Noose by Eric Red

Author:Eric Red
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

Bess needed to relieve herself.

Had to for the last fifteen miles.

She’d been holding it in for the last two hours and was in considerable discomfort with the bounce of the saddle. The country they had been riding through the last two hours had been wide-open prairie that did not afford any privacy. She could have ridden off by herself, gone a few miles, and probably found a suitable spot, but something told the canny female marshal it was a good idea to stick to these villains like glue and not let them out of her sight. At the same time, she didn’t want them to watch her drop her drawers so she had bitten the bullet—literally had stuck one of her .44-40 rounds between her molars, grinding against it, riding out the cramps in her bowels that came and went.

Five minutes ago, to her indescribable relief, fortune smiled on her. Luckily for her, the grim dogged procession of tired horses and bent buzzard figures of bounty killers rode up an incline and the posse was in the trees—rows of pines in dense walls of branches and trunks in both directions were on either side of the narrow trail. Both sides gave Bess ample forest cover to do her business shielded from sight of the men. To her left, the landscape angled sharply upward in a sheer slope of hard granite and lush conifers jutting at obtuse angles to the grade—that would be a hard climb and the woman didn’t think she had that kind of time. To her right, the slope looked level for a few hundred yards past the tree line, then appeared to drop off into a ravine of some kind. That was the preferred direction she would head for.

When she could stand it no more, she spoke up. “Mr. Butler,” Bess called out to the man in black riding directly before her on his giant mean stallion. “Can we take a ten-minute break? Nature calls.”

“As nature will do,” he amiably replied without looking back. “Take your time. We’ll rest the horses ’n wait for you here.”

“Much obliged,” Bess said with a relieved exhale. Descending out of her saddle and tossing the reins to Butler, she loped off the trail across the wild grass toward the dense tree line ahead. Her pace became even brisker as soon as she crossed into the cool, dark, peaceful canopy of pine forest. Once she felt the comforting embrace of its solitude, only then did she look back—to her great relief, after a few paces the posse was soon lost from view altogether past the branches.

Bess was thinking, Ought to have told Butler twenty minutes, because she intended to walk as far as she could into the woods and put a considerable distance between herself and the men behind her before she did what she came to do . . . even the next state would not be private enough for her.

A wave of relief washed over Bess, who experienced a sudden flood of euphoria—it felt so good to be alone finally.

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