The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  “That bastard punched me,” she said, spitting the words out at the short gent who slowly gained his feet while glaring at the girl and continuing to hold his hand against his bloody ear.

  “I punched her because she called me a bastard,” he said in an English accent that did not go with his crude looks. But he was well attired in a sleek bear coat and high-crowned martin hat. His head came up only to the Fancy Steve’s shoulders. They were an odd-looking pair.

  The girl standing beside Spurr, while not nearly as well dressed in a ragged wool coat and shabby green scarf, was beautiful.

  “And then she shoots my damn ear off!” the fat bastard added.

  She looked at Spurr, her blue eyes dancing in the firelight. “They said they were going to punch me where the bruises wouldn’t show and then tie me over one of their horses and drag me back to Diamond Fire.”

  “We still are,” Fancy Steve said to Spurr.

  Spurr felt the burn of anger boil up inside him. Three kinds of men piss-burned him above all others—those who were cruel to children, women, and animals. He had a feeling these two had committed all three sins.

  Slowly, he walked up to the Fancy Steve, who stood about two inches taller than Spurr. He was straighter and broader but only because gravity had been pulling on Spurr for twice as long as it had the Fancy Steve.

  Spurr held the tall man’s glare. The tall man’s upper lip curled. His nostrils flared. Spurr rammed the barrel of his Winchester hard into the man’s crotch. The man screamed and folded like a barlow knife, thrusting both hands over his crotch and closing his knees.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The shorter man, who was built like a boxer, bolted toward Spurr. From somewhere, he’d produced a knife. It flashed in his right hand as he came in low with it, intending to disembowel the old lawdog.

  Spurr had seen it coming in time, and he squeezed off a Winchester round, the rifle barking loudly. The stocky gent leapt straight up in the air, dropping the knife in the dirt and pine needles. He howled and hopped several times on one foot, holding his other foot off the ground. It sported a hole in the dead center of the man’s brown boot.

  “You old bastard!” he howled, finally dropping back against a pine bole, holding his wounded foot about ten inches above the ground, breathing hard, his face swollen and red, little eyes pinched to slits.

  Spurr pumped a fresh cartridge into the Winchester’s breech and looked at Fancy Steve, who’d dropped to both knees and was hanging his head as if in prayer though his shoulders bobbed as he breathed. “What about it—you two still think you’re gonna manhandle this little lady back to Diamond Fire? I hope I’ve given you the opportunity to reconsider, because I honestly don’t have any more time to waste on you.”

  Both men groaned and wheezed, the short gent now sitting down against the tree and holding his wounded, shaking foot in both hands.

  “I asked you a question. That still your intention?”

  Fancy Steve said something under his breath.

  “What was that—I couldn’t hear you?”

  He jerked his handsome, red face with gritted teeth up at Spurr. “I said no—we’ve reconsidered, you crazy old coot. For now, yes, we’ve reconsidered.”

  “Oh, I see. For now.” Spurr chuckled. “Well, for now then why don’t you two haul freight? Go on, git your asses back out to wherever you left your horses and start foggin’ the trail back to Diamond Fire. I see either one of you out here again tonight, I will kill you on sight and throw your carcasses to the wolves.”

  Fancy Steve looked at the short gent. The short gent looked back at him. The short gent’s eyes were bright. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. If he ground his jaws any more tightly together he’d turn his teeth to powder.

  Slowly, as weak as a man three times his age, Fancy Steve rose to his feet. He said in a pinched voice, “Come on, Chaney,” and began walking heavily out away from the fire, throwing his shoulders back and holding his hands straight down at his sides. He walked as though he’d just awakened after a week-long bender.

  “Come on, Chaney—stop your caterwaulin’,” Spurr said, waving his Winchester in the direction of Fancy Steve. “Limp on after your partner before I decide to shoot the whole damn foot off.”

  Chaney glared at Spurr and then at the girl and then back at Spurr again as, with great effort, he hauled himself to his feet. When he’d limped tenderly away on his bad foot, sending venomous glares over his shoulder at Spurr and the girl, Spurr glanced at her.

  She was staring at him, the corners of her mouth quirked in a grin. Her gray-blue eyes were long and slightly slanted. Her skin was white as milk. Her hair was the gold-blond of ripe wheat. “You’re my hero.”

  “Ah, hell,” Spurr chuckled, his ears warming. “It wasn’t nothin’.”

  “No, you spared me from a painful ride back to Diamond Fire with those two varmints. They’ve been known to haul girls belly down across saddles for miles and miles. They’d have done the same to me and then whipped my ass raw with a rawhide quirt once we got back to town.”

  Spurr stared after them. He could see only their jostling shadows now as they high-tailed it out to their horses. “Who were they, anyhow?”

  “The tall man is Boyd Reymont. He owns the Dovetail Frolic House in Diamond Fire with that baboon partner of his, Marcus Chaney.”

  “You must be purty important for ’em to both come after you.”

  “They don’t have any tough nuts workin’ for ’em. They’re too cheap. They just hire girls and keep order themselves. Even serve the drinks and sweep up every night after closing.”

  “Well, I admire their entrepreneurial spirit.”

  “One girl gets away and then they all want to run. That’s why they came after me.”

  “You stay here,” Spurr said as he walked out into the darkness beyond the fire.

  He stopped and pricked his ears. He could hear the two men yammering in pinched voices and grunting. Tack squawked. They were getting mounted. A horse nickered somewhere off ahead of Spurr and to his right.

  After a time, hooves thudded slowly, dwindling off to the west, brush and branches snapping. When Spurr had heard the riders cross the creek, he turned back and walked back into the girl’s camp. She was sitting on a rock by the fire, looking forlorn and miserable. The blood dribbling from her lip was beginning to dry.

  “I do appreciate the help,” she said, lifting her eyes to Spurr.

  “How long you been shadowin’ me, young lady?”

  “Since you left town. I heard you were riding east with that old outlaw. I thought you looked kind the other night, so I figured I could do worse than follow you, stay near enough for your protection if I needed it. I didn’t mean to be a burden, it’s just that I don’t have much of a sense of direction and I would have gotten lost in these mountains.”

  “Where you headed?”

  She hiked a shoulder. The firelight played across her smooth cheeks and long, fine neck. “Cheyenne, Casper . . . I don’t know. Anywhere but Diamond Fire, I reckon.”

  Spurr pitched his voice with paternal admonishing. “These mountain trails are no place for a girl. Especially a purty girl. Besides . . .” He let his voice trail off. There was no point in adding that there was a good chance his heels were being dogged by well-armed human coyotes.

  Now, however, he was beginning to doubt both of Drago’s stories. He’d seen no sign of anyone following him—outside of the girl, that was. It was beginning to look more and more like old Boomer was tellin’ a big windy, wanting only to try to frighten Spurr into turning him loose.

  Spurr was now confronted with the problem of the girl, but she was far less of a problem—and even a pretty problem, at that—than a dozen or so armed killers would have been.

  Spurr dropped to a knee beside the girl and dug a handkerchief out of his pants pocket. “Here, let me
tend that for you. What’s your name again? I’d forget my own if I didn’t have it written down.”

  “Greta. Greta Ford, originally of Hayes, Kansas.”

  “Greta, I’m Spurr.” He dabbed gently at the jelled blood on the girl’s lip. “Hurt bad, does it, girl?”

  “Nah.” She smiled at him. Her long legs crossed sexily. “You’re such a nice, good man,” she said. “I just know you’re gonna help me down out of these mountains, aren’t you, Marshal Spurr?”

  Spurr looked at her. Her smile seemed to grow, her pretty eyes twinkling.

  “Ah, hell,” Spurr said as he continued dabbing at her rich, red lip.

  SIXTEEN

  “Sorry for the long walk, girl.” Spurr had rigged up her horse, which she’d tied a ways off from her camp, and he was leading the mount up the steep hill toward his own bivouac.

  He was breathing hard with the effort. Walking along beside him rather than ride the horse over such treacherous ground at night, she was, too. He supposed her profession didn’t allow her to get out for fresh air overmuch, to build up her lungs.

  “Why on earth did you camp this high up, Marshal Spurr?”

  “Please, Greta,” Spurr said as they came out of the trees to see the faint glow of the dying campfire. “Just Spurr will do. I don’t hold much with form. And I camped up here to hold the high ground . . . in case it needed holding.”

  “Why would it need holding?”

  “Some mighty unsavory characters in these parts. Mighty unsavory. I’m sharin’ my camp with one.”

  Spurr nodded toward the dying fire’s dim glow as he continued leading the girl’s paint mare—he didn’t even want to know if the horse was stolen, but it most likely was—up the slope and into the camp at the base of the cliff. Drago sat against the tree that Spurr had tied him to. He was a vague silhouette in the near darkness relieved only by the lambent glow off the chalky ridge wall and the kindling stars.

  Drago was muttering through his gag. Spurr had heard enough men mutter through gags to be able to translate the muddy language, and he could tell that Drago was reading him and his entire family out to show his distaste at being bound and gagged and left by a dying campfire with the cold mountain night falling hard.

  Spurr dropped the horse’s reins and leaned his rifle against a tree. He walked over and pulled the bandanna down beneath Boomer’s chin, and the outlaw instantly laid into Spurr, cursing like a sailor. When Spurr had tossed several dry deadfall branches on the fire, and the flames had leapt up to reveal the beautiful blonde standing by the fire, staring down skeptically at the raging outlaw, Drago cut himself off midsentence.

  His lone eye flashed as it swallowed the girl like a giant, hungry mouth. It flicked up and down her willowy frame, the voluptuousness of which was poorly disguised by her cheap floral-pattered pink-and-white cotton dress showing beneath her waist-length, ragged wool coat. The hem of her white pantaloons shone beneath the dress, brushing across the tops of her rabbit-fur moccasins.

  The outlaw’s lower jaw hung to his chest. He stared unblinking at the girl for a good thirty seconds before he rolled his lone eye to Spurr, who was breaking branches to add to the pile by the fire, and said, “Spurr, I underestimated you. Truly, I did. I thought you done hoofed off like a lamb to the slaughter. But, no—you’ve returned, bearin’ a blond-headed angel minus the wings.”

  Greta laughed as she stood warming herself by the fire. “This is your prisoner, I take it?”

  “I don’t normally truss up my friends like calves for the brandin’, Miss Greta.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that, Spurr.”

  Voice pitched with unabashed awe, Drago said, “Holy moly—I like how she talks. There’s nothin’ like a woman’s voice, especially when you’ve been incarcerated as long as I have, to sing like Lillie Langtry in an old man’s ears.”

  “I’m standing right here, sir,” said Greta. “As I’m not a mute, there’s no need to speak as though I was out of hearin’ range.”

  “Sassy one, too,” said Boomer, lifting one cheek. “I like sassy women.”

  The old lawman shrugged at Greta, who arched a skeptical brow at the old outlaw and then walked around the fire toward her horse.

  “You leave the mount to me,” Spurr said. “Here, I’ll take down your bedroll, and you can rest easy like, Miss—”

  “Don’t you worry about my horse, Spurr,” Greta said. “And just so you don’t think me a stock thief, I bought the lovely mare, Betsy, from a down-at-heel saddle tramp in Diamond Fire. She has all the cowboy’s rigging. I can ride and tend her just fine. I don’t want my tagging along with you boys to cost you any extra work. To earn my keep, I’ll cook, and I make damn good coffee if you like it strong.”

  “Strong enough to singe a nun’s habit,” Boomer said.

  She winked at the old outlaw and led the paint into the woods toward where Spurr had picketed his and Drago’s mounts.

  Spurr stared after her, smitten in spite of himself. What was it about women that tied his tongue in nearly as many knots now in his old age as it had when he was twelve years old?

  “Quit droolin’, Spurr,” Drago admonished him. “It ain’t becomin’ of that badge you’re wearin’.”

  “Ah, shut up, you old burnin’ sack of dog shi . . .” Spurr cast another quick, sheepish glance toward Greta, and let civility steer him to silence.

  Drago chuckled. “Where did you find her, Spurr? If you got more stashed somewhere down there in the canyon, it would have been nice if you’d brought back an extry one for me. Or is she for me? She looks like she’d be a catamount in the mattress sack. With your ticker, you’d better swing shy!”

  Drago laughed. “And, say, would you mind untying me? It’s a mite embarrassin’ to be all trussed up like this when I’m trying to lure a purty little lass into my bedroll.”

  “You ain’t leadin’ her anywhere, amigo.”

  Spurr had set the coffeepot and a kettle of beans and bacon on the fire, figuring that Greta might be hungry. He stirred the beans and glanced off to where he could see the girl’s blond-headed shadow moving in the dark pines just west of the camp, where the horses were all snorting and nickering as they got to know one another.

  “She’s on the run from the varmints that had her imprisoned in some parlor house in Diamond Fire,” he told Boomer. “She’s gonna join us on the trail down the mountains. You best be on your best manners. She’s been through a bucket o’ buffalo dung.”

  “That’s what the shootin’ was about?”

  “I don’t normally shoot game after dark.”

  “You leave any of ’em alive?” Boomer asked with a snort.

  “Alive but one with a sore foot.”

  “Trigger-happy’s what you are.”

  “You didn’t accuse me of that back in Diamond Fire.”

  Drago scowled and brushed a cuffed wrist across his nose. He didn’t say anything for a time but only stared off across the open slope and into the dark trees that moved slightly every now and then when a breeze stole across the mountainside.

  “Spurr,” he said finally, as the old lawman lay back against his saddle, waiting for the coffee to boil.

  “What is it?”

  “You might’ve done that girl a great disservice.”

  “How’s that?” Greta asked, moving up out of the trees, grunting under the weight of her saddle, bedroll, and large, overstuffed carpetbag.

  “Here, let me get that for you, girl.” Spurr’s bones popped as he heaved himself to his feet. “You shoulda whistled for me.” Seeing a girl working under such a heavy load just went against his grain, even though she was young enough to be his granddaughter, damn the friggin’ fates, anyway . . .

  Drago chuckled again jeeringly as Spurr hurried over and grabbed the girl’s saddle and bedroll off her shoulder.

  “Thanks!” she said, dra
wing a deep breath as Spurr set the gear down beside the fire. “I haven’t hauled a saddle around in a while. They didn’t used to seem so heavy. I reckon that’s what I get for makin’ my livin’ on my back for the past two years.”

  Spurr’s ears warmed at the girl’s frankness, and he could see Drago’s cheeks darken and his eye acquire a sharp, amused light.

  Greta frowned as she cut her eyes from Drago to Spurr, who untied her blanket roll from her saddle and unrolled it on the ground for her, doting on her like an old woman. “How could letting me trail with you fellas be a disservice to me? If it wasn’t for Marshal . . . if it wasn’t for Spurr, I’d be heading back to Diamond Fire tied across my horse’s saddle!”

  Spurr said sharply, “Boomer, will you stop cuttin’ with that old saw?” He glanced at Greta as he gave the beans another stir, making sure they didn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. “Boomer there’s been blowin’ smoke up my . . . well . . . he’s been spinnin’ ragged yarns about his old gang gunnin’ for him. First, they was just trailin’ him to turn him loose and fill me full o’ holes. Now they’re trailin’ us to fill us both full o’ holes.”

  Spurr winked at the girl, who was now kneeling by her carpetbag by the fire. “Truth is, he’s so old his gang likely turned him out. Sort of like the buffalo do with the old bulls. He was caught by a bounty hunter with his pants down in a bawdy house, and he just can’t get over it. So he’s tryin’ everything he can to convince me I gotta cut his hobbles lest I should contract a bad case of lead poisonin’.”

  Drago said gravely, “I feel it’s fair to warn you, my dear, that your life is in more danger now than before this old badge-toting reprobate hauled you up here. The truth is, I’ve piss-burned the members of my old gang, and they are most likely right now gathering from all points of the compass in Diamond Fire—in preparation for heading this way. They’ve been scouring these mountains for me.”

  He turned his dark, one-eyed stare at Spurr, who was spooning beans and bacon onto a plate and chuckling quietly. “Two or three of those boys could track a snake across the ocean, my aged amigo.”