The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  The man’s rifle lapped flames, and Spurr drew his head back behind the corner of the cabin just as the slug tore into the near logs with an angry whump.

  Spurr jerked his head and his Schofield around the corner once more. The third shooter was running toward him again. Spurr triggered one shot at that man and then, as another slug came hurling out of the woods, he fired two more shots toward the second shooter, pleased to hear an agonized yelp amidst the frantic crackling of trampled brush.

  Spurr glanced behind the cabin. The third man was down on one knee, cursing, holding his rifle in one hand as he clutched the bloody knee of his outstretched leg with his other hand. He’d lost his hat and his long, brown hair hung in thin strands around his face and shoulders.

  Tio Sanchez.

  Spurr grinned. Sanchez gave a wild yell and, placing both hands on his rifle, raised the gun to his shoulder.

  Both of Spurr’s own pistols spoke, and Sanchez was thrown straight back, triggering his Winchester at the clear, blue sky a quarter second before he hit the ground on his back and lay rolling from side to side, howling.

  Spurr glanced toward the southern woods as he pressed his back against the front of the cabin. He set down the smoking Colt, flicked the Schofield’s loading gate open, and began reloading. He could see no movement in the trees or along the trail in the direction he’d last seen Greta.

  The old lawman said, “Where in the hell . . . ?”

  A man’s scream rocketed out of the southern woods.

  It was followed by a girl’s scream.

  Spurr slid the loaded Schofield into its holster, picked up the Colt, and glanced back toward where Tio Sanchez still lay shouting and mewling like a gut-shot puma. Spurr began reloading the Colt as he strode quickly toward the southern woods, stepping around sage shrubs and rocks.

  An eerie silence had followed the girl’s scream but now the silence was relieved by another scream from the man.

  “You pay me, you bastard!” Greta shouted so shrilly that her voice was breaking and quivering.

  Spurr increased his pace, staring into the pines peppered with aspens, now seeing a commotion in the trees about fifty feet in from the edge of the clearing. He popped the last pill into the Colt, spun the cylinder, and held the pistol straight down in his right hand as he jogged into the trees and stopped suddenly.

  “You pay me, you bastard!” Greta screamed again, extending her hand to the burly man sitting on his butt before her. The man’s bloody left arm hung slack. Blood was dribbling down from a nasty welt on his forehead, as well. Spurr saw the bloody rock in Greta’s left hand, which she squeezed threateningly and shook in the man’s face while extending her other hand, open-palmed.

  “I don’t give it away for free, you son of a bitch!” Greta screamed at the tops of her lungs, bending forward.

  “Get away from me, you crazy bitch!” shouted the outlaw Spurr now recognized as Bryce Hannibal, who was as bald as an egg though his ginger beard was as thick as wool. He cast his horrified eyes at Spurr. “Get her an’ that damn rock away from me, lawman!”

  “You pay me!” Greta screamed again, cocking her right hand and jerking it forward, hurling the rock at the man’s head.

  The rock hit its mark with a solid thunk and bounced down between Hannibal’s spread thighs. The outlaw howled and cupped a hand to his left temple.

  One of his two holsters was empty, but a revolver jutted from the second one. His rifle lay in the brush behind him. As Hannibal reached for the gun, Spurr leaned forward and grabbed the pistol out of its holster.

  Greta lunged toward Spurr, took the gun out of his hand. Taking the long-barreled Smith & Wesson in both her hands, she thumbed the hammer back and aimed the pistol at Hannibal’s head.

  The outlaw cowered behind his arms, leaning back against a tree bole, screaming and kicking his legs. “She’s crazy! Stop her! She’s loco!”

  “Pay me!”

  The pistol leapt and roared in Greta’s hand, the kick rocking her back on her heels. When she got her feet under her again, she ratcheted the hammer back once more, and drilled another round through Hannibal’s red-wool, black-buttoned coat.

  She fired until the hammer pinged on an empty chamber. She glared at the dead man over the smoking barrel of the big pistol in her small, pale hands. Slowly, she lowered the weapon and glanced at Spurr, her eyes filled with tears.

  “I just wanted him to pay me!” she screamed. “I don’t do it for free with no one!”

  She dropped to her knees and hung her head, sobbing. Spurr walked to her, knelt beside her, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He drew her tight against him and kissed the side of her head.

  “You got him, Greta. You made him pay.”

  A gun blasted near the cabin. Spurr jerked with a start, slipping his Schofield from its holster and clicking the hammer back. “Ah, hell,” he said, weary. “You stay here, girl.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Spurr wearily shoved off a knee, gaining his feet, and walked away from Greta, who remained kneeling near the dead man, sobbing. At the edge of the clearing, Spurr looked around, caressing his pistol’s cocked hammer with his thumb.

  When he’d shuttled his gaze east, he stopped caressing it. Boomer Drago stood over Tio Sanchez off the cabin’s rear corner, a pistol hanging straight down by his denim clad right thigh. Boomer brought his right boot back and rammed it into Sanchez’s side.

  Sanchez yelped and used his heels to scuttle feebly away, screaming, “Stop it, you crazy old bastard! Leave me to die in peace!”

  “Where’s the others?” Drago shouted down at the bloody half Mexican.

  “How the hell should I know?” Sanchez screamed. “We split up north of here to track you down!”

  “How far north?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “How long since you split up?”

  “Shit, we split up last night! Now leave me, damn you, Drago. Can’t you see I’m dyin’ here. And I’m too damn young to die!” He bawled.

  “We all gotta go sometime,” Drago said as Spurr walked toward him across the clearing. The old outlaw extended his pistol at Sanchez, who screamed again and tried to shield his face with his black-gloved hands.

  Drago’s pistol cracked. Smoke and flames stabbed slantwise down toward Sanchez. The bullet slammed through Sanchez’s left hand, slapping that hand across the half Mexican’s face as the slug continued on through the hand and into Sanchez’s left cheek.

  The young outlaw’s head bounced off the ground. The outlaw glared up at his killer, gave a sigh, turned his head to one side, and expelled a long, raspy breath. Apparently, Drago hadn’t heard Spurr approaching. He whipped his head at the old lawman now, widened his eyes, and then turned full around, raising his pistol.

  The barrel was aimed at Spurr’s belly.

  Drago had a shrewd, steely cast to his eye, a cunning smile on his lips inside the coarse black beard.

  Spurr kept his own revolver hanging at his side as he flared his nostrils at the old outlaw. “If you think I’m here for you, you got your thinker box screwed on backward. You ain’t worth a hill o’ cow shit to me, Boomer.”

  Spurr glanced at the Winchester lying where Sanchez had thrown it when Spurr had shot him. “Grab that carbine. We’re gonna need it. I’m gonna fetch us some horses.”

  Spurr swung around and started back toward where he’d left Greta. She stepped out of the woods, carrying a pistol in one hand, a rifle in the other. Her cheeks were tear-streaked but her eyes had reacquired that resolute hardness and frankness.

  She looked around, her gaze glancing off Boomer, who was just now retrieving Sanchez’s Winchester, and said, “Where’re the others?”

  “Maybe not far.” Spurr canted his head toward the cabin. “Why don’t you go on inside and rest a bit? I’ll fetch the horses.”

  �
��I’m not tired.”

  Spurr turned back to her and gave a wan half smile. “Well, I am. We’ll have some coffee and whiskey and then get the hell out of here before the others show up. We don’t wanna be pinned down in that cabin like that damn fool Drago was.”

  Drago was walking toward them. He gestured angrily with the rifle as he told Spurr to diddle himself and then apologized to Greta.

  Spurr gave a snort and walked out to retrieve Cochise. He rode Cochise through the trees to retrieve the dead men’s three horses. As he rode into the clearing in which the cabin sat, he was glad to see Greta’s mare trotting toward him, dragging its reins.

  The horse gave an eager whinny, obviously relieved to be with others of its kind, and Cochise returned the greeting. The dead men’s horses were still jumpy but they let Spurr lead them up to the cabin, in front of which Boomer was sitting, knees up, his back to the front wall.

  The cabin’s door was closed, as were the shutters. Smoke gushed from the tin chimney pipe. Drago must have built up the fire for Greta, resting inside.

  Spurr eyed the old outlaw, who leveled a return stare at the old lawdog. When he’d stepped down from Cochise’s back, Spurr loosened the saddle cinch of his own horse as well as Greta’s and slipped their bits from their mouths so they could graze. Spurr spat to one side, glanced at Drago again, who sat with a rifle poking up from between his knees, and then walked over to the dead Curly Ben Williamson lying behind the boulder. Curly Ben was as dead as chopped liver. His face looked like raw hamburger beneath the bandage around the top of his head. Even in death, Curly Ben appeared to be grimacing up at Spurr.

  The old lawman looked at Drago. “What the hell happened to him?”

  “Took him to the woodshed, you might say.” Drago chuckled. “Had me a grand ole time . . . for as long as it lasted.”

  Spurr picked up the dead man’s carbine. He glanced down at Curly Ben again, looked away, and then looked back down, frowning.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Spurr reached down and pulled his own Starr .44 from behind the man’s cartridge belt. He checked to make sure it was loaded, and then removed the Schofield from his cross-draw holster, and replaced it with his own beloved Starr.

  He walked back over to the horses and dropped his two spare weapons into his saddlebags. He looked into the dead men’s saddlebags, draped one pair over his shoulder, and then, also carrying a dead man’s saddle-ring carbine, whose cracked forestock was wrapped with shrunken rawhide, and whose initials had been brass-riveted into the rear stock, walked over to Drago.

  The old outlaw glared up at him, canted his head to indicate the cabin behind him. “What the hell are you doin’, draggin’ that poor girl all the way out here after what she’s been through?”

  “Ah, shut up, you old ringtail.” Spurr sat down beside Drago with a grunt and leaned back against the log wall. “If it wasn’t for her, I’d be draggin’ my old ass back to my cabin and you’d be deader’n overcooked pot roast.”

  Drago turned his grizzled face toward Spurr and dipped his chin, narrowing his lone eye. “Chop that up a little finer for me, old man.”

  “It was her idea.”

  “Get on with ya!”

  Spurr set the saddlebags on his lap and opened the flap on one of the pouches to peer inside. “How’d you get away from them fellas, Boomer? Don’t tell me they kicked you out on account of how you smell like rancid porcupine!”

  “I jumped into a river. Think my old ticker stopped tickin’ for a full hour. When I was kickin’ around in the water, I saw naked Injun girls all around me, and that kept me goin’. Crawled out, talked some old man out of a pistol and stove matches and a little grub—”

  “I met the gent you robbed—that’s how I found you,” Spurr groused.

  As though he hadn’t heard the lawman, Drago continued with, “And run into this old cabin here. Believe I knew the gent who lived here once, years ago.”

  “Luther St. Peter.”

  “That’s him! Right likeable fellow till he took up with a Ute squaw. Changed him. Wasn’t sociable no more.”

  “A woman will do it. There we go. Just what the ole sawbones ordered!” Spurr’s eyes lit up as he drew a bottle wrapped in wool out of the saddlebag pouch. He set the bottle down beside him and then hauled out a small burlap pouch. Opening the pouch, he discovered a dozen or so strips of what looked like deer jerky.

  “Them boys was well provisioned.”

  “I taught ’em to do that,” Drago said, plucking the cork from the whiskey bottle. “Never knew how long we’d be on the run, couldn’t risk ridin’ into town to stock up on whiskey an’ grub. At least they learned something from me, though they were damned ungrateful about it.”

  Drago tipped the bottle back.

  “I guess their tender feelin’s sorta stalled when you stole that bank loot from ’em, Boomer.”

  Drago jerked the bottle down, spraying out a mouthful on a raucous laugh. Spurr gave a snort, then, too.

  As Drago leaned back against the cabin, guffawing, Spurr started laughing nearly as hard. He hadn’t meant what he’d said to be funny but suddenly he saw the humor in it through Boomer’s eyes. It was probably just the nervous tension of the past several days, but laughter boiled up from deep inside him. He leaned back against the cabin wall, guffawing until he thought his ribs would splinter and poke through his skin.

  They both sat there against the cabin wall, laughing like a couple of schoolboys.

  Finally, when the mirth was boiled out of him, leaving him rib sore and washed out, Spurr lifted the bottle to his lips and took a pull. He handed the bottle to Drago, whose own laughter was dying slow, and Boomer shook his head, wiped tears from his eye with the back of his hand, and tipped the bottle back.

  He handed the bottle to Spurr and said, “What’s she doin’ out here, Spurr? Greta.” He glanced toward the cabin’s closed front door.

  That sobered Spurr like a visit from the parson. He looked at the lip of the bottle he was holding up to his mouth and said with a skeptical cast to his voice, “She wants ’em to pay her for what they took from her, I reckon. Leastways, that’s what she said.”

  “Ah, hell.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s damn sad, what they done to her. You’re lucky you was passed out and didn’t have to hear it, see it . . .”

  “Yes, I am.” Spurr drew a deep breath as he felt the flames of fury well inside him with all the power of when he’d first spied her curled up in that notch cave near the falls.

  Drago was about to say something else on the matter when the door squawked open to his and Spurr’s left, and Greta stepped halfway out the door, bending a knee and resting her left heel in front of her right foot. “You guys got some grub you feel like sharin’?”

  “Sorry, Greta,” Spurr said, handing the sack up to her. “Thought you were sleeping.”

  “Not with you two out here chinning like a couple of church crones.” Greta plucked a couple of pieces of jerky out of the bag and then handed the bag down to Drago. “I’d take a shot of that busthead, too.”

  Drago handed the bottle up to her, and she took a couple of hard pulls then returned the whiskey to the old outlaw. She came outside, stepped into the gap between Spurr and Drago, then sat down and gave Spurr a peck on the cheek.

  She turned and did the same to Drago and then leaned her head back against the cabin and said, “I’m glad we’re all three together again. I’ve missed our little group.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” Spurr grumbled, looking off.

  “I’d as soon have drowned in that stream as had to look at his ugly face again.” Drago rubbed his shoulder against Greta’s. “But it’s worth it to get to look on yours again, Miss Greta.”

  “Ah, quit makin’ calf eyes at the girl,” Spurr growled. “You’re liable to give her nightmares.”
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  They all chewed jerky and passed the bottle around. The horses plucked at the short, brown grass, occasionally swishing their tails at flies. They dragged their reins across the ground, latigos hanging free beneath their bellies.

  Greta looked first to the north and then to the south along the tree-lined stream running along the base of the western ridge. “Where do you suppose they are? The gunfire would have carried a long ways, echoing around this canyon.”

  Spurr bit off another chunk of jerky. “Maybe they figure Boomer ain’t worth the trouble and they headed to Martín’s cabin to pick up the money.”

  “Could be.” Drago laughed and adjusted his eye patch, chewing jerky.

  He kept on chuckling devilishly. It was more of a snicker that he couldn’t contain.

  Greta and Spurr shared a curious look. Spurr looked past the girl to the old outlaw. “You gonna spit it out or choke on it?”

  “The loot ain’t in Martín’s cabin.”

  “Well, hell, that ain’t no surprise. The day you start tellin’ the truth about anything the devil’s gonna be chippin’ ice from his goat beard!”

  Drago continued to chuckle and stare at the ground between his legs. Spurr and Greta shared another curious look.

  Greta turned to the giggling outlaw, and asked, “Where is it, Boomer?”

  “Somewhere safe and well cared for.”

  Greta shrugged and sat back against the cabin. She didn’t care about the money. Spurr did, however. He continued to scowl at the old outlaw as he said, “Come on, spill it, Boomer. I’m just curious more than anything. All I really care about now is borin’ .44-caliber holes in them friends of yours.”

  Drago cast Spurr a dubious look. “If I didn’t tell them, I sure as hell ain’t gonna tell you. Uh-uh. No, sir. Wild hosses couldn’t drag that one out of me.”

  “Boys?” Greta sounded strange. She was staring at Spurr’s roan, Cochise, who had turned to gaze north along the creek, toward a notch in the stony buttes. “I think we best pack up this picnic.”