The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  TWO

  Someone had died.

  As Spurr blinked and got his bearings, he wondered if he himself had expired.

  No. He could feel his old heart chugging like an ancient locomotive in his chest. His hat had tumbled off his head during the night. A breeze had skidded it several feet off to his left and downslope slightly. He heaved up on his hands and knees, so stiff from sleeping on the cold, damp ground that he felt as though he’d been stoned overnight, and crawled out to fetch his hat.

  All the while he heard the woman’s off-key voice singing in the yard below:

  Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

  We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,

  Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

  We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

  As he scuttled back to the side of the limestone shelf, he cast a look down the slope. A blue smoke fog hung over the hollow. The smoke was rising from the broad stone chimney of the log-and-sod shack sitting behind a screen of trees about fifty yards from the slope’s base.

  The air was fresh from the previous night’s rain. It was rife with the smell of green growing things and the mushroom smell of loam and of the wood smoke that hung over the hollow like a lid. The hollow itself was all blue shadows, for the sun had not yet risen over the southeastern hill, so Spurr couldn’t see much but figures milling about in the dooryard below.

  Then he hunkered lower, doffed his hat again, and pulled it down close to his chest as he squinted his eyes down the slope. A woman was moving toward him through the gnarled cottonwoods at the edge of the yard, heading toward a thin, tan footpath that Spurr could now see angling up the face of the bluff, a little to his right.

  He could also see that the woman—stout as a well house and clad in a long, plaid shirt over blue denim coveralls—was LaMona Gatling. She was the one singing. She wore a tattered straw sombrero and black gumshoe boots. There were four others behind her, walking single file, following her over to where the path started up the slope.

  LaMona sang:

  Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,

  Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;

  By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,

  We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

  Spurr gritted his teeth. If the woman was going to sing that loud, she ought to learn to carry a tune. LaMona’s voice sounded like a whipsaw trying to cut a plow blade.

  As she mounted the slope, walking slowly, her voice trilled and was laced with the grunts of her exertion. Behind her walked her daughter, Missy May—a slender girl with long, blond hair and tricked out in much the same fashion as her stout mother. Missy May wore no hat; a blue ribbon trimmed her hair.

  Behind Missy May were two boys, Preston and James, most likely, LaMona’s two boys. Spurr recognized them all from their sketched likenesses on wanted dodgers. Preston was a big, beefy lad with a baby-soft face framed by bushy ginger sideburns. James was built like his sister—tall and lanky, and he was blond like Missy May, too. The two boys were carrying a coffin on their shoulders, heads titled away from the pale pine box. Bringing up the rear was the cousin, Darrold Gatling, a short, fat young man carrying an old, Civil War-model Spencer rifle on one shoulder.

  The others were armed, as well—Preston and James with pistols holstered on their hips, and Missy May with a pistol butt poking from her right coverall pocket. Following her mother up the path that slanted off to Spurr’s right, toward some mossy oaks and stunt cedars around which several stone markers rose, fronting mounded graves, the girl moved her lips, singing softly and watching the ground while keeping her right hand wrapped around the grips of the pistol in her pocket.

  LaMona walked around a large boulder humping up out of the ground, singing:

  Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,

  Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;

  When our weeping’s over, He will bid us welcome,

  We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

  Keeping his head down, his rifle tight by side, Spurr figured it must have been LaMona’s idiot brother, Hyram “Frog” Andrews, in the box. Frog was fat Darrold’s father. Spurr had heard that Frog had been wounded by a cavalry soldier when they’d robbed the army payroll south of Deadwood. He’d either died on the trail and they’d hauled him home or died last night. Whatever had happened, Frog was dead now, and LaMona’s bunch was about to plant him in the boneyard that occupied a small, relatively flat area fifty yards to Spurr’s right and about halfway up from the bottom of the slope.

  LaMona continued to sing as the group moved up the bluff, her voice growing reedy now as the stout woman became more and more breathless from the climb.

  Spurr quickly considered the situation. Then, dragging his rifle and his hat, he scuttled several feet down the backside of the slope. He straightened his sinewy old body with effort, gritting his teeth as his brittle bones creaked and popped like an ancient chair, and cast his glance down the slope behind him.

  Cochise was lounging in high bromegrass, his legs folded beneath him, casting his rider a skeptical, faintly indignant look. The horse wanted food, preferably oats though parched corn would suffice, and water. He wanted breakfast.

  Spurr thrust a palm-out hand toward the big roan, silently ordering the horse to stay where he was and to keep quiet. Over the long years he’d hauled Spurr around the wooly frontier, Cochise had grown accustomed to such signals. He could read them well. Now he just turned his head forward and twitched his ears, peevishly waiting.

  Like Spurr, the horse didn’t like to stay in one place very long. And he preferred his meals on time.

  Spurr walked as quickly as his old legs and sore feet would carry him along the backside of the bluff, staying a good ten feet down from the crest so he wouldn’t be seen from the other side. When he figured he’d walked fifty or so yards, he doffed his hat, got down on hands and knees, and crabbed to the crest of the bluff.

  He was nearly straight above where LaMona Gatling’s crew had stopped in the little cemetery. Between him and the gang were several gnarled, mossy oaks, cedars, and cottonwood saplings. There were several small, mossy boulders, as well. Preston and James had set the coffin down beside a freshly dug grave. Spurr scowled at the hole.

  They must have dug the grave last night, before the rain had begun. If they’d dug it this morning, Spurr surely would have heard them.

  At least, he hoped he would have heard them. He wasn’t sure anymore. Hell, he’d slept all night without stirring at an owl’s hoot!

  LaMona had stopped singing. She and Missy May stood by the grave, and she was gesturing and speaking in annoyed tones to Preston and James, both of whom were bent forward, hands on their knees by the pine box, catching their breath. Short, fat Darrold was chuckling at the two younger men’s misery while he rolled a cigarette, standing off to the left of the women, near Preston and James.

  LaMona turned her head toward her brother’s son and said shrilly, “Put that tobaccy down, you fool! We’re plantin’ your daddy here this mornin’!”

  Darrold looked indignant. He said something to LaMona too softly for Spurr to hear.

  “Put it down, now, you damn fool, and show a little respect. Your daddy was a helluva lot better to you than you deserved, and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let you smoke at his funeral!”

  “Pappy liked tobaccy just fine, Anty Mon!” Darrold returned, jutting his sharp chin at the stout woman. “And he wouldn’t mind one bit if I smoked at his plantin’!”

  Seeing his opening, Spurr pressed his cheek against his Winchester’s stock and aimed the barrel down the slope. He had a good view of the gang between two oaks, and it wasn’t going to get any better.

  He loudly pumped a cartridge into the chamber and shouted,
“Turn to stone, LaMona Gatling, or I’ll drill you where you stand! That goes for all you worthless Gatlings!”

  LaMona jerked her head toward Spurr. “What the hell? Who’s there?”

  “Spurr Morgan, deputy U.S. marshal from Denver! Throw your guns down or join Frog!”

  They all froze and scowled up the slope toward Spurr, who slid his Winchester from left to right and back again, keeping the entire bunch in his sights. Darrold dropped his cigarette and nervously rubbed his big hands against his greasy elk-skin poncho.

  LaMona shouted, “This is a family matter, lawman. We’re in the midst of sendin’ my dear brother to his reward. Now, you get the hell out of here. We’ll deal with you later!”

  Keeping his Winchester aimed at the group, Spurr rose with a groan and walked in his stiff, bandy-legged fashion down the hill, keeping the group in sight between the two oaks. “You don’t understand, Mrs. Gatling. You’re under arrest for murder and robbery. I’m takin’ you in.”

  “You’re takin’ us in?” LaMona gave a caustic, raking laugh. “Why, you’re older’n Methuselah!”

  The others laughed. Missy May tittered. She still had her hand on the butt of the pistol poking out of her right coverall pocket. She would have been a pretty girl if her two front teeth hadn’t been sticking nearly straight out of her upper jaw and one blue eye didn’t wander.

  Spurr stopped near one of the oaks whose main trunk trailed along the ground for several feet before rising at an angle and shaking its leaves in the fresh morning breeze. He set his right boot atop the trunk and pressed the Winchester’s stock taut against his shoulder, aiming at the deep valley between LaMona Gatling’s enormous breasts pushing out her grimy plaid work shirt.

  He nodded. “I have seen better days. But you five are wanted in three territories for armed robbery of federal monies, the murder of citizens as well as soldiers, and the raping of three female and one male bank teller whom you kidnapped from a bank in Norman, Oklahoma.”

  Spurr made a bitter face, shook his head in revulsion. “In other words, you’re five of the slimiest damn sacks of burning dog shit I do believe I’ve seen in a month of Sundays, and I’ve seen a whole lot of Sunday months during my time in the U.S. Marshals Service. And right now, I’m feelin’ pretty good about my job. Bringing you in or leaving you right here in your own little boneyard will be the capstone of my career.”

  They all just stared at him, as though they were having trouble digesting all that.

  Finally, Preston Gatling said, “You sure do talk a lot!”

  “I’m alone a lot.” Spurr narrowed a menacing eye. “Now, throw down those weapons or I’ll leave you right here in little hillbilly puddles of grease.”

  LaMona looked as though something had just dawned on her. “Where’s Brine?”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead?” LaMona’s fleshy lower jaw sagged, making a small round hole of her thin-lipped, little mouth. “I . . . I thought he musta got bored last night and went over to see that Beamer girl in Sandy Flat.”

  “Nope. He bushwhacked me last night. You’d have been proud of him. Only, he took about four rounds for his efforts. Nope, he’s dead, all right. Now, I ain’t gonna ask you people again. Throw down them irons or you’re gonna be meetin’ ole Frog and ole Brine in hell in about two jerks of a whore’s bell!”

  “My cousin, Jesse James, will hunt you down and kill you for this!” LaMona said, extending her arm and a pudgy index finger at Spurr.

  Just then Missy May started issuing a strange sound. The girl stood stiffly, glaring up the slope at Spurr, her mouth opening wider and wider and the sound growing louder and louder until she was bouncing on the balls of her gum boots and fairly screaming.

  She looked like a diamondback coiled to strike. Her eyes flashed fire. The others looked at her as though she’d suddenly been possessed by a demon. But they must have heard the sound before, and taken it as a signal, because they all whipped their heads back toward Spurr, eyes as wide and bright as Missy May’s.

  Spurr had never heard a sound so haunting in all his days. It rocked him almost literally back on his heels. “You just simmer down, now, young lady!”

  The last two words hadn’t left his lips before Missy May dragged the popper out of her coverall pocket, and Spurr shot her.

  THREE

  Missy May dropped the gun as Spurr’s .44 round punched her two steps back, snapping her head back sharply.

  LaMona and the rest of Missy May’s gang jerked shocked gazes at the girl, who looked down at the blood spurting out the hole in her baggy shirt, between the small pert lumps of her breasts, and then at Spurr. The light was already dying in her blue eyes as she lifted her right arm and pointed a finger at the old lawdog, as though to indicate the man who’d shot her. She moved her lips but no words came out.

  She fell hard on her back, hair fanning out behind her on the grassy ground.

  Spurr ejected the spent cartridge casing from the Winchester’s breech, seated a fresh one, and pressed the stock against his shoulder once more. At the same time, LaMona reached under her shirttails, squalling, “You’ll pay for killin’ my baby, you old bastard!”

  But James was already jerking up his own two pistols, so Spurr shot him next. He slid his rifle back to the left and punched a hole in LaMona’s fat hide just as the woman triggered one of her two Smith & Wessons at Spurr though both slugs screeched wild into the ground about three feet in front of the oak. As James went down, howling like a coyote, Preston and fat Darrold jerked up their own weapons and, crouching, cut loose at Spurr.

  The old lawman was fleet of foot when he had to be, and as bullets wheezed and buzzed around him, punching into the ground before and behind him, he ran to the next tree to his right, and pressed his back against the trunk. When there was a relative lull in the shooting, he snaked his Winchester around the oak’s right side and triggered three quick rounds at Preston, who’d hunkered down behind a pitted gravestone, and Darrold, who was using his father’s casket for a shield, triggering his old Spencer repeater over the top.

  Two of Spurr’s slugs hammered the side of Frog’s casket, but the third one drilled Preston a new eye—this one about two inches above the bridge of his nose. It punched him straight back until he was sitting upright against a gravestone directly behind the one he’d been using for cover. As Preston kicked his boots as though trying to dislodge fire ants crawling up his pants, Darrold punched a round into the tree about four inches right of Spurr’s right eye.

  The fat man’s next round tore Spurr’s hat off his head.

  Spurr cursed and triggered his Winchester from his shoulder.

  Darrold bellowed raucously as Spurr’s slug plunked into his collarbone. As the fat man threw his empty Spencer aside and heaved himself awkwardly to his feet, he reached around to pull a huge bowie knife from a sheath belted behind his back.

  “I’m gonna cut your black heart out of your miserable old hide for that!” he screeched and, stepping around his father’s casket, lunged into a heavy, thumping run toward Spurr.

  Spurr saw no reason to spare Darrold. Darrold was a dead man running, albeit one running with a big, savage-looking, antler-handled knife in his hand.

  Bang!

  The Winchester bullet took Darrold under his right eye, snapped his head back with a sharp cracking noise made by his splintering neck. Darrold’s feet kept running for two more steps, but then he stopped, looked at Spurr with a confused expression, blinking once slowly, and then dropped to his knees.

  He continued to stare at Spurr for several more seconds, blood bubbling darkly from the hole in his cheek, before he made a gurgling sound, dropped his knife in the grass, and fell forward on his face and big, round belly.

  Spurr walked around to the front of the oak and dropped to one knee. He always knew without counting when he’d emptied his Winchester, which held nine rounds counting
one in the chamber, and he quickly began thumbing fresh shells from his cartridge belt, looking around at the bodies strewn before him.

  LaMona lay to the left of the pine box housing her brother Frog. She lay belly up, head toward the downslope, her shirttails ruffling in the chill morning breeze.

  Missy May lay beyond her. Several yards to her right, Preston still sat against the headstone, his eyes open though one was filling with the blood dribbling from the hole above the bridge of his nose. Aside from the blood, he could have taken a seat there to gather some morning wool or plot his next nasty job of robbing and killing.

  Darrold lay about ten feet in front of Spurr, facedown, arms and legs spread wide. Blood pooled on the ground beneath his chest and face.

  Spurr had punched three fresh rounds through the Winchester’s breech, when he froze suddenly, one round halfway through the receiver’s loading gate. LaMona had stirred. Now she stirred again, rolling her head around and then, all at once, rising to her hands and knees.

  She sighed and grunted as she hauled herself to her feet.

  “Hold it there, now, LaMona!” Spurr warned, lowering his Winchester and pulling his Starr .44 from the soft, brown leather holster positioned for the cross draw on his left hip.

  As though she hadn’t heard him, LaMona looked around and then walked several feet to her right, leaned down with another, louder grunt, and plucked one of her pistols off the ground near the mounded soil of her brother’s grave. LaMona swung heavily toward Spurr, ratcheting the Smith & Wesson’s hammer back and hardening her jaws. Her eyes looked no larger than black pellets in her pale, fleshy face sagging to triple jowls that swelled and wobbled above her enormous, sagging breasts.

  Her shirt just beneath her right breast had a pumpkin-sized bloodstain on it. Spurr didn’t doubt that the woman’s ample flesh might have absorbed the bullet he’d drilled into it, stopping it before it could strike anything vital. He wondered if he could ever hit anything vital in a woman ensconced in so much tallow.