The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  “Here you are, Greta. Supper beans warmed up special for you.”

  “Why, thank you, Spurr.” The girl accepted the plate and then scuttled onto her bedroll and sank back against her saddle, lines of consternation cutting across her forehead as she poked a spoon at the beans.

  “And don’t listen to him,” Spurr advised her. “The man’s a gravel-crawed criminal. He’ll do anything he can to get himself shed of those cuffs. Shut him from your mind, Miss Greta, and take heart that you’re with one of the wiliest lawmen west of the Mississippi. I will make certain sure you trail down out of these mountains without one hair mussed on your purty head.”

  “Ah, Christ, Spurr—you’re gonna make me air my paunch!”

  “Shut up, Drago, or I’ll take my cartridge belt to your rancid hide!”

  “Unchain me, and we’ll make a fair fight of it!”

  “Boys, boys!” Greta intoned, cutting her wide, startled eyes between them. “Please, don’t fight on my account!”

  Spurr glared at his prisoner. Drago glared back at him.

  Ashamed and embarrassed at his behavior in front of the pretty girl, realizing he was probably behaving like the men she was fleeing in Diamond Fire, Spurr sank back against his saddle. “I do apologize. I guess I just don’t cotton to takin’ much guff off a snake such as that.”

  Greta started eating her beans, continuing to cut her slightly skeptical gaze between the two men. “You two seem to know each other. You go back, do you?”

  Drago said, “Too damn far, Miss Greta.”

  “We go back a ways, that’s for sure,” Spurr said, rummaging around in his saddlebags until he’d produced his small, flat brown bottle, which he held up. “I take it you don’t disapprove of busthead . . .”

  Greta’s pretty, blue eyes flashed eagerly. “I should say I don’t! And boy, do I have a surprise!” She set her plate aside and dipped into her carpetbag. She pulled out two bottles of Kentucky bourbon, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

  “Boys, how about a drink on Boyd Reymont and Mark Chaney?”

  Spurr’s heart lightened at the sight of those two, labeled brown bottles. He didn’t think it was possible to find labeled bottles in this neck of the woods.

  He and Drago whistled at the same time. “Lookee there,” Spurr said. “And here I was already gettin’ the fantods over the prospect of emptyin’ this little medicine flask of mine.”

  “Not to worry,” Greta said. “I took three bottles out from behind the bar before I left this mornin’. If we ration ourselves, we should make it down to the eastern plains with a sip or two to spare!”

  “What’re you doin’ with so much liquor, Miss Greta?” Boomer asked as the girl spilled liberal portions into three tin coffee cups. “I didn’t figure you of the swillin’ type sort.”

  “I figured I’d have to pay my way down these mountains one way or another,” Greta said. “And after all I been through, I’d just as soon pass around the liquor as pass around myself.” She winked and handed one of the cups to Spurr.

  “Hey, what about me?” Boomer scowled at the old lawman as Spurr took a deep pull from his cup.

  “It’s against federal regulations for prisoners to imbibe,” Spurr said, though he’d heard no such regulation. “Don’t worry, Boomer—I’ll make sure yours don’t go to waste!”

  “Oh, Spurr, it’s a cold night!” the girl said, her eyes making a plea for Drago’s case.

  Playing it to the hilt, Drago hung his head toward his upraised knees.

  “That one-eyed old killer don’t deserve no Kentucky who-hit-john!” Spurr said. But the girl kept her wide, pleading eyes on him. “Ah, hell,” the old marshal relented, handing Drago’s cup to the pretty girl. “I reckon it’s your busthead, Miss Greta. Yours to waste on the likes of that ole curly wolf, if you’re so inclined.”

  Spurr thought Drago’s lone, shining eye would pop out of its socket as he watched the girl walk around the fire and hand him the cup. “Be careful,” Spurr warned Greta. “That’s a catamount, that one. Best not linger around him. Wouldn’t doubt it a bit if he used you to get to me.”

  “Are you really a killer, Mr. Drago?” Greta asked when she’d settled back down with her whiskey, huddling low in her coat against the penetrating mountain chill. “You don’t look like one.”

  “I only kill when someone needs killin’.” Drago spat the words at Spurr. “Mostly, I’m a train and bank robber. Oh, we’d hold up a stage now an’ then when times was tough an’ the girls expensive”—he chuckled devilishly—“but mostly we hit trains and Wells Fargo boxes loaded with gold or silver. Once we stole trinkets off a rich man from New York City, one o’ them robber barons, and sold ’em down in Mexico. That dinero got me through two whole years down there, cavortin’ along the coast of the Cortez Ocean with purty Mexican damsels.”

  “Sounds like you’ve had quite a life, Mr. Drago.”

  “Call me Boomer.”

  “That’s just one of his names. He’s had many, Miss Greta.” Spurr finished the whiskey in his cup and smacked his lips together. If he’d tasted better tanglefoot, he couldn’t remember when it had been, though being low on his own tarantula juice and this far out in the high and rocky probably had something to do with it.

  Drago sipped the whiskey, sloshed the liquid around in his mouth, and shook his head as he let it slide down his throat. “Say, that’s some good coffin varnish there. I do thank you, Miss Greta.”

  “The pleasure’s mine, Boomer. I’m just glad to be here. I couldn’t have spent another winter in Diamond Fire. Most of the good folks—if there is such a thing—leave before the first snow hits. That leaves the dregs . . . and we pleasure girls. I’ve been in some nasty camps, but Diamond Fire is in a bucket all its own.”

  “I’ll vouch for that,” Spurr said. “Say, where you headed for, Miss Greta? Cheyenne, did you say?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The girl sipped from her cup and wrapped her arms around her knees, giving a little shiver against the chill. “Just out of the mountains for the winter. Out of the mining camps for good. I knew a man in Cheyenne, a few years ago. He was married, but he said he loved me. I heard recently that his wife died . . .”

  She looked down, her eyes sheepish, sad. “Not too many options for a girl of my profession.”

  She sipped her whiskey.

  Spurr felt sorry for her. He’d known many women who’d gone into “the trade,” as it was called, because they’d run out of other options. Most were orphans or young widows without families to help ease their journey through life.

  The frontier was a tough place for girls without families, for women without men. They’d whore for a while, but then they’d become pregnant or too early they’d lose their looks or their health. Most died before they hit thirty.

  Greta threw the last of her drink back and set the cup on a rock by the fire. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. I think I’ll prepare for bed. I’m a mite on the sleepy side.”

  When Greta had risen on her long legs and walked away through the dark trees, Drago turned to Spurr, his eye sharp. “You an’ me gotta talk, partner. We gotta talk before it’s too late.”

  “I know, I know,” Spurr said. “Your ole gang’s comin’ for you.”

  “They is.” Drago blinked. “And you’ll rue this night you didn’t listen to me, old man.”

  Spurr gave a wry snort and threw the last of his whiskey back. Lowering the cup from his lips, he looked at Boomer once more. The old outlaw still had his lone eye aimed at him, dark as a pistol maw.

  A cold finger of doubt pressed against Spurr’s lower back. He considered it for a time, disregarded it.

  He should know better than to listen to anything Boomer Drago told him. The man was a liar. Always had been, always would be.

  “Well, Boomer, time to tend nature,” Spurr said, rising with a gr
unt and tossing his cup down against his saddlebags. “Then we’re gonna throw down for a good night’s sleep, get an early jump on the morrow.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Spurr woke with a start. It was dawn, the sky lightening, the trees relieved in shadow against it. Birds chirped in the branches.

  The birds weren’t what had awakened Spurr. He blinked as he rose on his elbows.

  He looked toward where Greta lay on his right, and his weak ticker heaved and coughed when he saw a pair of legs standing between him and the girl. The man wore high-topped brown boots, blue denims stuffed down inside the wells. Copper spurs dully reflected the dawn light. Spurr trailed his eyes up the man’s long legs and dirty cream duster just as the man turned his head to look at Spurr over his shoulder.

  The man wore a week’s growth of ginger beard. He stretched his lips back from large, white teeth, and his brown eyes flashed delightedly. As he half turned toward Spurr, the old lawman saw the smoking, long-barreled revolver in the man’s hand. Beyond the end of the barrel, Greta was stretched out on her back, her head tipped to one side, mouth slack.

  There was a quarter-sized hole in the girl’s forehead. Blood dribbled out of it and trickled across the smooth skin toward her ear. Her half-open, accusing eyes stared past the gunman toward Spurr as if asking the old lawman why he hadn’t done anything to save her.

  Then Spurr saw that it was not Greta lying there in the mussed blankets with the bullet hole in her forehead. It was Kansas City Jane as she’d looked that morning she’d lain dead on the boardwalk across from the bank.

  The gunman laughed as he swung quickly around toward Spurr. “Worthless old man!” he shouted, clicking the revolver’s hammer back and bringing the big pistol to bear on Spurr.

  “No!” Spurr shouted, reaching for the Starr .44 holstered beside him.

  A girl screamed. Spurr froze, and then he was not staring at the unshaven gunman but at a willowy blonde in a pink cotton dress and fur moccasins standing beside the fire from which sparks were rising. Greta had one branch in her hand as she stumbled backward, a blanket draped across her slender shoulders, her wide eyes bright with fear.

  “Spurr!”

  Drago sat against the tree to the girl’s right, glaring at Spurr, his blanket pulled up around his knees.

  “Holster that hogleg, you old coot!” Boomer admonished him. “You’re dreamin’!”

  Spurr looked at the gun in his hand. It was cocked and aimed at Greta’s chest.

  Horrified, he tipped up the barrel and depressed the hammer, easing it down against the firing pin. He lowered the gun to his lap, looked to his right. Only Greta’s saddle, canteen, and carpetbag were there, a whiskey bottle standing beside the bag.

  Kansas City Jane was nowhere to be seen.

  “Old and used up,” carped Boomer. “And he’s the ramrod. Lord help us all!”

  Greta swallowed as she stared down at Spurr. Her eyes lost their fear. She glanced at the branch in her hand, tossed it into the fire she’d been building, and dropped to a knee beside Spurr. She placed a hand on his forearm resting with the gun across the blanket twisted on his lap.

  “You all right, Spurr?”

  Spurr looked back at her. Her eyes were genuinely concerned. It warmed him. It also made him feel worse about scaring her. Old and used up. Maybe both Boomer and Henry Brackett were right. His heart was heavy; his shoulders felt weighed down by a blacksmith anvil.

  “I’m sorry, Greta.” That’s all he could think of to say. He looked again at the pistol in his lap. The gnarled, brown hand with knotted, bulging veins could not be his hand. Not Spurr Morgan’s hand. But it was. And with that old claw he’d almost killed this girl. His second one this month.

  “It’s all right,” Greta said with a tender smile, squeezing his forearm and then rising. “I’m gonna get coffee boiling and then I’ll make breakfast. I brought some canned meat from town, and six pickled eggs.”

  “I got bacon in these bags here,” Spurr said numbly.

  “We’ll have a feast then!”

  Greta picked up the coffeepot and swung around to start down the slope toward the creek for water.

  Spurr looked at Drago. Boomer cursed and gave a caustic shake of his head. “Doomed . . . that’s what me an’ that poor girl are.”

  * * *

  Despite the dream, Spurr didn’t feel doomed. Not any longer. The girl’s presence had helped him shake the anvil from his shoulders. Greta didn’t seem to believe they were doomed, either.

  The autumn day was clear, the sky blue, the sun warm, the air cool. The breeze smelled like cinnamon and pine. In the canyons that the trio rode along, there was the added moist, loamy, green smell of the creeks.

  Spurr kept a sharp eye on their back trail, and he kept his eyes and ears skinned on the land around them, his rifle resting across his saddlebows as he rode. But he saw no sign that his party was being stalked.

  He hadn’t felt any instinctual uneasiness since he’d sensed Greta on their trail out from Diamond Fire. He doubted very much that there was any truth to Boomer’s story—to either of Boomer’s stories—though the old outlaw continued to make a good show of looking worried as he cast frequent dark glances along their back trail and gave ominous sighs.

  Boomer Drago was a shrewd nut, and a tireless one—Spurr would give him that.

  Spurr enjoyed his time on the trail, knowing it would be his last as a federal lawman. Probably one of his last, period.

  He found himself paying close attention to the familiar but somehow magical details—the clomps of the horses’ hooves, the mounts’ snorts and nickers, the rattling of the bits in their teeth. The smell of the horses themselves and the leather of the tack. The chuckle of the creeks tumbling over their rocky beds in the deep, fir-studded canyons.

  The smell of coffee and wood smoke. The crunch of pine needles under the soft soles of his moccasins.

  The girl was an added bonus to this trip. While Kansas City Jane still haunted the old lawman, he found himself able to appreciate Greta’s own, singular beauty. The way she smiled and the way the light danced in her long eyes, and how her eyes crossed slightly when she joked and teased, which was often.

  She was a girl who’d lived a hard life, and it had taken its toll on her—Spurr could sense that in her frequent though short-lived, brooding silences. But she took full advantage of the buoyancy of happiness, stretching it out, savoring it, making it last.

  Spurr figured it was a quality in women who’d had it rough. That’s how his old friend, Abilene, had been, as well. She loved to joke and horse around, but her quiet times were quiet, indeed—and gloomy. Hell, he supposed that’s how he himself was, though he certainly didn’t claim to have had as harsh a life as a frontier percentage girl.

  The three travelers camped that night along another canyon. Greta cooked beans and beef and boiled the coffee extra strong, adding several shots of bourbon to the pot. Even Drago lightened up after several cups of the spiced coffee, and Spurr felt good, bedding now near the girl with a full belly and a light head, after he’d taken a scout around the camp to make sure they were alone.

  Nothing but the owls and coyotes and the little burrowing creatures that made faint scuttling sounds all night. Occasionally, Spurr heard the brief squeal of a rabbit likely being pulled out of its den by a stalking wildcat.

  The next morning, after he’d taken another slow, careful scout around the canyon, Spurr was doubly sure that Drago had been spinning yarns about his old gang. There was no smell of campfire smoke on the air and no sign of movement anywhere along their back trail. What’s more, there was a noticeable lack of hair-prickling tension beneath the collar of the old lawman’s hickory shirt, under his mackinaw.

  When Spurr returned to the camp, where Drago and Greta were packing gear and rigging the horses, Drago with his hands and ankles still cuffed, Spurr saw and heard the old outl
aw laughing and joking around with the girl. Drago had apparently decided to forget his ruse about his old gang. He was having too much fun trying to impress Greta with his lies about old outlaw escapades to continue to look dark and gloomy, as though he feared for his life.

  In the afternoon, they followed a windy, twisting ridgeline down out of the Medicine Bow Mountains and set up camp at the base of Cameron Pass, which was a natural bridge between the Medicine Bows and the Mummy Range just south. They made camp early, as it was dark here between ridges, and now they only had about a three-day ride to the Union Pacific line.

  When Spurr had tended the horses and staked them all to a long picket line, he rigged up a fishing line with string and a palming needle, using a steel-cut button from a woman’s dress as a lure, and hauled in three nice-sized red-throated trout.

  Greta fried the trout and made corncakes from Spurr’s stores, and they ate and drank well that night, Spurr and Greta sitting up close to the fire, Boomer trussed up as usual and tied to a nearby aspen bole. Spurr wasn’t taking any chances with the old outlaw, not only because he wanted to see Boomer brought to justice, but because he didn’t want to bung up this last assignment and put an extra bee in Henry Brackett’s bonnet.

  That night, Spurr was skinning a buffalo in his sleep, as he and Boomer Drago had once done in the old days just before the war had broken out between the states and they’d both headed east to fight for the Union. (Spurr had seen no good reason for one man to own another, but he’d mostly joined the federals because as a native Kansan he’d wanted to help keep the Union intact.)

  Working on the buffalo, flies buzzing around his head in the hot, humid Kansas air, Spurr cut the skin down the inside of each leg, grunting as he sawed the sharp blade of the skinning knife against the bull’s tough hide. He was cutting a strip around the beast’s thick neck, trying to work fast because the captain of the crew, pugnacious Old Billy Kramer, would be coming fast with the wagon, when someone rammed a boot toe into his ribs.