Branded Read online

  Ford reached up to adjust his weathered Stetson and shrugged in a rangy cowboy way. “Through ’ 85 and ’86 I tracked him through Idaho and Utah, then up into Wyoming. Came across bodies in every state. All of them butchered like steers. All of them branded. This villain he moved like a ghost. Nobody saw him.” The Ranger spoke in a lazy twang, but Noose noticed that the drawl seemed to come and go as it did with some men.

  “Where did you find this boy?”

  “Wyoming. In Pinedale. South of Jackson. His entire family was . . . father mother, sisters. Two sisters, girls, at least I think. Honest, it was hard to tell who was who the condition I found them in. All branded. The boy must have got away during the attack, because I found him hiding in the food cellar, got away during the fight maybe because it was . . . well . . . a mess. He had the brand, but he was alive. I took him with me, had him riding with me, hoping he would start talking, give me some clues about the killer, but fact is, the boy ain’t said a word since the day I found him. I had him on back of my saddle the last month but The Brander’s trail, it went cold. I know he’s out there, still killing, still using a red-hot iron to defile the human remains, but truth was I’d just about given up.”

  Ford’s eyes lit up. “Then I hear about a bounty hunter who could find anyone, anywhere, who could track any man that walked on two legs.” Ford nodded respectfully in Noose’s direction. “I heard about you, sir.”

  Noose just regarded him evenly. Out the corner of his eye, he could see Bess smiling proudly at him. Ford went on.

  “People say Joe Noose is the best bounty hunter in the western territories. Figured I needed help, and if anybody can track the branding killer down it would be you. So I come to find you.”

  “You did.”

  Bess piped up. “Marshal Ford came to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Jackson and found me first, asked about you. Showed me this boy. Showed me, well . . . I knew this was a job for you, Joe.”

  While he had been talking, Emmett had also been watching Noose and Bess exchange cryptic glances, unspoken guarded exchanges about the man they were after during the ride. Finally, Emmett spoke up.

  “You two know something you’re not telling me.” When they didn’t respond, he added, “With due respect, we’re all supposed to be partners on this.”

  The bounty hunter looked a question at the lady marshal and she nodded, so he shrugged. “Bess didn’t tell you, Marshal, because she didn’t feel it was her place to. Not until she spoke to me first. Reason is, me taking this job, it’s personal. You see, it ain’t just because I’m a good manhunter she come to me to track down this killer you’re after. I’ve had dealings with him, a long time ago.”

  Emmett looked like he’d been slapped. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

  Noose eyed Emmett evenly with a pale-eyed gaze. “I know who he is.”

  “So who is he?”

  “Same man who did this to me.” Noose bit the fingers of his gloves and tugged them off his hands. Then he unbuttoned his coat, then his shirt, exposing his bare torso. Displaying the old scar of the upside-down Q burned into his chest.

  Turning pale, the young marshal gaped at the wound, getting his mental bearings until he put it all together.

  “Get the picture now?” Noose said.

  Emmett nodded. He seemed dazed putting it all together, going through a struggle to maintain his composure.

  The bounty hunter closed his shirt and coat and pulled on his gloves.

  “But . . . when?”

  “Long time ago. Twenty years thereabouts. He was fifty, sixty, mebbe then, puts him seventy to eighty now. Old, but he’s the one we’re after.”

  “Who the hell is he? Who are we looking for?”

  “An old rancher is the one who branded me. He had a mean and twisted sense of justice back then. Reckon he’s gotten a lot crazier in twenty years. But it’s him. Can’t be but one man going around branding people with a Q brand iron. I know who we’re looking for.”

  Emmett nodded. “He has a name of sorts, this killer. Some are calling him The Brander.”

  “It ain’t his real name, but it’ll do until we learn his true one.”

  “It’s your turn. Tell me everything you know,” Emmett said.

  Noose had already told his story to Bess.

  Now he told it to Emmett Ford.

  Ten minutes later, the horrific account of his branding as a thirteen-year-old was finished. The young marshal was a level-headed, reserved man not given to displays of emotions. But Noose thought he saw moisture in his listener’s eyes when he got to the part about the rancher’s sons participating in the hanging and the branding.

  “The old son of a bitch lost whatever wits he had, it looks like. Back then, he hanged my friends but just branded me because to him I was too young to hang. Now he’s murderin’ and brandin’ everybody. What I’m saying is he used to have his own kind of moral code, but now he ain’t playing favorites. From what you’re telling me, his only code is kill ’em all.”

  “You really sure it’s him?” Emmett asked. “The Brander.”

  “Sounds like it, but it’s been a long time and we don’t know nothing for sure.”

  The only thing Noose knew for sure was the fiend was escalating his predations. He slaughtered families of men, women, and children and the corpses were piling up. Only this little boy had survived, and he wasn’t talking. He didn’t have to. All Joe Noose needed to see was the sister branding weal to the one he bore to know who the killer was, who he had to be.

  Marshal Bess was sitting with the little boy on her lap near the warmth of the stove, her eyes moving back and forth between Noose and Ford as they talked. Noose gave her a glance, touched by the tender protective way his friend was holding the child, a warm touch that promised no one would ever harm him again the way he had been harmed. That was Bess to the ground.

  Switching his gaze to the silent little boy, Noose could not tell if Bess’s ministrations had any effect on him, since the kid just stared into the crackling stove fire with a forty-yard stare. The flames danced in his blank eyes, and the pulsing glow of the small fire inside the grate played off his empty features. Noose knew that the little boy was intact on the outside, but inside was gone and not coming back.

  His own branding scar began to itch and burn the way it did when it was telling him something. There but for fortune. This nameless boy could have been Joe, his scar was telling him—he’d just been stronger, or luckier, but for whatever reason was in a position to put down the fiend like a dog and be sure that the man they called The Brander never branded another living human soul.

  So Noose stood across from the small boy, both with the Q brand seared on their flesh beneath their shirts, the adult and child version of the same victim.

  Emmett Ford set down his coffee and walked up to Joe Noose and with his back straight looked him respectfully square in the eye. “Will you help us catch this killer, sir?”

  Noose held Ford’s gaze and shook his hand. “Yes, I will.”

  Jumping out of her chair, Bess swaggered over to the two men, screwing on her hat. “I’m going, too, Joe. Don’t you think I ain’t. This is the three of us.”

  No point in arguing with her.

  Giving her a big cracked grin, Noose just nodded.

  It was decided.

  “Let’s ride.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The only thing Joe Noose would miss about being sheriff was the warmth of the office coal stove because where they were heading was going to be as cold as the moon for long weeks ahead on the deadly trail. At the end of that trail lay his oldest enemy, who at least would be contending with the same harsh and brutal Wyoming winter conditions his pursuers were. It would warm up considerably for the old man when Noose sent him to Hell, hotter than a thousand red-hot branding irons.

  The three manhunters spent the rest of the day provisioning for the trip ahead, getting supplies and ammo for their weapons and reshoeing and otherwise tend
ing to their horses. Joe Noose had to get his affairs in order, leaving the job of sheriff of Victor. The plan was to stay one night in Victor then ride out at first light.

  The boy stayed behind.

  The trail ahead would be dangerous, no place for a child who had already been through enough. Mountainous remote terrain. Temperatures below freezing. Likely gunplay. And a red-hot branding iron with a taste for human flesh. The bounty hunter Joe Noose and the two U.S. Marshals, Bess Sugarland and Emmett Ford, would ride it together, fully armed, loaded, and locked down.

  Noose took care of placing the boy in a proper home. After two months of being sheriff of Victor, Idaho, he knew everybody in town on a first-name basis, so Noose knew right where to go. He left Bess and Emmett behind to saunter across town down to the schoolhouse. There, he had a few words with the kindly teacher Sarah Jones, who agreed to take the boy under her wing and keep him fed and clothed under her roof until proper arrangements could be made. Mrs. Jones felt confident that the youngster would be adopted by one of the local families, because it was a town full of decent people. Thus, Noose found the lad a home with the generous schoolmistress of Victor, who showered the child with attention the minute he was introduced to her.

  That done, Noose gathered his weapons. A Sharps large-bore single shot long-range rifle. Two .45 Colt Peacemaker revolvers. Two Winchester lever-action repeating Model 1886 rifles. Twelve boxes of ammo for each. And a bowie knife.

  And went to the stable directly.

  Copper looked up at him with bright, warm eyes alert to the call to arms. The big bronze-colored stallion exuded muscular energy and vitality, looking like it was itching for action. The bullet wound it had taken in the shoulder had fully healed. Its eyes were bright with anticipation of hitting the trail again with its owner. The steed needed action and was happy it was going to get it. What took you so long? It’s about time. Its expression spoke. The horse was chomping at the bit.

  So was Joe Noose.

  “Boy, we got us a job to do.”

  The look Copper returned said Let’s do it.

  Saddling up, Noose rode his horse out of the Victor stable for the last time, trotting up Main Street to the general store. Where they were going there wouldn’t be beds, so the bounty hunter needed to purchase a tent and lean-to to sleep in outdoors, as well as a few buffalo blankets to keep the cold out. Freezing to death on the Wyoming frontier in the winter was a very real danger, even with comrades. Every spring thaw, bodies of man and horse were discovered where they fell and froze . . . sometimes just bones. He swung out his saddle and tethered Copper to the hitching post, then went inside.

  He was unsurprised to see Marshal Bess and Marshal Ford already there in the general store, purchasing supplies for the trip. Salted beef, coffee beans, dried beans, corn dodgers, and whiskey were in the process of being loaded into the saddlebags of their horses.

  Noose lent a hand loading up the provisions, taking casual note of his saddle mates’ firearms. Emmett Ford had a Henry rifle in his saddle scabbard, a big powerful gun used for hunting buffalo. He also packed the more accurate distance weapon, a Sharps rifle. His pistols were twin Remington 1875s. The bounty hunter knew his friend Bess was wearing her father’s twin pearl-handled Colt Peacemakers, undoubtedly freshly cleaned and oiled—in her holsters, for she never went anywhere without them. Her regular Winchester repeater rifle was on display. Casting a glance at her saddle as he filled her saddlebag with supplies, Noose saw she had packed plenty of ammo.

  The Brander, if that’s what the old man called himself these days, had much to fear from the formidable firepower the three who were chasing him were armed with. It would give any sensible man pause.

  The few last details taken care of, it was time to make tracks.

  Noose wrote his resignation note and, explaining his departure, personally placed the note in the hand of Mayor Ralph Wiggins, who was sorry to see him go. His last act as sheriff of Victor was to promote his deputy Alan Mills to fill his post as interim sheriff until a permanent position could be filled. Noose guessed that probably wouldn’t be anytime soon and that his deputy Mills would grow into the job and hold it for a long time. They shook hands. Noose wished him luck and it was done. He was back to being a bounty hunter.

  After a good night’s sleep in the local hotel, the three manhunters were rested, breakfasted, and saddled up as dawn broke over the town, ready to begin their ride across the Teton Pass.

  “I’d like to swear you in again as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, like I did with Bonny Kate,” Bess said, taking out a badge.

  Noose smiled and shook his head. “Two marshals on this job is quite enough. Better I work outside the law on this one, Bess. You just tell me which way we’re riding.”

  “Back across the pass to Jackson. Check in there, provision, and ride south to Pinedale, where the last murders took place. Figure it’s two days’ ride.” Marshal Bess had it all worked out. “Figured you’ll want to check the crime scene. We left it untouched.”

  “That boy’s family, right?”

  She gave a trenchant nod.

  “Any idea which direction the old man rode after he killed them?” Noose watched Bess through the falling snow, his pale blue eyes piercing hers through the veil of snowflakes pouring over the brim of his big black Stetson.

  She shook her head. “It snowed over. Savvied you’d be able to figure that out from clues at the scene and track him.”

  “You savvied right.” He thought for a moment. “How long ago did the murders occur?”

  “It’s frozen solid out there, but looks like no more than a month.”

  “Means the old son of a bitch got a month’s head start ride on us.”

  “You’ll catch him.”

  “Not sitting here.”

  “Then we best get a move on.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Noose cracked a warm, broken grin at Bess and she lit right up. “Daylight is wasting.”

  The three spurred their horses.

  They rode hard out of Victor.

  * * *

  Three hours south on the trail brought Joe Noose, Bess Sugarland, and Emmett Ford to the edge of where the forest fires had blazed across the mountains last summer until the early-fall rains had extinguished them. Noose slowed Copper to a trot, stunned at the devastation: tens of miles of forestation had been reduced to blackened cinders. Far as the eye could see, charred matchsticks of what once were pine trees a hundred feet high poked out of the snowbanks in dead columns of burned-out tree trunks that seemed to go on forever; the towering mountains, gorges, and ravines of the Teton Pass stood starkly exposed through the endless rows of scorched trees jutting skyward like porcupine quills everywhere Noose looked. The air smelled of burned wood all these months later. It was a sight to give a man pause.

  All this magnificent forest lost because of lady outlaw Bonny Kate Valence, whose storied exploits had left a path of legendary destruction in her wake. Noose himself had started the fire to save her life so he could get her to the gallows to hang. He didn’t have a choice—it had been his job. The bounty hunter did not tell his saddle partners he had tossed the match, as it would do little good. The forest would grow back. Bonny Kate wouldn’t.

  Certainly, it was a lot less dangerous riding back over the Teton Pass than it had been riding up it for Joe Noose—the fires were out and nobody was shooting at him as they had been then, a few months ago. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he remembered the hellish heat of those apocalyptic flames he had so narrowly escaped.

  Today the ride was peaceful and quiet. The Teton Pass was preternaturally silent, just the whistle of the wind and sound of falling snowflakes and creak of their saddles. There were no birds, having no place to nest in the dead, frozen tundra. Noose, Bess, and Emmett didn’t talk, lost in their thoughts in the sobering surroundings.

  Midday on the ride, Bess reached into her saddlebags and handed Joe Noose three hundred and fifty dollars cash tied with a string.

 
“What’s that for?” he asked.

  “It’s the bounty for Bonny Kate Valence for services rendered. You got her to the gallows. And the Marshals Service threw in an extra fifty dollars. It’s what they would have paid the hangman.”

  “Thanks, Bess.” He chuckled. “Reckon I earned that money.” He took the pack of money and put it in his coat.

  “Reckon you did.” She smiled. “Put paid on it. You can deposit it at the bank in Jackson when we stop by the marshal’s office in town, if you don’t want to carry that much cash.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  The lady marshal’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, Joe.”

  “What the hell for, Bess?”

  “For all the trouble that job and that woman gave you. Straight up, I was worried she was going to be a handful but I figured one woman couldn’t get the better of you, even a hellcat like that. Not after the Butler Gang. Maybe I should have thought twice, but I was in a fair fix with her hanging scheduled in two days and Mackenzie and Swallows out of the picture. I leaned on you as a friend.”

  “That’s what friends are for.” The bounty hunter grinned. “Glad I could help.”

  “Well, sorry anyway.”

  “Bess?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d do it again.”

  “Joe Noose, you are some piece of work.” They shared a laugh. She shook her head ruefully. “When that Arizona sheriff rode in with those men of his looking for Bonny Kate, I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Then there was her old boyfriend.”

  “There was somebody else out to get her?”

  “She was popular in an unpopular kind of way, let’s just say.”

  “You must have had your hands plumb full.”

  “I dealt with them. And they got dealt with. I warned ’em. At that point, I was harboring a few sympathies for the woman. Figured maybe she got a raw deal from folks.”