The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  Pressing a cheek against the cave floor, Boomer said, “I coulda made a run like that in a third the time and still had the strength to fight a wildcat with only a bowie knife.”

  Spurr snorted. Boomer relaxed there on the cave floor, keeping his cheek to the ground. Spurr looked at Greta, who sat with her knees up, forearms resting on them, head hanging. Her hair obscured her face.

  Spurr reached into the saddlebags, hauled out the pouch of jerky and the whiskey bottle, and, keeping out of sight from the men on the downslope, who were still triggering occasional shots, crawled over to her.

  He pressed his back against the cave wall beside her and popped the cork on the bottle.

  “Have you a pull o’ that, girl. Do you good.”

  She lifted her head, shook her hair back from her face. She looked drawn and pale behind the bruising. The cut on her lips had come open and was oozing a little blood.

  “You okay?” Spurr asked. He didn’t like how she looked. She appeared as drained as the two oldsters around her.

  “Just tired.” She took the bottle, threw back a deep swallow, and handed the bottle back to him. “Thanks.”

  She drew a breath and stared wearily down at her moccasins. “I reckon this is it, ain’t it? There’s no way out of this.”

  Spurr looked around. The cave appeared deeper than he’d expected, but through the shadows he could see the rear wall at the base of which lay a pile of stone rubble. They were surrounded by three stone walls and seven or so outlaws no doubt packing plenty of ammunition.

  Despite those steep odds, and as exhausted as he was, Spurr wasn’t yet ready to give in to despair. He patted Greta’s hand, and then crawled up beside Drago, who lay unmoving on the cave floor, and doffed his hat.

  He brought his carbine up close against his chest as he edged a look over the lip of the ledge. He pulled his head back behind the lip when he saw a gunman bear down on him from behind the boulder Spurr himself had used for cover only a few minutes ago.

  The slug tore into the lip of the ledge, spraying Spurr, Drago, and Greta with sand and gravel.

  Silence.

  Dust sifted. Greta coughed and shook her head, her tangled blond hair jouncing on her shoulders.

  “Might as well come on outta there, Spurr!” Keneally shouted from the downslope. “You got nowhere to go! If Drago tells us where he hid the loot, we’ll let you an’ the whore go!”

  Spurr kept his head low as he shouted, “Well, you’re just a kindhearted feller, Keneally. The only problem is this: I ain’t goin’ anywhere until I kill every last one of you low-down, dirty, girl-abusin’ sons o’ bitches!”

  He rose up on his knees and snapped a shot down the slope a half second after Keneally had pulled his big, blond head back behind a boulder. Spurr’s slug tore into the side of the boulder where the killer’s head had been a moment before.

  Spurr ducked his head again and arched an appreciative brow at the carbine in his hands. “Damn, I’m startin’ to get the hang of this little devil.”

  “Spurr?”

  He turned to Greta. She was staring down at Drago, who lay as he had before, cheek turned to the floor of the cave. He lay flat on his belly, Sanchez’s rifle by his side.

  Greta glanced fearfully at Spurr before lowering her eyes again to Drago. The old man’s fur coat ruffled in the cool breeze funneling up the slope and into the cave. Half of Drago was in the crisp autumn sunshine, the other half in the heavy purple shadows of the cave.

  Spurr said, “Boomer?”

  “He hasn’t moved since he lay down there,” Greta said, tonelessly.

  Spurr nudged the old outlaw’s shoulder with the back of his left hand. “Hey, Boomer, ain’t no time for a nap.”

  Drago didn’t move. Spurr stared at his back, which did not appear to be rising and falling as he breathed.

  “Goddamnit, you old bastard—don’t tell me you got us into this mess and slipped out the back door. If that wouldn’t be just like you!” Spurr wrapped a hand around the man’s shoulder and started to turn him over onto his back. “Boomer!”

  Drago jerked his head up and snapped his eyes open.

  “What is it?” he cried, bringing his rifle up and looking around wildly. “Where in hell are we? We best haul freight before that posse gets here!”

  Greta sighed with relief.

  “Hold on, hold on!” Spurr said. “You crazy old coot, the posse’s already done got here!”

  Boomer looked at Spurr as though he’d never seen him before. Then he looked at Greta, and he seemed to remember. A sheepish expression passed over his bearded face, and he blinked his lone eye.

  “Ah, shit. Here I thought we was in the Nations headed for Kansas City.” He cast a cautious glance down the slope and then scuttled back against the wall beside Greta, set his rifle across his knees, and picked up the whiskey bottle. “Had a girl there, years back. Her name was Maybelline.” He popped the cork on the bottle. “Maybelline Walker.”

  “Percentage gal?” Greta asked.

  “Preacher’s daughter.”

  “Figures,” Greta said. “What happened?”

  Drago took a long pull on the bottle, some of the whiskey dribbling down around the bottle lip and into the patchy beard on his chin and neck. When he lowered the bottle, he stared at it for a time, and then turned his sad eye to Greta.

  “We had a place we met up at whenever I was in the country. An old stage relay station, part of the old Weston and Nash Line out of St. Louis. Anyways, I went there to take her away to marry me and give up my evil ways, and she’d been there only to leave a note. She’d done married up with the banker’s boy, an’ she was movin’ to Denver where the boy was openin’ up his own bank.”

  Drago’s lone eye acquired a gold sheen. A tear oozed out of its corner to drop down his cheek and roll up in the dust caking his grizzled black beard. Greta smiled sympathetically, laid her hand upon the old man’s cheek.

  “I think I know how this story ends,” Spurr said, lifting his head to peer carefully over the lip of the ledge and down the slope, where the outlaws had gone eerily quiet.

  “How?” Greta asked, frowning.

  “He robbed the parson’s daughter’s young husband’s bank.”

  Greta gasped and turned to Drago, who was snickering like a schoolboy with a frog in his pocket.

  “Boomer, you didn’t!”

  Laughing, squeezing his eye closed, Drago shook his head. “Spurr, you know me too damn well!”

  Greta’s lower jaw sagged as she regarded the old man, aghast. But then, despite herself, she started laughing, as well. And then Spurr began laughing, and they were all three cutting up when a shadow leapt up from below the lip of the cave—a Stetson-hatted shadow with a rifle in his hands.

  The outlaw grinned as he leveled the carbine in his hands a half second before Spurr’s own Winchester thundered loudly inside the cave. Flames lapped from the barrel.

  The outlaw screamed as the slug tore through his brisket, pluming dust from his ankle-length rat hair coat, and punched him back down beneath the lip of the ledge and out of sight. His big body thudded and caused a small rockslide as it rolled.

  Gritting his teeth, Spurr ejected the spent brass from the Winchester’s breech, heard it clink onto the cave floor beside him, and then rammed a fresh cartridge into the chamber.

  “Don’t worry,” Spurr growled. “I seen him comin’ all along.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  From the downslope, silence like that in boneyard at midnight on Halloween.

  A few more rocks clanked as they slid down the slope in the dead outlaw’s wake. Dust tinted copper by the sun rose like smoke.

  Spurr stared through his own gun smoke out the cave opening, but all he could see from his angle was the other side of the canyon. The outlaws were well below, apparently quietly pondering their amigo’
s demise. To Spurr’s right, Drago snickered and said, “Did you really know that hombre was comin’?”

  “Of course I did,” Spurr lied. He was tired and his senses had dulled. He’d just been fortunate to have looked toward the opening when the killer had lifted his head. “You don’t think I’d let my guard down like what you done in Idaville, do you?”

  Keneally’s voice called from down the hill, “Nice shootin’ up there!”

  Spurr shouted, “Thanks but a shaver could’ve made that shot!”

  “You two old wolves are better than I figured!”

  “Why don’t you come on up, Keneally, and me an’ Boomer here can give you a few pointers!”

  Another silence, a brief one.

  And then another outlaw said in a sneering tone, “Why don’t you come down here and we can give that whore a few pointers? A few more o’ what she got last time!”

  Several of the outlaws chuckled.

  Greta lurched forward, grabbing her rifle and racking a round into the chamber. Spurr grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back away from the opening. “Hold on there, girl. That’s just what they want you to do—don’t you know that?”

  She tried to wriggle out of the old lawman’s arms. “Let me go, Spurr!” Her voice was hard but then he heard her sob. Spurr held her tight against him, gritting her teeth as she continued to struggle. Boomer lifted his head, snapped his Winchester to his shoulder, and triggered a shot down the slope.

  One of the outlaws gave a surprised yell.

  Drago lowered his rifle and shouted, “You sons o’ bitches got no honor! The boys I rode with before you never woulda done that to a girl. We mighta been outlaws, but that was a line we never crossed, an’ I’m damn ashamed to have ever ridden the coulees with you yellow-livered peckerwoods!”

  He jerked his head back behind the ledge as two rifles popped on the downslope. One slug tore up sand from the ledge while the other hammered the roof of the cave opening. Sand sifted down from the roof. Dust wafted.

  Drago lifted his head slightly above the floor and shouted, “You hear me, Keneally! You’re a copper-riveted tinhorn, and I’m gonna kill you deader’n hell if that’s the last goddamn thing I do!”

  Keneally shouted, “Come down here an’ try it, old man!”

  Drago snarled, took hasty aim, and triggered a shot down the slope. The bullet gave a witch’s screech as it ricocheted off a rock.

  Keneally and several other outlaws laughed.

  Spurr released Greta, who slumped, dejected, toward the cave floor. “Stop wasting ammo, you damn fool,” he snapped at Drago.

  The old outlaw whipped his head toward him, lone eye blazing. “You’re the damn fool! We wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d have listened to reason.”

  “Reason? You mean your lies!”

  “You see now I wasn’t lyin’!”

  “If you wouldn’t tell so many long, windy ones, maybe a man could figure out which ones was true!”

  Greta lifted her head and shook her hair back. As she slid back against the cave’s west wall, she said with a weary, depressed air, “Fellas, your arguin’ ain’t gonna save us.”

  Spurr looked at her. Then he looked at Drago. The fire had gone out of the old outlaw’s eye as he dropped his gaze to the cave floor.

  Spurr curled his legs beneath him, trying to get somewhat comfortable on the uneven stone floor that was nearly as cold as a marble slab, and grabbed the bottle. He popped the cork, extended the bottle to Drago, and said, “Why don’t we all have a drink?”

  Drago looked at the bottle. He stared at it thoughtfully, appearing as depressed as Greta now, but finally grabbed it and threw back a couple of deep swallows. He extended the bottle to Greta, who shook her head, and then gave the bottle to Spurr, who finished it off.

  “We got one more,” he said, whipping the empty bottle past Drago and hearing it shatter on the downslope. “We’re gonna need it tonight. Gonna get cold up here.”

  He set the bottle down against the wall near Greta, and scuttled onto his belly to Drago’s left side. He crawled forward a little so that he could edge a cautious look down the slope. He drew his head back when a gun blasted, and sand flew up into his face.

  Blinking the dust from his eyelashes, and spitting, he crawled back until he lay even with Drago, who gave him a wry look. “They got us bottled up purty good.”

  Spurr said with a vaguely chastising tone, “You realize our only chance of getting out of this is you telling them where the money is, don’t you?”

  Drago pursed his lips as he stared darkly straight out over the lip of the ledge. “They wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell ’em.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to give it a shot. If it was just me here, I’d say screw ‘em—we’ll shoot our way out of this crypt. Prob’ly get blown to our rewards, but at least Keneally wouldn’t win. But we got Greta to think about, Boomer. She’s young, got her whole life ahead of her.”

  “If you boys want to shoot your way out of here, count me in,” Greta said, setting her rifle across her knees and patting the forestock. Her blue eyes were resolute.

  Spurr looked past Drago at her, wagged his head, and grinned. “If I were twenty years younger . . .”

  “Thirty, more like,” Boomer said.

  Greta’s eyes crossed in that pretty way she had as she curled her split upper lip. “If we ever get out of here, I’ll marry both of you.”

  “You’d kill us both,” Spurr told her.

  “But what a way to go,” she said, her eyes smoky.

  Drago fingered his chin whiskers. “The only way Greta’s got a chance is if I turn myself over to those boys. And that’s just what I’m gonna do.”

  Boomer had no sooner started to rise to all fours, than Greta said, “No!” She threw herself onto the old outlaw’s back, and he collapsed belly down against the cave floor with a sharp grunt.

  Greta wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his fur coat, between his shoulder blades. “We’re in this together for the long haul, Boomer!”

  “Crazy girl—it’s your only chance!”

  “Ah, shit—they’re not gonna leave us alive, Boomer.” Spurr stared at the old outlaw. “You’d be throwin’ yourself to them lobos for nothin’. Might as well stay here, help us shoot it out.”

  Boom glanced at him sidelong, narrowing his eye. “And when we’re out of ammunition?”

  “We’ll start hurling rocks.” Greta leaned forward and planted an affectionate kiss on the back of the old outlaw’s nearly bald head.

  * * *

  The afternoon waned as shadows spilled down the ridges. Clouds slid into the sky over the canyon, making it even darker. Just after the sun went down, a fine snow began to fall.

  Spurr could tell by the iron-sharp cold pressing into his bones from the cave floor and the increasing sting in his cheeks and nose, not to mention his gloved fingers and moccasined toes, that the temperature was dropping rapidly. There’d been no shooting since Drago’s last shot, but, as though to taunt them, Keneally’s men built a large bonfire about seventy yards down the slope, at the edge of the large boulder field.

  Light from the fire danced across the rocks. Sparks columned upward.

  Occasionally, one of the outlaws would shout up at the cave, “Sure is warm down here. Must be right chilly up there. You folks sure you don’t wanna come down here and warm up, maybe have some beans and bacon? Got some rabbit to go with it. Plenty of hot coffee! Come on down, we’ll make it a fandango!”

  “We’ll take turns dancin’ with the whore!” another man shouted in a higher-pitched voice.

  Several men cackled, and one yelled, “And then we’ll draw straws for her—see who goes first!”

  Spurr, sitting with his back to the cave’s west wall, glanced at Greta, who sat beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. Sh
e did not react to the men’s jeers. He could see her blinking, so she wasn’t asleep, but she seemed deeply fatigued and on the edge of not caring about anything anymore.

  Drago appeared the same way. The old outlaw sat against the opposite wall, staring blankly at the wall over Spurr’s head, his rifle across his outstretched legs. Spurr probably looked as depressed as his cohorts. His shoulders were heavy, his chest tight, his heart beating feebly.

  This was likely the end of his trail. He didn’t care so much for himself, but he was damned sick about getting another girl killed. That’s how he saw it, despite her following him and Drago of her own accord out from Diamond Fire. He could have turned her away, but he hadn’t.

  Always a sucker for a pretty blonde.

  Well, now he’d more than likely gotten another one killed. He wasn’t sure why—it made no sense whatever, as long as he’d been after the old outlaw—but part of him regretted Boomer Drago’s imminent demise, as well. Maybe only because it would mean that his men had won. Or maybe it meant more to the old lawman than that. He couldn’t be sure. His brain was as tired and as cold as the rest of him, and he couldn’t trust his thinking anymore.

  He dozed for a time with his eyes and ears open, but then, staring out past the cave’s eastern wall, toward the solid stone ridge that trailed off beyond it, he came awake with a small fire kindling inside him.

  The weird castings of the light beyond the cave—the blue of the twilight stitched with the white of the falling snow which in turn shimmered softly with the light of the outlaws’ fire—revealed something that Spurr had not seen before in the ridge wall beyond the opening.

  Sitting across from him but slightly left, Boomer said, “What is it?”

  Greta lifted her head from where she’d leaned it forward against her rifle barrel.

  Spurr glanced to his right, not wanting to get too close to the ledge, making himself visible to the men on the slope and get a hole drilled in his head for his carelessness. He slid a little closer to the ledge but leaned down low against the floor, looking up and out the cave opening on his left.