Branded Page 2

  “How old are you, son?” the old man asked.

  “Thirteen,” replied the kid.

  “Just a boy. Too young to hang.”

  With that, the old man turned his back on the kid and walked over to the tree where the wretched three condemned youths sat like bags of shit on three horses with three ropes around the neck awaiting cruel vigilante execution. His two sons walked with him, one on each side, heads hung and shoulders slumped, like it was a march to their own gallows.

  The kid couldn’t believe his luck.

  He’d slipped the noose.

  His friends were about to swing but all the kid felt was glad it was them, not him.

  The rancher asked the three young outlaws if they had last words.

  All three cried for their mother.

  Seeing his two sons were looking away, the old man struck them both hard on the heads with his fists, forcing their full attention to the hanging. “This is what happens to those who do wrong. Time you boys became men and knew what delivering hard justice means.”

  Pointing the ugly scattergun into the sky near the heads of the horses, the old man triggered both barrels, unleashing twin kaboom blasts into the heavens.

  The three startled horses bolted.

  Clay, Jack, and Billy Joe were jerked out of their saddles as the ropes snapped taut on the branch. Their bodies swung suspended in midair, boots kicking off the ground, bumping into each other like sacks of grain, necks stretching grotesquely elongated until they cracked. The fat one, Jack’s head popped clean off and his decapitated body hit the ground with more blood than the kid had ever seen. Billy Joe and Clay got covered with it, eyes bulging and tongues lolling, spinning around and around on the ropes in convulsions until they hung limp on the nooses. The ground below them was stained with their waste as they evacuated. It was ugly. An ugly way to die.

  The old man wasted no time, drawing his knife and slashing the ropes, cutting the bodies down where they landed in a pile.

  His two sons were traumatized. The smaller one buckled over and puked in the dirt, shaking like a leaf. The taller one just stood and wept. His body was heaving in sobs.

  The kid just watched from the ground.

  Walking to his boys, the father put a hand on each of their shoulders. “You’re men now. I’m proud of you.”

  “Can we go home now, Pa?” the older son asked.

  “Once we deal with the other one,” the old man replied, swinging his gaze to the kid. The thirteen-year-old, all brawn and no brains, locked eyes with him defiantly. As the rancher family walked in his direction, he knew he was not going to get off that easy.

  “Hold him down, boys.” Faces smeared with dirt and tears, his two sons grabbed the hog-tied kid by each shoulder and pinned him to the dirt so he couldn’t move. The kid looked up at the old man looming over him glowering down in judgment, his fearsome countenance inflamed by the angry blaze of firelight from the nearby coal brazier. Yet the old man spoke quietly with something like pity in his eyes as he gave the kid a considering look.

  “Where are your parents, boy?”

  “Don’t got none. Never knew ’em if I did.”

  “Poor soul. Nobody ever taught you right from wrong. You’re just a boy but you ain’t ever going to grow up to be a man unless you learn good from bad. A man that doesn’t know right from wrong ain’t nothing but an animal, no better than cattle. And cattle get branded.”

  The old man lifted the fiery Q brand from the brazier. It glowed red-hot. Firelight reflected in his sunken mean eyes made them shine with hellfire. To the kid, he looked to be devil, not man.

  “Open his shirt,” the old man commanded.

  The sons ripped open the kid’s shirt, tearing cloth and popping buttons, exposing his muscular hairless unmarked chest.

  The kid knew what was coming. Now he felt something.

  Fear.

  The fear grew to raw panic and terror with every inch closer the blazing cattle brand came toward his chest, the heat against his bare flesh growing unbearably hotter, until the old man pressed the red-hot brand into his skin. The sizzling hiss of his own roasting flesh filled the kid’s nostrils as the smoke from his cooked skin billowed over his face and choked him. The searing blazing Q brand burned deep into the center of his chest, the old man leaning against the brand with both hands applying pressure.

  As the kid screamed and cried and begged for it to stop, he thought he heard the two sons screaming, too.

  It didn’t stop. The kid felt the red-hot brand burn all the way through the bones of his chest to his heart and brand him to his soul. Then he went into shock.

  Finally the old man lifted the brand off and tossed it on the ground. “Throw water on him.” His two sons were hysterical with tears as they bum-rushed a water keg, lifted it, and poured the frigid liquid contents all over the kid, soaking him from head to foot.

  The kid didn’t move, splayed akimbo in the dirt, a charred and bloody Q scorched into the center of his chest. He was in shock and his lips were frothed and eyes rolled up in their sockets, revealing the whites.

  But somehow the kid heard the old man’s parting words:

  “Every day of your life you will look at that brand and remember a man has a choice to make between right and wrong.”

  Words he would never forget.

  When the kid’s vision began to focus, his gaze had congealed with a cognition birthed in his eyes that was new, like a star born in the swirling cosmos.

  “Put him on a horse.”

  The kid didn’t know where the rancher and his sons found the horse, but somehow they put him on it and sent the mare off into the night with him slumped in the saddle. Then all he knew was pain and darkness until the sun came up and then all he knew was agony.

  Long the pain lasted.

  But that was a very long time ago.

  Now, twenty-one years, three days, and five hours later, Joe Noose, the man the boy had become, was going to get his revenge for what they did to him . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  His retribution came one fateful winter morning in the unlikely guise of a little boy Joe Noose had never laid eyes on before.

  It was December of 1886. The bounty hunter was presently employed as sheriff of Victor, Idaho. A group of badmen led by a very bad woman had killed all the lawmen in Victor. Noose had killed all the villains in turn. The town made him sheriff. Noose took the job only because of his horse. It was a long story.

  Physically, Noose looked intimidating enough for law enforcement. Now thirty-four years old, he had grown to be a very big man who stood six foot three without his boots. He was built of solid muscle. The man’s pale blue eyes had a steely gaze in a hard face with chipped ruggedly handsome features carved on a boulder of a head covered with thick brown hair. His hands were as large as cattle hooves and the biggest pistol seemed puny in his grip. He would have towered over his former self, the helpless youth who had been tortured, but that boy remained locked forever inside Joe Noose within his mighty frame, for his life began that terrible night long ago . . . the branding had burned a moral code into Joe Noose’s soul—a code he’d come to live by.

  Over the twenty-one intervening years, the man of action became a bounty hunter whose reputation across the western territories was bringing his dead-or-alive bounties in alive. Joe Noose had a brute instinctual sense of justice and always tried to do the right thing; his credo was never kill a man he didn’t have to, but that hadn’t stopped him from killing quite a few. He did what he had to do enforcing his own personal code of justice. Sometimes that was complicated. The bounty hunter dabbled in legitimate law enforcement and of late had worked as a Deputy U. S. Marshal and now a sheriff although the badge with the star on his chest was temporary.

  The sheriff job ended the day his best friend, Marshal Bess Sugarland, walked into the Victor sheriff ’s office with the little boy and had him open his shirt. Bess had come with another young U.S. Marshal and together she and he had ridden over t
he Teton Pass with the child in tow. It was a frozen winter morning as the four of them stood in the warmth of the room.

  Shutting the door to the sheriff’s office behind them, Joe Noose showed Bess and her two companions to three chairs set in front of the wood-burning stove. The small room was cold and their breath condensed on the air.

  She had still not introduced her fellow travelers to Noose. One, the rugged, brooding U.S. Marshal, the other the quiet, reserved little boy of perhaps nine or ten. Noose guessed Bess would make introductions in her own good time, knowing that they were here for a reason. The child seemed nervous and fearful and stayed close to the woman as she showed him a seat then took one herself and smiled at Joe. “The badge looks good on you.”

  “I’m just the interim sheriff while they find a replacement,” Noose explained. “Bonny Kate’s gang killed the last sheriff and his deputies before I did for them and the town needed someone to wear the badge. Seemed like the right thing to do when they asked me. You heard about all that fuss.” A nod from Bess. “I have a deputy when I need him, which ain’t often because the town’s pretty quiet these days now that hanging business is done with. Best believe I got the situation in hand. But I’ll be moving on soon, I reckon.”

  “Bounty hunter, then marshal, now sheriff. A body has a hard time keeping track of your movements, Joe,” Bess joked.

  Noose was glad to see she hadn’t lost her ornery sense of humor, but was worried about the huge wooden leg brace she wore on the wounded leg—it was bigger than the one he last saw her wear, and he hoped that the bullet Frank Butler had given her to remember him by wasn’t going to mean she would lose that leg. Bess saw him looking at her brace and looked crossly at him. “It ain’t gangrene. I’m not losing the damn leg. Just got it jacked up again thanks to you when my horse fell on me while I was riding up the pass with my deputy, looking for you during the fires.”

  With a sigh of relief, Noose looked over at the lawman who had just sat beside her by the stove. The young man had a hard, angular face, an intense, dark gaze, and was watching Noose closely. “This him, your new deputy?” Noose inquired.

  Bess shook her head. “No, my deputy is a greenhorn named Nate Sweet I left back in Jackson to man the U.S. Marshal’s office while I came here. Somebody had to mind the store while I was away. Good man, Sweet is, lots of promise.” She looked over to the officer with her. “This here is Marshal Emmett Ford.”

  Joe Noose gave Marshal Ford a long, hard stare—something was familiar about his face, but he couldn’t quite place it. “We met before, Marshal?” Noose asked. “I seem to recall your face.”

  Ford held his gaze respectfully and shook his head, demurring. “No, sir. I don’t rightly recollect so.”

  Noose shrugged. Maybe he was mistaken. He looked a question at Bess. Drew her gaze with him to the silent little boy bundled in coats, sitting staring into the fire. She spoke up. “The boy, we don’t know his name because he won’t talk. Marshal Ford brought the boy to me a few days ago. So I brought him to you. He’s why I come, Joe.”

  His brows furrowing, not following her conversation, Noose went to the stove, where the pot of coffee brewed, filling the room with a warm, toasty aroma. Without asking if they wanted any, Noose poured two cups and handed them to Bess and Ford, both of whom accepted the hot beverages gratefully and sipped. The boy just watched the fire.

  “Sit down, Joe,” Bess asked politely. He did. He was about to hear the story and the reason for her visit. “I’ll let Marshal Ford tell it. Go on, Emmett.”

  The young lawman cleared his throat and spoke plainly. “This boy was the only survivor of the massacre of his entire family near Pinedale. Father, mother, two sisters all cut to pieces and strewn about.”

  “Go on.”

  “They weren’t the first victims of this individual. We think it is one man. Twenty-five people, families, men, women, children, have been butchered by this killer. The ones we know about, anyhow. He has been leaving a trail of bodies from the southern border of Idaho across up into Wyoming and I’ve been hunting him ever since the spring.” The marshal spoke gravely. An intense, personal dedication to catching this killer was plain in his eyes. This was more than a job for Emmett Ford. It was a mission.

  “Good hunting,” Noose said.

  Bess interrupted. “I came to you for a reason, Joe. So did Marshal Ford.”

  “What reason?”

  Ford answered, “You’re the best bounty hunter in the western states, Noose. Everybody knows that. There ain’t a man in the world you can’t track down and apprehend. I haven’t been able to catch this killer on my own. I need your help. And there is a five-thousand-dollar dead-or-alive bounty on this individual.”

  “That’s serious money,” Noose replied, warming his hands by rubbing them together by the fire. “Very serious money. But the thing is, Marshals, I took a job as sheriff here in this town and gave my word I would perform those duties until a replacement is found. Nobody’s arrived to relieve me yet, don’t rightly know when they will. I’d surely like to chase down that bounty, but I have a job.”

  Rising to her feet, Bess’s spurs jingled as she walked to the wall and leaned against it by the stove, fixing Noose in her persuasive gaze from an elevated vantage. “Only you can catch this man, Joe.”

  Noose raised an eyebrow in question, letting her continue. “You don’t know the rest. This killer, he always leaves his signature. One you’ll understand, Joe.” Gesturing to the boy, Bess made the motions with her hands of opening her shirt. “Show him,” she gently but firmly bid the child.

  Swallowing hard, his eyes vacant, the little boy obediently unbuttoned his coat, then opened his ragged cloth shirt to expose his chest.

  When Noose saw what was there, his eyes widened in raw emotion and he rose from his chair to his towering full height, staring unblinkingly at what was on the kid’s naked, chicken-bone chest: The brutal mark of a red-hot branding iron was savagely burned into the child’s very flesh—half-healed and raw was seared a single upside-down letter . . .

  It was the same brand that Joe Noose bore forever on his own chest, a mark burned into him when he was little older than this boy, by the same brand, by the same man. He felt his own long-healed scar burn freshly under his shirt like a phantom pain, feeling again the white-hot agony of long ago. Noose was speechless as he just stared at the poor child looking up at him with hangdog eyes, displaying his disfigurement with shame.

  His knuckles whitening, Noose’s fists clenched at his sides in a murderous cold fury that made the cartilage crackle.

  When his gaze swung back to Bess Sugarland, she held it confidently. “This is a job for you, Joe. Only you can stop this man.”

  Nodding, Joe Noose pulled the sheriff ’s badge off his coat and laid it on the desk.

  Noose knew what he had to do. And he wasn’t going to be able to wear the sheriff ’s star doing what he was about to do; no proper lawman could. The big bounty hunter currently employed as interim sheriff of Victor, Idaho, said good-bye to the badge. He was not going to be upholding the law when he caught up with the son of a bitch who branded him, because this was personal and when it was personal the only law was the Law of the Gun.

  Lawdog never suited Noose much anyhow.

  He just took the job for his horse but his horse was fine now.

  Noose stretched his muscular six-foot-three frame to his full height and walked to the window, his leather boots and spurs creaking the floorboards until he stopped, looking out with his pale blue eyes distant and lost in thought. The wintery Idaho sunlight filtering into the Victor sheriff ’s office showed all the faded bruises and old scars on his handsome granite-block face. His breath condensed in the cold hair in a haze around his face, fogging the glass and clouding and obscuring the view of the town street—a wall that shut off his view as if to tell him his fate was inside the room, which he already knew.

  Joe Noose felt Marshal Bess Sugarland’s eyes on his back. His friend knew to pat
iently give him his time to think.

  A branding mark the same as his.

  Made by the same man, twenty-one years apart.

  He had a lot of questions.

  “Tell me everything.” Joe Noose turned from the window to face Marshal Emmett Ford, fixing him in a hard unwavering gaze that demanded answers, all the facts.

  Across the room, Ford stood by the small coal stove, having just poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. He met Noose’s gaze without blinking. Despite Noose standing a head taller than Ford and having a hundred pounds of muscle on him, the marshal looked iron fit and was not intimidated. Ford was about Noose’s age, rangy and lanky, a lupine cowboy face weathered by the elements. His intense brown eyes bored back into Noose’s own as he took a sip of coffee and began his tale.

  “I first heard about the branding murders three years ago, where I was posted at the marshal’s office in Laramie,” Ford said in his soft, even voice. “People passing through from the far north states brought talk with them about folks hacked to pieces who always had the mark of a brand in their chest, men and women. No survivors of any of these attacks, just branded bodies. Like somebody was leaving a message. Of course, the marshal’s office got called in to investigate. The assumption was Indians. But that didn’t make sense to me because there were no scalpings. It was the brand that made me know this was the work of a white man. Indians don’t use cattle brands to mark their cows. Nobody at the U.S. Marshal’s office listened to me, though, so I requested special assignment, set out alone, and went to track this murdering SOB down. Been on the bastard’s trail ever since. But I come up short. So I’m coming to you.”

  Noose looked and listened as the wiry male marshal took another sip of coffee. Ford’s face looked familiar somehow. But the man looked like a lot of people, not good- or bad-looking, face and hands suntanned from the outdoors; an honest, plain face. It was his eyes that made him different, the deep wells of a man who had seen things no man should see and live to tell. Noose liked that about him and felt an instant kinship with the marshal for unknown reasons he didn’t quite understand that made no sense. Snapping his pale-eyed gaze back to Emmett Ford, he saw the Texas marshal was watching him intensely. Noose said: “Go on.”