by Eric Red
“How the hell did you get through that forest fire?” The sheriff gasped in admiration.
“With difficulty,” Noose replied gravelly, his voice hoarse. “Some others weren’t so lucky. The undertaker here has new business. He best ready seven fresh graves. You’ll find the burned skeletons of five of ’em when the fires die. The other two bodies are back down the trail a ways.” Noose tossed a somber glance back toward the pass, then lowered his gaze.
“Sounds like it was a long, hard ride,” Tuggle said with an appreciative whistle.
“It was.”
“Well, you’re here now, with her, and that’s what matters.”
The sheriff saw the once-over Noose was giving him. It made the impostor lawman edgy. “Where’s Shurlock?” Noose asked. “What happened to the regular sheriff? I don’t know you boys.”
“Replacements,” Tuggle replied, scratching his eyebrow, noticing Noose’s hand rested on his thigh right by his holstered, loaded Colt Peacemaker.
“Replacements?”
“The sheriff got called away on business.”
“What kind of business?” Noose asked.
“The urgent type.”
From his saddle, Noose saw the grin starting to look plastered on this sheriff’s face whose eyes weren’t smiling as they looked up less welcomingly at him on his weary horse. He was too tired to think straight, having been shot twice, lost a lot of blood, and hurt all over. Maybe they were replacement lawmen like the man said, Noose told himself. He’d been tasked to bring Bonny Kate Valance to the gallows and his job was done, the hanging platform a stone’s throw away from the wench on the back of his saddle. Leave it alone. Let these boys handle the rest.
Noose jerked a thumb back at Bonny Kate tied up on the saddle. “She’s all yours,” he said in a gravelly voice, sounding plenty glad to be rid of her.
“We’ll take her from here,” Sheriff Tuggle said, roughly hauling the woman off the saddle and getting her onto her unsteady feet. The female outlaw just glared at the lawman with a surly blue-eyed stare and refused to look at Noose.
Noose didn’t give her a second glance as the sheriff roughly held her and nudged his jaw to his two deputies, who produced handcuffs from their belts and unceremoniously shackled Bonny Kate Valance’s hands in front of her at her waist. “Welcome to Victor, Miss Valance. Your hanging’s at noon. Hope you brought some clean undies. Let’s lock this bitch up, boys.”
Sitting in his saddle, Joe Noose watched as the three lawmen force-marched Bonny Kate Valance across the square in the morning sun beneath the shadow of the gallows platform toward the sheriff’s office and jail at the end of the street. Her shapely, worse-for-wear figure shrank smaller in his field of view, flowing mane of red hair blowing behind her.
She didn’t look back, not once.
Then, a moment later, the lawmen pushed her through the door into the jail and she disappeared from Noose’s sight.
With a sigh, Noose found himself wishing that would be the last he’d see of her.
But he knew he would have to stay and see her one last time.
When she took the drop.
* * *
“You’re a mess, Marshal.”
Joe Noose had been shot twice and needed to see a doctor. His wounds had to be tended to. He hardly needed to be reminded of this fact when a few minutes later Tuggle returned from the sheriff’s office after locking up his prisoner, ambling over to where Noose sat on Copper, letting the horse drink from a nearby water trough. “Looks like you’ve been shot,” observed the lawman, looking him over. Noose thought that fact was fairly obvious the moment he rode into town, given the two bloody, ragged bullet holes in his shirt, but figured maybe this peace officer was simple.
Joe Noose nodded and held up two fingers, too tired to bandy words. He felt like he was on his last legs even though he was seated in his saddle. It was all he could do not to fall out of it. Copper was holding up better than he was, but Copper hadn’t been shot twice.
Tuggle wore an exaggerated expression of grave concern. “Marshal, you gotta get to the doctor directly.”
“Just tell me where,” Noose growled, more out of exhaustion than aggravation.
“Okay, Marshal, you ride right down this street here half a block and you’ll find the doc on your left there.” Tuggle pointed directions helpfully. “Got a big sign on the door. Can’t miss it. Doc will get you fixed up.” The sheriff looked genuinely worried at the sight of the bloody cowboy on the horse. “I’ll lead your horse and help you over there.”
“I got this,” Noose snarled as he gave some boot to his stallion and rode past the sheriff crowding him. The man stepped aside and watched him go. It was taking all Noose had to sit straight in the saddle but he wasn’t about to show weakness in front of a stranger he didn’t trust. And he was still wondering what happened to Sheriff Shurlock. These new lawmen didn’t pass the smell test.
“Let me buy you a drink when you get fixed up, Marshal,” Tuggle’s voice called out behind him affably but there was a mocking in his tone. “You sure as hell earned it.” Noose looked back and didn’t answer as he rode off.
With a flip of the reins in his wrist, Noose steered Copper in a brisk trot past the gallows through the square onto the main street he figured was the street that sheriff mentioned the doctor was on.
The sun was coming up hard and hot—it was already hotter than normal. Hanging smoke and reeking stench of char in the air from fires on the pass burning out of control imparted an uneasy sense of danger and foreboding to the atmosphere . . . that and the blood in the air—because everybody in the town today who didn’t live here was here to see a woman get killed; the folks wanted blood and you could almost taste it in the air.
The hovering sooty haze stung Noose’s eyes and was keeping people off the street but he could see the town was packed for the hanging. As he rode past the corral, he saw the stockade was full of horses. Sold out.
A large, colorful banner hung across the street announced the hanging of Bonny Kate Valance. It was decorated in the ornate way of a Buffalo Bill Wild West show.
Rounding the corner, Joe Noose rode up a wide dirt main drag walled on both sides by boardwalk, storefronts, saloons, and hotels. NO VACANCY signage was hung out on the doors of the lodging establishments. As Noose trotted past the larger of the bars, he saw through the windows that the place was packed with a wide assortment of people crowding the counter, beginning their imbibing early; a few shots of whiskey improved the enjoyment of a hanging for some, Noose figured. It turned his stomach. So did the posters and carnival circus celebration portraying the hanging of Bonny Kate Valance. It wasn’t that Noose felt Bonny Kate didn’t deserve killing for her misdeeds, he just didn’t like making a big show of it for people’s entertainment.
And probably some politician’s election campaign. It made Noose sick.
He knew Bonny Kate and had ridden with her by his side for two days and had risked his life for her and she was a person to him, even if she was a bad one who had it coming. Suddenly he wished he’d have let that Arizona sheriff kill her clean and quick with a bullet as he would sure have done given half the chance; that angry old man just wanted to be the one to pull the trigger. That way, the woman would have been spared this public spectacle.
As if a fateful reminder of why everybody was here today, the town clock tolled the hour with eight loud bongs. Swiveling his gaze to the left, Noose saw the clock tower with the hands snapping into place with a click of unseen clockwork machinery on the eight and the twelve.
In four hours, Bonny Kate would die.
Joe Noose wondered if that was what she was thinking, aware that in the jail she surely heard that clock strike the hour.
Two hundred and forty minutes.
In two and a half hours they would come into her cell and get her ready, he reckoned. The crowd would be assembling in the square around the gallows platform, rubbernecking for the best viewing position for the execution. Reporte
rs would be setting cameras, scribbling in their notebooks. Ten minutes later a priest would show up at the cell and ask her if she wanted to make her confession. Noose smiled to himself, thinking Bonny Kate could give herself a few extra days of breathing life if she confessed all she’d done, but he figured she’d just laugh at the padre.
Fifty minutes to go, she’d be led into the sheriff’s office under armed guard.
Ten minutes to go, the posse would be walking her to the gallows, down that long street on her last mile, past the parting crowd, up the wooden steps, and a rope placed around her neck by the executioner.
A minute later, Bonny Kate Valance would be no more. Despite it all, Joe Noose would miss her.
When she was gone, the world would be a little less interesting.
* * *
Inside the small, empty jail Bonny Kate was pushed through the barred iron gate into the single open cell.
Sheriff Tuggle stood in the open doorway, his deputies fanned out behind him.
The female outlaw turned slowly to face him. Raised and held out her handcuffed wrists.
The sheriff took his key and unlocked them. The cuffs fell from her hands and hit the ground with a clank.
She smiled.
They all smiled.
CHAPTER 32
It took him no time to find the doctor’s office. It was just where that dodgy sheriff said it was.
The small wooden single-story building was right across the street from the feed store on the boardwalk. Weathered plank siding and a brick roof and a few small windows and a well-used door. A metal sign hung on the front that read, J. STONEBRIDGE. DOCTOR. The place looked open for business.
Urging his tired horse across the street, Joe Noose pulled Copper up to the hitching post. The getting off the horse part he had been dreading. Gathering his strength and putting a rolled-up cloth in his teeth, the big cowboy put his weight on the boot in the stirrup on his uninjured side. Slowly, painfully, he eased off his saddle, the cloth of his pants sticking to the leather seat with dried, bad-smelling blood. His. Using his muscular arms to cling to the pommel, he bit down on the rag and very slowly got first one boot down on the ground and then the other and then he was off his horse but barely on his feet. Copper’s big fluid brown eyes worried into his own.
“I’ll be all fixed up in a few minutes, friend,” Noose said, patting his amicable and loyal horse’s snout. Copper snorted hot breath onto his hand. “Then we’ll get ya over to the corral and watered and rubbed down and fed. How’s that sound?”
Copper gave him the side-eye.
Turning away from the stallion tied to the hitching post, Noose staggered stiffly to the door of the doctor’s office and rapped sharply with his knuckles.
It opened presently.
Standing in the doorway was a woman of about thirty, wearing spectacles and a clean shirt and white smock. Her hair was pulled back over a strong rural high-boned face and her intelligent gaze was direct and observant of his.
“I need to see the doctor,” Noose mumbled through gritted teeth.
“You’re looking at her.”
“ ‘J. Stonebridge,’ the sign says.”
“The J stands for Jane. Most people around here just call me Doc. Anyway, you’ve come to the right place.” The doctor’s hazel eyes behind her spectacles narrowed in abrupt concern as they looked Noose up and down and took in the extent of his injuries. “Mister, you been shot to pieces.”
Hovering in the doorway, Noose returned a weary amicable cracked grin. “Still in one piece that’s got a few holes in it.”
Dr. Stonebridge swept open the door and helped him limp inside with surprising country farm strength in her arm. “Lordy. Get the heck in here and let me have a look at you.” She led him through a small but functional hospital room to a table and helped him sit on it. He managed with a grunt. She saw the bullet-crunched chunk of metal on his chest that had saved his life last night. “I see you got a badge. Or it used to be one. Who the hell did this to you?” Dr. Stonebridge had already turned to the medicine cabinet and was quickly snatching up handfuls of bandages and bottles.
“It’s a long story.”
“What’s the short one?”
“My job was to bring Bonny Kate Valance to Victor from Jackson over the pass. Some people didn’t want her to get here. I disagreed. You could say I won the argument.”
That got him a scrutinizing, disapproving glance from the physician. “So those people won’t be having need of my services, I take it.”
“Services, just not yours.”
“The woman you brought here.” The doctor compressed her lips tightly. “She would be the one all the fuss is about?”
“The same.”
Noose watched Jane Stonebridge, noticing the clenched expression that had suddenly come over her features. “Is something wrong?”
“Looks like one bullet went clean through. The other got blocked by the badge. These wounds need to be stitched up and it is going to hurt. And you got some broken bones ought to be set.”
“Please stitch up the bullet holes for now. I’ll come back later for the splints.”
“When?”
“Few hours at the latest.”
“Where you planning on going?”
Noose’s eyes stared straight ahead, his mind working. “Not sure yet. I’ll know in a few minutes.”
“Stay still.” She was dabbing his wounds with a sharp-smelling solvent that stung like a hive of hornets but he didn’t move. “I have painkillers if you need them. Laudanum.”
He shook his head. “I need to keep my head clear. Stay sharp.”
“You got that woman here. They’re hanging her at noon. Your job is done. Keep your head clear for what?”
“In case this ain’t over yet.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
He swiveled his powerful gaze to hers and she didn’t blink. “You tell me.”
Dr. Stonebridge took out her needle and thread, focused her gaze on the bullet hole in his side, and began stitching it closed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Anything strange going on in town?”
“Like hanging an outlaw woman and having people come from across the country to watch it?”
“Other than that. Is there going to be trouble?”
She stopped stitching to look straight at him. “Mister, I best believe you’re a better judge than me if there’s going to be trouble or not.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Dr. Stonebridge sighed, tight jawed. If she knew something she wasn’t saying, Noose reckoned—then, in her way, she did: “Let me just say this. If there is going to be trouble, the sooner I get these holes stitched up, the sooner you can get back on your feet and deal with it, because, mister, any fool can tell that’s what you do.”
In no time at all, his bullet wounds were stitched and bandaged.
There was a knock on the door. Noose looked up to see Sheriff Tuggle, a big grin on his face, walk in like he owned the place.
“Mr. Noose, I’d be obliged if you’d let me buy you a drink.”
Noose nodded.
A few minutes later, the two men walked across the street into the saloon.
CHAPTER 33
The noise of the whiskey pouring into the shot glass was music to Joe Noose’s ears and the woody smell of the aged sour malt in his nostrils told him it was the good, expensive stuff as the bartender poured two stiff glasses from a fine bottle behind the bar and handed one to him and one to Tuggle.
The men clicked glasses with a melodious collision of glassware. “To a job well done. Damn well done, Marshal,” Tuggle said with an admiring grin.
Noose drank a deep draft as did his counterpart. The fine whiskey went down his throat in a smooth, syrupy burn that warmed his insides with a pleasing, numbing fire. Noose took another sip, watching the sheriff the whole time.
A minute ago he had followed Tuggle into the luxurious comfort of the plushly out
fitted saloon. Before he did, Noose tied up Copper by a water trough, patted him down, massaged the stallion’s sore muscles, and brought him some fresh hay. The sheriff had politely stood on the boardwalk in front of the bar without complaint, watching patiently as Noose tended to his horse first. Then, when good and ready, the big cowboy followed the sheriff watchfully into the saloon and now they were having a drink.
“Hits the spot,” said Noose.
“I figured it would,” replied Tuggle, signaling the bartender, who lifted the lid of a desk humidor exposing a full stock of fine-smelling fresh cigars. “Buy you a cigar?”
Noose slowly shook his head, “Bad habit.” He took another sip of whiskey, carefully scrutinizing the bar. It was just the two of them in the main area, with two curtained compartments leading off it. Leather couches. A full brass-railed bar. A wall-sized mirror. Oil lamps. Oriental carpeting. The row of Remington shotguns and Winchester rifles mounted on the wall caught his attention. The town had gone all out in refurbishments for the history-making hanging and business should be booming, but nobody was in the bar but him and this dodgy lawman. Like the townsfolk had been told to stay away, or just knew to. This saloon was too quiet, and Noose got the distinct impression that this sheriff was stalling for time. But why?
There was something else that raised his suspicions.
He knew this man Tuggle. Couldn’t put a face to a name, but they’d met before. A long time ago. He got the sense from the occasional odd glance that Tuggle recognized him, too. Something about the man was wrong.
“One of many vices I subscribe to,” said the sheriff, selecting a cigar, snipping the end off with guillotine cutter, putting the stogie in his lips, striking a match, and lighting up. Through the cloud of rich-smelling smoke, he looked past the glowing coal of cigar at Noose looking at him.
