The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  Cliff surveyed the cabin once more. Then he snugged his hat down low on his forehead, wrapped both hands around the Winchester, and took off running through the brush, shrubs, and small trees that grew back here behind the house.

  He ran to the privy and from there he cast another furtive look at the cabin. Seeing no one looking out the windows, he ran ahead and left to the back of the red-painted, peak-roofed woodshed that was about the size of a rich man’s buggy shed.

  When Cliff had caught his breath again, he sprinted the last thirty feet to the cabin’s rear wall, between the back door and the window nearest the south wall. There were several corrugated tin washtubs out here that Sonja used for washing clothes, and he was careful not to kick one.

  Cliff swallowed, drew a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves, and walked forward, ducking under the window. At the house’s southwest corner, he paused again, looked around the corner toward the front. None of the hard cases appeared to be outside—at least not on this side of the cabin. The Indian was no longer inside the corral. The horses had gathered on the corral’s east end, facing the yard, and were contentedly eating the hay in Cliff’s crib. Their saddles were resting over the corral’s top slap, near where the corral abutted the barn.

  Cliff could hear voices behind the stout cabin wall. He could not hear Sonja’s, however.

  He quickly slipped around the cabin’s rear corner and moved slowly along the wall. He ducked under the first window he came to. It was the window of Cliff’s study and a curtain was drawn across it. He could hear no voices behind it, so he continued moving to the next window. He stopped, crouching at the edge of the window, and dropped his hat on the ground.

  Staying low, he slid his head across the edge of the window frame until he could see past the curtain. A candle burned on the little table beside Cliff’s rocking chair. A man sat in his chair—a rangy, blond-bearded man in a black opera hat and a long, black leather duster. He was rocking in the chair, hands on the scrolled mountain lion arms, as though it were his chair. As though it were his cabin. As though the pregnant woman working in the kitchen were his, too.

  Sonja, her belly bulging behind her green-and-white-checked dress and apron, was chopping meat at the table on the other side of the cabin, beneath the light of the two lanterns hanging over the table from a stout log beam into which Cliff had scrolled his and Sonja’s name after they were married, and then scrolled Irvin’s name after the child was born here in the cabin, where the next one would be, as well. Two men sat at the near end of the same table that Sonja was working at, pots bubbling on the stove behind her. The two were playing two-handed poker. Another man sat in a chair beside the door. Sonja’s cat, Lester, stood on the man’s left thigh. Lester arched its back and curled its tail as the man patted the cat affectionately, grinning at it.

  There were at least three other men scattered about the room, on the couch angled before the fireplace abutting the wall to Cliff’s right, and in chairs—all lounging about, enjoying the fire and having a woman cooking for them, as though they owned the place.

  Cliff had glanced over the inside of the cabin in less than five seconds, placing everyone, and now he jerked his head back and down beneath the sill. Through the wall, he could hear Sonja saying inside, “. . . Don’t know where you got such a notion in the first place.”

  Cliff thought it was the man rocking in the chair who said, “Who else would he send it to?”

  “I saw my father only once in my life, and like I told you before, we didn’t get along. He knew how I felt about him and just to prove it, I sent that old outlaw packing. Never saw him again. So why would he send such a gift, as you call it, to his daughter who wanted nothing to with him?”

  Cliff’s heart beat faster. Shame and dread was a heavy weight in him. Again, his hands shook. He pressed his left shoulder against the cabin wall and tried hard not to throw his guts up.

  What was he going to do? He was not a fighter. He was a rancher. He couldn’t very well storm into the cabin and start shooting. Even if he had that kind of sand in him, he’d probably hit Sonja and the baby.

  But then the dilemma was suddenly solved.

  The round, cold steel maw of a pistol pressed against the back of his neck, and Cliff heard the ratcheting click of the hammering being drawn back.

  An impossibly deep, guttural voice behind him said, “What you doin’ out here? Your wife—she in there.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Cliff turned his head slowly to look behind him.

  The Indian stood there, tall as a barn door, keeping the pistol pressed up against the back of Cliff’s neck. The Indian’s face was like chiseled, black granite.

  It suddenly cracked. The lips spread to reveal large, yellow teeth as the big man grinned wolfishly and held out his gloved right hand. Cliff looked at the new Winchester. Reluctantly, he handed it over to the tall Indian, who then pulled the pistol away from Cliff’s neck and backed up a step.

  He aimed the pistol at Cliff’s face.

  Cliff turned and walked slowly forward. Too slow for the Indian who gave him a savage shove that sent him into a stumbling run. He almost tripped over his own feet and fell, but he caught himself against the side of the cabin. He glanced back at the Indian, anger burning in him. But then the Indian grinned again, and Cliff knew he was in trouble.

  Deep trouble. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  He walked around the cabin and onto the front veranda. He stopped in front of the door, hesitating, feeling like a Christian about to be thrown to the lions. The Indian gave him another shove that sent him flying against the door so hard that if it were not made of halved timbers he would have broken it down. He fumbled with the string latch, opened the door, and half fell inside until he got his feet under him.

  The man sitting to the left of the door bounded to his feet and swung toward Cliff, reaching for the rifle that had been leaning against the wall behind him. The man loudly cocked the carbine as the others in the room all jerked to their feet or snapped their heads toward the open door.

  The man in the chair right of the snapping hearth merely stopped rocking and turned his sober gaze toward Cliff as the Indian walked in behind him.

  “Seen him from the barn,” was all the Indian said in his low, rumbling voice.

  “Cliff!” Sonja ran toward him from around the table, her brown eyes bright with beseeching. She stopped before him, clutching at the front of his coat, tears glistening in her eyes as she said in a pinched voice, “These men think my father sent us money. Stolen money! I can’t convince them he did no such thing!”

  Cliff looked at the tall, blond-bearded man in the opera hat sitting in his, Cliff’s, rocking chair. He looked at the others including the Indian standing behind him. “What’s this?” Cliff said, manufacturing as much of a shocked expression as he could muster. “What . . . money . . . ?”

  The tall, lanky man in the rocking chair crossed his long legs. “Boomer done told us about his family. The only one he had. Didn’t know he had one till a year ago. Came for a visit. Told us about the place, almost braggin’ like. He had him a good daughter married to a good man who had a ranch though he wasn’t much good at it—ranchin’. They had ’em a boy. A crippled boy. Boomer’s eyes done clouded up when he told about the boy.”

  Cliff’s chest rose and fell sharply. He had an arm around Sonja’s shoulders. He licked his dry lips and said over her head, “What makes you think he sent the money here?”

  “What else would he do with it? Didn’t have it on him. He probably took enough out for himself—an old man like that wouldn’t need much—and decided to lose the men he double-crossed in the mountains.” The tall man rose slowly from the rocking chair. “Oh, I could be wrong.” He walked toward Cliff, his brown eyes searing holes in Cliff’s face. “You tell me I am truthful-like, an’ I’ll believe you. You tell me a lie, an’ I’ll see it. That’s
the way I am.”

  One of the other men—they were all standing now—snickered. “Keneally—he’s got him a special way—”

  Keneally turned his head sharply. “Shut up, Dayton!”

  Sonja turned and looked up at Cliff. “Cliff, where’s Irvin?”

  It took a few seconds for the question to sink in. She’d seemed to ask it from a long ways away. Cliff said, “He’s . . . I left him with the wagon . . .”

  “It’s cold outside.” Sonja turned to the man called Keneally. “I have to fetch my boy. He’s not well . . .”

  Keneally looked at the big Indian standing statue-still in front of the door. “You fetch him, Ed.”

  “Make Bill go,” the Indian said tonelessly. “I tend the horses.” He jerked his chin toward the corral.

  Keneally was still staring at Cliff with those wide, brown eyes. “Bill . . .”

  “Shit,” Bill said, walking out away from the table at which he and the other man had been playing two-handed poker. Bill glared at the Indian as he moved to the door.

  As he opened the door, Keneally said, “Don’t hurt him. We don’t know if these people are lyin’ . . . yet.”

  Bill chuckled, then opened the door and went out and drew the door closed behind him. Sonja sucked a sharp breath and glared at the tall, blond-bearded man in the opera hat. “We are not lying, and you leave my boy alone!”

  “Shut up,” Keneally said.

  “Look,” Cliff said, feeling cold sweat dribbling down the sides of his face. “You got it all wrong. You figured it wrong. This is a question you’d best leave up to Boomer Drago.”

  “Sit down. You, Mrs. Merriam, you keep makin’ supper. The boys is hungry.”

  Sonja looked up at Cliff. Her eyes were sharp with worry. Slowly, she turned away from him and walked back into the kitchen where a stewpot was bubbling on the range, filling the tense air with the pepper-and-onion smell of beef stew.

  Keneally continued holding his gaze on Cliff. “Sit down.”

  Cliff sat down in the chair at the table opposite the door. The chair squawked slightly beneath him. He looked up at Keneally, his mind racing. His mind was a stubborn thing that seemed almost apart from the rest of him. It had wrapped itself so tightly around the money that it would not let go. Heavenly Jesus—forty thousand dollars. He hadn’t told Sonja, because she would not have let him keep it. She would have had him take it to the sheriff in Longmont.

  Forty thousand dollars!

  That much money could get them through two years, help Cliff build up his herd with blooded stock, pay for the surgery that Irvin needed . . .

  Why wouldn’t these men just accept his lie and go?

  Cliff’s mind screamed its frustration between his ears. Why did everything have to be so hard?

  “Where is it?” Keneally said, standing over him, clenching his fists at his sides.

  Cliff looked up at the tall man, cleared his throat. His tongue felt swollen. He shook his head. “I haven’t seen no money. You got it wrong. Please, won’t you just go and let my family be?” He almost sobbed that last.

  Keneally drew a deep breath. “You’re lyin’ to me, Mr. Merriam.”

  His right hand closed over the handle of one of the three Colts he wore on his waist. His thumb clicked the keeper thong free from the hammer. He lifted the pistol from its holster with a snicking sound of steel against leather. Holding the pistol near his waist, he turned the barrel toward Sonja’s pregnant belly and clicked the hammer back.

  Sonja gasped and stepped from the table, pressing her flour-caked hands to her belly.

  “Once more,” Keneally said, “where is the money, Mr. Merriam?”

  Cliff stared in horror at the cocked gun aimed at his wife’s belly. The fist of his mind opened. He dropped his gaze to the floor and said in a hollow voice rife with shame, “The barn.”

  Cliff felt Sonja turned her stricken gaze to him. It was like a hot branding iron pressed against his cheek.

  Outside, a gun blasted.

  Sonja screamed and pressed her fists to her temples, staring in horror at the door.

  “No!” The shout exploded from Cliff’s lips as he bounded up out of the chair and rammed his head and shoulders into the tall man’s belly. As Keneally flew backward off his heels, the outlaw’s Colt exploded, stabbing smoke and flames over the table.

  Sonja screamed again. It was a strangled, agonized cry. The cry died in Cliff’s ears as the gun butt was smashed down hard against the back of his head, and darkness engulfed him.

  * * *

  Sitting in the wagon, holding a blanket around his shoulders, Irvin looked toward the brow of the hill rising above the wash on his left. The night was quiet. It had gotten dark, stars kindling in the sky that had only a little lilac left in it.

  Coyotes yammered in the canyon behind Irvin. From the direction of the ranch yard, boots were crunching gravel. The crunching sounds grew gradually louder. The man was heading toward Irvin.

  Irvin widened his eyes. Was his father, having taken care of whatever trouble he’d thought was occurring at the cabin, coming toward him?

  Irvin called tentatively, “Pa?”

  The only response was the continued, rhythmic crunching of the boots and the faint jangle of spurs.

  Irvin called a little louder, “Pa?”

  But he closed his mouth suddenly when he remembered that his father had not been wearing spurs. He’d had no use for spurs today, because he’d been driving a wagon not riding a horse.

  Irvin’s heart quickened as he listened to the footsteps growing louder. They were coming from the direction of the trail off behind the wagon and on down the canyon. The man who was not his father would come down the trail and see Irvin in the wagon.

  The boy lurched into motion, pushing up out of his seat, and then turned and lowered the foot of his good leg to the small iron step bolted to the side of the wagon, beside the top of the iron-shod wheel. Irvin put all his weight on that foot and then slid his bad leg that would not bend because of the steel cage over his knee off and down over the side of the wagon. He let it hang there for a second before he released his hold on the spring seat and dropped straight down to the ground.

  He landed with a thump and a grunt and fell on his butt.

  The footsteps were growing even louder as was the jangling of the man’s spurs. Then a man’s voice overlaid the other sounds: “Kid?”

  Irvin gasped.

  “Kid, you out here? Your pa sent me to fetch you.” The man chuckled. “Him an’ your ma are in real hot water, and that means you are, too.”

  The man laughed again.

  Irvin looked at the blanket-wrapped Spencer repeater beneath the wagon seat. As the footsteps continued growing louder, until Irvin could tell that the man was at the top of the slope and starting down into the wash, he pushed himself to his feet, threw himself forward against the side of the wagon, and reached up to grab the rifle.

  He slid the blanketed bundle out from beneath the seat, quickly shed the blanket, shuffled backward a step, and half fell to a sitting position on a rock. Quickly, he set the rifle across his lap and used the trigger guard cocking mechanism to slide a cartridge into the old rifle’s chamber.

  He hauled the heavy hammer back, and raised the rifle to his shoulder. It was a heavy weapon but Irvin had held and fired it before countless times because, while he was a cripple, his father never treated him like one. A boy his age should know how to shoot, and his father had taught him well.

  Seated on the rock and aiming the gun along the wash that was a wide, pale line in the growing darkness, toward the trail, he drew a slow, deep breath to steady his nerves. A shadow was coming down the trail, dropping toward the wash. There was still enough light that Irvin could see the man had his head turned toward him.

  “Kid? Say, kid, get your ass over here!”

>   The man slanted away from the trail into the wash. He was carrying a rifle down low by his side. He hadn’t seen Irvin sitting on the rock beside the wagon, but he must have seen him now, aiming the rifle at him.

  He stopped with a start. “Why, you little . . . !”

  The Spencer leapt and roared in Irvin’s hands.

  The man-shaped silhouette sort of crouched with a grunt and stumbled two steps back, slapping a hand to his side.

  Got him!

  “Why . . . you little devil!” the man shouted hoarsely five seconds later, when he realized he’d been shot. He bolted into a run toward Irvin.

  The boy screamed and dropped the rifle, slid down off the rock, and tried to run, but of course he couldn’t run. Not with the six pounds of steel encasing his right leg. All he could do was sob and drag the leg past the paint that was nickering and prancing in its traces, and head off down the wash as fast as he could, which was maddeningly slow. He could hear the man closing on him fast, running full out, boots pounding the short grass and gravel, spurs jingling.

  The man closing on him shouted, “I’m gonna cut your tongue out and wear it around my neck, you little devil!”

  The man was so close on Irvin now that the boy could smell the man’s horse and sweat fetor. In the corner of his eye, he saw the man reach for his collar, and Irvin screamed and ducked away from the man, and fell.

  “Gotcha!” the man bellowed through clenched teeth a half second before a gun thundered along the draw’s east bank.

  Irvin had seen the flash. The echo of the blast rocketed skyward, the echo growing quieter and quieter until the stars seemed to suck it up and swallow it. Irvin saw his attacker stumble away from him—a tall shadow in the darkness. The man dragged his boot toes, clutching the side of his neck with one hand, until he dropped to his knees with a groan and fell on his face.

  Irvin looked toward the opposite bank. Three silhouetted figures sat three horses there, one of the riders still aiming a pistol propped on his opposite forearm. There was enough light in the sky behind the shooter that Irvin could see smoke curling from the gun barrel.