The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  Spurr cocked the Starr .44 and extended the revolver straight out from his shoulder. “Drop it, LaMona!”

  The woman snarled and pinched her eyes and wrinkled her nose as she swung the pistol up with effort.

  “LaMona!” Spurr bellowed.

  But as she leveled her Smithy on him, Spurr’s pistol roared. The bullet punched into LaMona’s fleshy chest, causing her shirt to billow and her gun hand to waver. The Smithy barked, and the bullet spanged off a rock to Spurr’s left.

  LaMona staggered slightly but kept coming, swinging the Smith & Wesson up again. Spurr shot her again in the chest. She was moving around too much to try a head shot. Her big body was his best bet—if he could drill a bullet deep enough into her, that was.

  “LaMona, goddamnit!” Spurr shouted as he shot her again as she triggered the Smith & Wesson into the ground to his right this time.

  The bullet took her in her left shoulder and she swung sideways. That knee buckled and for a moment Spurr thought she’d go down but instead she got her feet beneath her once more, and, mewling like a wounded she-bear, kept staggering toward him, cocking the Smithy again with a grating click.

  Again, Spurr shot the woman, causing her next bullet to scream over his head and to ricochet loudly off a rock higher on the slope. He shot her once more, and then she was standing three feet in front of him, and he pressed the Starr’s barrel against her forehead, yelling, “LaMona, for cryin’ in the beer, won’t you please just die?”

  She stared at a spot somewhere on Spurr’s chin as he squeezed the Starr’s trigger.

  Ping!

  The hammer had landed on an empty chamber.

  LaMona spread a dull grin, showing her small, tobacco-grimed teeth between her thin turkey lips. She gave another grunt as she tried to lift the Smithy, but the gun would not rise. Instead, she triggered it into the ground several yards to her left.

  The bullet screeched wickedly. LaMona’s head jerked sharply to her right.

  When it straightened again on her shoulders, Spurr saw blood gushing from the hole the ricochet had punched through the left side of her head, just above her ear.

  The woman stared at Spurr, staggered from side to side, and then her eyes rolled up into her head until all Spurr could see was eggshell white, and LaMona fell straight back to hit the ground with a heavy thump.

  Spurr lowered the Starr to his side. He stared down at the big, dead woman before him and shook his head. “That’s troubling to me, LaMona. I never took you for a suicide.” He gave a droll chuckle and drew a heavy breath, throwing his shoulders back.

  Hooves drummed in the distance. He turned to stare down the hill. In the yard beyond the screen of trees, horseback riders jostled and wavered. Dust rose and the morning sunlight shone golden in it.

  Spurr holstered the empty Starr and picked up his rifle from where he’d leaned it against the oak behind him. He continued loading the long gun, but as he watched the riders gallop through the trees and gain the slope, following the path toward the boneyard, he stopped.

  Resting the Winchester’s barrel on his shoulders, he glowered down at the three men riding toward him, their deputy U.S. marshal badges flashing on their coats.

  Windom Mitchell was in the lead followed by Bruce Wagner and Calvin Pritchett. The young federal lawmen scowled beneath the brims of their Stetsons as they turned their heads this way and that, staring down in shock at the dead men and women strewn around the freshly dug grave and the pine casket.

  Mitchell—tall and dark with a prissy, mustached face peeling from sunburn—slowed his horse just beyond the cemetery. The others did likewise, Wagner and Pritchett riding out to either side of the young lawman decked out in a tailor-made three-piece suit and crisp black Stetson with a jewel pinned to its crown.

  The three stopped their horses on the other side of the carnage, shuttling their incredulous gazes from the dead Gatlings to Spurr, who stood in front of the oak tree, his rifle resting on his shoulder. His grim gaze belied his satisfaction at having proven the three younkers wrong in their snootily held opinions that the outlaws had taken the southeast path as opposed to the northeast path.

  “Fancy meetin’ you fellas here,” Spurr said without inflection. “I figured you was still waitin’ on me over to Red Creek. Well, since you’re here, you might as well find some shovels and start buryin’ the dead. Me? I’m gonna head on down to the cabin an’ see what ole LaMona’s cookin’ fer breakfast. Been one hell of a long night, as you can tell. No rest for the experienced lawdog, ya might say.”

  He turned, picked up his hat, casually inspected the bullet hole in its crown, and set it on his head. He walked away from the silent young lawmen, grinning in mute delight.

  FOUR

  “Spur-urrrr,” a girl’s pretty voice said into the tranquil darkness at the edges of the old lawman’s slumber.

  Spurr grunted, smacked his lips, ground his head into the pillow, and let himself drift deeper into the warm tar of sleep she’d started to summon him from.

  The girl’s voice called him back toward the fringes once more. “Spurr, hon . . . wakey, wakey.”

  “Ah, hell,” he said, still mostly asleep. “Le’ me, le’ me . . .”

  “Spur-urrrr.”

  The voice was softer but it came from nearer this time. He could hear the girl’s soft breathing, feel the warmth of her mouth up close to his left ear. Suddenly he felt the warm, wet softness of her tongue inside his ear, felt her small, pliant hand wrap around his manhood down beneath the sheets and autumn quilts, and give him a gentle squeeze.

  “Come on, hon—you said you was gonna take Kansas City Jane to breakfast this morning. Don’t you”—she swirled her tongue around in his ear once more and squeezed him a little harder—“re . . . mem . . . berrr?”

  Spurr opened his eyes and groaned at the girl’s manipulating hand that was causing the proverbial worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle to wag its tail. Spurr chuckled at the notion though the image of a tequila bottle caused lightning to strike his brain and make his ears ring. He’d had far too much of the ole tangleleg these past few days.

  Tangleleg, tobacco, and women.

  “Take a few days off, Spurr,” Chief Marshal Henry Brackett had told Spurr after he’d gotten back with Mitchell, Wagner, and Pritchett from the Indian Nations and filed his report.

  He reached up and sandwiched Kansas City Jane’s face between his hands and planted a warm kiss on the tip of her nose. “You keep doin’ what you’re doin’ with that nasty little hand of yourn, Janey my darlin’, and I might have you on your back again. I don’t think I got money enough for another poke and breakfast fer two. Been goin’ through it mighty fast of late.”

  “That’s all right,” Jane said, stretching her lips back from her teeth—nearly a full set, with only one gap behind her right eyetooth. That was pretty much a full set for a whore in these parts. “I’ll give you a free one . . . since you’re celebratin’ an’ all, after taking down that nasty Gatling bunch over in the Nations. The way they were carryin’ on for so many years, like a bunch of bloodthirsty wolves, why, I reckon every girl on the frontier owes you a poke, Marshal Spurr.”

  She leaned closer to him, raked her breasts across his shoulder, causing Spurr’s old loins to tingle.

  Spurr chuckled. He rolled the girl over on her back and buried his face between her firm, pale breasts, snorting and licking her and gently raking her with his beard stubble. She laughed and shivered, lifting her knees and writhing around, placing her hands on the back of Spurr’s head and grinding his face tight against her.

  “Oooo, that tickles, Spurr!”

  Spurr lifted his head. He kissed each of the girl’s pebbled pink nipples in turn, and then rolled over to the edge of the bed and dropped his feet to the floor. “Come on, Jane. If we do it again, I’ll need a nap before we light out. I ain’t as young as I used to be. Le
t’s go out and see what Mr. Wong is servin’ up for breakfast these days. Last time I was there, he was cookin’ some right fine huevos rancheros.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jane, who was sitting up and luxuriously smoothing her curly golden hair back behind her pink shoulders. “Don’t that beat all—a Chinaman cookin’ Mescin food?”

  “What do Chinamen normally eat, Spurr?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. When I was scoutin’ for the railroad a few years ago—hell, about twenty years ago now!—I saw ’em boilin’ a lot of cabbage with rice and the like. They drank tea, too. Lots of tea.” He glanced back at Jane again—if he remembered right, her real name was Nellie—and admired her firm, pink round ass facing him as she crawled over to the far side of the bed. “Their supper meals smelled—I hate to say it, Miss Jane—but a little like Indian stew.”

  “What do you suppose was in it?” The girl climbed down off the bed, turning to Spurr and pulling her hair back behind her head with both hands in that sweetly feminine way of hers. As she thrust her shoulders back, her tender breasts jutted forward, still a little red from Spurr’s beard stubble.

  “Do you know what’s in Indian stew, darlin’?” Spurr rose, chuckling, and began stumbling around, gathering his clothes.

  “No, Spurr,” the girl said. “What’s in Indian stew?”

  “Uh . . . well, let’s just say that when a farmer’s missin’ one of his hounds for more than a day, and there’s some Injuns camped out nearby, he might as well figure he’s seen the last of ole Rover.”

  “Oh, Spurr—please!” the girl intoned, making a face and cupping her hands to her breasts, drawing one knee toward the other one. “You shouldn’t say somethin’ like that when we’re about to light out for Mr. Wong’s!”

  Spurr roared as he sat down on the edge of the bed with his clothes in his lap. “You asked, darlin’! You asked!”

  She threw a pillow at him, and he laughed harder.

  They continued to jaw at each other as they both dressed, the girl stumbling around the room, pulling one article of clothing on at a time, and Spurr trying his best at dressing without having to move around overmuch. His head felt as though several brawny tracklayers had shoved railroad spikes through his ears and poured wood tar down his throat.

  When he’d gotten back from the Nations, a commendation from the governor of Colorado had been waiting for him, on Chief Marshal Henry Brackett’s desk, as well as a fifty-dollar bonus. Spurr had to admit that, while he was normally a relatively humble man, the commendation from the governor as well as the chagrinned smile on the old Chief Marshal’s face had gone to his head.

  And why shouldn’t it have?

  A month ago he had gone out to breakfast with the venerable old marshal, and over omelettes and hash browns, Henry Brackett had once again suggested Spurr retire.

  “Why don’t you head on down to Mexico, like you’ve been threatening to do for the past ten years, Spurr? Leave this lawdogging business up to the younger men. You’ve made your mark. Hell, even old bull buffalos know when their breedin’ days are over. They take it with a stiff upper lip and just wander away from the herd.”

  “Wander away from the herd, huh, Henry? Sounds a helluva lot like what the Injuns do. Look for some cave up in the hills they can die in alone, so the young folks don’t have to bother with ’em.”

  “Oh, that’s not what I’m sayin’ at all, Spurr. A bad choice of words.” Marshal Brackett had nudged his small, rectangular spectacles up his nose, laced his hands together on the table behind his plate, and leaned forward. His eyes behind the glasses were somber, frank. “I’m saying the marshals service has gotten . . . well, it’s gotten more complicated in these more modern times, Spurr. Colorado turned from frontier territory to a bona fide state almost five years ago now. The laws have gotten more complicated. Outlaws have gotten more complicated, too. More sophisticated.”

  When Spurr was about to interject, Brackett had lifted a hand to forestall him and said, “All that aside . . . well, you know as well as I do, Spurr, that with that old ticker of yours, you could go at any time. Face it, Spurr. Your best days are behind you. Leave it to the young folks to bring law and order to the new frontier.”

  Spurr had to admit, he’d considered it, just as he’d told Henry Brackett he’d do. He’d consider it over one more assignment—tracking the LaMona Gatling bunch from the spot of their last bloody robbery, though Brackett had insisted he ride “with three much younger but still very capable men, the new breed of deputy United States marshal.

  “When you’ve ridden with these young professionals, Spurr, I think you’ll be able to turn in your badge with confidence that civilization is in good hands.”

  “Young professionals, my ass,” Spurr said now, setting his hat on his head in Jane’s warped mirror. He laughed, still boiling over with glee, despite the bottle flu, at his having turned the tables on the three snooty lawmen—the young professionals as the Chief Marshal had called them—and taken down the entire Gatling gang single-handed.

  “What’s that, hon?” Jane said, fully dressed and ready to go, sidling up to him in the mirror and wrapping an arm around his waist.

  Spurr turned to her, hesitating. Then he laughed again. “Oh, I was just sayin’ I think it’s time you and this ole lawdog headed out for some o’ the Chinaman’s chow, and then we head on back here and I give you one hell of a professional ash-haulin’. How’d that be, Sweet Jane?” He reached into a pocket of his corduroy trousers hanging off his lean hips. “I think I got one more silver dollar rollin’ around in here too lonely for words!”

  Jane chuckled, and then she frowned. “Spurr, is that all you got left from the money the governor gave you?”

  “Jane, my dear beautiful gal—a pine box is a damn lonely place. You’re there a long time, and there ain’t one purty girl anywhere near for that whole long eternal time to spend it on.” Spurr winked, pecked the girl’s cheek. “Now, I’m so hungry my belly thinks my throat’s been cut!”

  Laughing, they left the girl’s room together and strolled down the wide, carpeted stairs of George Cranston’s Saloon, which everybody in Denver city proper and most of the county knew was a whorehouse—one of the best in Denver. Spurr didn’t usually have the money for such a place—he often swore that his store-bought pants came with holes in the pockets—but after the governor himself had oiled his palms a little, he saw no reason not to splurge.

  And he’d found this little blonde, who called herself Kansas City Jane, just a delight to make an old man’s weak ticker feel almost young and strong again.

  Spurr’s spurs rattled as he led Jane on down the stairs, her arm hooked through his. It was still early by saloon and whorehouse standards, so there were only about five men in the large, dark, cavernous room that housed a long polished mahogany horseshoe bar and vast, gaudy mirror on the left. There were about twenty or so stout tables on the right, amidst the square-hewn ceiling posts and a couple of potbellied stoves, both of which ticked and smoked with morning fires. It was late August, still summer, but there’d been a pronounced chill in the air for days.

  A gambling parlor lay through a curtained doorway, with blackjack tables, a roulette wheel, and a craps table, at the rear of Cranston’s, but Spurr tried his best to stay out of the place lest those holes in his pockets should grow even larger.

  “Where in the hell you goin’ with my girl, Spurr?” This from the barman who also owned the place—Leonard Cranston, brother of George who’d been hit by a hansom cab a few years back, dying and leaving the business to his big, burly, blond-bearded brother, Lenny, who hired some of the prettiest doxies in Colorado.

  “We’re off to get married!” As Spurr led the girl, who wore a much more sensible dress and shoes than she normally wore about Cranston’s, toward the front door that looked out on Arapaho Street, he lifted his hat high above his head. “Wish this ole duck good luck, will ya, fellers?�
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  FIVE

  “Wish Miss Jane luck, more like!” called one of Cranston’s regulars, Pearl Isaakson, who came in most mornings to partake of a sudsy beer to start the day, and anything remaining of last night’s free lunch platter. He stood at the bar, grinning, one elbow on the bar top, a beer schooner in his fist.

  The others in the saloon this early weekday morning, including Cranston, laughed as Spurr led the girl through the heavy, glass-paned door and out onto Arapaho Street. Traffic was light on this narrow, gravel-paved side street, about three blocks from the Mint and the Federal Building.

  A beer dray was just now passing with two big mule skinners at the reins, both of whom waved to Spurr and lifted their battered felt hats to Miss Jane. The driver’s shaggy dog was following the dray, tongue hanging and tail wagging, making the rounds with its master though giving chase to the occasional stray cat now and then.

  Spurr had resided in or around Denver long enough to know well over half the faces—including the animals’ faces—in the fast-growing old cow town once known as Denver City.

  Spurr and the girl waited for a coal wagon to pass and then headed off across the street to angle toward an alley mouth, which would take them via the quickest route possible to the Chinaman’s café which, if Spurr remembered correctly, was called merely Good Food—Cheap.

  “You ever been married, Spurr?” Jane asked as they stepped up onto the boardwalk on the street’s opposite side, passing the tonsorial parlor out front of which the barber, Roy Overhill, was sweeping horse and mule dung from his stoop.

  “Me? Hell, no!” Spurr laughed. “Oh, I lived with a few women too stupid to know no better, but no, I never been hitched.”

  “I bet you’d have made a good husband.”

  “Really? Why’s that, honey?”