The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  At the edge of the fire’s glow, Bone stopped. McCall and Tatum stopped, as well. The fire was about fifteen feet away. The hump that was Spurr Morgan—Bone recognized the hat tipped down beside the saddle that the old lawman was using for a pillow—lay on the fire’s far side. He lay abutting a stout pine, high-topped moccasins standing neatly beside Spurr’s form humped beneath the blankets.

  It was almost dark in the clearing. Occasionally the fire popped and sparked and there was some fleeting light. But mostly there were only shadows. The only sounds were Spurr’s regular snoring, the soft crackling of the fire, and the ceaseless chugging and rippling of the river in the bank about fifty yards to Bone’s right.

  Bone looked at the others. They were both watching him, taking his lead. He nodded and started forward, raising his Winchester in both hands across his chest, gently drawing the hammer back to full cock.

  He set each boot down carefully in the fine dust and pine needles around the fire. He skirted the fire’s left side and approached Spurr, who lay before him in the velvety darkness. The old lawman continued to send up his loud, slow, regular snores.

  To Bone’s left, McCall gave a soft whistle. Bone looked at the man, who jerked his head to indicate something above Bone. Bone lifted his gaze to see, in the dense shadows and flickers of umber light from the fire’s coals, what appeared to be a rope.

  The rope was hanging from a branch of the pine. Bone glowered up at the rope, and cool, dry fingers of apprehension raked across the back of his neck.

  The rope had been fashioned into a hangman’s knot. It hung about four feet over Bone’s head. He could feel the tension in the other two men as they, too, studied the knot.

  Spurr continued to snore.

  The snoring stopped.

  Bone, McCall, and Tatum all jerked their heads down to look at the humped shape before them. Bone began to bring his Winchester down, aim the barrel at a spot in the blankets just beneath the down-canted hat.

  A shadow slid out from behind the tree. Two eyes glowed red in the fire’s dim umber glow. A raspy voice shouted, “Bone, McCall, Tatum—you’re all under arrest! Gonna come peaceful?”

  Bone heard himself scream as he lurched back a step and aimed his rifle at the vague, red-eyed silhouette of a hatless head poking out from behind the stout pine. He only saw a gun flash, which fleetingly showed the devilish grin on the wizened old lawman’s haggard face, before he stopped hearing anything at all.

  * * *

  Spurr’s pistol roared three times and then once more as if in afterthought, the flames stabbing from the barrel lighting up his little encampment in the trees along the river. The man to Spurr’s left was the only one of the three who’d gotten off a shot, the slug plunking harmlessly into the pine bole.

  Then all three figures were humped on the ground to either side of the fire, groaning and mewling, boots raking the dirt as the dying outlaws kicked and flopped spasmodically.

  It took only a few seconds before they stopped moving, ceased making sounds of any kind.

  Spurr stepped around the tree in his longhandles, the Starr .44 aimed straight out from his right hip. Gray smoke curled from the barrel. He walked around to each dead man, making sure that each had, in fact, given up the ghost.

  Spurr gave a satisfied chuff and returned the Starr to the holster coiled beside his saddle, near where the Winchester leaned against the pine. He threw his blankets back, tossed away the small pine branches he’d heaped there, and crawled back into the roll.

  He looked up at the noose he’d thrown over the pine branch, shook his head, and chuckled at his own joke.

  He tipped his hat down over his eyes, smacked his lips, and yawned. “Now, maybe a washed-up old lawman can finally get some shut-eye!”

  NINE

  Four days later, in the winding, narrow little canyon that housed the town calling itself Diamond Fire in the Medicine Bow Mountains, Spurr stared down at the man with his head hanging over the creek, and said, “Sir, if that creek comes up another inch, or you lower your head same, you will drown.”

  The man did not move. He was hanging half off the bank of the creek that tumbled down the canyon, splitting the town in two. The man’s shaggy, light blond hair sagged toward the water that bubbled over the rocks, barely an inch beneath his nose. One arm also hung over the bank while the other arm was thrown out beside him. He wore a shabby wool coat, dungarees, and the hobnailed boots of a miner.

  “Sir!” Spurr intoned, staring down from Cochise’s back. He’d just ridden into the shabby outskirts of the town. It was late afternoon, but the sun had already dropped behind the steep, rocky western pass, and piano and fiddle music could be heard all up and down the canyon, the players seemingly competing for raucousness.

  Still, the man hanging over the water did not move. Sound asleep. Passed out, more like, from the snake piss sold in such camps as this one and calling itself whiskey.

  With an angry grunt, Spurr hauled himself out of the saddle. He dropped to a knee, rolled the sleeping man over onto his back, and saw that he had been sleeping, all right. Asleep for all eternity. The ragged hole in his forehead, just left of center, told the story. Blood had oozed out of the hole and into his hairline and coagulated there in a thick, dark brown crust.

  “Want a poke, mister?”

  Spurr lifted his head. A girl stood on the second-story balcony of the broad, three-story building behind him. Called Reymont & Chaney’s Dovetail Frolic House, it was an unpainted structure built of vertical whipsawed pine planks, with unpeeled pine logs framing the sprawling first-floor veranda. The girl, a willowy blonde, wore a sheer wrap that Spurr could see through, and she opened the unbuttoned garment wider to give him an unobstructed look at her breasts.

  She smiled. “I’m free with a bottle until seven o’clock this evening.” She hefted her breasts in her hands, and winked. “We’re in competition with the Chinaman on Denver Avenue, so Reymont and Chaney got us all marked down for a time.”

  “A purty girl like you for the price of a bottle?” Spurr said, scowling with incredulity as he straightened. “Well, that’s an insult and a cryin’ shame to boot!”

  The girl smiled and waggled a bare knee, charmed.

  “Say, this man appears to be dead,” Spurr said, pointing at the dead man.

  “I had a feelin’,” the girl said, releasing her breasts. “He hasn’t moved in a long time.”

  “How long’s he been here?”

  The girl shrugged. “Since I woke up this mornin’, around eleven or so. I got a feelin’ he’s been there since last night. Heard a spate of gunfire out here around mignight, men shoutin’ an’ carryin’ on like they do.” She turned the corners of her pretty mouth down and shook her head. She did nothing to cover her well-rounded breasts, the pink nipples pointing slightly outward.

  “The constable ain’t been summoned?” Spurr said, as incredulous as before.

  “What constable?” the girl said. “Owen Wiley’s dead as last year’s Christmas goose.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Two nights ago. His woman found him sittin’ in his privy with his throat cut.”

  “Holy shit,” Spurr said. “Has someone taken over for him?”

  The girl nodded. “The mayor’s fillin’ in, though he ain’t spreadin’ it around over much, seein’ as how the town constable ain’t a very popular line of work here in Diamond Fire.”

  “Could you direct me to the mayor, then, honey?”

  She smiled down at him, leaned forward on the balcony rail. “Say, you’re sweet. You talk sweet and you got a sweet face.”

  “My face has been called a lot of things, honey,” Spurr said, chuckling, “but sweet ain’t one of ’em.”

  The girl laughed. It sounded a little like Kansas City Jane’s laugh. The girl was blond like Jane, too, though her heart-shaped, blue-eyed face was prettie
r.

  Just the same, being reminded of the dead whore made Spurr’s heart heavy.

  “Say, you ain’t headin’ east soon, are ya?”

  Spurr regarded her curiously. She glanced behind her and then over the railing to see if anyone else was within earshot, and then cupped a hand to her mouth as she said, “If you were, I was wonderin’ if I could tag along. I’d like to get out of this perdition before the snow flies.” She shook her head darkly. “This is one crazy place, mister, and I’d just as soon not spend the whole winter here with these crazy miners.”

  “I’d like to help you out, honey, but I’m here on business.”

  The girl turned her mouth corners down and nodded in understanding. “You’ll find him up the canyon and on the other side of the creek. Just follow the screams to the tonsorial parlor. Burke does tooth extractions, in addition to barberin’, for a good bottle of whiskey or fifty cents.”

  Spurr pinched his hat brim to the girl. “Much obliged, sweetheart. You’d best get inside. Sun’s goin down fast and a chill’s a-buildin’!”

  “I like you, mister,” the girl said. “If you’re out lookin’ for a poke later, look for Greta. That’s me. I’ll curl your toes for ya!”

  “Maybe I’ll just do that,” Spurr said, feeling a knot in his groin tug tight as he looked at the girl’s nicely rounded mounds once more.

  He turned away and led Cochise on up the canyon lined with buildings of every size and color and constructed of about any material available including white canvas stretched across a pine log frame. They were painted all colors of the rainbow. Wood smoke sat over the canyon like a gauzy kettle lid, but Spurr also smelled the spicy tang of opium and the fresh-cut-hay smell of marijuana.

  All that was second only to the aromas of every brand of perfume concocted, and wafting up and down the canyon on invisible wings. The gaudy fragrances connoted all things female, and, despite a heavy feeling in his heart for Kansas City Jane, Spurr felt his old sap run.

  First things first, he told himself as he led Cochise across a halved-log bridge spanning the narrow creek that dug deeper into the canyon the higher it climbed the floor’s steep incline.

  When he’d led the horse past one of the louder saloons spewing ribald female laughter and the din of off-key piano music, he did indeed begin to hear a man screaming.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh, Christ!” the man shouted as though around a mouthful of rocks. “Just pull the damn thing an’ get it over with, you devil!”

  “I will if you’ll keep your damn mouth open, you damn fool!” returned another man.

  “Ah, the music of a high-mountain gold camp!” Spurr said. “Just wraps a feller’s heart in warm wool—don’t it, Cochise?”

  The horse didn’t look nearly as comfortable as Spurr did in such a boisterous place, with noise emanating from nearly every shop and saloon lining both sides of the streambed and the street. Even a Chinese laundry on the other side of the canyon was loud; a little Chinese woman was giving holy hell to some fancy Dan in a three-piece suit holding a stack of freshly folded clothes in his arms and wagging his head, as though he wasn’t satisfied with the woman’s service.

  Spurr tied Cochise at the hitchrack fronting Burke’s Tonsorial Parlor—a little, unpainted frame shop with large glass windows on either side of the door propped open with a small stool. Inside, the barber/dentist was working on a big, burly gent tipped back in the barber chair while three other burly men stood around watching the proceedings in terrified fascination.

  And bloody proceedings they were. The towel draped down the patient’s chest was scarlet with the stuff. And just now, as the man whom Spurr assumed was Burke jerked his right arm back, more blood spurted from the patient’s howling mouth.

  “There you go, McCloud,” the dentist bellowed down at the man, angrily, holding the bloody tooth in his pliers. “And it would have gone a whole lot easier if you’d shown a little backbone and kept your friggin’ mouth open!”

  The dentist was as big as his patient and the other men standing around. A tumbleweed of thick, curly red hair ensconced his head around a palm-sized bald spot at the crown. His Irish brogue was thick enough to float a clipper ship.

  When his patient, continuing to howl and bellow around the cotton the dentist had stuffed in his mouth, had paid for the misery he’d endured, and left with the three men following him and looking owly, the dentist turned to Spurr and said, “Next!”

  “Hold on, ya damn butcher!” Spurr intoned, laughing and holding his hands up, palm out. “The few teeth I got left in my head you ain’t comin’ anywhere near. I’m here for your prisoner. Deputy U.S. Marshal Spurr Morgan at your service. A pretty little doxie named Greta said you was the mayor and the temporary turnkey till the camp could find another man stupid enough to take the deceased one’s place.”

  “Thank Christ,” the man said, tossing his bloody pliers in a tin pan and wiping his bloody hands on a towel. “I didn’t think anyone was ever gonna come for that demon. A wretched one, that! And dangerous, I hear, too!”

  “Dangerous? I heard he was damn near as old as I am.”

  Burke tossed the towel onto the leather-padded barber chair and began rolling his white shirtsleeves down his freckled arms. He was big, but he had large, intelligent brown eyes and a somewhat nonplussed air—likely a learned man for whom the violent climate of a deep-mountain gold camp did not set well.

  “Oh, he’s old,” Burke said, shaking his head ominously. “But I understand he is not who he said he was when the constable sent that telegram to Denver. Since then his true identity has come to light, and he is the member of a somewhat notorious gang. One that is headed in this direction—so he claims, and I don’t doubt it—to spring him from our rat-infested little icehouse.”

  “Who is he if not this George Blackleg fella?”

  “I can’t remember the name, now. You can ask him yourself.”

  Spurr said, “Did you telegraph that news to Henry Brackett? He might like to hear about it.”

  “I’d have had to ride clear down to Wet Fork to send it, as we have no telegraph here. Even if we did, I wouldn’t have known who to send the telegraph to. Not my area of expertise. I’m surprised Arney Haverlick did. He was the constable who got his throat cut while he was trying to take a nice, leisurely constitutional last week.”

  Burke shook his head again and grabbed a brown derby off a hat tree by the door. “Imagine having your own privy invaded by some knife-wielding ruffian? Haverlick’s poor wife found him sitting there with his trousers around his ankles, covered in blood.”

  “Any idea who wielded the blade?”

  “Hell, take your pick!” Burke said in exasperation as he headed out the door, shrugging into his wool suit coat and beckoning for Spurr to follow.

  Outside, he locked the door, pocketed the key, and then started walking on up the canyon. Spurr followed, trailing Cochise by the roan’s bridle reins and weaving through the foot traffic. The smoke from chimney pipes and outside cooking and heating fires was so thick as it wafted on canyon downdrafts that it made Spurr’s eyes water.

  The jailhouse—aptly identified by JAILHOUSE lettered on a wooden sign jutting on poles into the nearly dark street—sat only a few buildings up from the barbershop, between a surveyor’s office and an assayer’s office, both closed and dark. In the break between the jailhouse and the assayer’s office, two beefy men in animal skins were arguing over a painted girl clad in pantaloons, black shoes, and a ratty wolf coat. She was yawning, looking bored as she waited for the men to settle their dispute.

  The jailhouse was a flat-roofed stone block behind a small, weathered-gray veranda trimmed in bleached deer and elk heads, a covered water barrel sitting by the front door. Spurr had seen whores’ cribs larger. The place was dark but a man’s voice emanated through the Z-frame door, singing an Irish ballad in a Texas twang and changing the words to make the
ballad even bawdier than in its original form. The man’s voice was accompanied by the tooth gnashing raking of what sounded like a tin cup across a barred door.

  Both the singing and the banging stopped when Burke tripped the leather-and-steel latch and threw the door open.

  “Fire’s out,” a deep voice croaked from the jailhouse’s cold, dark shadows. “Been out for a couple hours now, Tooth Fairy.”

  Spurr frowned as he followed Burke inside. The voice had sounded vaguely familiar to the old lawman, as did the man’s wry tone.

  “Busy day,” said the dentist, walking toward the desk that abutted the front wall. “I brought you a visitor.”

  “She better have big tits,” came the voice from one of the dark cells lining the back of the small, earthen-floored office.

  “They’re big but they got hair growin’ between ’em,” Spurr said, chuckling.

  He stared into the shadows at the back of the room. He could see the prisoner’s muddy silhouette standing behind the door of the center cell. The man did not say anything. Spurr felt the man’s gaze probing him, as though the prisoner had sensed something as familiar in Spurr’s voice as Spurr had sensed in the prisoner’s voice.

  Burke scratched a match and lit the table lamp on the previous constable’s desk, which was merely three boards spanning stacked packing crates. The dentist/barber held up the light, pulled two keys and a small ring from his coat pocket, and walked over to the cell.

  Light from the flickering lamp slid across the uneven earthen floor. It reflected dully off the iron bars of the cell, shone in the eye of the man standing behind the door, staring out from between two strap-iron bars, his large, brown hands wrapped around a bar to either side of his head.

  The prisoner had a large, bearded face the color and texture of ancient sandstone. He wore a thick, black beard stitched with less gray than one would expect for his age—early sixties, Henry had said, around Spurr’s same age. The rest of the man’s face looked every day of his age, or older, with many, deep, crosshatched lines and dime-sized liver spots on skin stretched taut across high, severely tapering cheekbones. Both cheek nubs were especially wrinkled and leathery from overexposure to the elements and extreme temperatures.