Branded

by Eric Red

  The fat cat’s faces just laughed and whispered insinuations with good ol’ boy gusto.

  Stephen McCoy, the group’s unofficial leader, took Deputy Sweet by both shoulders. “Nate, you’re a good kid. What if we told you that we all here want you to be U.S. Marshal in Jackson? We want a man wearing the badge, we want you wearing it. We will triple your salary from what it is now. Yes, we know in the U.S. Marshals Service the salaries are fixed, but we will supplement that income with outside revenue streams from stocks to property. It’s all perfectly legal. The Gentlemen’s Business Bureau can make all that happen. In ten years you’ll own your own ranch. Be one of us, our man. You want to be town marshal, say the word.”

  “That sounds like a bribe.” Sweet shrugged McCoy’s hands from his shoulders.

  “Think of it as a promotion.”

  “I work for Marshal Bess Sugarland, for the last time, gentlemen, get it through your thick heads.”

  “She must be a real bitch to work for to have you so whipped.”

  “Consider your next words very carefully, mister.” The deputy rubbed his knuckles.

  McCoy grabbed Sweet’s shoulder again, roughly this time. “U.S. Marshal is a man’s job, Nate. Bess Sugarland’s a woman. You got a dick, she doesn’t. You have balls, son. Use them.”

  “Get Marshal Bess Sugarland’s name out of your mouth before you find my fist in it.” Deputy Nate Sweet’s eyes narrowed dangerously, fists clenching at his sides, deadly cool.

  “What did you say to me?” The bigwig was offended.

  “You heard me.”

  Drunken McCoy screamed in Sweet’s face. “Screw that bitch marshal and f—” The deputy’s fist shot out, slamming McCoy in the jaw and knocking him cold with one quick, short punch. The unconscious bigwig was caught by his friends, who eased him to the sawdust-strewn floor. None of the businessmen had the guts to meet the tough eyes of the deputy.

  But somebody in the saloon did.

  Nate Sweet looked up and saw a gambler at a nearby table putting down his cards to watch the fight, and the cowboy looking straight at him had a jigsaw scar running down the side of his face as their eyes met and locked. Sweet stepped over Stephen McCoy and walked straight over to the card table, looking down at Puzzleface, a friendly authoritative smile on the deputy’s face.

  “Let me buy you a drink,” the lawman said.

  CHAPTER 9

  “You must be Puzzleface,” Sweet said.

  A few minutes later, Deputy Sweet and Puzzleface were propped at the bar, facing each other affably.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear about me,” the man replied with a friendly, self-deprecating smile, and offered his hand. Sweet shook and found Puzzleface’s handshake agreeably warm. “My name is Bill Taylor. Some call me ‘Puzzleface’ Taylor. I’m here to tell you personally, Marshal, I ain’t the man they say I am.”

  Deputy Sweet nodded, not sure how to respond, so he poured shots of that good expensive Scotch those Gentlemen’s Business assholes had left when they fled the saloon the moment before. The two raised a glass in toast and drank, then Sweet poured two more shots. While doing so, he was considering the impression the stranger who had come to town made on him.

  The man looked in his thirties. Puzzleface wasn’t short, wasn’t tall, of medium build and height, a confident gait, and had a dusty elegance. The air of a dandy. The man before him wore a well-tailored black coat over a silk vest, a ruffled shirt, suspenders, elegant, and worn if polished cowboy boots. No gun belt was visible. A weathered Stetson with a brim that had lost its shape sat near his hand on the bar. He had something of the riverboat gambler in appearance and took pride in his grooming.

  His face drew all your attention. Behind a heavy beard and waxed mustache Puzzleface Taylor had a fine bone structure, generous lips, and surprisingly sensitive brown eyes in a delicate face marred by the jagged scar making a jigsaw cut running from his left cheek through his top and bottom left lip to the chin. The scar was the first thing you saw and it gave you a harsh first impression, but you got past that when you saw the eyes, and those soulful eyes pulled you in. Sweet wanted to ask the stranger where he got the scar, but didn’t.

  He said he wasn’t the man they say he is? the deputy wondered. What kind of man is he, then?

  “Need to ask you a few questions, Bill. It’s my job.”

  “I didn’t rob the Union Pacific train, if that’s what you want to know. I don’t carry a gun and don’t know how to shoot one if I did. Never stole nothing in my whole entire life.”

  “Fair enough. Can anybody vouch for your whereabouts the day of the train robbery two weeks ago?”

  “Hell yes. Everyone at the R.E. Miller Ranch over in Solitude where I’ve been staying for the last month certainly can. Ask anyone works and lives out there and they’ll all tell you today’s one of the first days I’ve left the ranch in weeks.”

  “Those are nice clothes. You look flush. What do you do for money, Bill?”

  “I play cards.”

  “You’re a gambler.”

  Nodding, Puzzleface patted the bulge of a deck in his vest pocket.

  “Is that what brings you to Jackson?” Sweet changed the line of questioning, knowing without evidence of a crime, which there didn’t appear to be, Puzzleface didn’t have to answer any questions about where he got his cash any more than those Gentlemen’s Business Bureau crooks did, and Sweet was sure there was a lot more to arrest those boys for.

  “I like this town.”

  “No law against being in town.”

  “I ain’t here to cause trouble.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “Other folks might tell you different. Some people got funny ideas about me.”

  “That’s not the concern of the U.S. Marshals Service, Bill. Ideas do not fall under our purview. Deeds are our only concern, specifically misdeeds. Has anybody threatened you here in Jackson?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Anything you want to report?”

  “ No.”

  “If anyone threatens your person, you come to me, you hear? I run a peaceful town.”

  Puzzleface nodded cautiously. “So what have you heard about me?”

  “Heard you’ve been giving money to strangers.”

  “Folks is only strangers until you know ’em.” He smiled. Puzzleface’s voice was mellifluous and pleasing to the ear.

  “Why are you giving people money?”

  “To help them out.” Puzzleface sounded sincere. His eyes betrayed a kindness that nullified any aspersions to his character.

  “No law against that.”

  Looking at Puzzleface, Deputy Sweet still felt he had no idea who he was. He was so fascinated by the scar-faced man he did not realize he had been staring until the stranger, unnerved by the lawman’s stare, downed his glass a little too quickly.

  “Thanks for the drink, Marshal Sweet.” Puzzleface stepped away from the bar. “Better hit the trail and get back to the ranch before I have too many and fall off my horse.” He gathered his heavy overcoat from the chair at the card table and started for the doors to the saloon.

  “I’ll walk you out.” Sweet nodded, grabbing his hat. “I gotta get back to the office and lock up.”

  The two men stepped outside onto the cold snowy night air. It was full dark, and Cache Street, a hundred yards past the Silver Dollar Bar, dropped off into pitch-blackness. The bite of the chill oxygen cleared their heads and started to sober them up. They unhitched their horses and climbed into the saddles. Puzzleface flipped the reins and rode his gray palomino down Cache and Deputy Sweet was turning his stallion in the other direction when he heard the hooves stop.

  Halting his horse, Puzzleface looked back over his shoulder. “Most people ask how I got my scar. You didn’t.”

  “None of my business.”

  A beat.

  “Okay, how?”

  “It’s a long story,” said “Puzzleface” Bill Taylor with a grin lik
e it was his standard routine, departing on his horse down Cache Street, swallowed up in total darkness as the sound of hooves faded.

  A gunshot rang out.

  Shattering the wintery silence, the single sharp report came from down the dark street where Puzzleface disappeared. There followed a high-pitched cry of pain and thud of a falling body muffled by the snow then galloping hooves of a bolting horse.

  Startled, Deputy Sweet urgently swung his stallion and gave it spur, drawing his Winchester rifle as he charged down Cache Street.

  Sprawled on the snow, Puzzleface lay sobbing, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He was alive.

  Dropping from his saddle, Sweet knelt beside the wounded man and quickly examined the gunshot, determining the bullet had gone clean through the right shoulder and the wound itself was not fatal. The bullet hole on the front shoulder was huge and ragged, indicating an exit wound, so Puzzleface had been shot in the back. “You’re gonna be okay, Bill. Hang on. Gonna get you on my horse to get you over to the doctor at the infirmary.” Puzzleface was bawling in pain, his overcoat soaked with blood that was spreading in a blackened pool on the snow he lay on. The deputy made several careful attempts to lift the wounded man and get him on the horse, but couldn’t pick him up because every time Sweet touched him, Puzzleface recoiled in agony, kicked and thrashed, and only wept harder. Starting to shake uncontrollably from blood loss and the terrible cold, his life kept draining on the snow like red paint on a white canvas. The stranger didn’t have much time left, the deputy realized. If the wound wasn’t treated by the doctor in the next few minutes, he’d bleed out.

  “Sorry, friend.” Deputy Sweet closed his fist and socked Puzzleface in the jaw, instantly knocking him out, and the wounded man stopped resisting. It was the second person the lawman’s good right had rendered unconscious this night.

  Now that Puzzleface was limp as a noodle, Sweet lifted him effortlessly in his arms off the street and eased him onto his stallion, slumping him in the saddle. The deputy noticed how light and featherweight the man was to carry. Climbing into the stirrups in the saddle behind his passenger, the lawman swung the horse around and galloped recklessly across the snowy ice-slick street east toward the local clinic.

  Riding through the night transporting Puzzleface to the doctor, the young deputy marshal vowed to nail the cowardly gunmen who shot an unarmed man in the back once he identified the shooter, just as soon as he figured out who Puzzleface was and why somebody would want to kill him.

  Soon the answers would astonish him.

  * * *

  Luckily that night, a capable new doctor named Jane Stonewall had recently relocated her practice from Victor in Idaho to Jackson. Dr. Jane’s clinic provided excellent up-to-date medical treatment for the community, and the dedicated physician worked all hours.

  Holding the collapsed Puzzleface with one arm in the saddle, Deputy Sweet held the reins in the other and steered his horse at a fast gallop across Broadway to Pearl Street. His saddle leather was drenched in blood, black in the moonlight. A few people out on the cold night had to dodge out of the way of the lawman’s stallion to avoid getting trampled.

  Five minutes later, Sweet pulled his horse to a halt by the whitewashed one-story wooden building of Dr. Jane’s offices on Pearl Street. The light of the coal oil streetlamp flickered across a sign that read JACKSON CLINIC on the front door.

  Deputy Sweet dismounted and gathered the slumped figure of Puzzleface off the horse, carrying the light load of the wounded man in his arms to the front door. His arms were occupied so he kicked to knock.

  “Coming,” a female voice said inside. The door was opened by a woman of about thirty, wearing spectacles and a clean shirt and white smock. Her hair was pulled back over a hardy face and her intelligent gaze was direct and observant of his. Dr. Jane’s hazel eyes flashed in concern at the sight of the blood-splattered man in Sweet’s arms.

  “This man needs help, Doc.”

  “What happened to him, Nate?”

  “He’s been shot.”

  “Bring him in. How bad is it?”

  “He’s bleeding out. Somebody shot him in the back.” Doc Jane stood aside to let Sweet pass to carry Puzzleface into a tidy functional hospital room in the glow of several coal oil lamps. “Put him on the table. Careful.” She gestured Nate to a table and helped him lay the unconscious wounded man on it. Dr. Jane had already opened the medicine cabinet and was quickly snatching up handfuls of bandages and bottles of solvents.

  The deputy looked down at the diminutive scar-faced man who was chalky pale from loss of blood. “Can you do anything for him, Doc Jane?”

  “I need to take a look at that bullet wound first.”

  “It went right through from the looks, so you don’t have to dig any lead out.”

  “Do I tell you your job? Here, help me get his coat and shirt off.”

  Carefully leaning over Puzzleface, Dr. Jane’s strong fingers undid the buttons of the bloody overcoat and laid it open, then gently began undoing the buttons on the gory shirt, and Deputy Sweet helped her peel the sticky cloth away from the man’s naked torso.

  “My word,” Doc Jane gasped in surprise.

  Deputy Nate Sweet stared speechless.

  The exit wound was a nasty, gory mess of rent flesh.

  But that was not what caused their astonishment.

  The blood from the bullet wound dripped down over two firm bare female breasts.

  Puzzleface was a woman!

  CHAPTER 10

  The day was cold and sharp, sunlight scintillating off the crystallized frosted surface of the vast unbroken carpet of snow on the prairie as the three riders traversed it. Off to the west, the snowcapped granite peaks of the Yellowstone mountain range rose jaggedly against the roof of the blue cloudless sky. Joe Noose, Emmett Ford, and Bess Sugarland rode side by side, as they had for weeks. Their condensed breath and that of their horses left clouds of steam in their wake. It was a beautiful morning, the ground even beneath the snow under their horse’s hooves, and the day was peaceful so far.

  They were not alone.

  A huge herd of elk, several hundred strong, migrated across the tundra. It was an impressive sight to behold. The animals were big and healthy with their brown and gray winter coats, rows of antlers like moving forests on all sides of the horses. The pack of roaming wildlife did not fear the horses or riders who gave them no reason to fear them. The trio of people relaxed and enjoyed the spectacle of the vast elk herd. Noose was pleased to see that his friend Bess wore a beaming smile on her happy face.

  “So after you got branded, what happened?” Noose turned to look at Emmett when the marshal spoke. His companion was watching him attentively.

  “What do you mean?” The bounty hunter shrugged. “I hurt like hell for months.”

  “I mean after that. What did you do?”

  “I damn well sure didn’t rustle any more cattle, I can tell you that. Straightened out pretty quick, I guess. Suppose that night knocked some sense into me. The hard way, I reckon, but I was a hardcase. Heading down a bad road. Getting branded got me to thinking a lot. And one thing led to another.”

  “Worked regular jobs, huh?”

  “Recall I moved from Wyoming to Idaho then Utah, got as far as Texas but it was too damn flat and hot that far south so I come back Far West. This place fits my body, maybe because of the elevation. Worked all over as drover, laid rail on the trains, broke horses. Did that through my teens. But I stayed out of trouble.”

  “What got you into your line of work?”

  “The pay. Mostly.”

  “When did you become a bounty hunter?”

  “What makes you so interested in my life story, Marshal Ford?”

  “Call me Emmett. We’ve been riding together for a month now, figure that oughta put us on a first-name basis.”

  “Call me Joe, Emmett. So why you asking me all these questions?”

  “I’m not interrogating you but your story is da
mn interesting. A man goes from a teenage cattle rustler to becoming the best tracker and manhunter in the western states. That’s quite a few big strides for a man to take in his life.”

  Noose shrugged. “I didn’t want to get branded again, or hanged, not after seeing what an ugly thing that was, so first I started working straight jobs. It didn’t stick. I found I had an aptitude for fighting, more than others. I was big and able to knock down or put down most men and always could. And there was a place for my skills that didn’t involve wrongdoing but doing good. Seemed that was my place in the world. For years after I got branded I never raised a hand against a man unless I had to, like to defend myself. But I saw that other folks couldn’t defend themselves, so started raising my hand to the people they needed to defend themselves against. It helped those folks when there was nobody but me to be their fist. So what I was good at, what was right and what was wrong, my place in all that, it all started to make sense.”

  “You ever go back to that ranch?”

  “The old man’s ranch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nope. Never did. Never wanted to.” His gaze grew distant. “May need to now.”

  “Everything circles back around, don’t it?”

  “I reckon it does.”

  “Hell, Joe. It was twenty years ago. That ranch probably ain’t even around anymore.”

  “The old man is.”

  Noose looked over to see Bess listening in on the conversation. He cocked a disapproving eyebrow to her eavesdropping.

  She just shrugged and smiled. “That’s more than I knew about you yesterday, Joe.”

  “You already know all you need to know about me, Bess.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure. Emmett here is getting you to open up more than I ever can.”

  “Bess, you do not want to hear me run off at the mouth.”