The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  It was either Drago or Jack Crawford—probably Drago stumbling around Spurr as he ineptly worked on his own buff near his partner’s. “Goddamnit, Boomer,” Spurr snarled, “you couldn’t hit the ground if you fell!”

  He opened his eyes and found himself sitting straight up in his bedroll. Someone moved to his right, and he felt the hard point of another boot rammed into the same place in his ribs.

  Spurr cursed and grabbed his rib cage as he flopped on his side and looked up.

  A tall, round-faced, green-eyed man in a black opera hat and long leather duster stood in inky silhouette against the lilac dawn sky. The man’s blond-bearded head and his shoulders were massive, making him appear short though he was at least six feet tall.

  He stared down at Spurr, smiling with satisfaction. He had a big, stag-gripped Colt Navy in his right, black-gloved hand, and, half-turned away from Spurr, he was aiming the pistol at Spurr’s face.

  He spoke through his yellow, brown-crusted teeth. “Just lay there, old man, or I’ll kill you now.”

  Spurr looked around the man’s leg clad in patched broadcloth, and he heard himself wheeze a horrified gasp. Greta was sitting up in her own bedroll six feet away from Spurr. Two men were standing around her while another man in a battered bowler hat and red vest under an open, shaggy wolf coat, knelt behind her. He held one hand over her mouth. With his other hand he pressed a cocked pistol against Greta’s left temple.

  Greta stared wide-eyed at Spurr, her face smooth and floury pale above the man’s brown hand. Her chest rose and fell sharply as she breathed, terrified.

  “Ah, shit—oh, hell!” Boomer Drago yelled about ten feet to Spurr’s left, sitting tied against the aspen. Two more men stood around Drago, and one was just then withdrawing the boot he’d slammed into the old outlaw’s rib cage, waking him.

  “Goddamnit, Spurr!” Drago shouted, leaning forward and sideways over his battered ribs. “What’d I tell ya?”

  “Spurr,” said the big man standing over the old marshal, narrowing his cunning green eyes. “Old Spurr Morgan. I thought you’d been turned under a long time ago.”

  Spurr cursed against the lingering agony in his side and stared at the man holding Greta. “You let her go, goddamn your worthless hide!”

  He glanced to his right, where he’d coiled his pistol.

  The big man standing over him said, “Quiet Ed’s got the Starr. Your Winchester, too.”

  Spurr followed his glance to the big man with Indian features standing a ways back in the trees, Spurr’s Starr wedged behind the cartridge belt wrapped around the outside of his blanket coat.

  The big Indian held two rifles on his shoulders. One was Spurr’s Winchester. He was not looking at Spurr. He was staring down at Greta just as the man behind her removed his hand from her mouth, turned her head toward his, and kissed her.

  Greta fought against him but he held her taut in his arms, kissing her.

  “Let her go, goddamnit!” Spurr said as he bounded up and lunged forward off his stockingfeet, his blankets tumbling away. He’d intended on bulling into the big man before him, but he’d only taken his second step before the big man rammed his right knee up against Spurr’s forehead.

  Spurr stumbled backward and hit the ground hard on his back, lights flashing in his eyes.

  “Goddamnit, Spurr!” Drago bellowed. “Why in the hell couldn’t you listen to me? Now, here they are, and we’re all dead!”

  EIGHTEEN

  The man in the gray bowler and red vest drew away from Greta, grinning, spittle stringing from his lower lip. He was missing his two front teeth. His face was like a raisin, eyes dark and nasty mean.

  Greta bunched up her face and slapped him, the crack sounding like the report of a small-caliber pistol. The man’s face jerked to one side. It hardened. He snapped his own hand up, laid the back of it against Greta’s left cheek.

  Greta screamed as the blow whipped her head to one side, blond hair dancing across her shoulders.

  Spurr glared helplessly, his heart chugging heavily, at the man who’d slapped her. The man was laughing now. Vaguely, Spurr wondered if this was all just another savage dream. But he didn’t think so. If it was, he hoped he’d wake up soon.

  He sat up, wincing against the pain in his ribs and his head, and heard the harrowing impotence in his own words as he said, pointing at the man with Greta, “I’m gonna kill you, you son of a bitch!”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?”

  The man with Greta started to rise, angry eyes on Spurr, who heaved himself to his feet, balling his fists. His chest felt tight. He prayed his heart wouldn’t go out on him.

  “Forget him,” said the tall, blond-bearded man with the pistol aimed at Spurr. “He’s old and dried up.”

  He walked around the fire to Drago. A man with pale skin and pale eyes and wearing cut-down holsters stood near Boomer, a cocked pistol aimed at the old outlaw’s forehead. That had to be the Texas gunman, Curly Ben Williamson. His pale skin was scaly, like a lizard’s.

  There were a dozen dangerous-looking, unshaven men standing around the camp, most looking at Greta.

  The man to Spurr’s left kept a carbine aimed at Spurr’s side as he rolled a sharpened stove match around in his mouth. The big Indian, Quiet Ed, was staring expressionlessly at Greta, who knelt on her blankets, chin down, hair obscuring her face.

  The big Indian’s eyes smoldered.

  Spurr walked over to the girl, dropped to a knee beside her, and wrapped his right arm around her. He could feel her shivering against him. Desperation was like a living thing within him.

  Desperation and shame.

  He’d let himself get hornswoggled. This pack must have been on his heels for at least the past couple of days. Just like Boomer had warned, they’d probably got on his trail in Diamond Fire. Spurr was outnumbered, outgunned by much younger men. All he could do was try to save Greta, somehow keep her out of the jaws of this savage pack.

  The blond-bearded leader with the massive head and shoulders and wearing the black opera hat and leather duster was Sam Keneally, an Arizona outlaw with several bounties on his head. He stood in front of Drago, boots spread, sliding the flaps of his duster back as he planted his fists on his hips, just behind his gun-heavy holsters.

  He stared down at the old outlaw. Drago grinned sheepishly, glancing from Keneally to Curly Ben Williamson. “Well, hello, Sam. Fancy meetin’ you here. Curly Ben, you’re lookin’ fine though I would appreciate it if you’d stop aiming that hogleg at your old friend, Boomer.”

  Keneally stepped forward and slashed his right fist against Drago’s face. There was a sharp smacking sound that made Spurr’s own cheekbone ache.

  The blow snapped Boomer’s head to one side. Spurr saw blood leaking from the short gash across the old man’s cheek. He didn’t know why, but seeing Drago treated that way graveled him, though the old outlaw had certainly brought it on himself.

  “Still got a good right hook, Sam—I’ll give you that,” Drago said. “It ain’t nice to hit a man when he’s all tied up like this, though. Didn’t your ma teach you no better?”

  “Where’s the money?” was Keneally’s only response.

  Drago turned his mouth corners down and stared mutely up at the broad-shouldered man.

  Keneally slid his Colt from its holster, thumbed the hammer back, and pressed the barrel against the center of Drago’s head. “A dead man can’t spend it. Might as well tell me. Besides, if you don’t, me an’ the boys are each gonna take a turn with that purty girl over here. Drag her out in the brush and give her a grand ole time. How’d you like to see that—you with such a tender heart toward womenfolk?”

  Drago said, “You leave that girl alone, Sam. That ain’t what we’re about. We ain’t never been about that!”

  “Ain’t no more ‘we,’ Boomer. Not since you killed Teagarden and White an’ lit out
on your own with the strongbox.” Keneally swept his free arm out to indicate the other gang members standing around watching him and Drago, though Spurr could tell that the big Indian, Quiet Ed, was staring at Greta as though she were a hot meal. “You piss-burned us all real good.”

  Spurr wondered if there was any way he could kill Quiet Ed, who seemed both literally and figuratively the biggest threat toward Greta. If only he could get his hands on a gun . . .

  Boomer swallowed, said with a nervous tremor in his voice, “She had nothin’ to do with the strongbox, boys. That was just me. We ain’t about hurtin’ women. Never been about that.”

  “I’m the leader of the gang, now, Boomer, and I say we are about that.” Keneally glanced over his shoulder to cast his cold, green-eyed gaze at Greta. “Right here an’ now, this morning, we’re gonna start to be about that. Might even give Quiet Ed there first crack at her, since he can’t seem to take his Injun eyes off of her. Shit, Boomer, even after I drill a bullet through your head an’ you’re shovelin’ coal in hell, you’ll be hearin’ this poor girl scream.”

  Drago said without further hesitation, “Martín’s cabin. Two loose boards under the table. You’ll find it there.”

  “Martín’s cabin.”

  “That’s right.” Drago swallowed as he looked at the scaly-skinned gunman, Williamson, and then glanced around Keneally toward Spurr and Greta, his anxiety plain in his lone eye. “You boys best be hittin’ the trail. You’ll be burnin’ daylight soon.”

  “We’ll all be hittin’ the trail together, Boomer,” Curly Ben Williamson said. He was oddly soft-spoken, which somehow enhanced the menacing quality of his yellow-eyed, scaly-skinned countenance. “Just like old times. Only, this will be the last time for you. And you best hope that money’s where you say it is, ’cause if it’s not, dyin’s gonna come slow and hard.”

  Keneally said, “You’ll never believe how slow. But first . . .”

  The outlaw leader turned to Greta. “First things first,” he said, quirking up the corners of his mouth inside the thick, blond beard. “First, I do believe me an’ the boys need a little rest and relaxation.”

  Greta turned to Spurr, her breasts rising and falling sharply behind the dress she’d worn to bed because of the high-mountain chill. Her eyes begged the old lawman for help.

  “No,” Spurr said, shaking his head slowly. “You leave this girl alone. Drago gave you what you come here for. Now, take him and get the hell out of here!”

  “She’s got no part in it,” Drago said. “Leave her be, goddamn your ugly hide, Keneally!”

  Keneally seemed fueled by the old men’s objections. “Sorry, Quiet Ed. But she’s too purty. I’m gonna have to have her first. Hell, you’re liable to kill her without even tryin’—big and wild as you are with the girls.”

  Curly Ben Williamson laughed softly.

  Before Spurr knew what he was doing, he’d bolted off his heels and rammed his head and shoulders into Keneally’s belly. Keneally must have been as surprised by the old lawman’s fast, savage move as Spurr himself was. The outlaw gave a surprised yowl as Spurr drove him over backward, reaching for the big Colt still holstered on his left hip.

  He closed his hand around the grips, jerked the gun up, tearing free the keeper thong, and rolled to one side off of the outlaw leader. He clicked the hammer back and aimed the gun at Quiet Ed just now lunging toward him, black eyes bulging in their sockets.

  Before Spurr could get the popper leveled, he glimpsed Keneally’s right hand slashing toward him, the man’s fist filled with his other Colt. The fist and the revolver’s butt slammed across the bridge of Spurr’s nose.

  Spurr heard the pistol in his hand bark, but only distantly, as though someone else had fired it from a long ways away. Because by then he was tumbling down, down into a well filled with cold tar.

  Even more distantly, Greta screamed.

  * * *

  Spurr continued to hear her screams from the bottom of the tarry pit he’d fallen into. But they were muffled. Sometimes he couldn’t hear them at all.

  He could feel the reverberations of violent movement through the tar. He tried to swim up out of it, but he felt as though a boulder were sitting on top of him, keeping him pinned to the bottom of the pit filled with the thick, black substance as cold as spring snowmelt.

  He was only vaguely aware of an eerie silence. He was more aware of the throbbing in his head, as though a spike had been driven through his ears, and the sensation of steel jaws clamped down hard on his logy heart.

  A hot skillet pressed against the back of his neck.

  Oh, Christ—now they were burning him!

  He lifted his head with a start, opened his eyes.

  He was amazed to see bright sunlight washing over him, threatening to blind him as it increased the hammering pain in his skull. He closed his eyes and then opened them but did not look straight up at the sun, which was hovering just over the twelve-o’clock position, beyond pine tops that were dark against it.

  Blood stained the pine needles and gravel beneath him. His nose was so swollen that he could see it bulging like a ship’s prow. Likely broken.

  He climbed to his hands and feet, taking stock of his old body. His body, however, seemed fine except for the gnawing ache in his ribs and the customary tightness in his chest. He could live with that. It was the hammering between his ears that seemed nearly unbearable.

  That pain was worse even than the dull thudding of his broken nose.

  He looked around quickly as the brain fog cleared enough that he remembered all that had happened. Then he whipped a look behind him, over to where he’d left Greta. She wasn’t there. The sun blazed down on the twisted blankets and saddlebags and tack and on the stone ring for the fire inside of which was mounded white ash.

  Spurr hauled himself to his feet. His heart hiccupped as he stumbled forward in his stockingfeet and his longhandles, which was all he’d worn to bed. He dropped to his knees by the fire ring, dipped a hand in the ashes.

  Cold.

  “Greta?” he said, his voice sounding weirdly nasal and raspy, as though he’d left half of it in his chest.

  The girl was nowhere in sight.

  Spurr looked at the tree to which he’d bound Drago. Boomer was not here. Spurr hadn’t expected him to be. Keneally and the rest of the gang had taken him off to Martín’s cabin, wherever in hell that was, and to the money Drago had absconded with.

  Keneally.

  Curly Ben.

  Quiet Ed . . .

  Shame hammered Spurr’s temples, pummeled his shoulders. He’d let them walk right into camp where he’d been sound asleep. They taken Drago and they’d most likely taken Greta, as well.

  As he continued to look around, he found the girl’s torn dress a ways down the slope to the west, among the gold medallions of sunlight filtering through the pines and the firs. A horse whickered to Spurr’s right, and the old lawman turned to see Cochise standing at his picket line. The horse pawed the ground nervously while watching Spurr, aware that something bad had happened. Drago’s horse was no longer with the roan, but Greta’s paint mare was.

  Maybe they hadn’t taken her, after all.

  If not . . .

  Spurr’s heart thudded weakly, erratically. He looked down the sun-dappled slope through the trees, toward where a waterfall filled a broad pool beneath it amidst scattered boulders at the base of the ridge wall.

  If her dress was here, she was likely down here somewhere, as well. Likely dead, Spurr told himself as though consciously trying to absorb it, to take some of the bite out of finding her.

  He continued down the slope but stopped after only a few more steps. White cloth lay twisted in the grass. As Spurr moved closer he saw that it was a chemise and a pair of white cotton pantaloons.

  Both garments were torn and bloody.

  Nearby, there we
re deep scuffs and scratches in the forest duff. Greta must have gotten away from the gang and run down here in an attempt to escape her attackers. It had been a futile attempt, for here they had taken her.

  Spurr looked around closely at the trees and the short grass and prickly evergreen shrubs tufting amongst the bed of pine needles and cones. Dread ached in him nearly as keenly as his physical ailments, for he expected to find her naked, bloody body here anywhere.

  But then he found a thin trail of blood that led him down the slope toward the falls. He stopped beside the pool at the bottom of the falls, which was a slender column of water rolling through a cleft in the ridge about thirty feet up on the rock wall.

  He dropped to a knee, traced his finger around two circular indentations in the sand and gravel. Someone had knelt here. Not long ago. Water had been splashed over the sand, which was still damp.

  Footprints shone in the sand where the girl had walked away after she’d finished bathing. Spurr followed the tracks with his eyes to the edge of the cliff, on the west side of the pool.

  Clouds were moving in, casting gray shadows. The shadows made the girl’s blond hair stand out from the sandstone cliff, where she lay, wrapped in a green blanket, in a small notch cave at the cliff’s base. She lay curled in a ball, facing Spurr, the blanket drawn up to her throat.

  “Leave me, Spurr,” she said tonelessly.

  Spurr straightened. “You can’t stay out here, Greta.” He glanced at the sky. The blue was being covered quickly by large, charcoal-bellied clouds, and a chill breeze had risen. “Gonna rain soon.”

  “Please leave. I want to be alone.”

  “Are you all right, girl?”

  “Please leave me, Spurr.” She’d spoken in the same dull voice as before, not looking at Spurr but staring blankly straight out from the notch cave.

  “All right.”

  Spurr looked around. His heart ached. Everything in him ached. His knees felt like putty. Rage burned behind the pain. Rage and frustration because he did not know where the gang had gone. Even if he did know, there was little he could do against them.