CHAPTER 5
“Are those men who they say they are?”
Bonny Kate was tight-lipped as she met Joe Noose’s blunt gaze. He wanted answers. She nodded and said, “Yeah, Sheriff Bojack. I know him.”
“So it’s true, then.”
“The them being lawmen part, yeah.”
“Why the hell are they trying to kill you?” he asked.
“For something I ain’t done.”
“Lady, for a woman who ain’t done nothing you got a lot of people want you dead for it.”
The two people were walking single file up the narrow gap in the granite crevice between the cliffs, leading their horses carefully, moving single file with Noose in the lead, Bonny Kate tailing him. There was barely room in the tight space for the width of the horses to squeeze through. Noose was walking backward to keep a flinty eye on the opening several hundred yards behind, where they had slipped through, escaping the posse. Noose held his loaded Winchester and Henry rifles, one in each hand, ready to fire, his reins loosely slung over his right wrist because Copper needed little supervision. The bronze horse agilely placed its hooves on the steep, rocky ground, ascending the treacherous draw toward the opening up ahead that spilled out onto some kind of higher ground. The female outlaw brooded, giving Noose a narrow glance.
“I don’t give a squat if you believe me or not,” she said. “I’m between the hawk and the buzzard anyway and either way I’ll be dead in a day or two.”
“Can’t believe or disbelieve what I don’t know nothing about. Why do those lawmen want to kill you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long ride. Mind if I ask you a question, Miss Valance?”
“Ain’t like I’m stopping you.”
“Why is it that you ain’t shown a lick of fear about swinging at the end of that noose they got waiting for you in Idaho but that sheriff back there scared you so bad you were quaking in your boots?”
“Was not.”
“What difference does it make to you whether you die by a rope or a bullet?”
“Because a noose is quick. Waylon Bojack, he ain’t just gonna kill me, he’s gonna kill me slow, after he removes my lady parts.”
Noose passed the Winchester in his left hand to his right one with the Henry to reach out and take Bonny Kate’s hand, helping her lead her ragged quarter horse up a tricky section of path. “Firstly, that ain’t gonna happen,” he said. “Nobody’s gonna kill you before I get you to the gallows to die legal. Them lawmen are interfering with due process and I’ll kill all of ’em if I have to. That’s on them for breaking the law they was sworn to uphold, but I’m getting you to the noose just like I’m sworn to do.”
“Lordy.” She looked at him oddly with a penetrating gaze. “You’re gonna risk your life, probably get yourself killed or shot up real bad, going up outnumbered against all those men trying to kill me just so the folks in Idaho can kill me. What’s the sense in that? Either way I’m dead.”
“I have a job to do, you’re that job, and I’m gonna put paid on it.”
“Well, good for you.” She snorted. “You may be big and tough and all and have all them big guns but you ain’t got a lick of sense. Not hardly a lick.” She shook her head and laughed harshly. “Get yourself killed just so some folks can kill me instead of other folks. That makes no sense.”
“Does to me.”
“Because?”
“Because I swore an oath to Marshal Bess, because it’s the law, and because in this situation it’s the right thing to do. I gave my word.”
More and more, Bonny Kate seemed to grow fascinated with Noose. Like she had encountered some new animal species not previously known to exist. “You’re big on the right thing to do,” she observed frankly. “You always done the right thing?”
Noose became distant for a reflective few moments, then said, “Not always. Now I try to. When I can figure out what the right thing is. That ain’t always easy.”
“You said a mouthful, Joe Noose.” The female outlaw unexpectedly smiled warmly then spoke softly and sincerely when she said, “And if it means anything, I do appreciate it. I feel safe with you. Not for long, maybe, but safe for right now.”
“Good.”
“It is good.”
Noose let Bonny Kate’s hand go now the footing was more steady in the crevice and returned the Winchester to his left hand, returning his gaze to the receding opening to their rear over his prisoner’s shoulder. So far there was no sign of the posse. “Maybe you best tell me the long story of why that sheriff wants your hide. Pardon the language, Miss Valance, but that man has one hell of a hard-on for you. Why is that?”
She sighed, lock-jawed.
Noose shrugged. “I got all day. The night, too. Then the first part of tomorrow. That’s about it.” He grinned.
She didn’t. “Sheriff Bojack believes I shot his son, his own deputy, in the back and killed him outside of Phoenix about nine months ago. The deputy was part of Bojack’s posse that was chasing me and my gang for a train robbery we pulled in Arizona, where we stole a bunch of money. A hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars was the take. That part of what they accuse me of is true. We robbed the train. And the law came after us. It happened in Bojack’s jurisdiction and he and his boys chased us hard for a week, damn near drove our horses into the ground. Them Arizona lawdogs is some tough honchos, that’s a plain fact. After a week we thought we had lost ’em in the desert but we was wrong.
“My gang and me, we had hid out in some pueblos and the sheriff and his boy and probably those men back there shooting at us ambushed us while we were sleeping. The bullets were flying and it was hellfire. I ran. Didn’t even have time to strap on my gun belt, and that young deputy, good-looking boy that he was, gave chase and he had me boxed in with his gun on me, but he was an honest lawman, he didn’t shoot me though he could have ’cause he was just a kid. I knew when I heard the shot it wasn’t his shot, and when the deputy fell with a big hole in his back I saw Johnny Cisco standing behind him with a smoking weapon. Cisco was my man and was always sweet on me but as the good Lord God is my witness it was Johnny Cisco shot the Bojack boy in the back, not me. I was unarmed, didn’t even have a gun on me, Joe!”
Noose listened, backing his way up the draw, didn’t look at her, keeping his eyes alert for trouble behind them, didn’t speak.
“You probably don’t believe me, either.” Bonny Kate shrugged in resignation.
“Don’t matter if I do or don’t. Point is, Sheriff Bojack believes it enough to travel three states to come gunning for you. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”
“It happened just like I told it.”
“Why you think he thinks that?”
“Because Cisco told him I shot the deputy. And all those buzzards in that old gang of mine backed up his story. Sheriff Bojack and his deputies captured or killed all of my gang that night. I’m the only one who got away.”
“What happened to the money?” Noose asked.
“That hundred grand from the train, you mean?” she retorted.
Noose nodded. “What else?”
Bonny Kate shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. My gang had it and the law got them. I got away with two dollars and one buffalo nickel in my britches, and not a damn thing else. ’Cept my life. What I have left of it.”
“That was a lot of money.”
With a wistful smile, the lady outlaw nodded, whistling nostalgically. “Sure was. Most cash I ever seen or touched. While I was on the run I don’t know which I missed more: that money or my beau Johnny Cisco’s handsome face, them mooning looks he’d always give me ’cause that man loved me something fierce. Truth be told, I got powerful lonesome in the days since then, knowing I’d never have a man worship the ground I walked on like that again, and I still miss Cisco. He’s probably dead now, but maybe he got away with that money and is living in luxury. I rightly don’t know. Soon all my worries are over anyhow.”
“Reckon.”
They had reached the top of the gap and Copper stepped ahead of Noose out onto the top of the cliff face. Noose put his hand out for Bonny Kate to stop so he could check the area was safe. He peered carefully over the edge of the gap that opened up onto a stark plateau, both his rifles at ready as he swung them in a quick 360, his nose going where the muzzles went.
Nobody was up there, nothing moving except the odd birds flying overhead. Insects buzzed. The air smelled hot, dry, and dusty. From Noose’s vantage, the rock face ended at a sheer cliff on one side of the draw and on the other side stretched for fifty yards to a scattered tree line of browned and thirsty pine trees that rose high into the colorless sky before the mountains continued straight up beyond in a series of dizzying, jutting crags. A rugged, untamed wilderness. The drought conditions had been severe the last month. The landscape was one big fire hazard, Noose observed grimly; a single spark could set the entire mountain ablaze. Endless patchwork quilt carpets of once-lush conifers now dun and withered from thirst, green leached from their dried branches, blanketed the steep rising slopes of the Teton Pass in clumps of dead and dying forestation.
Noose could not see the excavated trail everyone traveled across the pass from up here—it lay below out of sight to the south—and there was nothing remotely resembling any kind of trailhead in this remote area; he was going to have to improvise a way on up through the mountains, pushing south, left, with his prisoner and hoping to reconnect with the regular trail without incident.
Time was wasting.
The sheriff and his deputies were after them, and men like these meant to see things through. It was a long way to Idaho across hard country and they had to get moving.
Stepping up out of the crevice onto solid ground, Joe Noose took another look around and then gestured with his rifle to Bonny Kate it was safe to come out. With a few swift, sure steps, she egressed the gap with her Appaloosa in tow and stood beside him on the plateau, looking around in dismay, unsure of where they were to go. A brief, refreshing breeze scented with dry pinecones cooled their faces and dried the sweat. Noose pointed toward what seemed like some kind of natural path in the woods heading west in the general Idaho direction.
He swung into his saddle. She climbed into hers. They rode on. So far, nobody was on their trail.
For now.