Noose Jumpers: A Mythological Western

by Trevor H. Cooley

  Tom came up to Sandy, still grinning. “You’re backer is really Pecos Bill? The Pecos Bill?” He spoke to the legend, “Is it true you were raised by coyotes?”

  “Kind of,” Pecos replied. He spat tobacco juice onto the floor and looked at Sandy. “Zed’s got a good point. What do you think? If I do this, there’s gonna be consequences. The Powers That Be might break our contract.”

  Sandy frowned. “I hate to tell you to break laws, Pecos, but if you can help us out of this situation, I got no choice.”

  “Alright. I’ll do it,” he said, his mustache stretching as he grinned. “I’ve been savin’ up my power for a while now.”

  “I’m already doin’ it,” the Kid said, flicking his fingers. A series of shots echoed from outside, followed by exclamations as several lurking banditos found their weapons going off spontaneously. “Some of these banditos have really old guns.”

  Luke looked at the Stranger. “You don’t owe me anything. I understand if you don’t want to help. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight, though.”

  The Stranger’s jaw clenched, his anger subsiding. “I may not owe you anything, but there is a promise I plan to keep.”

  “Good!” said Zed. He closed his eyes briefly. “We’ve got only minutes to get our plan together. That sheriff’s got his men putting together a battering ram.”

  “So,” said Sandy. “What exactly can you do?”

  “Remember the plagues of Moses?” said the Kid with a giggle. “Well, this is about to get biblical!”

  26: Biblical

  An excerpt from the Tale of the Red Star Gang

  “. . . It was the biggest wolf a man has ever seen; tall and wide as a buffalo with a mouth full of more wicked teeth than a hungry alligator. The wolf held the sleeping boy up off the ground, his belt clenched in its slavering jaws.

  Tucker didn’t know what strange spell kept the boy asleep with such a menace grabbing hold of him, but he fired off a warning shot, parting the hair between the beast’s ears. “Hold on there, critter. You put that boy down or I’ll be wearin’ me a wolfskin coat.”

  The wolf let out a defiant growl. “Many a man has tried to hunt me down, Eagle Eye. But I’m faster and more cunning than any man. Try what you will, but this boy will be my supper!”

  The wolf was off, true to his word, faster than any animal Tucker had seen before. But that didn’t bother him none. He yawned and climbed to the top of the ridge. There was the wolf, still a runnin’, getting farther and farther away. Eagle Eye Tucker, cool as a cucumber, raised his rifle and peered down his sights at the wolf. On it ran, gaining distance. It was near a mile away when he pulled his trigger.

  The wily old wolf was certain he had proven himself man’s better once again. He could see the cave of his den in the distance and thought of how tasty the tender boy would be. That was his last thought before Eagle Eye’s bullet entered his head.” – From an article entitled, “Eagle Eye” Tucker, the Caballero Who Never Misses, by Edward J. Robinson, published in the Las Vegas Gazette one day before the Red Star Gang’s stand in Puerta de la Muerte.

  “Okay, so as I see it, we have two problems to overcome,” said Tom, hopping onto the sheriff’s desk next to the Kid. “First is how we get out of this town full of desperadoes-.”

  “First is how we kill Jeb Wickee,” Sandy corrected.

  “I think getting out alive should be your first concern,” Zed pointed out.

  “You said your piece. Now we’re saying ours,” Luke said. “Now I think the biggest problem is beating his ability to dodge bullets.”

  “He doesn’t dodge them,” said Sandy. “They go around him.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Luke said. “I’ve been thinking on this. I say we get the jump on him. Sandy, you can hold him still and I’ll stab him with my belt knife. Problem solved.”

  Sandy shook his head. “I don’t want to stab him. I want to shoot him.”

  “It doesn’t work,” the Constable said. “Chuck was only maybe six or seven feet away when he shot.”

  “Then we do it point blank,” Luke said.

  The Stranger nodded. “An execution.”

  “We don’t need to be that close. I got my own plan set in motion. I just need my rifle-.” Sandy grimaced in sudden realization. “It’s on one of the horses outside!”

  “I think you two are forgetting that second power of his.” Zed said. “I felt it when I was with Chuck outside. Never felt anything like it.”

  “Right. The witch said it has something to do with an artifact he has,” Sandy said, rubbing his jaw.

  “That must be how Jeb did it,” the Stranger said, smoking thoughtfully. “Whatever that artifact is, he stole Bobby’s power with it.”

  Sandy stared at the legend. Things started to fall in place in his mind. That power had been oddly familiar. It had been like Bobby’s charisma multiplied a hundred times. “That is another problem,” he admitted. “But if I have my rifle I can be far enough away that it won’t matter.”

  “What makes you think your rifle is going to be any better than my gun?” Luke asked.

  “Because you may be fast, but I’m ‘Eagle Eye Tucker’. I don’t miss,” Sandy said with a grin. “That’s my talent. It’s just that my most accurate shots are with that rifle.”

  “Your talent against his,” said the Stranger thoughtfully. “Could work. You feel stronger to me than you did before.”

  “So back to the plan,” Tom said, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “If we’re gonna get to Sandy’s rifle, we’ve got to get to the horses without getting our heads shot off. What we need is a distraction. Even better if we can clear the plaza.”

  “That I can do,” said the Stranger, grinning evilly. He stretched, rolling his neck with a series of popping sounds. “I’ll get started.”

  “Please do.” Tom said, suppressing a shiver as the legend disappeared into a cloud of black mist. “Okay, so if we can get Sandy’s gun and somehow manage to kill the sheriff, the next part is getting past all those outlaws.”

  “That’s gonna take a lot of luck for you and a lot of bad luck for them,” said the Kid with a chuckle. “I’m gonna be all over the place working on makin’ that happen.”

  He hopped up onto the desk, his clothes disappearing and reforming into his revolutionary uniform again. With a smile and a salute, he was gone.

  “I’ll be takin’ my leave too,” Pecos said. The specter was standing there with his eyes shut, sweat beading on his brow. A peal of thunder rumbled in the distance. He glanced at Sandy. “What I have planned is gonna be big. But I can’t do it all from here. I’ll have to go away for a while. You’ll be alright without me?”

  “Go,” Sandy said with a smile and Pecos vanished in a gust of wind.

  “So what do we do now?” Luke wondered.

  “We load up,” Sandy replied, heading over to the guns and ammo.

  The sound of shouting grew in the plaza outside. Zed closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them, he wore a look of concern. “This better all happen quickly. They’re coming with that ram.”

  Approaching the plaza outside, ten men carried a makeshift battering ram they had made by tying together a series of railroad ties. Jeb Wickee and his deputies walked beside them. The sheriff’s hands were clenched as he worried about what the Red Stars were up to in his office. He hoped they weren’t destroying the place just out of spite.

  “Listen close, you hear me?” he said to the crowd of men already gathered in the plaza. “Once you bust that door in, I want you to run in and grab those Red Stars. Do not shoot them.”

  “But won’t they shoot at us?” one man asked.

  “I said don’t shoot them!” Jeb said, amplifying his voice with the power of the noose. His body still tingled with it. Two days of hangings had given him more energy than he had ever held before. Santos had just been the last and most talented of them. “Take them alive! Except for the girl and that last deputy. I don’t care what you do with them.” />
  A peal of thunder echoed from the West and Jeb looked up to see a menacing bank of clouds rolling in. Where had that come from? He could have sworn the sky had been clear a moment before.

  Deputy Tweed leaned in and said in a soft voice, “They have a point, Sheriff. With as many guns as you have in there, they could have bodies stacked floor to ceiling before we get to them.”

  “You worried about these banditos, Tweed?” Jeb asked. “We have plenty.”

  “I’m just saying there’s nowhere for them to go. They got no food or water. We surround the place. They have to give up eventually. If they try to make a run for it, we got them easy,” said the big man.

  Jeb sometimes forgot that Tweed was more than just brawn. “They can do too much damage in there. What if they decide to burn the place down rather than surrender?”

  No one else knew it, but Jeb had more important things in his office than just the furniture and his gun collection. During the confusion caused by the fiasco at the bank he had taken the opportunity to steal some of the bandit’s gold and cash. It was hidden under the floorboards.

  As the bandits lined the battering ram up with the door, a powerful gust of wind swept through town, bringing with it the cool promise of rain. A plume of dust swept into the plaza from the streets in town, filling the air and causing the men to cough and shield their eyes. Another peal of thunder came, this one much closer, and the sky darkened as purple clouds surged overhead.

  The men, though unnerved by the strange weather were used to dusty winds. They pulled bandanas up over their noses and mouths and surged forward with the ram, striking the door. The first impact cracked the door but did not cave it in, so Jeb instructed the men to pull back and do it again.

  The air grew darker. Lightning struck in the town not far away, followed by a crack of thunder that the men could feel in their bones. Jeb suddenly began to understand that something strange was going on. He focused in with senses trained over years of working with witchery and discovered that the air was thick with it.

  “This ain’t right,” Willis said, taking a step backwards. He pointed up at the gallows high above them. The platform below El Estrangular was somehow darker than the area around it. A black miasma began to form, rising in wisps from the wood itself.

  This was some kind of distraction. Before the men could see it, he ordered them forward again. “Go!”

  The ram surged forward, but as the men charged, the knots binding the railroad ties together began to loosen. When they struck the door, it buckled partially, the bottom hinge shearing, but the bar behind the door held.

  The ram itself did not. It crumpled, the bindings failing and the men fell in a jumble, some of them hurt badly or pinned under the heavy thing.

  The wind picked up and with it came an unearthly howl. Men began to shout in fear. Jeb looked back up at the platform to see it engulfed by a heavy black mist that rolled down the steps and pooled on the ground below. A wicked laugh split the air.

  Somewhere within that black cloud something stirred. A great beast began to emerge as if from hell itself. Two yellow dots of fire coalesced as the snout of a black stallion pushed through the mist, flames rising from its nostrils. Its eyes glowed red. Its hooves struck the wood of the platform and sparks spurted into the gasping crowd of men below.

  A rider was on its back. He wore all black and his skin was ghostly pale. Ghastly scars crisscrossed his visage and his one eye burned like a branding iron. He opened his mouth and laughed, a hideous sound that chilled through the very soul, and a horde of flies poured from his smoking maw.

  Some of the men screamed. Bandits fell over each other as they tried to flee. Jeb’s own deputies were long gone.

  “It ain’t real!” Jeb shouted, though every fiber of his being was telling him to run. He forced as much power into his voice as he could. “Shoot it! It ain’t real! You’ll see!”

  Many of the men found courage and some of them fired. Bullets passed through the nightmarish rider as if he weren’t there. The rider laughed again, a jet of flame rising from his mouth, incinerating many of the insects that hovered in front of him.

  “See!” Jeb shouted, raising his shotgun and firing. “It ain’t real! Get that door open!”

  “YOU THINK I’M NOT REAL?” the rider laughed and the black horse jumped from the platform above. It landed on a frightened man who burst into flames on contact, screaming in horror. “I AM THE STRANGER AND I HAVE COME FOR YOUR SOULS!”

  Jeb’s hold on the men broke. They ran into the streets of Puerta Muerte just as the rain started to fall.

  It came in a torrent. The blanket of dust that had hung in the air was crushed to the ground, turning straight to mud. Rain poured off the Stranger and he rode closer to Jeb.

  “I KNOW YOUR SECRET, JEB WICKEE. I KNOW ABOUT THE NOOSE. ALL THOSE TALENTS STOLEN.” The Stranger shook his head and as he did so, the skin started to peel off of his face. “YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR BETRAYAL TODAY.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Jeb snarled.

  The decaying Stranger cocked his head. “WANNA SEE UNDER MY EYEPATCH?” He reached up to his face and lifted the flap of black leather.

  Jeb turned and ran.

  “Holy hell on earth,” said Tom with jaw agape as they watched the scene unfold through the wide crack in the door. “If I didn’t know what was goin’ on, I would’ve pissed myself.”

  “I still might,” Sandy said with a grin.

  “I did not know he could do that,” Luke said, his eyes wide.

  “I told you so, lads,” said the Constable with an uneasy laugh and it was pretty obvious that even he hadn’t been fully aware of what the Stranger was capable of.

  “Did he really fry that man?” Tom asked. “Can he just gallop through the streets lighting everyone on fire?”

  “I’m pretty sure that man wasn’t real. Just part of the Stranger’s witchery,” Luke said. “Right?”

  “You lads had best be off while the plaza is cleared,” Zed recommended. “Once those men have washed their drawers, they might be back.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Tom replied.

  He and Sandy grabbed the bar in front of the door and struggled to lift it. The door had partially buckled inward and was pressed tightly against the wood.

  Luke took two loaded pistols off of Jeb’s desk where he and Tom had piled them. He shoved one into his shoulder holster and one under his belt at the small of his back. He looked at Zed. “So what are you going to do to help?”

  The Constable laughed. “Unfortunately, I am not in their class. My main contribution was to goad them into helping you.” He rubbed his ear and looked down at the unconscious forms of Katie Weiss and Pat Garrett. “Leave these two to me. I can lead them to safety if you jack-a-ninnies can keep the crowd distracted.”

  “Right.” Luke limped over to Tom and Sandy, who were still struggling to get the heavy bar up over the brackets that were holding it. “You two need a cripple’s help to get that thing open?”

  “Shut up! We’ve almost got it,” Sandy grunted.

  “Hey, listen, Sandy,” Luke said. “You know that man I killed, back at that big job seven months ago?”

  “Look, I’m over that, Luke,” he said, straining. “It was a mistake. I get it.”

  “No. It wasn’t a mistake. I just couldn’t tell you why before,” Luke replied. “That man had a backer, a legend called Timmy Red-Vein. He doesn’t use guns.”

  Sandy paused in his lifting. “The Stranger told you?”

  “Just as the man was coming up behind us. He was grabbing for a knife when I shot him,” Luke explained.

  “Oh,” Sandy said. “I see.”

  “You two done making up?” Tom asked. “We almost got this thing open.”

  “I just wanted you to know I’m not that cold blooded,” Luke said.

  “Right,” Sandy said and grasped the bar again. One more jerk and the bar came free. The door fell inward, along with a downpour of rain. A terrified bandit, still p
inned under the battering ram, raised a shaking pistol at them.

  Luke shot him between the eyes, then frowned at the rain, “I am not looking forward to getting my bandages wet.”

  They stepped out into the deserted plaza, everyone was gone, even the Stranger, though the miasma of blackness still dripped from the gallows above.

  The rain pelted them, soaking into Sandy’s duster and Luke’s jacket. Tom, who had stolen a long leather overcoat from the sheriff’s coat rack was the driest one. He smiled at them cheekily as he approached the horses. His smile dropped.

  “Aw hell, my horse is gone and so are the others. Either stolen or ran away.” He stuck out his bottom lip. He had been getting to like Bitey.

  “I wish I could say the same about mine.” Sandy squatted next to his mare, who was lying on the ground, unmoving. She must have been hit by that opening volley of rifle fire. Jeb’s men had dragged the bodies of the marshals away, but left her there. He patted her. “Poor girl.”

  “I guess we’re on foot,” Luke said with a groan. His pains had subsided during the excitement of the afternoon, but being soaked had brought them back.

  “Hey, Sandy!” said Tom. He was standing a little further down the plaza where one of the deputy’s horses lay on the ground. It must have also been shot, but made it a bit further before collapsing. Tom reached under it and tugged, nearly slipping and falling in the mud when the rifle came clear of the holster. He lifted it into the air. “Got it!”

  Sandy ran over and grabbed it from him. “Now to find Jeb Wickee.” He ran back to the sheriff’s door. “Constable! Tell me where the sheriff is.”

  “You’re welcome.” Tom looked at Luke. The injured man was staring up at the gallows. Tom joined him. There was something about that noose. “It’s like it pulls at you.” He shivered. “Let’s get out of here.”