The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  The prisoner wore a patch over his right eye. The lone eye, devilishly slanted, was chocolate-brown, the iris runny at the edges. It was as shrewd and piercing as a hawk’s dark eye set deep in the leathery hollow of the socket. On the man’s head was a black felt bowler hat, the badly frayed brim showing the cream cording beneath the felt.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” the man said, his chapped, pink lips moving inside his beard. The pupil in his lone eye appeared to expand and contract as it bored into Spurr, the man’s lips remaining slightly open in shock.

  Spurr stared back at the man with a similar expression. The visage before him had aged considerably, making him only a shadow of the man Spurr remembered. But there was enough of the man Spurr had known—mainly, the expression and the cunning, shrewd, mocking light in the lone, slanted eye—to cause Spurr to say with an incredulous grunt, “That you, Boomer?” He stepped forward, his right hand automatically sliding across his belly to close around the handle of the Starr .44. “Boomer Drago?”

  TEN

  The man in the cell said, “That you . . . Spurr? Well, I’ll be damned.”

  At the same time, both Spurr and the prisoner said, “I thought you was dead.”

  Spurr pulled the Starr from its holster, raked back the hammer, and held the gun out in front of his chest. “But you’re as good as dead, you son of a bitch. You know how many years I was after you? And then, when I lost your trail, I still kept lookin’—everywhere I went. Every saloon or whorehouse I walked into. Always lookin’ for your face—the one with two snakey eyes in it, ’stead of just one. Finally gave up—what?—maybe ten years ago, now?” He shook his head slowly. “Thought for sure you was shovelin’ coal in hell.”

  The man staring at him through the cell bars grinned jeeringly, showing large, chipped, cracked teeth grimed with coffee and tobacco stains.

  Burke sidled tentatively up to Spurr, staring at the prisoner with a cautious air, and cleared his throat. “So . . . this is Drago, then? Boomer Drago? Just like he said . . . ?”

  “That’s Boomer Drago, all right.”

  “How do you know this man, Deputy?”

  “We rode together a couple times, nigh on thirty years ago, now. Just after the war. Even joined up with the marshals service together. But then ole Boomer split with the good and decent, right under our noses, and joined up with a bunch of train robbers. Turned to stealin’ and killin’ for his livin’.”

  “Better money,” Boomer Drago said, grinning at Burke.

  “Ain’t nothin’ worse than a lawman going bad. Joinin’ up with the curly wolves—becomin’ one o’ the worst ones himself.”

  “I never heard of Boomer Drago,” Burke said.

  “Back before your time,” Drago said.

  “And then he let Drago die, switched his name, must have switched his area of operations.”

  “The proliferation of the Iron Horse out on the frontier has been a boon to all us curly wolves. Was able to move on from Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado. Plenty of trains in Nevada, California, even Arizona, if you can stand all them dirty little ‘Paches . . . not to mention the rattlesnakes and the heat.”

  Drago shook his one-eyed head. “Spurr, you ever spend a whole summer in Sonora? There ain’t enough beer and tequila in all the world to take the edge off that blastin’ kind of hellish heat!”

  “Changed his name to George Blackleg,” Spurr said, staring at his old nemesis, the man who’d managed to stay two trails ahead of him, frustrating him no end back when he was a younger man and trying to make a name for himself as a federal badge toter. “When did you do that, Boomer?”

  “Do what?”

  “Change your name. What the hell you think I’m talkin’ about?”

  Drago stared with his one wide eye at the pistol in the old lawman’s tight’s fist. “Hey, you best let down the hammer on that ole Starr, Spurr! Slow-like, I’m sayin’!”

  “How ’bout if I let it down fast-like, Boomer? Make up for years of bitter frustration. Damn your worthless, murderin’ hide. I thought you was dead! Only changed your damn name!”

  “Spurr . . . now . . . you’re gettin’ all worked up. Ain’t good for an old man’s health. Ain’t good for my health.” Drago chuckled nervously, his one eye on the Starr.

  “When’d you change your name?”

  “Hell, if I know! Lemme think.” Drago scratched his ratty beard. “Must be about ten years ago, moved on up to Montana, robbed a few trains, then lit down to Mexico for a coupla winters, movin’ on up in Arizona and California to rob a few more. Then me an’ the boys headed back down to a little three-goat village down in the Sierra Madre. Nice girls down there. All brown and plump. Good cooks, too—if you like your grub spicy hot!”

  “What’d you come back here for?”

  “I got my reasons.”

  Burke interjected with a dubious air, “The point is he’s here. And whoever he is—George Blackleg or Boomer Drago—I’d just as soon get him out of here. I’m tired of feeding him as well as keeping a fire burning in that stove.”

  “What fire you been keepin’ burnin’ in that stove, Mr. Tooth Fairy?” Drago said, his voice low with menace. “Haven’t you noticed a definite chill in the air? My pecker done froze to my thigh several hours ago. Gonna have to fetch me a warm whore to thaw it out!”

  “Oh, it hasn’t been that long!” the dentist said in disgust, turning toward the bullet-shaped stove in the corner.

  As Burke opened the stove door and started laying a fresh fire, he said with his back to Spurr and Drago, “My point being, Deputy Morgan, that I hope to hell you intend to take this man out of here first thing tomorrow. Get him down the mountains, for godsakes, before the first snow flies! We’ve had enough of him here.”

  “Yeah, he’s had enough of me here,” Drago told Spurr with a mocking light in his lone, dark eye. “Especially since he learned my old gang is headin’ this way—fast as high-country lightning bolts—to bail me out of this cell with a whole passel of lead.”

  “Yes, especially because of that,” Burke said as, kneeling, he shoved shredded bits of newsprint through the open stove door.

  “He’s jerkin’ your chain,” Spurr said.

  “Oh, it’s the truth,” Drago said, scratching his head as he pondered the cocked Starr remaining in the old lawman’s fist. “And they ain’t gonna like it one bit if, when they get here, they discover they rode here for nothin’. So why don’t you just be a good man, Spurr, and very gently ease that hammer down against the firing pin there. After you aim the barrel away from my delicate person, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Boomer Drago grinned.

  Spurr looked at the gun in his hand. He hadn’t actually considered shooting the man. It was just old, bitter hatred and frustration at having been so badly hornswoggled by the outlaw that had caused his hand to close over the Starr of its own accord. He had never killed a man in cold blood, and while this was an exceptional situation, he supposed he shouldn’t start now, this being his last job and all.

  Spurr held the revolver’s hammer back with his thumb, tripped the trigger, releasing the hammer, and then eased the hammer down to the firing pin with a click.

  Drago drew a ragged breath at the sound of the click. “Now, can we talk like two civilized human beings, Spurr? Huh? Would that be all right with you? Damn, you’re lookin’ . . . old!” Drago laughed.

  Spurr slid the Starr into its holster. “You ain’t no spring chicken, you blackhearted son of a bitch!”

  “Blackhearted! Come on, now—that’s harsh!”

  “Gentlemen, please!” Burke stood facing the old lawman and the old outlaw, his back to the stove in which a fledgling fire danced. “I didn’t bring you over here, Marshal Morgan . . .”

  “Call me Spurr.”

  “. . . Marshal Spurr . . . so that you could have a shouting match with my prisoner. Now that
you are here, however, I was hoping you could tend to the man—feed him, empty his slop bucket, and keep the stove stoked—so that I can go back to the tonsorial parlor. Quite a few miners come into town at night and the first thing some want, before a poke, is a bath and a shave.”

  “And dental work,” Spurr said with a wry snort, still staring at Boomer Drago, having a hard time believing that’s who was really standing before him. It was like watching a ghost swimming up out of the ancient past.

  “Joke if you want, but I get fifty cents a tooth. Well, then—do we have a deal? I take it you’ll be riding out first thing in the morning. Perhaps you could stay right here and see to his . . . uh . . . needs?”

  The jailhouse door opened abruptly. As it flew back against the wall, Spurr wheeled and slid his hand across his belly to the Starr over which he had not secured the keeper thong. A man stood in the doorway, clad in bearskin coat and a bearskin hat. The coat was open, the flaps shoved back behind two pistols.

  He walked into the jailhouse followed by two more men dressed similarly, all with pistols prominently displayed.

  Spurr said, “Now, who in the hell are you?”

  The first man was short, with a full blond beard. The other two were taller. They were all in their late thirties, early forties, and they had a wild look. They smelled wild, too—like bears fresh from the den.

  Prospectors. Spurr recognized the haunted looks in their eyes. Living too long alone in the mountains without women, with the frustration of knowing their mother lodes were right beneath their feet—if they could just dig it up . . .

  “Step aside, old man,” the first man said. “We’re gonna take your prisoner off your hands.”

  “What in blazes?” said Boomer Drago, staring at the newcomers over Spurr’s left shoulder. Burke stood in front of the crackling wood stove, looking constipated.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Spurr said, keeping his voice mild. “But I do appreciate the offer. Now, kindly drag your raggedy asses back wherever in hell you dragged ’em in from.”

  “Louis said to step aside, old man!” said the last man into the room, waving an arm. “We heard you got Boomer Drago locked up in here—hell, it’s all over these mountains now—and we come to kill him!”

  “You’re right popular, Drago,” Spurr said, keeping his eyes on the three scraggly men facing him, standing about two feet apart in front of the door. “Now, why would you fellas want to come stormin’ in here with blood on your mind? Not that I didn’t have the same notion, but Drago here is property of the government of the United States of America, and since I am a deputy U.S. marshal, I reckon it’s my place to ask.”

  “We rode with him, nigh on five years ago, now,” the smaller of the three said. “Remember us, Vernon?”

  “Vernon?” Spurr said.

  “That was the alias he was ridin’ under at the time.”

  “One of many,” Drago said. “Well, hi, Louis. Dewey. Elwyn, is that you? Didn’t recognize you under all that bearskin. Have you lost weight?”

  “We was hopin’ we’d run into you again, Vernon.” This from the smallest newcomer, Louis, who had his thumbs tucked behind the waistband of his smoke-stained duck trousers. His mean eyes were pinched together. “Wasn’t very nice, walkin’ away with that strongbox. Wasn’t much in there, but, hell . . .”

  “Took our share of the gold, took my girl Connie,” said Elwyn. “She always was a double-dealin’ little whore. It’s the gold I missed. It’s the gold you’re gonna die for, Vernon . . . or Boomer Drago, or whoever in hell you are.”

  Louis jerked his head impatiently and closed a hand over his right-side pistol. “Step aside, old man. You don’t wanna die here tonight. Not for him.”

  “Go out and get yourself a drink,” said Dewey, curling his upper lip. “You look like you could use it.”

  “Ah, Jesus,” Burke said, sidling away from the stove. “Marshal Spurr, just turn him loose. The old catamount is not worth all this. He is not worth the trouble!”

  “Listen to him, Marshal Spurr,” said Dewey. “You’re old and used up and you don’t wanna die this way. Three against one is long odds however you wanna stack ’em.”

  Spurr sighed, hooked his thumbs behind his cartridge belt. “This man is my prisoner. He will not be leaving his cell until tomorrow, at which time we will start our trek down the long trails back to the Union Pacific tracks east of Camp Collins. If you want to make a play for him, then go ahead and make it now, and stop wastin’ my time.”

  “Ah, shit, Spurr,” Boomer Drago said.

  “Marshal, I don’t think you should be encouraging this,” Burke said in his heavy accent. “What you want to do is discourage it.”

  “I’m too old to fuck around like this,” Spurr said.

  Behind the old marshal, Boomer Drago stepped back away from his cell door. “Spurr, you think you can take these fellas? They don’t look like they got much back-down in ’em.”

  “I don’t, neither,” Spurr said. “So I reckon we’ll just have to see how well I do. Wish me luck, Boomer.”

  Spurr had to admit, if only to himself, that he was feeling less than confident about his ability to take down these three before him. One, they were younger. Two, he had once been fast, but over the years he’d slowed down, so he’d instinctively avoided such situations as these.

  This one, however, was not going to be avoided. He could see that by the hard glints in the three pairs of eyes staring at him.

  Drago said, “Good luck, Spurr. I never thought I’d say those words, but, shit, I’ll go ahead and say ’em again. Good luck.”

  “Oh, bloody hell! Oh, Jesus!” Burke said, backing against the far wall. “Could I please be excused? I am merely the turnkey here. I have no authority to either hold this man or let him go, but if I did, I would certainly order Marshal Spurr to turn him bloody well loose! I, in fact, have no business here. So, lest I should be caught in the crossfire—”

  “Shut up,” Elwyn said out of the side of his mouth.

  Then he drew. A half a wink later, the others drew their own weapons.

  Spurr’s old instincts had kicked in. He’d sensed it coming. It was almost as though he’d inadvertently been reading Elwyn’s mind. Spurr’s hand jerked across his belly of its own accord, unsheathed the Starr .44, and ratcheted the hammer back.

  It belched smoke and fire in Spurr’s knobby hand.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam-bam!

  Two of the three hard cases were blown back out through the jailhouse’s open door and into the street.

  Louis was the fastest of the three, and he got off two shots. One kissed the nap of Spurr’s left coat sleeve before ricocheting off the cell door with an ear-ringing clang. The other, fired just after Spurr’s first bullet had torn a quarter-sized hole in his heart, was triggered into his own left ankle.

  “Oh,” Louis said as he flew back against the open door and stood there, his smoking pistol aimed at the floor.

  The cutthroat stared down at the blood pumping out his chest, between the flaps of his bear coat, and he said, “Oh. Oh, shit.” And then he looked at Spurr in disbelief, his head wobbling on his shoulders, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  He staggered forward, pinwheeled, and hit the floor on his back.

  Silence.

  Spurr’s gun smoke wafted in the lantern-lit room. The fledgling fire, whose weak flames were dwindled, softly cracked and popped.

  Behind Spurr, Boomer Drago whistled. “You old coot. You still got a few left in the chamber.”

  Spurr himself was amazed. He looked down at the Starr and the old hand wrapped around it, as though they belonged to another person.

  “Yeah, I got a few,” he said.

  He walked over to the door and stared out at the two in the street. Neither was moving. He turned back into the office. Boomer stood up near his cell door, amazement
lighting his lone eye. Burke was squatting against the far wall, his hair rumpled. He held his hat in his hands and was staring, pale-featured, at the hole in its crown.

  He slowly lifted his eyes to Spurr and said in a low, shocked voice, “Bleedin’ ricochet. Might have taken my eyes out.”

  “Or your brains,” Drago opined.

  Burke looked down at his hat again, nodding gravely.

  Spurr flicked the Starr’s loading gate open and began plucking out his spent shell casings, tossing them into a small wastebasket near the desk.

  “Spurr.”

  The old marshal looked at Drago.

  “Them three were nothin’ compared to the men in the gang comin’ to fetch me. Come on. Let me out of here. You’ll never make it against them. Hell, there’s twenty, twenty-five of ’em. You did good here tonight, and I do appreciate it, but these three never were good with them hoglegs. Slow as molasses in January.”

  Spurr stared at the old outlaw as he plucked fresh cartridges from his shell belt and slid them into the Starr’s wheel, rolling the cylinder between his thumb and index finger, listening to the soft clicks. Burke continued staring at his hat as though the hole were really bird shit and he was wondering how he was going to get the stain out.

  Spurr’s heart fluttered. He’d had too much excitement for one day.

  “I’m tired,” he said, shoving the pistol down into its holster and fastening the keeper thong over the hammer. “I’m gonna go stable my beast and then stable myself for a long autumn night’s nap. I’ll see you in the mornin’, Boomer. Sleep tight. Burke, make sure his horse is saddled and ready to go at first light.”

  Burke stared up at him, the barber/dentist’s lower jaw hanging.