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  Marshal Mackenzie walked to the rack by the door and got his hat. “Load up, Deputy. Let’s ride.” His spurs jingled as with a snap to his step he walked across the creaky floorboards to the gun rack and snatched two Winchester rifles, cocking and loading each.

  Opening the ammo chest, Deputy Swallows grabbed two boxes of .47 caliber and one bandolier belt of. 45 caliber ammunition. He took his bolt-action Henry rifle from the gun rack and screwed on his own hat.

  “Make sure this place is locked up tight so nobody harasses our prisoner while we’re gone.” The lawmen went around locking and bolting the windows and closing the steel shutters, which took them a minute or two and then they went to the door.

  “Behave yourself, Bonny Kate,” Marshal Mackenzie said on the way out.

  “I never do.” She smiled saucily. “Don’t hurry back now. I got no place to be.”

  “After you, Deputy,” said Mackenzie as he held the door and both men left the marshal’s office. He hung up the CLOSED sign inside the window on the way out. Then he bolted the triple locks.

  The lawmen stepped out into the fresh air and strode around back to the stable where their big hardy quarter horses were tethered. Each loaded their saddle holsters with their rifles and filled their saddlebags with ammo. They double-checked the loads in the heavy irons in their belt holsters. Saddling up, the marshal and deputy untethered their stallions’ tack, heading off at a full gallop out of the stable toward the big empty of Hoback Junction ten miles to the west.

  CHAPTER 27

  Yesterday the horse had climbed out of the Snake three miles farther down from where it fell in.

  The bracing chill of the turbulent river waters had refreshed the stallion while it was swept along the fast rapids, a relief from the brutal heat, but being off its feet had alarmed the steed desperately treading water with its hooves, struggling to keep its nose above the surface, snorting air.

  When unseen rocks crashed against its flanks the horse bellowed, and there was a bad moment in a rough patch of white water when blows of the stones below the surface and suffocating frigid water going up its choked nostrils to surge down its throat made the bronze horse feel certain it was going to drown . . . until seized by raw panic it pawed and twisted and righted itself, big brown eyes bulging with fierce determination to live, and so it did.

  Moments later, the cool water had turned deep and slow, current now smooth and stately in flow, easing the stallion’s lengthy passage downriver from up-country. The bronze horse rotated its sleek and strong body rightways up, legs not finding footing but hooves slowly pedaling underwater as if running in place and soon it was swimming. The motion kept its big head above water, the animal sucking in air as its hammering heart beat less quick until its feet at last met resistance of soft mud and the horse could walk and this it did . . . all the way out onto dry land.

  The bronze stallion stood on the plain dripping wet and shook itself dry. The soaked riderless empty saddle felt heavier on its back than it had before. Catching its breath and feeling a pang of hunger, the horse nibbled on the straw on the ground, then lifted its handsome head to look around its quiet, vast, unfamiliar surroundings. The horse had never been in this place before. It did not know where it was.

  A horse will always return to the barn or head home, wherever that home happens to be. This is instinct.

  This particular horse had no home; for as long as its equine brain recalled, its traveled life had been perpetually in transit, forever journeying to new and different places down distant trails the stallion was unacquainted with and never saw again, always headed where it hadn’t been before.

  But a primal instinct to return home stirred in the stallion. Not knowing where such a place could be, the horse experienced an urge to go back where it belonged.

  Which was?

  Where was home?

  At first, the animal didn’t know.

  Then it did.

  Doubt became certainty as the horse recalled the face of the rider who rode it last—the man who understood the stallion and treated it well, the friend whose heart beat in time with the stallion’s own, the partner who made it feel an equal; the horse had become reborn with his new friend in his saddle, had felt alive for the first time in its entire existence. Unlike the old rider who hurt and beat the horse until it felt enslaved, abused, and dead on its feet, this new rider was a friend who made the horse feel special and valued and free . . . and gave it strength.

  Home. The horse did not understand exactly what this home was that the pull of instinct was compelling it to return to, but the rugged stallion’s strong heart said the man was the closest thing to it.

  His friend was home.

  And that was where the horse must go.

  Last thing the horse remembered was watching his friend’s face looking back on the hill while the stallion was getting washed down the river . . . then the man was gone.

  The bronze-colored coat of the mighty stallion Joe Noose had dubbed Copper was drying and as the sun came out gained the color and hue of a glorious suit of armor.

  Besides a keen sense of direction, Copper had plenty of what is for good reason commonly called horse sense.

  The river had carried the horse in this direction.

  His friend was back the other way.

  Breaking into a quick trot, Copper set out and headed up-country.

  That was a day ago.

  CHAPTER 28

  As she sat on her horse amid a gang of bad men she distrusted, Bess Sugarland remembered the last time she had laid eyes on her father before riding after the man who killed him . . .

  Bess had closed his eyes before she left.

  Her soul had been reeling after the bounty killers left town to give chase to her father’s killer. The young woman didn’t know what to do. She was all alone and had never been alone. Bess had always had her dad, but suddenly, horrifically, no more. Marshal Nate Sugarland lay sprawled in the saloon, shot full of holes, covered with blood.

  She couldn’t just leave him there. Not in the bar, bleeding on the sawdust.

  Yet she had to go after the man responsible. Bess could not let her father’s murderer escape, even if a formidable gang of killers were already hot on his heels. And she was the marshal now.

  The thought of her father’s corpse going ripe in the heat if she was away for days curdled her stomach. It was wrong.

  But Bess knew if she did not saddle up in the next hour the gang of bounty killers would be long gone and she would not catch up.

  Standing in the empty saloon that still reeked of cordite and the coppery stink of blood, Bess stared down at the marshal. His blank eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. His ruddy, pudgy face and white whiskers were peppered with spackles of drying blood. His cheeks were already turning pale. The entrance wounds on his chest were raw and gushing and his shirt was soaked red. Her father had died a sudden, violent death and his last moments on earth were agonizing, this was clear, yet his expression was peaceful, Bess thought. There was no expression, she then realized, for the body was just a shell. His soul had departed.

  The clock on the wall ticked, reminding Bess of the minutes slipping away where her time for action would quickly pass.

  Her father would need to be properly buried but she had no time to do that now. The heat was going to get fierce in the next few hours. Bess thought what to do. There was ice in the cooler in the back of the bar in an oiled wooden trunk. Her first thought was to stow Marshal Sugarland’s body there, keep it on ice, thereby preserving it until her return.

  Her vision blurred as she saw the moisture on her hands and felt the hot wetness on her face, blinking away the sting of the tears. This was no time to cry. Crying would come later, when this was done. Right now, she had decisions to make.

  The ice cooler . . .

  No, not that.

  Bess saw in her mind’s eye the blue stiff figure of her father lying in a pile of ice and it was such a cold, bleak, lonely picture
she knew that just wouldn’t do.

  He needed to be home.

  Among his things.

  In his own bed.

  Cleaned up.

  At rest.

  Home.

  She swung her gaze through the swinging doors of the saloon and saw the U.S. Marshal’s office across the dirt main street of Hoback, the family quarters visible to the rear, and she made up her mind.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” Bess whispered down to the body at her feet. “I’m gonna get you home.”

  Decision made.

  Couching down, she tenderly got both hands under his armpits and heaved with all her strength. The corpse was heavy, limp but starting to stiffen with rigor mortis. Bess Sugarland bent down, using all her might to heave her father’s head and upper torso over her own shoulder, then rose and stood with a grimacing grunt. Nate Sugarland’s dead body was slumped in her strong and healthy young arms and for a moment Bess stood there holding him up, like a dance partner who had collapsed from exhaustion. The young woman felt his blood, the same blood as hers, splash over her shirt and trousers that became wet and sticky and the moisture of it was against her skin, but this only galvanized her further. Gritting her teeth with a determined gasp of effort, she bent her knees, got her own weight under the heavy body, and slung it over her shoulders, clinging with all her strength to the arms slung around her neck, and leveraged her father’s corpse onto her back.

  As she staggered with him across the floor, the old wooden boards creaking below her boots, the blood splattering the leather and leaving a bloody trail of bootprints in the sawdust, Bess caught a quick glimpse of the morning’s other victim behind her.

  The barman, blasted to pieces behind the counter, lay twisted in a pile of busted glass and was soaked with spilled whiskey from the shattered bottles. Him she would have to leave. Bess had never liked him anyway.

  Family came first.

  Each step she took broke her heart.

  Her dead father was on her back.

  His blood was all over her.

  Keeping her unblinking gaze fixed on the back door of their house behind the marshal’s office that drew ever closer with each step, Bess trundled on and focused on just putting one boot in front of the other. The flat heat of the Wyoming sun baked down. Bess heard only her own ragged exhalations and crunch of boot steps on the dirt. Once, somewhere far off, came the scree of a hawk but the woman didn’t notice.

  These were the hardest steps Bess ever took.

  She could smell her father, the familiar manly scent of soap and the outdoors coming off her skin as his cold face pressed against her cheek but it was fading now. Bess breathed the scent of her father in deep before it fled forever.

  “We’re going home, Dad. Almost there. I got you.” She heard herself repeating this over and over as she carried his lifeless heavy bulk across the street from the bar toward their shack until at last she was at the door.

  Shouldering through the door, Bess gasped in relief departing the suffocating heat as the cool of their rooms embraced her. The shades were drawn. The place was quiet and dark.

  She would not rest until she had him in bed.

  Her legs were ready to give out but Bess made it the twenty paces through the door of Nate’s room and with her last ounce of strength, carefully lowered her shoulder and eased his dead body onto the mattress of the bed. The springs squeaked. Relieved of the great weight, the young woman stood up and stretched her aching arms, gasping for breath. Looking down, she saw the bloody, peaceful body of her father lying half on, half off the bed. Her heart swelled knowing at least he was back home, in his bed. It seemed restful. Bess stepped forward and took both his legs and lifted them onto the mattress, straightening him out on the sheets.

  She pulled off his dusty, weathered boots and set them on the floor by his dresser. The boots were retired now, having walked their last step with Nate Sugarland.

  Then she removed his gun belt and slung it over the bed frame. He wouldn’t have to worry about his shooting anyone anymore.

  Going to the kitchen, Bess drew a bowl of water from the sink and fetched some soap and a few washcloths and towels. Returning to the bedroom, she set the bowl and cloths on the dresser. Then she quietly sat on the bed beside her father.

  And she cleaned him up.

  Washed the blood from his face.

  Removed his shirt.

  Gently used a wet soapy washcloth to wash the blood from his big torso and from around the bullet wounds.

  She cleaned him up with loving care.

  The tears rolled down her face.

  Soon the blood was gone and except for the ugly black holes in his chest, Nate Sugarland seemed like he was asleep except his eyes were open.

  Reaching out two fingers, Bess gently closed the lids.

  Nate’s eyes were now shut.

  His daughter rose and went to the closet, fetching the folded quilt, his favorite, that her mother had sewn for him when she was alive. Bess laid the quilt over her father and drew it up to his neck like a blanket.

  Last, Bess Sugarland leaned forward and kissed Nate on his cold forehead. She whispered in his ear, “I love you, Dad. I’m going to catch the man that killed you and have him hanged. I’ll pull the trigger on him myself if it comes to that. I have to go now.”

  Her job was done here.

  She straightened up and buckled on his gun belt, checking the loads in the pistols. The Colt Peacemaker revolvers were very heavy but the heft felt good in her hands. They would knock down whatever they hit and what they hit would stay down.

  They were big guns but she had big hands.

  One of the many strong things she had gotten from her father.

  Then she turned and left the room.

  A minute later, acting U.S. Marshal Bess Sugarland had saddled up and was riding hell-for-leather out of town after the gang of bounty killers.

  Here, now, twenty-four hours later, Bess rode on her horse with the gang of assassins hunting Nate’s killer. She switched her gaze left and right at the big, filthy armed men on horseback on all sides. Homicide radiated off them. She could smell murder on their dirty hides.

  And Bess knew that she might already have found who killed her father.

  The question was, what was she going to do about it?

  She had a few ideas . . .

  CHAPTER 29

  Making doubly sure he stayed out of sight before he chanced a look at his pursuers from his position behind the rocks, Noose peered over the edge of the boulder, squinted through the trees, and made out the distant specks of the men and horses.

  It was the bounty killers, all right. Hot on his trail.

  He counted.

  Counted again.

  That couldn’t be right . . .

  There were twelve to start, Noose recalled. He’d taken out five of the gang over the last day and had been certain those vermin were dead . . . yet the distant figures of men and horses across the ridge clearly numbered eight.

  Didn’t make sense.

  Seemed highly unlikely they had hooked up with more of their confederates way out in this remote stretch of wilderness that was a long way from anywhere else.

  It occurred to Noose that one of the gunmen he thought he had killed had survived and maybe these bastards were tougher than he thought.

  He needed to take a closer look and be sure he wasn’t seeing things.

  Rummaging in his jacket, wincing from the shooting pain in his ribs, Noose fetched up his small pair of field glasses. Lifting them to his eye, he peered through the binoculars, panning them left and right until he got a fix on the gang, magnified now large enough in his view to count the cartridges on their bandoliers.

  The faces were all recognizable from the up-close look at them he’d had yesterday back at the saloon . . . there was the leader, Frank Butler, the only bounty killer whose name Noose knew, the hooded cold-eyed gaze over his black handlebar mustache making him instantly identifiable. Noose recognized the
others easily enough: the small one that looked like a rat; the bald one with the scattergun slung over his shoulder . . . face after face was familiar as he scanned his field glasses across the men and horses.

  Then he saw the woman.

  And now he knew why there were eight.

  Noose recognized her, too, from the saloon. The marshal’s daughter. Auburn-haired and uppity, full of juice. What the hell was her name? He disremembered. While the woman had been a deputy back at the town it looked like she had switched badges, because that was a shiny silver seven-star U.S. Marshal’s badge now pinned on her pert bosom. So that was it: the marshal’s daughter was riding with the bounty killers to oversee the hunt for her father’s killer. Now it all made sense.

  Lowering the binoculars, Noose rubbed the stinging sweat out of his eyes and raised the field glasses to look again. He settled the oval view on the female marshal. She had sand, this one. Noose had picked up on that back in the bar but he truly respected her grit now. Hell of a day she must have had dealing with her father being shot and now taking it upon herself to ride with this dangerous bunch—one woman alone in the woods with seven heavily armed professional killers. And she didn’t look afraid.

  From the gang’s glowering countenances and the tension he could pick up even from this distance, Noose knew that she hadn’t been invited. The woman came on her own volition and was sticking to them like glue. This pack of vultures did not appreciate her presence, that much was clear. It wasn’t tough to figure out why: Butler and his brutal crew wanted to kill Noose out in the middle of nowhere where there were no witnesses and bring him back slung over the saddle for that fat reward they meant to collect.

  This woman marshal complicated things.

  In a lot of ways.

  In spite of himself, Noose’s mouth cracked in a narrow grin as he chuckled quietly, thinking about all the ways the lady was messing up Butler’s evil plan just by the simple fact of being there.

  Reckon those boys are learning there’s no such thing as easy money, Noose mused. Probably thinking about that a lot once she showed up. Serves them right.