Joe Noose had heard, never trust a man with three names. He wondered if the same held true for women.

Bonny Kate Valance stood there in handcuffs. The wrist restraints were shackled loose with a two-foot chain because she would be riding a horse the next two days. It would be her last ride. Their point of departure was the U.S. Marshal's office in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At the end of the trail fifteen miles across the Teton Pass over the Idaho border lay the town of Victor. The gallows there would be Bonny Kate's final destination. The notorious female outlaw had been sentenced to execution by hanging and it was Joe Noose's job to get the woman there safe and sound so the state could kill her.

The irony was not lost on Noose.

Noose was a big man. He towered six foot three on a broad, muscular, and rugged frame. His handsome, leathery, unshaven chipped face some said looked like a picture of a Roman gladiator. Noose had never seen a picture of a gladiator, but it had always seemed like a compliment and he took it as such. On his massive block of a head his unkempt brown hair had need of a clipping. His giant hands, big as steer hooves, were encased in leather gloves against the cold. A heavy worn brown duster covered his upper torso over a checkered shirt and red bandanna around his neck. The coat had dark stains that could be mud or blood, likely both. His Stetson was tipped low over his pale blue eyes to shield them from the sharp Wyoming sun breaking over the mountain range near Hoback.

It was there by the fork in the Snake River a month before that Noose had spent a fateful and violent few days. At the end of that misadventure fifteen men lay dead, all but three by his own hand, but the men he had killed were responsible for the murders of the three lawmen and it was justice because the murderers had it coming.

Joe Noose had come out of it with one bullet in him — the other bullet went clear through — a bunch of busted ribs, and a few broken bones but his resilience was high; the massive cowboy was healthy and strong and healed quick. Now save for a few lingering bruises and scars on his person that made him look even tougher, folks would never know the hell he'd been through.

The best thing Noose had gotten out of the nasty Hoback business with the Butler Gang was he had made two friends. The first was standing on four legs right in front of him, sixteen hands high, saddled up, and ready to ride: his horse, Copper. The mighty and fearless stallion was aptly named for his bronze coat; when the light was right as the morning sun was now, its hide gleamed with the metallic magnificence of a suit of armor on a medieval steed. Copper's smart eyes were moist and brown, and powerful muscles rippled beneath its smooth tawny hide. The horse had saved Noose's life, and the love and loyalty it had for its owner, and its owner for it, was palpable.

The other friend Joe Noose had made was walking on her own two legs out of the Jackson Hole U.S. Marshal's office right now. Sort of walking, anyhow. Marshal Bess Sugarland was a young hardy woman, strong and attractive with vigorous outdoor looks and flashing intelligent blue eyes. Her gaze was straight and forthright and her manner the same, although her gait was presently crooked from the wooden leg brace she hobbled on and the Winchester repeater she was using as a crutch. A bullet had nearly taken off her leg in Hoback and the wound was healing slower than Noose's wounds had, but Marshal Bess didn't let it slow her down. She was the law in the town of Jackson now, whether she liked it or not.

The seven-star badge on her small chest glinted in the morning sun. Her chin was firmly set and her composure determined as she limped across the stable behind the U.S. Marshal's office up to Noose and the outlaw standing alongside their horses, getting ready to embark on their fateful journey.

Bess nodded to Noose then turned her gaze to Bonny Kate, choosing her words and tersely delivering them. "It ain't for me to judge you, Miss Valance. It's for the Lord to do that. But let me tell you one thing and you listen so you hear it good. Nothing better happen to my friend, or else."

Bonny Kate smiled darkly. "Don't threaten me with a good time." There was haughtiness in the condemned outlaw's posture, with her large bosom stuck brazenly outward in her denim shirt and her shapely blue-jeaned hips cocked in a defiant pose above her black rattlesnake- skin cowboy boots. Her demeanor displayed neither respect nor regard. Everything about the doomed Bonny Kate Valance seemed to whistle past the graveyard.

Bess leaned in nose to nose with Bonny Kate and spoke in the kind of low, quiet way that got people's attention. "I don't make threats, I make promises, Miss Valance. And I promise if Joe Noose don't come back from your hanging in one piece, I'll dig you up and kill you again. That's a promise I'll keep."

The female outlaw stared at the marshal in disbelief, shook her head in resignation, and chuckled. "The ideas folks have about me. None of 'em true. I swear." The outlaw sighed ruefully and shrugged her soft and delicate shoulders. "But folks best believe what they best believe, and bein' as they all think me to be the Antichrist in petticoats there's no telling any of 'em otherwise, so off I go to be — "

Bonny Kate made a pulling gesture by her neck with her closed fist, cocked her head sideways, crossed her eyes, and stuck her tongue in her cheek, making a popping sound with her lips in a grotesque imitation of hanging. Then she rearranged her face back to normal again and wore a perplexed, confounded expression that was almost comical. "Now, here's the part I don't get. My mama always told me to wear clean drawers, and my whole life that has been just what this girl has done only to end up hanged as an adult and soil myself like an infant. You know that's —"

"Shut up, Bonny Kate. Get your posterior on that horse. You got a date with the hangman and we don't want to keep him waiting." Marshal Bess turned her tight, worried gaze to Joe Noose, who stood calm and patient beside Copper, brushing the horse's golden withers with his big, rough hand. The two friends made eye contact and in their shared gaze was an unspoken shorthand born of friendship. The conversation was had in simple glances.

A nod from Noose telling Bess he was going to be all right. A returned nod and then a second one from Bess told him to be careful. A grin and friendly touch of his finger to the tip of his Stetson from Noose told Bess to stop being foolish and quit her worrying. Joe Noose never had to say a word, and with one easy, powerful sweep of his leg he swung into the saddle of his bronze horse and was mounted up.

This time Bess smiled back. She rounded on Bonny Kate Valance and swept up the barrel of her Winchester, now a loaded weapon, not a crutch, aimed right at the convicted woman's narrow gut below her ample bosom. Again, Bess didn't need to speak. A quick levering of the repeater and couple of up-and-down motions of the rifle barrel communicated the message perfectly well, and Bonny Kate took the meaning clearly. With her relative freedom of mobility in her handcuffs, the woman outlaw grabbed the saddle pommel of her tough old loaned chestnut quarter horse and slung a boot into a stirrup. After a few unladylike grunts and ungraceful clambering of her shapely legs, she struggled into the saddle and sat...