The Crimson Trail

by Eric Red

  “See you in Jackson,” Joe said, tipping his Stetson.

  Bess searched his eyes. “You got something on your mind, tell me, partner.”

  Joe wanted to tell Bess how he felt about her, but somehow the thought of that scared him spitless. “I hate goodbyes, Bess.”

  “This ain’t goodbye,” Bess said softy with a smile, her eyes wet, a hitch in her voice. With those parting words, the lady marshal snapped the reins and turned her horse away from him to begin her long ride.

  And Joe almost said it.

  He wanted to. The words were on his lips.

  Bess, you have nothing to be jealous about.

  But Joe knew if he said that, he’d have to say the next part.

  You’re the only woman I want to be with.

  And then he’d have to say the rest.

  I love you.

  So Joe Noose said nothing.

  As Bess Sugarland rode away, a piece of Joe Noose rode with her. His heart.

  In its place, on his chest above his heart, the bounty hunter felt the old scar of the cattle brand burned into his flesh start to tingle and sting like a phantom pain, the way it always did when there were wrongs to right, justice to be done, and he had to act. The white-hot fury of the brand filled the empty hole where his heart felt missing, adrenaline pumped through his body and he was ready for action, his purpose clear for today: help the Holdridge woman track down the killer in her outfit and stop him from murdering her wranglers so she could get her cattle to Cheyenne.

  It’s going to be a hell of an adventure, Joe Noose thought, tearing his eyes away from the distant speck of Marshal Bess Sugarland on the plain, swinging his gaze over to the valley where the procession of longhorn steers on the march moved out with the covered wagons, the rovers and their horses driving the herd with whoops and hollers and cracks of bullwhips. Laura Holdridge rode gloriously out front of the herd on her wagon, her golden hair blowing in the wind. The valley rang with the voices of the men as the ground shook with the thunder of hooves, sounds of jubilation and life. It was quite a sight.

  Joe was going to miss the woman he loved.

  But he’d see Bess in Jackson soon enough. Sure, it wasn’t going to be the same without her. For now, he had a job to do, and for a while at least, that was enough.

  The cattle drive was on the move.

  He better get on after them.

  CHAPTER 3

  Joe Noose remembered how to do it.

  Riding his horse beside the herd of longhorn steers, a raging river of hundreds of tons of cow flesh surging across the prairie, the deafening thunder of hooves pummeling his eardrums, his nostrils clogged with the smell of manure, the job of cow punching was all coming back to him now from years ago when he did that work; the main thing the bounty hunter recalled was that a cattle drive was hard redneck work.

  It was back in ’67, when only fourteen, after drifting around the West working a lot of jobs, when he’d worked as a wrangler for a brief spell. Joe learned the trade on the Calhoun Bar T Ranch in Texas. A hardworking quick learner, Noose hired on as a ramrod on the famous Calhoun cattle drive from Texas to Kansas. It was back in the good old days when the legendary cattle baron old man Thomas Calhoun ran things before his crook of a son took control of the Bar T Ranch and it became an infamous cattle empire built on the blood of Texans. That Texas-to-Kansas cattle drive had two thousand head of prime longhorn beef fed on the grassland plains. Joe and fifteen other wranglers drove the gigantic herd across harsh badlands in grueling conditions under dangerous circumstances. Progress was laborious; they covered ten miles a day on average, on a good day fifteen, and it was a thousand miles to Abilene. During the period, Joe felt he had friends and wasn’t alone anymore, that he belonged. The work was tough but the whiskey and laughter and fellowship young Joe enjoyed were golden days.

  The journey was not without incident. Two months into the cattle drive a gang of armed outlaws tried to steal the herd, and gun work was required. On that hot day in Oklahoma, young Noose and the fifteen rovers got ambushed and found themselves cornered in a box canyon surrounded by six deadly sharpshooters. The rovers outnumbered the rustlers three to one, but the outlaws held the high ground and occupied choice shooting positions. Ambushed at dawn while they slept, the wranglers were undressed and unarmed, having left their gun belts behind in their panic to flee the flying lead. That is, everyone but Joe Noose, who slept with his gun belt on, out of habit. But his Colt Peacemaker had only six rounds. In a desperate shootout, young Joe shot all six of the outlaws dead in a blazing fifteen-second gunfight, never once needing to reload—each of his rounds fired from his six-cylinder revolver was a kill shot. His unharmed saddle mates looked at Noose in a whole different way after witnessing his fearsome display of violent firepower; from then on they treated him like a god, but he was no longer one of them. Gods and mortals don’t mix, so Joe collected his wages and left the cattle drive before it crossed into Kansas.

  He was a loner by nature who went his own way and didn’t fit with a group for very long, even a group of wranglers his age who were his friends. He never saw those rovers again, but it was for the best: Joe Noose had a feeling he was a lot better with a gun than he was at punching cows anyway.

  In the fullness of time, determined to do what he was good at and born to do, Joe Noose found a job that suited him; as a bounty hunter, he could use the fearsome tradecraft of the gunfighter for good, if he chose to do right. It was always up to him. And Joe was free to practice his personal brand of law enforcement and deliver his own idea of rough justice. He could never be a normal lawman bound by the laws that constantly change. Instead, he was outside the law, but still enforcing the letter of it guided by his own wits and conscience. Noose only took bounties and went after rewards where he could use his pistol to make things right. All across the West, folks knew his reputation: if the reward was dead-or-alive, Joe brought the man in alive, if he could.

  That’s who he was now, years after he recovered from a savage branding at age thirteen that brutally ended his days as a violent juvenile delinquent and left a permanent scar on his chest that had set him on the correct path. From that day forward, young Joe had pulled his life together and tried to make an honest living. The branding had haunted him his entire adult life every step that he took; the red-hot iron had driven his actions, defined his character, made him who he was. It was only a month ago when Noose finally had his face-to-face reckoning with that very same branding iron and the man who wielded it for evil, where Joe Noose finally made his peace with being branded himself. Or so he hoped. The branding scar in his chest he would take to his grave, but the branding scars in his soul were healing.

  He was feeling pretty damn good at this moment, running the herd, the sun in his face and the fresh air in his lungs. Joe savvied the horse between his legs felt the same way he did, knowing they usually thought alike.

  Noose looked down at his other best friend, the one he rode on, his magnificent bronze stallion, Copper. The horse had been with him on all his recent adventures and braved incredible danger with fearless fortitude; courageous like his master, though Joe sometimes wondered if you could rightly be called courageous if you were truly fearless, because while he himself wasn’t fearless, he swore Copper was. Noose had given the horse his name. A year ago, Joe had confiscated the stallion from a vicious bounty hunter he’d gunned down who had maltreated and physically abused the stallion. Joe only intended to use the horse to get away from the gang of bad men who were chasing him, but once he got on the steed he never got off, and man and horse became inseparable. It didn’t take long for the kindness and good treatment the good-hearted man gave to the badly abused stallion for the animal’s indestructible spirit to emerge. And so he became Copper, dubbed by Joe because in the sunlight his tawny golden-blond coat shone like a suit of metal armor.

  Right now, Copper was happy to be alive, charging along beside the countless longhorn steers at a prancing canter with a swagger in h
is bold four-legged step. Joe rode comfortably in his saddle. Copper’s head was held high on his enormous neck, golden withers wafting in the wind. The bounty hunter cracked a huge grin when he patted his steed and it looked back at him, smiling as horses sometimes do, and damned if that amazing horse didn’t wink.

  The string of longhorns went as far as the eye could see in both directions, a sea of jagged horns. Above, the sun shone in a bright blue sky filled with clouds, as below them the oceans of frost-patched grass and snowcapped mountains stretched far and wide. The shadow of a bald eagle falling across the herd made the rovers look up in wonder to see the bird extend its amazing seven-foot wingspan and swoop up and down the length of the herd, not once but twice.

  Joe laughed, turning in his saddle, craning his neck to watch the bald eagle’s magnificent avian display, hoping every day would be just like this one. Easiest job he ever had so far. The bounty hunter was enjoying it while he could.

  It was three hundred miles to Cheyenne and spring was in the air. On a day like this, it was perfectly natural to think nothing stood in their way.

  But Joe Noose knew better.

  It was time to talk to the boss lady.

  CHAPTER 4

  Spurring his horse to a gallop, Noose was gaining on Laura Holdridge’s covered wagon, the cattlewoman cracking the whip in the driver’s seat at the reins of her team of four horses pulling her rig alongside the longhorns, and as Joe rode up alongside the wagon, he could see the look of determination on her face like nothing was going to stop her.

  Leaning out of the saddle, the bounty hunter grabbed his horse’s tether and tied it off the rear transom of the wagon. Standing up in the saddle he reached for the rail of the wagon, jumping off his stallion onto the sideboard of the covered wagon. Winking at Copper, Joe said, “Be right back.” Then, buffeted by the wind, dust, and dirt, he made his way to the front of the moving wagon.

  Joe Noose swung into the driver’s seat beside Laura Holdridge, who sat forward, holding the reins and using the whip. She turned her face to him.

  Joe extended his hand, introducing himself although they had already been introduced. “My name’s John Smith.”

  “You said your name’s Joe Noose,” came her confused reply.

  “Not with these men. A few may have heard of me. I have a reputation.” It was noisy outside the wagon with pounding hooves of the cattle and horses and the racket of the wagon itself. Noose and Laura had to speak up to be heard, but Joe sat close to Laura so they could shout in each other’s ear; amid the cacophony of the cattle drive, none of the wranglers riding beside the steers could hear a word of what was said on the wagon. “They can’t know who I am or this is not going to work.”

  “What if they’ve seen you somewhere before?” She shouted in his ear, keeping face front and eyes on her team.

  “They won’t recognize me. I didn’t recognize them at the grave when Bess and I rode up today and I’m fairly certain I’ve never met any of them. The false name should do the trick to conceal my identity. ”

  “OK.”

  “It’s understood until we get to Cheyenne, call me John. Or Smith. Or anything you want to call me. Anything but Noose.”

  “I call all my crew by their last names.”

  “Smith then.”

  “OK, Smith.” The dusty wind was in their faces, blowing their hair and clothes, carrying the leathery smells of the hundreds of steers, an endless succession of horns stretching far ahead into the big country. “We better give you a cover story my boys will believe about why you joined the outfit. I’m gonna say my husband, Sam Holdridge, had you on his crew when he went to Canada and bought three hundred head two years ago. The outfit didn’t go with him on the trip because we needed them on our ranch, so he brought the cattle home with hired hands he picked up in Calgary. So you’re from Canada if anybody asks. Where are you from, anyway?”

  “A lot of places.” Noose shrugged.

  “Well, now you’re from Canada.”

  “Always wanted to go there. That about covers it then.”

  She turned her face to him, behind her windblown golden hair, fixing him in her steady blue-eyed gaze. “Anything y’all need from me, just name it, hear?”

  “There is one thing mebbe.”

  “Name it.” She cracked the whip with a vigorous “Yee-ah!”

  “A notebook and a pen to write with.”

  “Take the reins.” Laura handed Noose the reins and climbed out of the driver’s seat, ducking through the flap of the covered wagon. Joe snapped the reins and kept the horses moving. He leaned over and looked around the transom to check on his stallion he tied off on the speeding wagon. Copper kept up at a comfortable canter, giving its owner a look that said it was wondering what’s going on. Joe cracked a grin and sat back straight in the creaking driver’s seat bouncing on the wooden axles of the wooden wheels.

  The mounted wranglers herding the cattle were looking at him, giving him looks, wondering who the hell he was and what he was doing on their boss lady’s wagon. Noose knew he better get back on his horse before the time he was spending with Laura started looking suspicious.

  The canvas flap parted. The cattlewoman came out of her covered wagon, swung a leg over the driver’s seat and dropped beside him. In her hand was a small leather-bound notebook with a pen attached. “It’s an old diary I keep meaning to use but never do.” She handed it to him. The notebook fit snugly in the palm of his hand. “Is this what you need?”

  He gave her back the reins and flipped through the blank pages. “It’ll do. Need one of these on a murder investigation.”

  “A diary.” Laura was confused.

  “A murder book.”

  “How can anybody murder anyone with a book?”

  “That’s exactly what I said when Marshal Bess first told me what they call one of these.” Joe laughed, shaking his head. “During the investigation, I’m s’posed to make notes in this notebook of what I see and hear, make a list of suspects, write down clues and keep track of all the details and so forth, which’ll help us get the killer. At least so I’m told.” Laura looked over as she cracked the whip on her team of horses hauling her wagon. “I’ve never actually used one of these notebooks, mind,” Joe admitted with a shrug. “But Bess tells me every marshal uses a murder book because it helps them think. Use deduction, she calls it. This job seems as good a time as any to school myself in using one.”

  He opened the murder book, took the pen, and on the first page he wrote his first entry: SUSPECTS.

  Gesturing with his arm, the bounty hunter indicated the men on horses around her wagon, shepherding the herd. He counted nine, including the cook. Any one of them could be the killer. “Why don’t we start by you pointing out each of your men and giving me their names? That’ll help me put names to faces.”

  Setting down the whip, the cattlewoman pointed out each man in her outfit. “On the left of the herd, that’s Charley Sykes, Curly Brubaker, and Rowdy Maddox is the one with the red kerchief. Right of the herd, you got Joe Idaho, Frank Leadbetter, and the real skinny one is Wylie Jeffries.” Joe scribbled it all down in the book. “Behind us, Fred Kettlebone, our cook, driving the chuck wagon. Yonder on the other side of the cows, that’s Billy Joe Barlow. Started out with four more when I left the ranch in Consequence. These are who I have left. With five hundred steers, can’t afford to lose any more.”

  As one by one, Laura told him the names of her wranglers, Joe Noose wrote all those names down in his murder book, and now he had his list of suspects.

  SUSPECTS

  Charley Sykes.

  Curly Brubaker.

  Rowdy Maddox.

  Billy Joe Barlow. “B.J.”

  Wylie Jeffries.

  Frank Leadbetter.

  Joe Idaho.

  Fred Kettlebone.

  Eight men. One of them was a killer.

  Joe closed the murder book and put it in his jacket. “Don’t lose that book,” Laura warned. “One of my boys ge
ts their hands on it, we got trouble.”

  Noose patted his pocket. “Stays with me all the time.” Both Laura and Joe noticed that they were getting more and more suspicious looks from her outfit the longer they sat together on the wagon in conversation. “I better get back and join the outfit before your drivers start asking questions,” Joe said as he rose.

  “Good idea.” Laura nodded, snapping the reins.

  Joe swung out of the driver’s seat onto the transom. Noose looked back at her as he climbed onto the sideboard on the side of the wagon. “Remember, Mrs. Holdridge. It’s John Smith, don’t forget. Make one slip and call me Noose, my cover’s blown.”

  “Good luck, John Smith. What’s the next step?”

  “I meet the men.”

  Joe Noose leaped off the wagon and landed in the saddle of his horse. Mounted, he untethered Copper and off they rode. The next thing Laura Holdridge saw was the bounty hunter on his gorgeous golden steed galloping on ahead of her wagon to join the rovers, waving his hat with a holler.

  CHAPTER 5

  The cattle drive made fifteen miles by nightfall.

  The outfit set up camp along a tributary of the Snake River beside miles of grazing land where they stopped the herd. The outfit assembled the three wagons behind a grove of towering pines whose branches kept the hot sun out of their eyes until it set; once the sun went down the temperature dropped twenty degrees, and the night became black as pitch. The vagaries of Wyoming weather were something the outfit was used to. The cattle were calm, some asleep on their feet, the stock as tired as the drivers were after pushing the herd dawn to dusk with only one short break to rest and graze. It was quitting time for the rovers, but the newest member of the outfit’s day was just getting started.

  Joe Noose did not get off his horse when the rest of the wranglers dismounted after the long, hard ride. Not right away. The saddle gave him a high vantage point: twelve feet up—the combined height of his stallion then himself ground to eyeball; his vantage overlooked the entire camp. Noose closely observed the outfit’s activities. First thing the bounty hunter noticed was the outfit was not one big happy family; the drivers had split off into factions. Three, by his count.