“My pleasure!”
Burke walked over to the cell.
“Hold on!” Spurr said, unsheathing his .44 from beneath his buckskin mackinaw. He clicked the hammer back and wagged the piece at the prisoner. “Get back away from the door, Drago. Good Lord, Burke, how often you done this?”
The dentist looked sheepish as Drago grinned and, removing his hands from the strap-iron bars, backed away from the door.
While Spurr held his pistol on Drago, Burke shoved the key in the lock and swung the door wide on caterwauling hinges.
“Step out here, Drago. Let the Tooth Fairy cuff you. You make one false move, I’m gonna make this trip a whole lot easier for both of us.”
Drago’s eyes glinted angrily. “You’re a bad one, Spurr. I always knew it. Heart like granite, makin’ a man hit the cold trail without nary a bread crumb in his teeth. No coffee.”
He shook his head as he walked slowly out through the cell’s open door, holding his wrists out in front of him. He kept his hard eyes on Spurr. “When my boys catch up to us, it ain’t gonna go well for you. Not well at all!”
“It’ll go well enough,” Spurr said as the dentist clicked the cuffs closed around the prisoner’s wrists.
Burke stepped back away from Drago. Spurr walked around behind the old outlaw and prodded him on outside with the barrel of his cocked Starr. When Spurr had Drago on his horse, Burke came out with a rifle and saddlebags.
“What about these?”
“Any weapons in the saddlebags?” Spurr asked.
“Just pots and pans.” The dentist snorted. “A couple of wanted dodgers with his own likeness on them. Several different aliases.”
Spurr glanced at Drago, who smiled and shrugged.
“You keep the rifle,” Spurr said. “Toss those saddlebags over his horse.”
“That’s a prized Colt’s repeating rifle, Spurr. I’d admire to have it with me till the end.”
“You can kiss my ass.”
Drago told Spurr to do something physically impossible to himself.
Spurr looked up and down the canyon. There were no humans out, just a couple of dogs sniffing around trash heaps. Smoke fluttered under the cold, gray sky, snagging on the false fronts of the buildings lining the canyon. The silence after the previous night’s din was funereal.
Or did it just seem ominous to Spurr, whose nerves were drawn taut from the possibility that Drago’s men might be on the lurk, possibly planting a bead on his back at this moment?
He honestly didn’t know if Drago was lying about his gang being headed toward Diamond Fire. Something told him the old outlaw was not.
That would be the first non-lie for Boomer Drago.
When Burke had draped the saddlebags over Drago’s horse and walked back up onto the porch, Spurr caught Drago grinning at him shrewdly. “Oh, they’ll be along soon, partner. I’ll guarantee you that.”
“I’m not your partner,” Spurr said with a grunt as he untied the reins of his and Drago’s horses, and heaved himself into the leather. “I’m the lawman who is finally going to ride you to justice.”
Drago laughed.
Spurr pinched his hat brim at Burke, who just stared back at him, and then Spurr put Cochise east along the canyon, avoiding a dead man lying in front of a pink-painted brothel with one boarded-up window. He ground his heels into Cochise’s flanks, and jerked Boomer’s bay along behind him, Boomer saying, “No such thing as justice, my friend. You’ll find that out soon enough, partner!”
* * *
They’d been on the long trail down the mountains for three hours, when Spurr cast another in a series of suspicious looks behind him, over Drago’s left shoulder. Boomer turned to follow Spurr’s gaze.
“Let me ease your nerves, partner,” Drago said. “If my boys was back there, you’d know it. They ain’t the type to do any sneakin’.” He chuckled devilishly, showing his yellow, crooked teeth inside his grizzled black beard, squinting his lone brown eye.
“How many are they?” Spurr asked. “Not that I believe they’re behind me, but someone’s been shadowin’ us for the past hour or so.”
“You sure?” Drago widened his eye in surprise and glanced behind him once more, holding his saddle horn with both his cuffed hands. “How do you know?”
“My lawman’s sixth sense. How many?”
“Uh . . . let me see,” Drago said, lifting his gaze and moving his lips, counting to himself. “There’s Tommy and Leo and Quiet Ed and Tio Sanchez and Sam ‘Coyote’ Keneally, and. . . . Oh, I’d say an even twenty, if you count Curly Ben Williamson. You ever meet Curly Ben, Spurr? He’s a gunman out of Texas. One o’ them new kind with cutdown holsters and steely eyes. Scaly skin that takes no color even when he’s out in the sun all day every day, all year long!”
Drago chuckled, pleased with himself. “You ever hear of him, Spurr?”
Drago knew Spurr had heard of him. Curly Ben was a big name these days in Texas and Oklahoma. Most lawmen had heard of him. What Spurr had not known was that Drago had been riding with the likes of the cold-blooded killer out of Texas.
If Drago was telling the truth, that was—something Boomer hadn’t been known for even when he’d been riding on the right side of the law.
“Never heard of him. But if I see him, I’ll be sure to shoot the son of a bitch on sight. Any cork-headed prissy bastard goin’ around callin’ himself a Nancy-boy name like Curly Ben deserves a bullet drilled through both ears and his carcass sent home to his no-account family in pieces.”
Drago guffawed. “Damn, Spurr—you got a burr in your bonnet! Hey, where we goin’?”
Spurr had reined Cochise off the right side of the trail and was splashing across a shallow creek, jerking Drago’s bay along behind him. “Time to build a fire and boil some coffee. I don’t know about you, Boomer, but I’m hungry.”
THIRTEEN
In truth, Spurr was tired.
The trail to Diamond Fire had taken more out of the old lawman than he’d expected. The trail hadn’t gotten any easier when he’d reached Diamond Fire to discover that his prisoner was his old enemy, Boomer Drago, a man he’d been after for years and had finally given up on ever running to ground.
While he was pleased as punch to finally be bringing the man to trial, the truth was, he hadn’t caught the old bastard himself. Some bounty hunter had. Spurr was just the delivery man. That took some pop out of his punch. Besides, the delivery wasn’t going to be easy—not if Drago wasn’t just stringing silver beads and his gang really was behind him.
Spurr was tired and his mood was sour. That seizure on the street out in front of the bank on Arapaho might have taken more out of him than he’d thought. The high altitude of the Medicine Bows wasn’t doing him any good, either. His lungs felt tight. His head ached dully. He constantly felt hungry though food didn’t seem to fill him up.
What he needed was some bacon, beans, biscuits, and coffee, all of which he’d lain in at a stage relay station the day before he’d reached Diamond Fire, figuring that game might run scarce near the settlement. Another couple of belts from his flask would ease the twinge in his ticker. He might even have to have one of his heart-starter pills. He’d gotten a fresh supply from his sawbones in Denver though the man had told him to go easy and warned him that taking the pills with whiskey was liable to blow him sky-high.
Spurr didn’t know if the old bone cutter was serious or not. He didn’t think so. He’d been washing the nitro down with his whiskey for the past two years, and he’d be damned if it didn’t always put a grin on his face and for a brief time cause naked girls to dance before his eyes.
“Get down,” Spurr ordered Drago, when he’d stepped down from Cochise’s back about a mile off the main trail, in a little ravine through which another creek gurgled, its water speckled with fallen autumn leaves.
Spurr couldn’t see much of his ba
ck trail from here, but he kept his ears skinned for hoof thuds. He hadn’t taken the time to cover his trail, but he didn’t think the horses had left much of one over the country they’d traversed—mostly thin soil over shale and sandstone.
Drago hooked his cuffed hands around the saddle horn and gave a grunt as he swung his right leg over his bedroll and saddlebags. He dropped to the ground, stumbling slightly, wheezing. He fell back against the side of his bay, his cheeks red above his beard, his lone eye watery and red-rimmed.
He smiled weakly. “Christ, look at us, Spurr. A couple of old goats. We don’t belong out here. We should be laid up with some fat whores and Kentucky bourbon.”
“Hell, I oughta just lay you out with a bullet in your depraved old head.” Spurr narrowed an angry eye over the barrel of his extended .44. “Make this job a whole lot easier. Why don’t you make a play on me, give me the right excuse?”
“Ah, shit—what do you need an excuse for?” Drago’s eye flashed fire. “It’s just you an’ me here, Spurr. Brackett’s a long ways away. Just us and the crows. Go ahead and drill me, you cantankerous old bastard. Do it now and get it over with or finally shut the hell up about it!”
“Ah, hell.”
Spurr felt cowed. He and Drago both knew Spurr wasn’t going to shoot the old outlaw in cold blood. He’d never pulled such a stunt before—he’d always given men at least half a chance to be taken in—and he had no intention of starting now, on his last assignment.
Spurr jerked his head to a small, flat-topped boulder near a lightning-topped pine. “Get over there and sit down.”
When Drago had done as he’d been told, Spurr hauled his own saddlebags off Cochise’s back, dropped them near the base of the tree, fished out an old, rusty pair of ankle-irons, and slung them over to Drago. They landed at the outlaw’s feet.
“Put ’em on.”
“You don’t need them, Spurr.”
“Put ’em on, so I don’t have to watch you like a hawk. You ain’t goin’ anywhere or doin’ much of anything—at least, not very fast—with them ankle bracelets. Go on, they’ll look purty on ye!”
Spurr chuckled.
When Drago had grudgingly closed the irons around his ankles, he sat down against the boulder, dug his makings out of a pocket of his shaggy gray wolf coat, and began rolling a smoke.
Meanwhile, Spurr unsaddled their horses, hobbling both mounts so they could drink and forage with limited freedom. Spurr gathered dry wood from the bottom of the ravine and built a small fire under the pine.
When the flames were popping and crackling, he started coffee boiling with water from the creek and got out his five-pound flitch of bacon wrapped in burlap. He sliced the pork into a cast-iron skillet, set the skillet on a rock near the flames, and then fished his burlap bag of baking powder biscuits from his saddlebags. He set those on a rock near the skillet then sat back against the pine with his whiskey flask.
“I’d take a pull from that,” Drago said.
“Sure you would.” Spurr popped the small cork on the flask, and took a pull. “Damn good stuff. But coffee will do for you.”
Again, Drago told Spurr to do something physically impossible to himself. Spurr chuckled and took another conservative sip, sloshing the liquid around to judge how much he had left. Only about half. Somewhere, he’d have to get more. He hadn’t been about to buy any tarantula juice in Diamond Fire, where it would have cost him two days’ pay. He had to start keeping a watchful eye on his dinero from here on in, if he didn’t want to starve or freeze to death.
Spurr returned the flask to his saddlebags and began forking the bacon around in the pan that had begun hissing and crackling, juice bleeding out from the meat to glisten in the pan that had been blackened from countless fires.
The white-speckled black coffeepot was beginning to chug, steam rising from the spout.
“Spurr, I got a confession to make.”
Spurr chuckled.
“I ain’t tryin’ to hornswoggle you, now. I admit I was before, but not now, ’cause I see you’re still tough as spikes and ornery as a Brahman bull down in the Brasada country.”
“All right, go ahead,” Spurr said, smiling indulgently as he dumped a handful of Arbuckles into the boiling coffeepot.
“My gang has no intention of turnin’ me loose.”
“No, shit? Well, damn, now you’ve gone and surprised me, Boomer!” Spurr had cast his words in irony, but the old outlaw’s confession had buoyed his spirits some. He didn’t know what or what not to believe when it came to Boomer Drago, but having his back trail clear would sure take a load off his mind.
He turned away from the steaming coffeepot and the sputtering sidepork and narrowed a skeptical eye at his prisoner. “But how can I take your word on anything?”
“You can take my word on this, partner. I got no reason to lie about it. In fact, I got every reason to finally tell you the truth, since it don’t look like you’ll listen to reason and turn me loose.” Drago wagged his head sadly, and sighed. “Like I said, my boys ain’t out to free me from you, Spurr. They’re out to kill me.”
“Kill you?”
“Hey, you’re burnin’ the belly wash!” Drago said, glancing at the roaring coffeepot that was spewing black coffee and copper bubbles from its spout and lid.
Spurr grabbed a burlap swatch and removed the pot from the fire. Letting the pot cool near the two cups he’d retrieved from his saddlebags, he kept scowling skeptically at his prisoner. “Why would they wanna kill you, Drago—you bein’ such a likeable cuss an’ all?”
“We got crossways.”
“You don’t say!”
“Yes, we did. And I have lived to regret it. I was on the run from that bunch when that bounty hunter, Kershaw, caught me with my pants down in that little whorehouse in Idaville.”
“What’d you do to piss them boys off so bad, Boomer?”
“Ah, hell—the usual stuff. You know how it is with my kind, Spurr—we’re always out to double-cross each other. Well, they tried to double-cross me by givin’ me a smaller percentage of a recent haul on account of I was old and they’d started delegatin’ me to holdin’ the horses outside the banks we robbed. They said I was no longer worth a full share. So, damnit, I went and took my share and rode out on ’em.”
“And that piss-burned ’em bad enough to make ’em wanna track you and kill you?”
Drago licked his lips as he stared at the coffeepot, gray smoke now curling from its spout. “Spurr, you wouldn’t mind pourin’ me up a cup o’ that mud, would you? I swear, I’ve been thinkin’ about a cup all mornin’, and here it is after noon!”
Spurr filled both cups, handed one to Drago, who took it in both cuffed, gloved hands, staring at the smoking brew like he’d just been handed a pound of pure gold. He blew into the steam and closed his upper lip over the brim, sucking. “Damn, it’s hot! But it sure tastes good. I remember you made good coffee, Spurr. One of the few things I liked about you.”
Drago laughed.
Spurr lifted his own cup to his lips and looked at the horses that were grazing contentedly along the creek a ways down the ravine. Cochise had a good sniffer as well as keen ears, and he usually announced riders a good ten, sometimes fifteen minutes before Spurr could hear or see the company coming. He was happy to see the big roan hadn’t spiked his ears or arched his tail.
He didn’t know what to think about Boomer’s new story. He wasn’t sure if it made any difference from the previous one he’d told. Whether they wanted to free Drago or kill him, Spurr was pretty much in the same tight spot. All it could change was that the gang might strike with a little more venom if it wanted to kill Drago rather than free him. They could circle around Spurr and his prisoner and spring a bushwhack without warning.
If Boomer’s gang really was trailing them, that was. Or everything Drago had told Spurr was in fact nothing more
than smoke fog, trying to distract Spurr from his purpose, instilling fear, and possibly looking for the old lawman to make a mistake which Drago could take advantage of and use to shake himself loose.
Spurr sipped his coffee and leaned forward to fork the bacon around in the pan. Drago was staring at him over the brim of his own smoking cup.
“If they kill me, partner, they’ll sure as hell kill you, too. Bet on it.”
“I done told you to quit callin’ me ‘partner,’” Spurr groused. “We haven’t been partners in damn near twenty years. And I don’t know what you hope to gain from all this jawbonin’. You an’ me is headin’ for Denver. I hope to make the Union Pacific tracks east of Camp Collins by Wednesday, and that’s that.”
“You won’t make it. We won’t make it.”
Spurr was peeling the biscuits open with his thumbs.
“We’re old, Spurr. Both of us. Why don’t you just turn me loose? I don’t have much of a chance, because they’ll follow me and I know they ain’t far behind. Probably within a mile or two right now, followin’ our sign. I seen a couple scoutin’ ahead of the others near Idaville, so they’re on my scent, all right. But you got a fair chance of making it out of this thing alive. They got no truck with you. You’ll live long enough to retire and frolic with fat whores till the end of your days.”
“I appreciate your concern for me, Boomer. Makes my old ticker feel warm.” Spurr folded the bacon and shoved the chunks into the biscuits he’d opened. He set two on a plate and set the plate on the ground near Drago’s chained ankles. “But you an’ me are gonna be tight as Siamese twins all the way back to Denver, when I turn you over to the turnkeys in the basement prison of the Federal Building.”
“Damn, that’s good!” Drago said, chewing a mouthful of biscuit and sidepork. He looked up at Spurr as he chewed, narrowing a shrewd eye. “What I just told you is bond, Spurr. I just want you to know that. I ain’t gonna say another word about the situation, because I can see I ain’t gonna change your mind. You’ll see soon enough how it lays out, and by then, I’m sorry to say, it’s gonna be too late.”
The Old Wolves Page 10
