. I don’t expect you to understand. Maybe I don’t understand, myself.”
