Noose Read online

  “Warn’t none of our business.” The leader of the gang fired up his cigar and shot the fuming deputy a chilling glance of his bullet black eyes. “Yet.”

  “What do you mean?” Naked confusion and dismay swam in her eyes. “W-why didn’t you stop him?”

  “Woulda had to kill him. It would have been murder. Can’t kill him till it’s legit, till there’s an official reward and a dead-or-alive bounty.”

  The enraged young deputy leapt to her feet, drawing her revolver. “Then I’ll get him if you won’t!”

  Butler didn’t budge, maddeningly sure of himself as he regarded her patiently. “He’ll kill you, ma’am. He’s a professional shootist. You’ll be dead before your gun leaves its holster. Killing him is a job for professionals.”

  She hesitated, in doubt. “But . . . somebody has to do something,” the girl stammered.

  “Let me explain this to you. We’re bounty hunters. We can bring him back, alive or dead, but we get paid. It’s what we do. There ain’t no reward on him yet.”

  Bess looked this way and that. “He’s getting away.”

  Butler was implacable. “Then you best get that reward authorized.”

  “I can’t authorize no reward.”

  “You got a telegraph, ain’tcha?”

  “Yes, in the marshal’s office.”

  “Then telegraph the Jackson Hole U.S. Marshal’s office and get it authorized.”

  The confused girl thought a few seconds. “I guess I can do that.”

  “Then we’ll get the killer for you. There’s twelve of us, one of him, and we’ll bring him back slung over his saddle. Just got to make the reward legal.” He took a few slow steps toward her, cunningly manipulative. His testosterone-charged intimidating composure rattled the tomboyish girl.

  “We’ll take care of everything, missy. Don’t you worry yer purty little head.”

  Bess nodded. “Okay, okay, I mean, sure, if that’s what you think is best. So . . .”

  “So you just need to telegraph in the reward.”

  “Telegraph the reward, right.”

  “To Jackson Hole.”

  “Jackson Hole, sure.”

  “Sooner the reward is authorized, sooner we ride.”

  “Right. I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ll come with you.”

  Bess was getting more flustered by the minute. “Sure. This way.”

  The badmen followed the pretty deputy out the door, twelve sets of eyeballs ogling her shapely posterior.

  Moments later, the bounty killers escorted the deputy through the door of her own marshal’s office. Butler eased the panic-stricken Bess into a chair by the telegraph. The gang leader sat down in the deceased marshal’s chair, put his boots up on the man’s desk, and snarled. “Telegraph Jackson Hole.”

  “O-okay,” she replied. The deputy obediently tapped away. The other bounty killers hovered like buzzards. Their leader dictated the telegram:

  MARSHAL SUGARLAND AND BARTENDER SHOT DEAD STOP KILLER ESCAPED STOP REQUEST AUTHORIZATION OF BOUNTY OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS STOP DEAD OR ALIVE STOP

  The girl looked up, bathed in sweat. “A h-hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Cash.”

  Deputy Sugarland tapped the telegraph keys.

  CASH STOP

  The clock on the wall ticked.

  Deputy Sugarland gazed apprehensively around her at the big killers breathing down her neck, then looked over to the icy leader of the gang with his boots up on the desk.

  “N-now what?” she asked.

  Butler puffed his cigar, stretched his legs, and patiently regarded the clock. “We wait.”

  The bounty killers loomed, waited.

  Butler didn’t blink. Bess stared nervously at the telegraph. It sat quietly.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jackson Hole was a small town nestled in a valley at the base of the spectacular peaks of the Wyoming Teton mountain range. It was just waking up.

  U.S. Marshal Jack Mackenzie, a leathery heavyset lawman in his early sixties, adjusted his hat and smiled at a few passersby on the unpaved dirt street as he walked to his office. Horse-drawn wagons with ranchers and frontier women in petticoats passed by on the street. It was a beautiful morning.

  Mackenzie entered the U.S. Marshal’s office and hung his hat, and his day went straight to hell.

  His young, agitated deputy Nolan Swallows looked up from the telegraph as he urgently tapped out a message. “Sir, Marshal Sugarland’s been murdered.”

  “What?”

  “They want a reward issued. A hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Is this some kind of joke? Find out who’s on the other end of this wire.” Deeply shaken, the marshal watched as the deputy sent the transmission. Moments later came a response.

  “Bess Sugarland.”

  “Aw, crap. His daughter. She’s a good kid. Those two was really close, Sugarland and his daughter. That poor girl. She must be beside herself.” Mackenzie thought things over a minute. “Ask Bess who killed Sugarland.”

  The transmission was a series of taps, and the deputy’s pencil scratching on a piece of paper turned it into words.

  “She says his name is Joe Noose.”

  “Noose. That Joe Noose? Get a description just to be sure.”

  More telegraph tapping back and forth.

  “About thirty. Six foot three. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Scar on his face. Riding a painted mustang. Marshal, we know Noose. He’s that bounty hunter came into this office three days ago saying he was chasing down Jim Henry Barrow.”

  “She know where he went?”

  “East.”

  The Jackson Hole marshal rolled a cigarette and lit it. Smoke hung in the woodsy air of the fresh lumber of the structure. “Tell her I’m going to organize a posse directly.”

  The telegraph went silent for a few tense moments.

  It took a long time for a response.

  When the unit finally started tapping again both lawmen’s brows furrowed at what it said.

  Swallows shook his head and moved his spectacles on his nose. “She doesn’t want a posse, Marshal. Says there’s a crew of professional bounty hunters in Hoback heavily armed, ready to go after the son of a bitch soon as the reward is authorized.”

  “Sounds to me like the Butler Gang that brought in Bonny Kate Valance the other day.” Mackenzie indicated a slumbering female redhead locked in the small jail cell in the office. “Those were heading out to Hoback after the Barrow bounty directly. Ask Bess if the leader is named Frank Butler.”

  Deputy Swallows sent the message over the telegraph and when the answer came back he nodded affirmatively.

  Pacing the room, Mackenzie thought hard. “How long you figure it would take us to organize a posse and ride out to Hoback? Four, five hours, something like that?”

  Swallows nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  The marshal shot a hard glance at the deputy. “Tell her to tell them I’ll give ’em twenty-four hours to get their man. After that, I’m wrangling the posse.”

  Swallows tapped the keys furiously. The old man sucked smoke. “And tell ’em the money’s authorized.”

  More tapping.

  “They got their hundred-thousand-dollar reward.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Thirty-two miles away in Hoback, the telegraph printed the response. Deputy Bess Sugarland desperately read it, looking frantically at Butler. “Authorized,” she gasped breathlessly.

  Butler reared to his feet with a metallic clink of spur. He regarded his bounty killers with bullet black eyes. “Let’s ride.”

  The gang of bounty killers wasted no time going after the reward. They were out the door, on their horses, reins and guns in hand, loaded and locked down.

  Bess came out of the marshal’s office after them.

  “I better come along.”

  The leader of the gang stopped the deputy. “This ain’t no place for a woman.”

  She bridled at the condescension, swallowi
ng hard. “I’m the law.”

  “Stay put.”

  They argued. She insisted that she come along with the gang. The bounty killers and the scary man named Butler were having none of it, and the young female lawman wasn’t sure where she found the nerve but she stuck to her guns.

  But still they wouldn’t let her come. It was no use. Bess backed down.

  “Okay, I’ll stay here,” she said in a weak voice as she stood by the mounted gunmen, hating herself.

  “We’ll bring him back slung over his saddle by noon,” the leader promised, tipping his big black hat. “Guaranteed.”

  Bess nodded.

  Butler sniffed the air. Like an animal picking up the scent of his prey. It was all he ever had to do.

  He pointed like a scarecrow into the hills. Twelve big men on twelve big horses spurred their animals’ scarred flanks and galloped out of the town in a heavy cloud of dust, hooves pulverizing the ground. The leader’s bullet eyes were black and unblinking as he perched fearsomely in the saddle, his gang in savage symbiosis like a terrible machine of horseflesh and duster and iron.

  The deputy stood in the settling dust of the gang, feeling the ground shaking under her feet from their receding hooves, watching the tall riders ride up into the hot, mean hills.

  They were an efficient outfit, Bess thought to herself... too damn efficient.

  Something about them didn’t smell right.

  She had told them she would be going with them.

  It was her job.

  They had disregarded her, left her behind.

  These men were stone killers for sure, but also professionals who intimidated her right down to her boots. Particularly the way the leader, Butler, radiated violence and hostility. Those feral eyes of his knifed right through your guts. Deputy Sugarland knew she was just a green kid and a girl at that. Only reason she was a deputy and even wore the badge was that her dad didn’t know how to raise her any other way. She didn’t have a mother. Probably her father deputized her, the young lawman guessed, because there wasn’t anyone else out in these remote parts to take the job and keep the old man company. But raise her to be a lawman he did and she could ride and shoot and knew the job of a marshal, even if she’d learned it mostly by watching her dad do it. But now the marshal was dead. Murdered in cold blood by a no-account stranger who had come to town, and Bess was all there was left of the law. It was just her. The conflicted young woman stood on the empty street, watching the distant riders resembling a trail of ants as they rode away.

  The scared kid in Bess wanted to just stay out of it and let the bounty hunters handle getting the killer. It was twelve of them against his one. They’d catch him for sure. Problem was she had this badge and the duty that came with it—the lawman she was raised to be knew it was her problem and the buck stopped with her. The old man would have expected nothing less of her. He never treated her with anything less than respect as a professional. Bess knew she better take a hand in this. With that resolve, she untethered her horse and heaved herself up into the saddle. Breaking open her shotgun, she saw it had two shells of buckshot chambered and checked to find eighteen more rounds in her saddlebags.

  She fingered her badge.

  It meant everything now.

  “Screw it.”

  Bess Sugarland would ride after the gang directly.

  But she had something to do first.

  CHAPTER 8

  Noose was a few miles into the hills by now, riding hard, the outpost of Hoback a tiny speck behind him.

  Miles ahead of his pursuers, he peered over his shoulder to see the trail of dust at the base of the hill, clearly coming in his direction.

  What had taken them so long? he wondered. What was their game? They had him dead to rights. Best Noose could figure, it was sport. But he knew for certain they meant to kill him. Only reason they hadn’t done it yet was that inexplicable delay.

  Then Noose realized he wasn’t thinking straight.

  The reward.

  It would have taken a few minutes to authorize.

  Meaning now they were coming after him, he had a bounty on his head.

  Noose hoped it was a big reward, because he damn well meant to be sure those sons of bitches earned every penny. As he galloped his horse up the trail, he took inventory: Right now he was okay. Unwounded. Fully armed. He needed to find some high ground where he could dig in and hopefully begin picking them off, strike fast with the element of surprise, thin their ranks.

  Hell, with luck he might kill them all and claim the reward for himself.

  But that would be a good trick.

  What he needed was a river.

  His tracks were clear and easy to follow. Even a creek would allow him to ride through the water in either direction if it wasn’t too deep, concealing the hoofprints of his horse, eluding them for a time. But no water, creek or otherwise, showed itself.

  Noose was going to have a hard time staying alive for even another hour. The heat was brutal, his horse was tired, and the pressures of the morning made it hard to think, but he had to stay clear.

  He had a lot of killing to do if he was going to live to see sunset.

  * * *

  Now twelve horses galloped like black thunder across the landscape.

  The bounty killers charged off into the canyons in pursuit of Joe Noose. Frank Butler rode in the lead. He reined his horse. The killers gazed out at the dusty, empty horizon. Butler sniffed the air.

  “West.”

  They galloped off.

  Two minutes later Butler halted his men and pointed his finger like the Grim Reaper. The bounty killers looked where their leader aimed his gloved digit.

  In the high rock formations, the lone figure of Noose was visible on the far bluffs under the baking sun. He scanned at the canyons around him, even from this distance his rugged face recognizable. Their quarry took out his canteen.

  Looking down the gunsight of his Sharps rifle, Butler drew a bead on the back of the distant Noose’s head. “Three hundred yards,” he hissed to the others. “Wind from the east. Adjust an inch and a half up for trajectory.”

  Butler’s black-gloved finger closed on the trigger.

  It had been a bad week.

  Noose lifted the canteen to his mouth. His eye caught a flash of metal in the reflection of the bluffs on the curved surface of the steel canteen.

  He spurred his horse just in time to avoid the bullet that whistled past his ear.

  Bullets exploded just behind his horse’s hooves as he galloped up onto a ridge. Noose threw a look over his shoulder to see the twelve men in dark dusters blasting at him. He dug his heels into his horse and rode hard.

  Butler and his bounty killers charged their horses off the high bluffs onto the plateau after the fleeing Noose, who had galloped up the ridge.

  “Easy money,” Butler chuckled.

  Forty-eight horses’ hooves pounded up the ridge.

  In a gully, Noose leapt off his horse and took position behind some rocks by the entrance. He took careful aim with his pistols and listened to the approaching horses, aiming where he expected them to be any second now.

  The bounty killers came on like a machine.

  Noose opened fire on the gang as they rode in. He shot the gun out of one’s hand. The ricochet of the slug off the pistol cylinder was a shower of sparks. Butler whistled stridently and secured his men behind some boulders as they took cover with practiced prowess.

  They all traded fire.

  Bullets whined past Noose’s ears. His slugs didn’t reach the bounty killers. The pistols in Noose’s fists clicked as the hammers struck empty chambers. Quickly he reloaded and shot back at what he could glimpse of the men in the dusters hiding behind the boulders, but he couldn’t see much. They were in a good position and had him boxed in as they laid down suppressing fire. Volleys of slugs exploded against the rocks around the lone Noose.

  Then Noose ran out of bullets. Cracking open his pistol cylinders, he saw both guns w
ere empty. He thought fast and got an idea.

  From his place of concealment, Butler grinned savagely at his gang. “I counted his rounds at the bar. He’s used his twenty. He’s empty.” Butler saw Noose leap up from his cover and run for it.

  “Gotcha.” Butler aimed and fired once.

  Noose dropped.

  “Told you he was easy money.”

  A squat bounty killer named Slade went first. Butler and the rest of the gang followed close behind. Keeping his pistols up, Slade peered over a big rock, was pleased with what he saw, then looked back at his gang and nodded with a cracked-tooth grin. The gunman holstered his pistols and stepped over the rock.

  Slade saw Noose sprawled motionless on the ground.

  He approached. The scabrous thug stood over his fallen target and leaned down with a cocky smirk.

  Suddenly, Noose’s eyes popped open and he sat up blindingly fast, grabbing both Colt .45 pistols from Slade’s holsters and shooting him point-blank with two guns square in the chest. The dead bounty killer’s body was catapulted back ten feet through a red curtain of raining blood. His drilled corpse landed smack against three other bounty killers, knocking them down.

  Before Frank Butler had time to react, Joe Noose had the twin hot muzzles of both .45 pistols jammed under his bristly jaw. Noose thumbed back the hammers of both guns, as all the bounty killers raised their weapons and trained them on Noose at point-blank range. The air was filled with a chorus of ratcheting clicks.

  Noose didn’t blink. “They shoot me, I shoot you.”

  Butler didn’t, either. “Nice ’n easy, boys.”

  “Looks like we got us a situation.”

  “Reckon there’s no such thing as easy money,” Butler said.

  “This is what we’re going to do,” Noose said, his face an inch from Butler’s. “You’re going to tell your boys to stand down. You’re coming with me.”

  Butler smiled. “That so?”

  “That is so.”

  “Let me guess. You’re figuring on taking me to Jackson Hole. Turning me in. Getting it all straightened out.”