Noose Page 20

She turned to face the bounty killer leader, shaking and in shock, her hands raised high to show she was unarmed.

  “Changed my mind.” Butler cracked a mordant evil sadistic grin. “Sit down.”

  He shot Bess in the left leg, which collapsed under her as she crumpled in the dirt, screaming and sobbing and holding her blood-spurting upper leg.

  “You can train any dog, even a bitch,” sneered the blackhearted bastard. Butler gestured for his men to ride out of the trees. “Let’s see her try to run away now. Put her on a horse. Then let’s find that son of a whore Joe Noose and finish this thing before this bitch bleeds to death and ain’t no use no more to us as bait.”

  Bess was too weak and traumatized and racked with pain to resist as she shut her eyes so she didn’t have to see anything anymore. She felt the rough hands pick her up and submitted to being loaded onto a saddle where with her eyes closed everything was black as a tomb and all she heard were the hooves as she was taken away with the bounty killers as they rode off.

  They hadn’t even bothered with a tourniquet for her leg.

  * * *

  Noose heard the gunfire and thought, What in hell?

  He counted the shots.

  Eight.

  The distant, muffled reports came from above to his right in what he guessed was a northwestern direction—too far away to have been directed toward him.

  Then who?

  Those were the bounty killer gang’s guns that he had heard—Noose recognized the make and caliber of Butler’s pistol at least—but who were they shooting at?

  He was on foot now.

  It was slow going down the steep embankment of the gorge, the slope plummeting at a ninety-degree angle, the fifty-foot-high pine trees jutting like clustered steeples at a canted angle to the grade.

  His boots skidded down the muddy terrain, the traction slippery and treacherous—he had to use his hands to catch himself as he descended the yawning gorge.

  The bounty hunter regretted not having a horse but was guessing by now he would have parted ways with it anyway regardless—no way that a horse could have made it down this slope.

  What was all that shooting about?

  Fear juddered in his gut as his mind went first to the possibility that Butler and his gang had executed the woman marshal. It had worried Noose for some time that that would happen. Then he more or less dismissed that possibility because it sounded like one pistol had fired the shots he had just heard and they wouldn’t use all those rounds on one simple girl. Didn’t think they would, anyway.

  Perhaps she shot some of them . . . shot Butler, even.

  In that case the outcome was the same and she was dead. The female peace officer was heavily outgunned and would have been felled by the other bounty killer’s bullets directly had she opened fire on them. The fact that she might have reduced their number and improved his odds of survival was cold comfort if the marshal’s daughter had lost her life in the process.

  Still it sounded like one gun, not an exchange of gunfire.

  Down he sidestepped along the ridge at a swift rate of descent, the angled trunks of the big pine trees sweeping past. The scent of soil and sap filled his nostrils.

  If it wasn’t the woman then it had to be someone else. A gunfight breaking out in the gang of bounty killers was a definite possibility. Likely Butler had plugged one of his own men. The tensions had been flaring among the thugs for some time now and these were not coolheaded types.

  The feeling of being completely unarmed was not a good one. He had nothing but his two hands.

  Noose’s strong body hurt all over as he descended the steep grade, his clothes wet with mud and blood and sweat and stuck to his chest and legs. He felt like an animal. All around him was titanic forest, and the view below was looking more treacherous and the gorge grew steeper and the jagged granite boulders far below became visible through the tree line as he approached. The cowboy couldn’t see too far ahead and could be heading for a straight drop to instant death on the rocks for all he knew. But the only way out was down.

  The law.

  Of course.

  The marshals those two bounty killers back there had yelled to Butler about had showed up.

  The U.S. Marshal’s office in Jackson Hole would have sent a few armed officers to intercept the fugitive blamed for the Hoback marshal’s murder and they knew which way he was coming. The telegraph requesting the authorization for the reward would have told them that.

  And that’s when Noose slipped.

  His boots went right out from under him.

  Then he was tumbling.

  Over and over he rolled as the ground gave way and he somersaulted down the steep declination. His vision went upside down and sideways as trees and rocks and branches smashed past his face. His hands went everywhere, clutching vainly for purchase on the muddy, rocky, moss-covered walls of the ravine. Head over heels he toppled and flipped, victim to the pull of gravity, as down the hill Noose fell. Rocks and stone and buried trunks of trees sledgehammered his torso and extremities and the impacts against his wounds sent screaming agony through his wounded body. Fresh bruises tattooed his skin with each successive impact. Blood filled his eyes. Noose was still rolling over and over down the sheer embankment and just when he thought the fall would never end, he hit hard flat ground and lay still.

  The bounty hunter had come to rest at the top of a ridge. He blinked and saw red, so he wiped the blood out of his eyes with the back of a big dirty hand, spitting crimson saliva onto the ground.

  The whinnying of the horse snapped him to attention.

  Not good.

  The sound of the horse’s vociferations and clack of its hooves were very close by.

  Slowly raising his head, expecting to see the bounty killers and get a bullet between the eyes, Noose looked in the direction of the sound of the horse.

  He saw just one Appaloosa.

  It stood alone.

  Saddle splashed with blood.

  The solitary horse was frozen in place, lathered with sweat, staring him straight in the eye.

  Strapped to the saddle was a cleaned and oiled Winchester rifle and a spare Colt .45 pistol along with two bandolier belts loaded with ammunition.

  “Good horse,” Noose whispered reassuringly.

  He saw the U.S. Marshal brand on the saddle that was drenched with gore, the seven-star sigil jutting like scar tissue in all the blood, and Noose right away knew what those gunshots had been: the Jackson marshal had met up with the bounty killers and they’d shot him to pieces.

  The horse had fled. Probably a wise decision. Definitely a fortuitous one as far as Joe Noose was concerned.

  Staggering unsteadily to his feet, using a boulder for leverage, Noose stood and took a few tentative steps toward the nervous horse. He didn’t want it to shy and flee. Anything but. Holding out his hands, making a gentle tsk sound with his lips, his gaze confident and friendly, for Noose was good with horses, the cowboy approached.

  The stallion’s eyes widened apprehensively and it jerked its head nervously once or twice, but the horse didn’t run, and in a moment Noose had it by the reins. He patted its head and quickly made a friend.

  “Good boy, good boy,” he said, grinning.

  The Appaloosa responded to his sure touch, apparently almost as happy to see him as he was to see it.

  What pleased the cowboy even more were the marshal’s guns and ammo in the saddlebags. Looked like a hundred rounds or more.

  Noose was rearmed.

  Fully loaded.

  And back in the fight.

  Looking up into the sweeping, forest-carpeted canyon above, his keen blue eyes cutting across the spectacular vista, Noose saw no immediate sign of the posse. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though.

  He quickly drew the Winchester from the saddle holster, levered it, and slammed a full load of slugs from the bandoliers into the breech. Cocked it. Then he did the same with the Colt .45. Both guns were in excellent condition.
<
br />   He couldn’t say the same for himself but he felt a lot better armed again.

  No bullets came his way from the tree line above or below him.

  Those shots had been five minutes ago, maybe less.

  The horse had bolted right after it so violently became riderless and it couldn’t have gone far on this rugged trail, so the bounty killers must be close at hand, not far behind.

  As he clutched the reins, Noose saw what had frozen the horse. The trail it had come down was clearly visible upward through the trees—no going back that way because that would be straight into the guns of the gang—but the trail had bisected at the edge of the ridge—the horse was afraid to go any farther. Around a copse of rearing conifer trees a few yards away, Noose spotted what the horse clearly hadn’t: a narrow rut down the side of the ridge that could easily be ridden. Where it spilled out was anybody’s guess, but that was the way out.

  “Easy, boy,” Noose said gently.

  He hitched a boot into the grisly stirrup and swung up into the saddle, the blood-soaked leather squishing squeamishly under his butt. It was a nasty, disagreeable sensation sitting on a dead man’s horse in a saddle wet with the dead man’s blood but Noose got his boots in the stirrup.

  With easy command, he led the stallion out onto the trail and they trotted into the trees. His guns were close at hand and he kept a sharp lookout.

  This had been the bloodiest day he could remember.

  And it wasn’t over yet.

  He reined the horse around and started riding it back up the hill because that’s where the bounty killers were and that’s where Bess was.

  He had a job to do, bad men to kill, and a good woman to save.

  Joe Noose just hoped he wasn’t too late.

  CHAPTER 40

  Frank Butler reached and grabbed Bess Sugarland by the scruff of her shirt and with a fierce jerk yanked her clean out of the saddle, dumping her in an untidy heap in the dirt.

  She screamed in raw agony as her leg with the bullet in it twisted underneath her, and her lungs didn’t hold back.

  Her wrists were roped and she couldn’t rise or sit so just thrashed about on the ground in pain.

  Like a trapped, cornered animal in the dirt, Bess looked up at Butler towering ferociously over her, matching her own feral gaze in raw intensity. The six other bounty killers had ridden their stallions around in a circle closing her in, and now were dismounting. Their boots and spurs struck the soil noisily and they quickly moved to form an oval within the circle of horses, walling Bess in and preventing her escape. The young woman’s head snapped this way and that as she cut her gaze desperately back and forth upward at the grim faces of the bad men.

  “I didn’t want to kill you. Not at first. Killing two U.S. Marshals is crossing the line even for me, especially a father and daughter.” Frank Butler’s eyes were dead as he stood over her, looking down pitilessly. “Knew I should’ve right at the start. Knew I’d have to in the end. Tried to cut you slack. But you had to push your luck. You had to push me. Fact is, sister, you been a giant pain in my ass this whole trail. It’s just . . . Truth is . . . You are too much trouble.” Butler scowled fiercely and the ends of his facial hair turned down with the edges of his thin lips, making him look feral. “You shoulda stayed back in that town and planted your daddy and then there wouldn’t have been none of this trouble.”

  He shouldn’t have said that.

  Bess’s eyes darkened with bottomless hatred. She screwed her mouth up and spat up at Butler’s face but missed by a yard.

  She shouldn’t have done that.

  “That’s it,” the leader snarled, his frozen grin a tetanus rictus below his black handlebar mustache.

  Frank Butler lost his grin at the precise moment he took a step toward Bess and began reaching for his gun.

  * * *

  At that exact second, not far off, Joe Noose got himself squarely situated in the saddle, ready to go in with guns blazing.

  Snapping the shotgun closed in his left hand with a clean jerk of his wrist, he cocked back the hammer of the Colt .45 in his right hand with his thumb. The reins hung loose. A cocked and loaded Winchester and another pair of Remington revolvers were easily in reach in his saddlebags.

  His powerful legs were tightly gripped on the stallion’s flanks because he was going to ride in hard without using the reins because he needed both hands to shoot with.

  The sun was at his back so it would be in their eyes.

  Noose’s lethal and deadly gaze was fixed on the circle of men and horses two hundred yards distant just beyond the trees below—he could see Bess on the ground and knew what the dirty miserable sons of bitches were planning to do to her. Unlucky for them, the fool bounty killers wouldn’t see him coming because their backs were turned to face the woman they planned to execute and had all their horses positioned blocking their view of their surroundings, so Joe Noose’s ambush was going to be their worst surprise.

  This human garbage has been sucking my air far too long.

  It’s time to kill them all.

  Nobody left standing.

  None of them gets out of here alive.

  The dead marshal’s Appaloosa stallion Noose sat astride was an ornery, cussed beast who chomped at the bit, ready for action, its snorting breath huffing from its nostrils, front hoof pawing the dirt like a bull ready to charge, just waiting on Noose’s go. This was a warhorse, a lawman’s mount, a steed who had been trained to run into a fight and was meaner than a snake.

  Noose leaned down to whisper in the horse’s ear something he believed the animal already knew: “Listen to me, old horse, those men out there murdered your owner and that’s his blood on this saddle, so you and me, we’re going to make ’em pay with their lives. The next blood on this saddle will be theirs. I need you mean, boy, mean, you hear? You ready?” Noose could have sworn he heard the cantankerous old warhorse bellow in rage as it scraped the ground with its hoof. He figured the stallion probably saw the marshal get shot and had its own score to settle.

  All Joe Noose needed to do was tap the heel of his boot to the stirrup and his disagreeable stallion took off like an artillery shell fired from a mortar, reaching a full gallop in seconds, head down, tearing up the tundra in a barreling charge at the circle of the other weary horses.

  * * *

  “On your knees, bitch.”

  Bess knelt, beat and cowed, head hung low.

  Butler spun the cylinder of his Colt Dragoon with a rattlesnake whirr and put the barrel against the back of the woman marshal’s head.

  He took his sweet time cocking back the hammer.

  “Last words?” Butler said.

  On her knees, as Bess feels the cold muzzle of Butler’s Colt Dragoon pressed against the back of her skull and hears the hammer cocked back, she closes her eyes and knowing they will be her last words, whispers softly, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I did my best . . .”

  . . . She thinks she hears her father answer . . .

  . . . An answer to her secret prayers for her daddy to rescue her like he always did when she was a little girl, because now she is all alone and so very scared, on her knees, about to be shot in the head and put down like a horse, a disgusting way to die, and here, now, Bess Sugarland doesn’t feel brave at all, not like a marshal or even a grown woman but like a little girl wanting her daddy, hoping against hope for him to come rescue her, and she thinks she hears her father answer her prayers, listening to his horse’s hooves galloping to her rescue as she waits for the bullet to enter her skull and end her, the beat of hooves growing louder, yes, definitely she hears those hooves, and Bess smiles because her prayers have been answered and her daddy is riding in to save her, then suddenly she knows it is not her daddy who is rescuing her, it is . . .

  Bess’s eyes popped open—

  —just in time for her to get blood in her eyes from the exploding left gun hand of Frank Butler blown off from thumb to middle finger as the Colt Dragoon shot out of his hand showered spark
s from the bullet that just hit the metal as it spun uselessly through the air like a fireworks pinwheel. Butler’s eyes bulged in horror as he clutched the ruins of his left hand and glove and staggered back, turning in circles, screaming his lungs out in a hideous high-pitched porcine squeal that turned into a string of blasphemous profanity—

  —on her knees, Bess’s eyes were wide as a child staring up in shock and awe at her actual rescuer: the formidable heroic figure of the towering cowboy on a gigantic horse galloping toward her with guns blazing like great lightning bolts, bodies falling before him, backlit by the sun into a blinding vision of a true hero, not her father but Joe Noose—

  —and the instant she saw Noose, Bess transformed from a little girl to a grown woman blinking blood out of her eyes as she caught Butler’s bloody revolver as it spun through the air before it hit the ground, got her hand around the stock and finger through the trigger guard and was up on her good leg and all the way back to U.S. Marshal—except now Bess wasn’t planning on making any arrests and the only law she cared about was the Law of the Gun as she fanned and fired and shot Garrity smack between the eyes—

  —Bess was surprised he had as many brains as flew out the back of his head—

  —Noose straight-armed the shotgun and the pistol out in front of him, waiting until the other horses cleared—murderously mad as he was at the gang, he had no truck with their horses and although he wouldn’t lose sleep if one of his bullets dropped Butler’s evil nag, he wanted to avoid any unnecessary horse casualties. He braced himself in the saddle, his own hips matching the Appaloosa’s hurtling stride, and took aim down his gunsights, waiting for the wall of stallions they bore down on to clear—

  —as soon as the other horses heard the oncoming hooves of Noose’s beast and sensed the fury in its ferocious approach, part those steeds did—the stallions bolted for cover like a curtain pulling apart on the circle of men who realized what was happening a second too late: they were all exposed to Noose’s line of fire and he did not hesitate—

  —pulling the first trigger of his scattergun, he blasted Lawson square in the chest with a full load of 12-gauge buckshot and blew him out of his boots, his body like a limp rag doll flying fifteen feet back to where he hit the ground dead—