CHAPTER 18
The sun was going down.
Joe Noose looked up at the sparkling red flares exploding through the tree branches, the crimson ball of fire moving behind the western pines flashing in and out of his eyes with each step of his horse. He gauged they had an hour of daylight left. Full dark in this part of Wyoming came fast this close to the Idaho border, he knew. The tree canopy would bring on darkness that much quicker. They were a mile from the top of the pass but wouldn’t reach it today. Riding off the trail through the treacherously uneven pine woodlands was difficult enough during day hours and would be suicidal once night fell. The horses wouldn’t make it ten yards before one put a hoof wrong and snapped a leg. The sanguine radiance of decreasing sunset deepened and shadowed in luminosity to paint the riders and horses and the trees towering around in one sinister color: a gruesome shade of blood, a hellish gory hue that even now was fading to black.
Scanning the surrounding woods in the failing light from his saddle, Noose spotted a small clearing nearby that looked like it might make a suitable campsite.
Swinging a glance over his shoulder, he saw Bonny Kate Valance’s ruddy face bathed in red twilight, the glow infusing her red hair with witchy incandescence.
“We have to make camp,” he said.
“Stop, you mean?” she replied.
“Can’t ride in the dark. You know better than that.”
“But they’re coming. They’re all still after us.”
“They can’t ride in the dark, neither.”
The sun sank.
Looking nervously around herself with a shiver, the woman pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. “Good, I guess. Camping here, I mean. Lordy, my ass hurts from all this riding and I’m getting cold. Ain’t you?”
“It ain’t cold. Not yet.”
“It will be good to get warm by a fire.”
Noose shook his head slowly, firmly. “Ain’t gonna be no fire. That will point us out to those that’s after us like a signal flare. We’re camping in the dark, because dark is what it gets up here.”
“You’re making me look forward to getting hanged so I can get this all over with.”
“You’ll get your wish soon enough. Tomorrow, if we survive tonight.”
She had no response to that.
He clicked his teeth and flipped the reins, steering Copper for the small clearing under the lofty overhang of the pine trees and his horse trod toward it. Bonny Kate followed cooperatively on her Appaloosa. All around, the dense woods were growing quiet and very still in the onset of nightfall. The shadows deepened. The closer they rode, the more Noose saw he had picked a good spot. The area was flat and uncluttered by roots. The brown pine-needle carpeted ground looked soft enough to make a reasonable approximation of a bed. Best of all, there was a natural obstruction of a log on one side and tight growth of conifer trunks on the other that afforded a natural defense and cover. It would do.
In the branches high above, the chirp of birds and buzz of insects sensing the approaching nightfall created a noise that somehow added to the sense of silence. It was serene, restful even. For the first time since Joe Noose rose that morning and rode out of Jackson with his fateful cargo, Noose began to feel himself unwind and relax—he sat loose in his saddle, eager to get off his horse for a few hours.
The dark descended fast. The two horses and riders approached the clearing. Swinging out of the saddle, Noose swiftly tethered Copper’s reins to the nearest suitable tree and patted his four-legged friend’s nose. Copper showed its teeth and bucked its head in friendly response. Rounding on Bonny Kate, Noose saw she was still up on her horse, sitting in the saddle and looking around to get her bearings. From the calm expression on her face, the camp seemed to suit her.
The last of the sunset winked out on the horizon, like a glint of red light on the sharp blade of a knife; a sudden gloom descended over the campsite as the red afterglow extinguished in the deep shadows’ descent—it was very quick; the only remaining light was the faint crimson glimmer of the twilit sky barely glimpsed through the interlaced black skeletal silhouettes of the branches high above. Already, Noose could barely make out the bronze shadow of Copper standing by the tree.
“We’re safer now than we’ve been the whole day. The dark just took care of that. I don’t expect no trouble till dawn.” Noose helped Bonny Kate off her horse, easing her to the ground, where she stretched her aching limbs.
“We at the top yet?” she asked.
“Hard to tell. Just about, I’d say. The trail is a few miles to our left and not being on that I can’t say for sure, but my guess is an hour’s ride at dawn and we’ll arrive at the declination.”
“Declination?”
“Means we’ll be riding downward. On the Idaho side.”
They made camp. Both sat across from each other as night fell and the world went dark.
“My last good night’s sleep where I wake up to a new day.” She stared off into space.
Noose looked at her grimly. “Waking up to a new day ain’t guaranteed for nobody, Bonny Kate.”
She gave him an ironic, melancholic smile. “Well, for me, no days after tomorrow is definitely guaranteed.” She sat on the ground, knees pulled up to her chest, hugging her arms around them.
For a while, Noose didn’t respond. “I’m sorry about that.”
She just shrugged.
The quiet moment and relaxed surroundings as well as saddle fatigue had Noose in a reflective mood. “I don’t know what to say, I suppose.”
“You don’t got to say nothing. You don’t owe me nothing.”
“Reckon all I can say is I hope you had a hell of a time in this life. Don’t know you too well, Bonny Kate, just a day, but you seem like you ain’t that bad a sort. Definitely met worse. If what you say is true, or some of it is, then you’ve been wronged by them hanging you like they mean to. It ain’t right. But it’s the law, and it ain’t for me to say.”
Her smile was genuine. “Thank you.”
It was his turn to shrug.
“You’re okay, Joe Noose. Don’t exactly understand you, but as males of the species go, you’re okay in my book.”
He grinned, then tipped his hat.
“I’m gonna cut you loose, Bonny Kate.”
“Say what?” Her widened eyes gleamed in the moonlight.
“Gonna take the cuffs off, so you can sleep comfortable. You got a big day tomorrow, need your beauty rest to keep your wits about you.”
“You trust me that much?”
Noose didn’t answer, just edged forward on his big knees through the pine needles, drawing his key ring from his belt as he reached for her hands. “You ain’t afraid I’m gonna run off ?” she asked.
“Where to?” He gestured to the woods. All around them was pitch-darkness so stygian black the nearest trees ten feet away were visible only as lighter shadows against the darker impenetrability beyond. The moonlight did nothing to light the area.
“Grab your gun or something while you’re asleep?” Bonny Kate asked as Noose inserted the key in her manacles and undid the lock. The shackles opened and the chains dropped with a muffled clank on the soft bed of pine needles. She rubbed her wrists.
The moonlight glinted on his cracked grin. “I ain’t gonna sleep. I’ll be sitting right by that tree yonder with my eyes and ears open, standing watch.”
“All night?”
“All night. So I ain’t worried about you going for my gun, and it ain’t you I’m staying up to watch out for anyway.”
Noose settled back against the tree. He bit the cork out of a bottle of whiskey, took a swig, corked it, and tossed it over to Bonny Kate. She caught the bottle, took a deep swig, and whistled in satisfaction. “That warms a body right up.” The lady outlaw tossed the whiskey back to Noose. “It’s kind of nice without a fire. Just the moonlight. Cold and all, but nice.”
“And safe.”
“I feel safe.”
Noose grunted in agreement. Soon he felt her eyes gleaming in the dark on him. Presently, Bonny Kate said, “So being as we got this time to spend together. . .”
He raised his gaze to meet hers, watching her evenly.
Bonny Kate took a deep sip then thought a minute before she recorked the bottle to throw it back over to Noose. She regarded him a moment. “You mind if I could sit next to you, Joe? Seems stupid us tossing this bottle back and forth, us keeping getting drunker because soon we’ll miss and break the bottle and then there won’t be no more whiskey.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“I’m getting there.”
“You’re fine where you are.”
He held her raw, aching gaze. Finally she said, “Fine, you want me to say it, I will: This is my last night on earth. I want to sleep my last night in a man’s arms. What’s so wrong with that?”
Noose sighed, shifting uncomfortably. “Ain’t a good idea, Bonny Kate.”
“You think I’m gonna steal your gun and shoot you with it while you’re asleep if you let me get close?”
“I told you I ain’t sleeping tonight.”
“Then, what you worried about?”
The two people sat across from each other in the camp in the middle of the woods, just outlines to each other in the dappled moonlight falling through the boughs. Noose could see her eyes shining in the dark, glittery with tears. “Ain’t worried about nothing,” he said defensively.
It was quiet for a while then he heard the woman’s soft sobs and in the dim saw the heaving of her shoulders as she wept.
Noose shifted awkwardly. “C’mon, Bonny Kate. Don’t do that.”
Louder sobs and sniffles. He couldn’t see her eyes anymore and it took him a few seconds to realize that was because her face was in her hands.
“Stop crying, will ya? C’mon, I hate to listen to a woman cry.”
“I-it ain’t you gonna hang tomorrow. I’m scared. I’m scared to die. It’s only gonna be a few hours now. That’s all the time I got left. I never felt so . . . alone. So terrible awful alone.”
Regarding her bleak and dismal form in the shadows, Noose felt a tug on his heart, because the woman looked like a discarded little girl’s rag doll, utterly bereft and forlorn. Unable to help himself, he set the bottle down and sat up, getting up on his haunches and approaching her in an unthreatening crouch.
She sat slumped, her hair over her hands pressed against her face, weeping uncontrollably in racking sobs.
Tentatively, Noose reached out and as gently as he knew how, took one of Bonny Kate’s hands and pulled it toward him. “Come on. Come over here with me. I’m sorry. You can sit over here with me.”
Her hand was limp in his, as if the strength and will to live had left her body. Noose was shaken up by how spent and fragile the woman appeared to be. Tenderly as he could manage, he pulled again and she didn’t resist but it was like he was dragging an unconscious person. “Easy, lady,” he said. Scooping her up off the ground in both big arms, one under her legs, the other under her shoulders, he rose to his feet, stood up straight, and carried her the fifteen feet across the camp to the big pine tree trunk he had been sitting against. There, Noose set her gently down with her back to the tree, with all the care he could muster. Her head hung limp, her froth of red hair about her shoulders. But as he released her hand she gave his a delicate squeeze, and there were signs of life in her again. Bonny Kate had stopped her crying, drying her wet face with the back of her other hand.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly.
Leaning back against the tree, Noose slid to a sitting position beside Bonny Kate. Immediately, she rested her shoulder against his big left arm and laid her head against his chest. She felt warm and alive and her being this close to him was more agreeable than he cared to admit to himself, so he did not move. With his right hand, he picked the bottle of whiskey up off the ground then bit out the cork. It was half-full, and the amber liquid sloshed around inside. They passed it back and forth as they sat together and watched the idyllic moon fingering through the branches of the forest canopy as minutes seemed to turn into hours, feeling the alcohol warm their insides with each swig. The soporific effect of the booze did not make Joe Noose drunk for his tolerance was high, but he felt himself feeling closer to Bonny Kate Valance than he had all day, as she lay against him.
All of a sudden, her lips were on his. Hot, moist, sweet.
Noose broke the kiss with Bonny Kate.
“Please,” she begged.
“It’s tempting, ma’am. It sorely is. But it ain’t right.”
She smeared her lips against his and threw her whole hot body behind it, wrapping her arms around his back but gently he pushed her way. The passion in her smoldering flesh radiated raw heat off her and Noose wanted the woman bad. It took all his will to break away. “I couldn’t take advantage of you like that.”
She grinned saucily. “Take advantage all you want, cowboy. Ain’t like I’m gonna mind this time tomorrow. Girl’s got to get her kicks while she can. Hell, it ain’t like I’m gonna get with child.”
“Sorry.” He pulled back and watched her stonily. His face was a wall.
Bonny Kate cooled off, her rapid breathing slowing, at a loss for words. She regarded him incredulously. “Nobody’s ever turned me down before.”
“Let’s just say you’re not my type.”
The swift, hard smack she gave him left the side of his face hurting long after Bonny Kate had crawled across to her horse then curled up and fallen asleep but still Noose did not put the cuffs back on so her last night was not spent in discomfort.