Noose Read online

  The cowboy shrugged. “Stubborn, I guess.”

  The marshal took out her handkerchief, poured water on the cloth, and cleaned the bullet wound as best she could. His chest was covered with dried blood and as some of the caked gore came off she saw the bruised swelling on his right side. She whistled through her teeth. “Not only do you have a bullet in you—”

  “It went clean through.”

  “Okay. Not only have you been shot, you got a few broken ribs.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  Rubbing the balled wet handkerchief on Noose’s chest over what she thought was another wound under the dried blood, the bare skin was cleaned . . . what was revealed in the center of his chest made her recoil in shock. With a startled gasp, Bess took an involuntary step backward when she saw what was on Joe Noose’s chest. “Is that what I think it is?” She choked.

  He sighed.

  Furrowing her brows and leaning in for a closer look, Bess cleaned the blood off around a savage burn scar seared into the flesh of his muscular torso, the pale mottled flesh in the center of his hairy chest a disfigurement where no hair would ever again grow, a mark roughly the size of her fist:

  The letter was upside down.

  It looked like a noose with a piece of rope attached.

  And it had been made by a red-hot cattle brand.

  The man had been branded.

  Like an animal.

  Noose just watched her face evenly, his eyes unreadable.

  Bess was mortified. “Joe Noose. You got branded. Somebody branded you like a damn steer. Who would do such a thing to a man?”

  She had only glimpsed the mark for a few seconds before Noose noticed she was staring at it and his eyes flashed with unease as he quickly pulled the shirt over his torso to cover himself up and the branding scar was now lost to her view. But that was long enough for Bess to see the weal made by a red-hot branding iron that had happened years ago, for the mark had long since healed over.

  The subject plainly made Noose uncomfortable, so he changed the topic as he buttoned his shirt. “We best get moving.”

  Bess, being young and forward and impulsive, couldn’t take a hint. “How did you get branded, Noose? That brand looks like a noose. That how you got your name?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But—”

  Avoiding her gaze uncharacteristically, for the big cowboy was a man who looked you straight in the eye at all times, Noose just muttered evasively in his laconic drawl, “Don’t matter. Nothing to do with our present situation.” The cowboy didn’t want to talk about it. This much became clear to the marshal so she dropped the subject.

  “I need you to stay alive, Noose. We’re just ten miles from Jackson. You got to stay alive to tell the law there your story. Think you can do that?”

  Noose nodded.

  “You saw them kill the marshal, you said.”

  He nodded again. Bess poured some canteen water on his head to refresh him, and he asked, “How many of them are left?”

  “Seven. You got the rest.”

  Noose’s grin was mean. “Good start.”

  “That’s a fact. You shot the hell out of those boys.”

  “They had it coming.”

  “That is also a fact.”

  The bounty hunter’s mind was working behind his eyes. “The reward. How much is it?”

  “Hunnert thousand dollars.”

  “Paid to the man brings in the man killed the marshal.”

  “In cash, dead or alive.”

  “The reward belongs on Frank Butler.” Newly energized, Noose rose fearsomely to his feet. “I intend to collect.”

  “I’ll help you,” she said.

  “You want a cut?” he asked.

  The female lawman just shook her head.

  “What do you want, then?”

  She looked at him true.

  “Justice.”

  Then she added, “And I want the rest. I want to know everything that happened yesterday.”

  The bounty hunter and the lawman pressed on side by side across the rugged tundra of the ridge and over the next five minutes he told her.

  After Bess had heard his story, she said, “So they ambushed and murdered the man you’d already caught, then stole the body for the reward. That’s how this whole thing got started.”

  “Right, that’s the way it happened.”

  “And you went after them. Alone.”

  Noose shrugged. “Reckon.”

  “Couldn’t just drop it? Cut your losses?”

  “They killed an innocent man.”

  “What was that to you?”

  “He was in my custody. I was bringing him in.”

  “Took a big risk. One against twelve.”

  “Didn’t think too much about it. Figured I’d get the marshal involved and things would get straightened out. Never figured them for killing the marshal nor framing me.” He chuckled. “But I gotta give ’em credit. Was pretty smart. Makes you wonder if it’s the first time anybody tried it.”

  “But now I know the truth, it ain’t gonna work out so good for that man Butler.”

  Noose shot Bess a flinty glance. “Unless you’re dead and can’t be a witness. Something for you to think about.”

  They locked eyes.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, sticking her jaw out brashly.

  “Due respect. Just sayin’.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Keep your eyes open. Ears, too.”

  “They’re gonna be after us soon.”

  “Stake your life upon it.”

  They traveled in silence for a few minutes without discussion until at last he spoke up. “You’re one to talk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long were you riding with that gang?”

  “Since three miles out of Hoback.”

  “One girl. Seven of those bastards. You have any idea what could have happened to you?”

  “I was lucky, I guess.”

  “Just saying. You’re one to talk to me about going up one against twelve.”

  “It was different. That man they killed who you had the bounty on was a stranger. Didn’t mean nothing to you. The marshal was my daddy.”

  “You didn’t know they killed him then.”

  “No, I thought you did.”

  “So why not just let them do their job? They were plenty good at killing.”

  She was reflective for a moment, ashamed and defiant. “I guess I know what it was. Because I wanted to be the one pulled the trigger on the man that killed my daddy. I wanted to do it with my own hand, not let somebody else do it. I wanted to kill that son of a bitch myself.”

  “And you thought that was me.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “The men were talking. I heard you in the rocks. I don’t know. Maybe somehow I knew all along. I was thinking about you a lot on the trail. First I hated you, waiting for you to die. Then all you went through I was seeing firsthand, the odds against you, you sticking in there fighting and giving it right back to those bastards, that got my respect, made me even root for you, and, Joe Noose, that riled me. But somewhere deep down I knew a man like that couldn’t be no yellow-bellied killer. And I could see just the kind of yellowbellies that gang is.”

  “Thanks.” His eyes flashed with warmth.

  Noose grimaced and choked, buckling over. Alarmed, Bess grabbed hold of him and ran her hands over his torso. He groaned. “You come this far. You gotta make it. If you die, there ain’t no witness to who killed my father.”

  He nodded and stood straighter. “I know you don’t want Butler to get off.”

  “He won’t get off. One way or the other. Even if I have to shoot him myself. Thing is, I’d have to throw away my badge after I did that.”

  He grinned at her. “You’re my kind of gal.”

  They kept walking, looking around them as they lit out towar
d the rise of canyons dead ahead.

  All the while Bess was thinking, I’m going to find out why you got branded one day, Joe Noose. If we get through this, somehow I’m going to make you trust me enough to tell me . . .

  * * *

  Noose himself had nothing to say for a while. Wishing the woman had not seen the mark of the brand on his chest or asked questions about it—there were some things a man kept to himself.

  The cowboy remembered all too well how he got the brand. He remembered every day of his life. And was remembering now . . .

  . . . It was always the same jumble of images he would never forget that flooded his skull, always his memory of that sizzling red-hot brand getting closer and closer . . . and other memories: four nooses dangling from the tree . . . four ropes tied to saddle pommels of the horses . . . the old man’s severe hooked face and hard pitiless eyes without a trace of mercy . . . the horses’ hooves pawing the dirt . . . the blazing Q brand coming ever nearer . . . the terrified faces of the men with the nooses around their necks, faces still familiar even as he had disremembered their names . . . the ropes connected to the nooses tightening . . . the two young boys crying . . . the old man’s shot-apart hand with no thumb or forefinger . . . that disfigured chicken claw of a hand clutching the scattergun and blasting it . . . the chorus of snapping necks . . . the fiery brand pressed against his naked chest, the white-hot agony and smell of his own burning flesh up his nose . . .

  There had been a time Noose had tried to forget those events and put all that behind him but every time he looked at his chest he was freshly reminded. Just like the old man said he would be. Now Noose forced himself to remember because he knew the day he forgot, he was lost.

  So it had become habit every day of his life that Joe Noose remembered the fateful day he was branded.

  And the old man’s words about being too young to hang . . .

  CHAPTER 32

  The gold pocket watch snapped shut with a metallic report that sounded louder than it was to the disgruntled ears of the man who had checked the timepiece five times in as many minutes. Frank Butler replaced the watch on its gold fob in the pocket of his black button-down vest beneath his duster.

  What was taking that woman so long?

  The lady marshal had left to answer nature’s call a full half hour ago and still she hadn’t returned. Butler looked around with a circumspect eye at the surly, antsy faces of his men sitting in the saddles of their horses with nothing to do but shove their thumbs farther up their behinds. They were all getting restless, their leader saw. Like himself, they were men of action and cooling their heels for no good reason didn’t sit well with them, not with this kind of reward money at stake. They were like sharks, he and his boys. Butler once read somewhere that sharks swam or died because swimming was how they breathed, and while he had never seen a shark, he knew they were at the top of the food chain of nature’s apex predator killers, just how he fancied his gang to be the most dangerous bounty killers in the West. Difference being, instead of swim or die with them, it was ride and shoot or die. And for the last half hour they had been doing none of either and it was getting tough to breathe.

  Because the bitch was taking too damn long.

  He would have sent some boys after the marshal’s daughter to check on her by now, but she went off alone to relieve herself and Butler didn’t want her surprised by his men walking up to her when she had her pants down around her ankles. That would not improve her disposition one bit and might get the unlucky gunmen shot. He was stuck with this vixen on this long ride because of her badge and he didn’t want her to have any more of an attitude problem than she already had. But being a gentleman had its limits. They had a reward to get after and pretty soon he was going to fetch her himself whether she was taking a dump or not.

  So where was she? He kept coming back to that. What was keeping her?

  Butler’s brain turned over the possibilities for her present absence. Might be that time of the month for her. Might be that the trail disagreed with her and her bowels . . . well, he didn’t need to think about that.

  There was one thing he could do.

  Leave her behind.

  Why not?

  Just ride off with the gang and get on with their business hunting down Noose. Now Butler had an excuse to shake the troublesome marshal loose—it was her taking so long—if the marshal caught up later and gave them an earful.

  “Mr. Butler, how long we going to have to wait for this woman? I say just get riding and leave her behind.” Butler shot a glance to Sharpless, who had just spoken. From the looks on his shootists’ faces and murmurs of agreement, the sentiment was a shared one. Daylight was wasting and with each passing minute their reward was farther from their hands. Butler himself was inclined to not further delay their departure until . . .

  “Where the hell everybody figure that marshal got to?” Garrity wondered out loud.

  “Maybe she run into Noose,” Culhane joked.

  That drew titters of amusement from everyone in the gang except Frank Butler, who now wore a saturnine expression of considerable severity on his suddenly suspicious face. “Dismount. Everybody. Lock and load,” the leader snapped abruptly as he swung out of his saddle and his boots hit the ground with a crash of spurs.

  “We’re going after her.”

  * * *

  As the big cowboy and female lawman made their way down the canyon, step by steady step, she kept looking behind her up at the mountainside rearing above. There was movement behind them through the trees a few hundred yards above them. The sounds of boots and the clanking metal of guns were intermittent but audible and getting louder as the men who made those noises drew closer. The bounty killers were after them, all right. The entire gang coming on strong. They were making as much of an effort to keep quiet or conceal their presence as a steam train did highballing down the rails.

  Noose and Bess came to a stop on the ridge and scanned their surroundings. Right now they had cover with the trees above them, and because of the canopy it was likely the Butler Gang didn’t see them yet since no bullets had come their way. But both the man and the woman could see that advantage was about to end, because from this point forward it was open country for half a mile until a tree line at the forest base to the west . . . This wasn’t going to work.

  “They’re coming,” Bess tightly said. “I knew Butler was gonna know I been gone too long and figure it out. Was just a matter of time. He hasn’t trusted me for a while now.”

  “Best keep moving, then.” Noose helped her along the downward trail.

  Bess threw a worried glance over her shoulder. “No. They’re closing in. We’re outnumbered. There’s too many of them and they got more guns.”

  “We just have to—”

  Noose looked down at his arm as Bess gripped it tightly, then looked up into her strong, honest eyes that stared back into his own with calm force. “We have to split up. You head west.” She pointed. “That way. Plenty of cover that direction.” Bess looked over her shoulder, lips compressed. “I’m going to go back and intercept Butler and his gang. I’ll lead them in the other direction, get them off your trail. Point them east. Say I saw you head that way.”

  “What if they don’t believe you?”

  “That’s my problem. I’m a U.S. Marshal and it’s time I start acting like one.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’m the law and I’m giving the orders around here.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She reached toward her right holster. “I’m gonna give you one of my guns so you’re not unarmed.”

  He put his hand on hers as she touched her pistol and shook his head. “Bad idea. Butler is no fool and nothing gets by him. You can bet he’ll notice one of your guns is missing and be asking questions.”

  “I’ll say I dropped it.”

  Bess saw Noose give her a skeptical glance and she said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t believe me, either.”

  Noose saw fro
m her decisive expression there was no arguing with her. “Marshal.”

  She looked him a question.

  “Thanks for everything you’re doing for me.” His face was holding back the emotion he felt. “You saved my life.”

  Bess returned a cocky smile. “Maybe you can do the same for me sometime.”

  “I always return a favor. Good luck.”

  With that, Noose turned and sprinted down the ravine into the rocks and brush, heading in the direction away from the sun into the rugged wilderness ahead. As he made tracks, he looked back twice over his shoulder.

  The first time Bess was halfway back up the hill.

  The second time she was gone.

  Noose was by himself again.

  But he didn’t feel alone.

  * * *

  “Easy.”

  Marshal Bess Sugarland stepped out of the brush with her open palms spread away from the guns in her holsters.

  Frank Butler glowered at her as he slowly thumbed the hammer of his Colt Dragoon he had pointed in her face out of cocking position. His black eyes never left her as he nudged his jaw, and the rest of the gang slowly lowered the guns they had aimed at the marshal.

  Bess noticed Culhane and Lawson took the longest amount of time to take their guns off her, itching to kill her in the worst way and looking for any excuse.

  “You have some explaining to do,” Butler said suspiciously.

  “I’m the marshal around here. I don’t have to explain anything. Especially to you,” Bess said, walking with a lady swagger into the midst of the bounty killers.

  “What were you doing took you so long?” His eyes followed her. His voice was flat.

  “Your job for you.” Bess turned to face Butler, removing her canteen from its shoulder strap and unscrewing the cap.

  The leader’s impassive expression betrayed the tiniest twitch of confusion.

  She took a swig of water. “I found Joe Noose.”

  Bess felt seven pairs of eyes tighten like a garrote on her. She had their attention now.

  “Then what?” Butler whispered, taking a threatening step closer.

  “I chased him.” She splashed water on her face, cool and collected in composure. Her indifference riled Butler like she knew it would.