Suddenly, he clouded up and looked about to rain. “Good Lord . . . you got old. And, say, what happened to your nose? Looks just miserable!”
“In case you didn’t notice, old-timer, you got old your ownself. Now, you seen ’em or haven’t you?”
“Say, she ridin’ with you?”
Spurr followed the old man’s glittery gaze to the trail behind him. Greta was riding up the hill, toward Spurr and Lowry, her head canted skeptically to one side.
“So what if she is?” Spurr asked the old-timer, his impatience with the old man growing.
“Kinda young, ain’t she?” Lowry grinned. “She the one that broke your nose for ya?”
“Mister, you’re gettin’ on my nerves just awful.”
“No, I never seen no gang. Can’t say I regret not seein’ ’em, either, if you’re after ’em.” Lowry’s eyes grew large and he jerked his hand up as something dawned on him. “Say, a gent robbed me yesterday. Maybe he’s one of the varmints you’re lookin’ for.”
Spurr scowled. “Robbed you? Just one?”
As Greta reined her paint to a halt behind Spurr, Lowry said with an angry air, “Sure enough. I was takin’ a dip in the creek and some gent slipped up out of the bushes. I didn’t see him right away, but when I did it was too late. He was hot-footin’ out of my camp with a pouch he took out of my saddlebags. He tried to take old Webster here, too”—he leaned forward to pat the mule’s left wither—“but Webster gave him a good kick for his efforts, an’ he run off.”
“What’d he look like?”
“I didn’t get a long gander at him, but he wore an eye patch and he was old. Old as us. Wore a wolf coat. No hat. Looked raggedy-heeled—you know, like he hadn’t a good meal since the last blue moon. Seemed to be limpin’.”
Spurr glanced back at Greta, who parted her lips.
Spurr turned back to the old-timer. “What’d he take?”
“A little pouch of beans and deer jerky, and a tin box of stove matches. Took my pistol, too. Probably woulda taken my rifle, but he must not’ve see it under my gear, and he was all hepped up about my mule!”
“When was this, Lowry?”
“Like I jest told ya—yesterday around noon.”
“Which creek did you say?”
“Injun.” The old-timer hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Two draws northwest. Luther St. Peter and his old squaw used to live in there, about a mile on. We used to have some shinin’ times, me an’ Luther—before he got him a squaw. We come out here from St. Louis together a hell of a long time ago, now. Let’s see, we was trappin’ for beaver up the Poudre . . .”
“Let’s go,” Spurr said, reining Cochise around the mule and pinching his hat brim to the old man. “Thanks for the information, Lowry. Have a good winter.”
“Ha!” Lowery laughed caustically, hipping around to follow Spurr with his gaze. “You try to have a good winter in these mountains. If I could stand the smell and the commotion, I’d head for Cheyenne. No, I reckon I’ll die up here. Crows’ll pick my bones clean, but I reckon they gotta eat, too . . .”
The old mountain man let his voice trail off as Spurr rode on up the trail, Greta following and asking, “You think that was Drago? The man who stole the old-timer’s pistol.”
“Sound like him to me,” Spurr said, touching heels to Cochise’s flanks, pushing the horse on up the steep trail toward the brightening cobalt sky beyond the ridge. “One-eyed and raggedy-heeled and in need of a weapon and matches. Sounds like he must have given Keneally an’ them the slip somehow.”
He shook his head and nibbled at his scraggly mustache. “Wouldn’t put it past him. Crafty son of a bitch—I’ll give him that.”
At the top of the ridge, he reined Cochise to a halt. Greta came up behind him and checked down her own mount a ways off Spurr’s left stirrup. “You know where the creek is—the one the old man mentioned?” she asked Spurr.
Spurr nodded. “Been through there a time or two.”
“Well, come on, then,” she said, impatiently turning her horse south along the crest of the ridge.
“Hold on, girl! We just put these hosses up a steep climb. They need a blow, and we need to adjust our saddles less’n we wanna end up hangin’ down one side!”
Greta checked the paint down again. Her eyes sparked angrily and she opened her mouth to speak but drew her lips together and let the sharp light fade from her eyes. She looked around, the wind blowing up from the treeless western slope to tussle her hair and the ends of her scarf, which was knotted beneath her chin.
As Spurr crawled off Cochise’s back and started tightening the latigo beneath the horse’s belly, Greta winced as though from a sudden pain inside her, and stiffened, leaning a little forward in her saddle. When the spasm appeared to have passed, she dipped her right hand into the carpetbag hanging from her saddle horn.
She pulled out one of the remaining bottles, popped the cork with a hand clad in a powder-blue knit glove, and took a sip. She closed her eyes as she brought the bottle down and stretched her lips back from her teeth. She swallowed hard and then took another swig from the bottle and swiped her wrist across her lips.
Spurr watched her grimly. “You all right, Greta?”
She glanced at him and smiled. “Sure. I only took a few more men than I’m used to in one night, that’s all.”
“Greta . . .”
“That Quiet Ed had a nasty backhand.” She rubbed her purple cheek, touched the cut that ran down her upper and lower lip. “But you know what really burns me, Spurr, is the bastards didn’t pay.”
Spurr walked around behind Cochise and tightened her latigo in silence, staring sadly up at the girl and her pretty, battered face. A rage burned in him, but he kept the fire low lest it should burn right through him.
“I’m gonna make ’em pay, Spurr.”
Greta looked around at the countless ridges bulging around them, at the high, rocky peaks in the north, and then she turned to Spurr once more. There was a haunted quality to her eyes now that disconcerted the old lawman. The ravaging and the beating she’d taken had done more than physical damage to her.
She was jumpy and impatient, probably not seeing things too clearly, and he hoped to hell he was strong enough to keep her from getting herself killed.
“That’s all I want—I just want to make them pay.”
Despite his growing doubt that they’d ever even see the gang again, Spurr said, “We’ll make them pay, Greta.”
“No, I don’t mean revenge, Spurr,” she said, shaking her head. She leaned into the fist she was pressing against her lower belly and shook her windblown hair from her eyes. “I mean I want them to pay me what I’m usually paid for my services. Three dollars and fifty cents.” She chuckled. “Only this time, I get to keep it all, not just a lousy two percent like what Reymont and Chaney dole out to me.”
A claw of uneasiness gripped Spurr’s own belly. He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him. He doubted she was.
He held her gaze, her blue eyes straight and level but opaque with some other, wild thing that he feared would put her life in grave danger. He wished now that he’d been more vehement about refusing to take her on this vengeance quest.
“That’s not too much to ask—is it, Spurr? For the money they owe me for my services?” Quirking her mouth corners in a dubious smile, she held up the bottle. “Drink?”
Spurr took the bottle from the girl. He took a deep pull, watching her around the side of the bottle as she stared southwestward, the direction in which Indian Creek lay. She continued to lean into her fist, blinking rapidly against the wind, that frozen half smile on her battered, red lips.
Spurr took another deep pull from the bottle and then handed it back to her. When she’d taken another couple of bracing sips herself, she returned the bourbon to her carpetbag and snapped the top closed.
S
purr touched his heels to Cochise’s flanks, moving out along the crest of the ridge. An hour later, as he dropped down into the canyon bisected by Indian Creek—a silvery blue thread of water flashing between wind-brushed aspens in full autumn bloom—a rifle cracked.
The echo of the shot hadn’t finished bouncing off the surrounding ridges before another rifle thundered, adding its own echoes to the dying ones of the first shot.
“Greta, you stay here!” Spurr shouted, and he booted Cochise along a deer path hugging the trees lining the steam.
As the shooting continued, the old lawman slipped his Schofield from its holster but wished like hell he had his Winchester.
TWENTY-TWO
As Spurr trotted Cochise up the trail, holding the Schofield against his right thigh, he glanced behind. Greta was staying put for now, curveting her horse in the trail and staring after him.
Good. Maybe she’d follow his orders and keep out of harm’s way. He didn’t think he could take another young lady dying on him.
Chances were the shots were fired by hunters laying in meat for the long mountain winter, but he had to tread carefully while he investigated.
As he rode, tension climbed his spine. The shots increased until he thought he could hear three rifles and at least one pistol. The shooters weren’t hunters. Somewhere ahead men were swapping lead.
He followed the game trail along a southern bend in the trees and the stream, which hugged the base of the southern ridge. He reined up just before the stream straightened out and deadheaded south between tall, craggy peeks, and swung down from Cochise’s back, moving heavily and tenderly, his ribs balking at every strain.
Judging from the loudness of the pistol pops and rifle cracks, the shooters were within a hundred yards, kicking up an angry din. Spurr led the big roan back into the forest and tied him to the up-jutting branch of a deadfall tree. Walking south through the aspens, he quartered back toward the clearing and the game trail.
The shots seemed to be coming from the far side of the trail and ahead maybe fifty, sixty yards.
Spurr could hear men yelling back and forth, the echoes of their angry voices joining the reverberations of their rifles and the sporadic pops of the pistol. He followed the din through the woods, staying out of sight of the far side of the trail. He’d just spied the cabin sitting in a little clearing to the east, tucked into the scattered aspens and firs, when a nearby horse whinnied shrilly.
He turned to see three horses tied to branches about thirty yards ahead. Startled by the gunfire, they sidestepped and jerked at their reins, their latigo straps dancing freely beneath their bellies.
Spurr moved slowly to the horses, gripping his pistol in his right hand, holding his left hand palm out, reassuringly. He whistled softly as he approached the nearest horse, a pinto, tied with its head away from Spurr. The horse sidestepped, looked at the stranger sidelong, and gave another ear-rattling whinny.
Spurr stopped, holding his left hand up higher and gritting his teeth as he looked through the trees on his left, toward the cabin around which smoke was puffing as the shooting continued. Spurr had spied a saddle ring pistol dangling from the pinto’s saddle. He wanted that gun but he didn’t want the horses giving his presence away to the shooters.
A voice in his ear told him these three horses belonged to Drago’s former gang. And that the men now shooting at the cabin were Keneally’s boys. Which meant Spurr could use another pistol if not a rifle. Hell, he could use a whole damn arsenal, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He continued to ease up to the pinto, whistling soothingly. The horse’s muscles were tensed, neck arched. It stared at Spurr with white-ringed eyes, but it let the old lawman sidle up to it. Quickly, Spurr slipped the knot on the leather cord tying the pistol to the saddle, and stepped back away from the dancing mounts. He looked at the gun in his hand—a .44 Colt Army Model in good condition and with six in the wheel. He spun the cylinder, shoved the popper down behind his cartridge belt, and moved to the edge of the trees.
He sidled up to a birch and dropped to a knee, staring across the game trail and into the clearing at the stout log cabin roofed with tightly woven, sun-bleached aspen saplings. There were a few dilapidated outbuildings and skinned log corrals behind the place, dwarfed by the granite mountain rising behind it.
Smoke issued from a tin chimney pipe. The cabin’s shutters and halved-log door were closed.
A man was hunkered down behind a small boulder in the sage-stippled front yard, to the left of the path leading to the front door. His back faced Spurr.
The man lifted his carbine to his shoulder. The Winchester leapt and barked in the man’s hands. The bullet hammered the front door with a loud whap, carving a dogget out of the wood. The bullet did not appear to have penetrated the heavy door, which was probably constructed of sturdy timbers.
The shutter left of the door swung open quickly. A shadow moved in the window, a pistol was thrust through the opening. It belched smoke and flames twice quickly, and the man in the front yard ducked down behind his covering boulder as both slugs hammered the rock’s far side.
The man behind the rock laughed loudly and slid his head around the boulder’s right side as he shouted, “Close one, Drago—but you missed me! Hah! You can stay in there all day and all night. Hell, we don’t care! We got plenty of ammo, and when you’re all out, we’re gonna come in there and drag you out and shoot you through both ears!”
Spurr’s heart thudded heavily, anxiously. He’d recognized the voice of the Texas gunman, Curly Ben Williamson. That meant it was indeed Boomer Drago holed up inside the cabin.
At least three of Keneally’s bunch had him trapped like a rat in a privy. Spurr could tell that there were two other shooters—one flinging lead from the woods on Spurr’s right, and one shooting from a corral behind the cabin. From his vantage, Spurr could see the smoke plumes of both shooters’ weapons.
As the shooters’ horses continued to nicker nervously in the woods behind him, Spurr slid his new Colt from behind his cartridge belt and looked around carefully.
Where were the other gang members? Obviously, they weren’t here or they’d be on the cabin like a cat on a baby robin. But, having heard the fusillade, they could be headed this way.
Spurr took a minute to think over his options, deciding he really had only once course of action. To kill these three sons of bitches—back-shoot them if he had to, for they deserved no better—and pull Drago out of there. He no longer cared about hauling the old outlaw to justice. He now had bigger fish to fry—namely, the running to ground of the rest of his gang and delivering some vigilante justice for Greta, his badge be damned.
“Ah, shit,” he said, hefting both pistols in his hands and returning his gaze to the cabin. “I’m startin’ to sound as crazy as Greta!”
Spurr looked at the man straight out ahead of him—fifty yards away. He recognized the long deerskin duster and the black hat beneath which Curly Ben appeared to have a white bandage knotted around his forehead. The bandage glowed in the bright sun.
Spurr looked at the infrequent smoke plumes rising from the wood on his right. There wasn’t much cover between Spurr and Williamson, so he’d have to move as quickly as he could, keeping low, lest the man in the woods should pink him before he could beef the dooryard shooter.
Spurr raised both pistols in his hands, scrubbed his right wrist across the tip of his sore nose, and started running, meandering through the gray-green mountain sage. He hadn’t run ten yards before the man in the woods on his right shouted, “Curly Ben—behind ya!”
Spurr stopped, dropped to a knee, and extended his right-hand pistol as the man ahead of him turned to face him, pressing his back against his covering boulder. Spurr aimed carefully, squinting one eye, and fired his Schofield at the same time a slug tore up dirt and sod two feet right of his right boot.
Curly Ben screamed and lurched back ag
ainst the boulder, clapping a gloved hand against his right shoulder. Spurr dropped to a knee and shot the man once more—this time through the dead center of his chest—and flinched as another bullet hurled out of the woods to curl the air in front of his nose.
Spurr dropped to a knee and started to turn toward the woods on his right when hoof thuds brought him up short.
With a sick feeling, he glanced to his left. Greta was galloping her paint toward him along the deer trail that hugged the woods. She leaned forward over the gelding’s outstretched neck, and she was ramming her heels against the mare’s flanks, urging more speed.
“Oh, Christ,” Spurr heard himself mutter as he turned toward the fool girl. “Greta, get back! Get back, damnit!”
But then she’d passed him and was flying down the trail toward the south. She wasn’t heading directly toward the man in the woods south of the cabin, but she was making herself a clear target for him.
Spurr cursed and ran toward the cabin, shouting, “Drago, it’s Spurr, damn your eyes! I’m here to help you, so you best not shoot me you ugly, one-eyed son of a bitch!”
“Who’s that?” Drago shouted from inside.
“Spurr Morgan!”
“I can’t hear fer shit—my ears is ringin’! Did you say Spurr Morgan?”
As Spurr pressed a shoulder against the front of the cabin and glanced first into the woods south and then toward the corral behind the place, he shouted, “Shut up and hold your fire!”
Smoke puffed in the woods south and in the corral behind the cabin. Spurr jerked his head back behind the front wall as one slug hammered into the cabin’s south wall while the other one, triggered by the man in the corral, hammered the corner, spraying silver wood slivers in all directions.
Spurr dropped to a knee and triggered three rounds toward where he’d spied the smoke plume in the southern woods. When he turned toward the east, he saw the third shooter running toward him from the corral, a green neckerchief billowing down around his black vest and red-and-black calico shirt. As the man stopped and raised his rifle, Spurr triggered a wild shot at him.
The Old Wolves Page 17