Branded Page 11

  “I ain’t fixed no broken brands.”

  “You sure?”

  “Ain’t seen no three-fingered men, neither.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  “Because I didn’t like the way this big guy was lookin’ at me.”

  Bess chuckled not in a nice way. “Well, ain’t how he looks at you that should concern you because he looks at everybody that way. It’s him hitting you that you want to worry about. Have a nice day, sir.”

  Leaving the blacksmith’s stall, Noose, Bess, and Emmett headed down the block toward the stable.

  As they rounded the corner, Noose saw a flash of yellow, thought he saw a man with a yellow kerchief standing watching him, then duck out of sight, but when he looked again there was nobody wearing anything yellow among the passing people.

  “Hold up,” Noose said. Something had caught his attention. His two companions stopped where he did and followed his gaze to a building down a side street.

  The Wyoming chapter of the Cattlemen’s Association was on the edge of town. A large barn and stockade had several small offices in an unfinished wood structure. The organization had a small staff that managed the supervision of all the cattle ranches from Casper to Evanston.

  “What are you thinking, Joe?” Bess asked.

  “I’m thinking it’s time we find out what ranch that Q brand belongs to. There can’t be more than one. The Wyoming Cattlemen’s Association keeps a register of all the ranches in the territory and keeps their brands on record.”

  “Yes, it does,” agreed Emmett.

  “Our next stop,” said Bess.

  The three manhunters walked down the street to the entrance of the Cattlemen’s Association and went through the door, unaware they were being closely watched.

  * * *

  Mason Cole had been reaching for his gun, having a clean shot at Joe Noose’s back when his target was arguing with the blacksmith five minutes ago, then those damn marshals showed up out of nowhere and the ex-con missed his opportunity to kill the bounty hunter. It was suicide to try it with the two lawmen present because they’d shoot him dead.

  Cursing fate, Cole hung back, leaning against the wall across the street in the shade of the overhang, where he blended in with the crowd. It was freezing but he was sweating. Wiping perspiration from his forehead with his filthy yellow kerchief, he noticed his hands were shaking from nerves. He willed them to be still, settled down, and kept watch on the three people across the street talking to the blacksmith. Shortly whatever business needed to be conducted was finished, and Noose headed off down the street in the company of the two marshals. When they were two hundred yards away, Mason Cole began to follow from an inconspicuous distance. His mean eyes locked on the big man’s back were squinting and stinging because Cole wasn’t blinking—no way he would miss the moment when the three split up and the bounty hunter was alone again . . . when he, Cole, would strike. He guessed the bounty hunter and the marshals weren’t leaving town anytime soon. They were here on some kind of business, probably chasing a bounty, and were making a lot of stops, probably seeing if anybody had seen whomever they were after.

  Mason Cole told himself all he had to do was be patient, wait until Noose stepped away from the others—a man has to eventually: everybody needs to take a leak at some point.

  He’d get another shot at Joe Noose.

  * * *

  Inside the Wyoming chapter of the Cattlemen’s Association, the three manhunters entered a large warehouse room, well appointed for the rough-hewn town. The room was lined with bookshelves stacked with records in volumes and loose- or bound-paper form. The place had a musty, cozy atmosphere, due to the comforting warmth of the wood-burning cast-iron stove against the wall, and the pleasurable aroma of hot coffee bubbling on the burner. A single clerk labored at a desk in the middle of the room.

  “Let me do the talking,” Noose said.

  Bess made an ushering be my guest gesture with her glove, and she and Emmett followed Noose to the desk where the ruddy young clerk in a bow tie and spectacles sat going over papers. He looked up with a friendly smile, taking notice of the two silver badges on the man’s and woman’s chests. “How can I help the U.S. Marshals Service?”

  Noose stepped forward, taking off his hat, and spoke in a serious tone of voice. “We’re trying to find the ranch that a particular brand belongs to. Would you have that information?”

  “Mostly, yes. Can you describe the brand?”

  “It’s a Q. Shaped like the capital letter.”

  “Q, eh? That’s common. There may be more than one. But if it’s in Wyoming, we should have a record. Well, let me look it up. Give me a few minutes.”

  The clerk stepped away from his desk and went to a large shelf lined with dusty leather-bound volumes and selected one. He pulled it down, set it on a back table, and began thumbing through the pages while the three manhunters waited, exchanging uncertain glances.

  The clerk finally stopped at one page. “I found a Bar Q ranch. Owner is one Abraham Quaid.”

  Noose raised an eyebrow. “In Wyoming.”

  “Correct.”

  “Would you have a location for the ranch?”

  “Yes. It says here the address for the Bar Q ranch we have listed is in Consequence.”

  “Where the hell is that?”

  “Let’s take a look at the map.” The clerk gestured the bounty hunter and two marshals over to a ten-foot map of Wyoming that was framed on the wall. Adjusting his spectacles, he found Wind River, their current location, with his finger, then traced his finger left and up on the map until he located a designation in a remote area for a place called Consequence, Wyoming.

  “It’s about a hundred and seventy miles northwest of here. Middle of nowhere, actually. Closest town is Consequence, five miles from the ranch itself. It’s quite a ride from Wind River.”

  “You’re sure about all this?”

  “Well, this individual Abraham Quaid listed as the rightful owner filed the ranch and brand in July 1830, fifty years ago. Nothing to say the place is still there. But they use a Q brand, or used to.”

  “Still do,” Noose said grimly.

  “Hope this was of help to you folks. Help yourself to some coffee over by the stove if you have a mind to. I have to get back to work. A lady cattleman named Laura Holdridge at the Bar H Ranch is planning a giant longhorn drive to Cheyenne for the big Cattleman’s Association auction. Her husband just died, so there’s a lot of paperwork I have to do to get the ownership transfers of all those cows in order. Got to get back to work. Good day, Marshals.”

  It was damn cold outside and a lot warmer inside the Cattlemen’s Association building. It was good to be out of the elements, so the three manhunters went over to the stove and poured themselves coffee, talking things over.

  “He has a name now.”

  Emmett and Bess looked at Noose, wondering what he meant. He went on. “The man who branded me has a name. The Brander has a name: Abraham Quaid.”

  Bess nodded.

  So did Emmett, with a heavy sigh. “Good to know.”

  Joe Noose’s gaze had a distant look, his eyes filled with storm clouds. “I need to go to the ranch. The ranch that belongs to that brand.”

  “You never knew where it was until now?”

  “ No.”

  “No idea?”

  “Wyoming, I figured, I guess.”

  “All these years you never gone back, Joe?”

  “No reason to. Until now.”

  Noose was not being truthful; he could have found it, could find anybody anywhere on the planet, but the ranch where he was branded was the last place he ever wanted to set foot again. The very thought of going there created a disagreeable sensation in him.

  Fear.

  Joe Noose was a man afraid of nothing.

  Except, it seemed, the old man who branded him; the one time in his life he was helpless, tortured, and victimized. Noose felt his stomach go queasy a
nd a weakness in his limbs at the thought of returning to that damned ranch.

  Yet somewhere, deep inside, the bounty hunter had always known he would one day return to the place where his soul was forged by the branding iron, and he felt destiny pulling him there now.

  Marshal Bess was watching Noose closely and seemed to intuit what the voices of inner demons were saying to him, but her steady supportive gaze said I’ll be there, right beside you.

  The other marshal tugged laconically on his Stetson and pulled his beard. “I think going to that ranch sounds like a total waste of valuable time that we should be getting after this killer,” Emmett sputtered. “Okay, so the old man came from there, but he sure as hell ain’t there now, in the first place. Plus we got no idea where it is, in the second place.”

  “I think we’ll find some answers there,” Noose said.

  “We’ll ride there directly, first thing tomorrow,” Bess stated.

  It was decided.

  * * *

  The trio separated a few minutes later to canvas the town and question the locals; it would save time if they split up and spoke to the owners and employees to see if they had seen the three-fingered man who now had a name besides The Brander. Noose would talk to the stablemaster, Bess would talk to the grocer and gunsmith, and Emmett would talk to the owner of the feed store and any other places in that part of town.

  As Noose was walking away alone, he turned into an alley leading to the stable.

  And Mason Cole knew this was his moment.

  The ex-con crossed the street and followed the man whose guts he hated into the alley, tailing about fifty feet behind. And as soon as he was in the alley, Mason Cole drew both pistols and took aim at the dead center of Joe Noose’s back.

  Joe Noose whirled, his right hand sliding his Colt Peacemaker out of his holster, finger on the trigger but not squeezing it, the clean action of the slide of the draw once the barrel cleared the holster and was up, pushing the top of the gun under his flattened left palm pulling and releasing the hammer and shooting the bullet—Joe Noose fanning and firing took a fraction of a second less than it would have taken for him to squeeze the trigger, but that fraction of a second cost Mason Cole his life.

  The .45 round punched a dime-sized hole in his heart.

  Cole was dead before he hit the ground.

  Joe Noose didn’t like killing a man.

  But he didn’t hesitate when he had to.

  His reflexes were still good.

  After The Brander gave him that case of nerves, it was good to know.

  Damn good.

  CHAPTER 15

  Her hot bath felt exquisite.

  Bess Sugarland was sunk in the big copper tub up to her neck. Beside her, a large boiling pot of water sat on a chair. The steam fogged the windows of the cozy hotel room, past the curtains.

  It had been a month since she had been able to bathe, out on the cold, rugged trail, and if the water wasn’t black, it felt like it should be. Right now, she luxuriated, felt the searing water relax her tired, knotted muscles, laid her head back.

  She took another swig of whiskey from the bottle on the floor beside her; it was good local scotch malt, and burned her throat going down in a good way, giving her a glow all over. She’d forgotten about life’s pleasures.

  It was good to be alone.

  She liked the men she rode with like brothers, one anyway, but a girl needed alone time.

  Her inebriated eye caught the glint of the U.S. Marshal’s badge sitting with her clothes atop the comfortable mattress and clean sheets she could not wait to climb into.

  It was good to take the badge off.

  A girl needed to be a girl sometimes, even when she was a lawman.

  As Bess blissed out in the steam, her tensions melting away in the hot tub, her mind wandered back over the events of the long day.

  The day had ended with a literal bang when Joe Noose shot a man who was gunning for him. The bounty hunter had immediately identified the corpse as one Mason Cole, a decade-old dead-or-alive bounty he had delivered to Laramie back in the day. From the looks of things, the man had spotted Noose someplace and come for some payback. Bess reflected that her friend Joe must have to live his life looking over his shoulder for the men he brought in alive on dead-or-alive bounties coming after him someday; it was the cost of doing business of how he made his living. Noose had to appreciate the risk that some of his bounties would want revenge, must know it would be safer and easier to kill them rather than leave them alive where they could retaliate—killing them was perfectly legal in a dead-or-alive bounty—but knowing all that, Joe Noose still stuck to his code about bringing in the men alive when he could. With that insight, the lady marshal’s admiration and affection for her friend grew greater.

  It had been a brouhaha today when the bullets started flying. Sheriff Potter had come running and though he may have made a doddering first impression, the lawman took a hard line about gunfights in his town of Wind River and conducted a hard-nosed investigation that involved a tough interrogation of Joe Noose. Luckily for Joe, a witness came forward: a stable hand was coming out of the barn just when Mason Cole drew his guns to shoot Noose in the back and saw the whole thing when Noose drew first and shot his attacker down in self-defense. The stable hand’s story matched the bounty hunter’s, two U.S. Marshals vouched for their companion’s character, and for Sheriff Potter the case was closed.

  After that, Noose, Bess, and Emmett checked into the town’s one fine hotel and splurged on a hot steak dinner and a lot of drinks. For the first time since they lit out on their journey, the three of them relaxed and laughed and enjoyed one another’s company as friends. The steaks were excellent.

  Afterward, drunk, happy, and ready to sleep in a real bed, the trio retired to their rooms. And Bess Sugarland repaired to her long-dreamed-of hot bath where she now slumbered peacefully in the comforting water.

  She had sweet dreams that night.

  It would be the last ones she would have for a long time to come.

  CHAPTER 16

  The cattle were lowing.

  Three hundred head of steer stood in the Wyoming winter valley in the dead of night.

  The solitary wrangler Lonny Seed had the shit detail, the graveyard shift. Six hours from midnight to sunrise, sitting on his frozen saddle in the middle of the herd, keeping an eye on the stock. Here Lonny sat, straddling his pony, in the middle of the steers. The night was almost pitch-black from the fingernail moon carving a snick through the fuzzy winter clouds overhead. Hulking bodies of the cattle were mountainous shadowed shapes looming across the frozen tundra on all sides of his horse, disappearing off into the darkness where they could be heard but not seen. The stink of cow shit was gag-inducing.

  Christ, it was cold.

  The cowboy’s bones were chilled to the marrow. Hugging himself, Lonny felt a series of uncontrollable shivers shudder through his system—with his running nose and hacking cough expelling condensed breath into the arctic cold, he knew he was getting sick.

  Casting a surly sidelong look to his left, he saw the distant tiny light of the kerosene lamp in the crew tent three hundred yards away at the eastern edge of the herd—a lone beacon in the void like a solitary star in the sky—where the other six wranglers and ramrods were warm and asleep under their blankets. He was anything but, out here in the frozen hell.

  What was the bitterest pill for Lonny Seed to swallow was that not two months ago the cowboy had been sitting on a horse looking out over a herd of prime steers twice the size of this that he and his gang owned—stole, to be precise, but those cattle were theirs and he had an equal share—he’d been a damn cattle baron or as close as he’d ever been to one. Now, through the cruel workings of fate, Lonny no longer owned any cattle and had been reduced to hiring on as a two-bit wrangler tending another man’s herd so he could earn enough money to eat. How far he had fallen in so quick a time. His lonely, miserable post allowed him plenty of time to wallow in self-pit
y.

  Only when he noticed the fumes of condensation billowing up from his chin around his face, did Lonny realize his teeth were chattering and he’d been cursing under his breath.

  The only good thing about the damn subzero temperatures was the cattle didn’t budge. It was too cold for them, too. And them not moving was a good thing because in the black of night, a hundred tons of bulls could flatten you and your horse if a few of them started moving, because they could barely see you in the daytime and were blind in absolute dark like this.

  Presently, Lonny Seed realized he was not alone.

  There was somebody else out here in the herd with him.

  His first reaction was relief, figuring the foreman had sent one of the other ramrods out to split the shift.

  “Jones? Flaherty? That one of you boys out there?” he called into the ubiquitous gloom. Nobody answered. “Han-nerty. Cable?” Still no answer. Lonny squinted out at row after row of shadowy bovine backs, looming like a range of lumpy hills into the dim. And he saw all the horns. Jutting forests of long, jagged steer horns, far as the eye can see.

  A few of the cattle shifted position.

  Somebody was pushing through the steers, on foot, coming his way. But Lonny couldn’t see who, only the displacement of the steers indicating the interloper’s position. Involuntarily, the wrangler’s hand touched the stock of his holstered Colt Navy. “Who’s out there?” Again, no answer.

  The cowboy caught just a glimpse of the glow before it disappeared, a radiance like red-hot metal.

  Swinging in the saddle, Lonny looked left and right, drawing his pistol and not taking any chances. The sound of the cattle hooves thumping the hard frozen ground was becoming more audible. His sneaky brown eyes slid left and right, seeing nothing but cows. Cursing himself for letting his nerves get the better of him, the cowboy took a deep breath and tried to settle down in the saddle. He had hours on his shift to go yet.

  His stiff half-frozen hand clenched and unclenched on the stock of his Colt revolver, his fingers too numb to return it to his holster.