The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  Below, men shouted.

  Guns began flashing and popping. Spurr could see the flashes in the corner of his left eye. He kept climbing. He looked up to see Drago crawl over the crest of the ridge and roll aside, revealing Greta’s oval-shaped face staring down at him, her blond hair blowing wildly in the wind up there.

  “Hurry, Spurr!”

  Bullets crashed off the ridge wall around Spurr, some skidding along past him and continuing up toward the velvet sky speckled with stars. One bullet hammered the cleft six inches left of his left hand. Spurr thrust his right hand up and another hand closed around his wrist.

  Boomer grunted and fell back on his butt as he ground his heels into the stone floor of the ridge and hauled Spurr up onto the crest. Drago cursed and cajoled Spurr as, grinding his heel into the rock, he scuttled back on his butt, dragging Spurr along with him. Greta reached down and grabbed Spurr’s arm, and she grunted and groaned as she joined the effort.

  Finally, Spurr was lying half on top of Boomer Drago, half on top of Greta while the muffled pops of angry gunfire continued below, the outlaws’ lead screeching benignly skyward.

  When Spurr finally caught his breath, lying flat on his back and staring at the stars, he said, “Well, now that we’re up here, how you reckon we get down?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard if a bear can do it.”

  Spurr and Greta both turned to Drago.

  The old outlaw worked his nose, sniffing. “Yep, that’s bear shit, all right—pardon my French, Miss Greta.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Greta climbed to her knees. “You mean a bear’s been up here? Recently?”

  Keneally’s men had stopped shooting but Spurr could still hear his men yelling. They were madder than wet hens about having let their quarry slip away from them. For now, at least.

  “Smells fresh to me,” Boomer said.

  Spurr climbed heavily to his knees. He ached all over and the crab in his chest still had a vicious hold on his heart, but he was amazed to be alive. He followed Drago’s gaze to a large, dark mound about six feet away from Boomer. Spurr pushed to his feet, stumbled over his own feet—christ, he was dizzy!—and stared down at the black pile of goo liberally lumped with berry seeds.

  “Nice big one.”

  “Griz, you think?” Boomer asked him.

  “Never seen a black bear shit that big.” Spurr straightened, wincing and planting his fists on his hips as he leaned back, stretching. He was dizzy but the crab seemed to be easing up on his old ticker. “Must be an easier way down than the one we took up. A bear wouldn’t climb that crack or anything like it.”

  Greta was still on her knees, looking around dubiously. “Fellas, what about the bear himself? That pile of shit does smell awfully ripe even to my untrained sniffer.”

  Spurr looked around. He didn’t see anything of the bruin—probably a lone male laying in a good supply of tallow and padding its belly out thoroughly before forting up for the winter. Which meant it was hungry. Bears this time of the year would eat anything—flora, fauna, or human. A grizzly the size of the one that had dropped the shovel-sized, smelly load wouldn’t bat an eye at running down a human, though the way Spurr currently felt, the bear wouldn’t have to run very hard to catch him.

  Boomer looked little better off. The old outlaw lay on his side, propped on an elbow, his chest rising and falling sharply. He looked around. “Well, shit. I hope we didn’t crawl out of the frying pan to die in the fire.”

  “All we can do,” Spurr said, “is to find a way down from here, get our bearings, and start walking.”

  “Where?” Greta said.

  “Starting off, the path of least resistance.”

  Spurr stood near the top of the fissure they’d just climbed, staring down toward where Keneally’s men had fallen suddenly, ominously quiet. He’d unsheathed his Starr because he thought maybe one or two had decided to climb the crack, but it didn’t look like any had been than stupid.

  Their fire was no larger than a pinprick of orange light from here. He couldn’t see any shadows moving around it.

  “Sounds like we done confounded ‘em—”

  Spurr stopped when a voice shouted up from the bottom of the canyon. The words were garbled, muffled by the wind and distance.

  “What the hell was that?” Boomer said, pushing off a knee and gaining his feet.

  The shout came again, louder but only a little clearer this time, so that Spurr could make out what sounded like, “Father.” The voice echoed strange. It sounded as though it were being shouted from the bottom of a deep well.

  “What’d he say?” Greta asked, moving up to stand beside Spurr, the cold wind blowing against them.

  Again, Keneally shouted, “Something or other father, Boomer!” He laughed bizarrely. The echoes of the laughter vaulted around the canyon for some time, sounding more and more hollow as they dwindled. And then there was only the sound of the wind.

  “What the hell’s he mean by that?” Spurr said, glancing at Drago standing to his left.

  Drago shrugged, shook his head. “How the hell should I know? Probably drunk. And two parts loco. Here, I only thought he was one-part.” The old outlaw crossed his arms on his chest, and shivered. “Brrrr! Cold up here!”

  “I say we head for lower ground,” Greta suggested.

  Spurr turned to stare off across the caprock they were on. Most of the snow had been swept clean by the breeze. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how far the slab extended to the north. He assumed it ran for quite a ways to the east and west, capping the ridge on the north end of the canyon they’d climbed out of. Likely, the only way to lower ground was to the north.

  He hoped they wouldn’t have to descend as steep a ridge as the one they’d climbed up. He doubted his old knees would take it.

  Spurr started walking slowly northward along the caprock that was a massive, northward-sloping chunk of uneven granite from which, here and there, a wind-gnarled cedar fingered up out of small cracks. There were even a couple of junipers and wild current shrubs.

  The wind pushed against Spurr from behind. He had to stiffen his back against it. No telling where the caprock ended and another canyon dropped away. Mostly, what he could see ahead of him was velvety darkness with the occasional humped shapes of granite outcroppings and stunted trees.

  He moved through the widely spaced shrubs and cedars and occasional mushroom shapes of rock that had pushed up eons ago from the granite base. He was glad that the caprock continued to angle gradually downward. Maybe that meant there would be no sharp drop off.

  After nearly a half hour of slow walking, the granite caprock stopped abruptly. Beyond lay only darkness, masking the northern terrain.

  “Shit,” Spurr said.

  “What is it?” Greta asked, walking a few yards behind him.

  Spurr thought he’d come to a deep canyon and would have to look for a way down, but no. He dropped to a knee at the edge of the caprock and stared down to where brown dirt and pine needles sloped away from the massive stove slab only four or five feet below. Beyond were more closely spaced pine and firs and the pale shapes of occasional boulders. On the wind was the tang of pinesap.

  The old lawman cursed again, chuckling this time. He sat down, dropped his legs over the edge of the rock, and then dropped to the ground. “There!” he said, turning and smiling up at Greta standing at the edge of the caprock. “How’d you like that little piece of luck?”

  He’d just extended his hand to the girl, when a guttural bugling sounded, echoing eerily. Greta gasped. Spurr looked around, groaning, caution rippling along his spine.

  The sound came again—a deep, bellowing cry of feral anger. Because of the echo, it was impossible to tell where the sound had originated. It seemed to rise up out of the earth itself and resonate beneath the stars as it gradually dwindled to silence.

 
; Only the wind sifting down over the caprock and nudging the branches of the pines and firs dropping down the gradual slope behind Spurr.

  “There he is.” Drago stood several yards behind Greta, a little higher on the granite slab. He was staring eastward, his thin hair blowing around the top of his bald-pated head. The strap of his eye patch angled blackly down the side of his head and across his earlobe.

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” Greta said just loudly enough for Spurr to hear.

  “Griz,” Spurr said.

  “An angry bruin,” Drago elaborated. “Might have scented us. Maybe we’re in his territory, and he don’t appreciate strangers competin’ for his precious deer vittles.”

  The bugling sounded again, starting low but then rising in pitch until it cracked at its apex. Gooseflesh rose along Spurr’s back as that high, chortling squeal echoed loudly, savagely.

  Spurr glanced at Drago once more. “Can you get a read on him, Boomer?”

  Drago pointed. “I’d say he’s somewhere off to the east, below the caprock somewhere. Must be a valley down that way.”

  Spurr extended his hand to Greta, and helped her down the shelf and onto the dirt-covered slope beside the old lawman. “We’d best head northwest, then. Come on, Miss Greta. Hope you still got some juice in your stewpot—sounds like you’re gonna need it.”

  “I’ll manage,” the girl said, as she followed Spurr on down the slope, Drago dropping tenderly off the shelf behind them. “How ’bout you, Spurr? You still got some grain in your feed bin?”

  “No, I sure don’t. But it’s just amazing how the hunting cry of one of those beasts will put some spring in an old man’s step!”

  Drago was breathing hard as he followed about ten yards behind, stumbling over fallen branches and low hummocks of ground as he looked cautiously off to their right. “Sure enough,” muttered the old outlaw under his labored breathing. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Bad luck is what this old badge toter is. Spurr, I declare—I knew twenty years ago I was gonna rue the day I met you!”

  Spurr only snorted at that and kept moving.

  * * *

  They continued winding their way down the gradual slope through the dark night, shivering against the steely, mid-autumn chill. Snow blowing off the branches peppered their faces. Not much lay on the ground but that which glowed in the starlight.

  They heard the bear’s savage cry only once more, and then, save for the occasional yammering of a coyote, the night grew quiet.

  The slope seemed endless. But since the trio’s energy was not, they holed up in a nook of a stony outcrop, concealed by brush and junipers. Sitting side by side for warmth, Greta sandwiched between the two men, they shared water from their two canteens, and slept.

  Spurr slumbered like a dead man. When he woke, he thought for a moment that he was dead and that he’d gone to heaven of all places. Imagine that!

  Sunlight angled down through the branches of the pine to his right, bathing him in its warm, buttery glow. For a moment he sat staring straight ahead at a chickadee hopping about on the branch of a naked aspen just ahead of him and down the slope a few yards. The little black and white bird, too, was limned in the sun’s golden glow. The chickadee gave its familiar “chick-a-dee-dee” song in a simple celebration of the sunny mountain morning, and then continued to pick at the branch for seeds, grubs, and larvae.

  Peace poured through the old man’s bones like warm syrup.

  He meditated on the bird for a long time, feeling Greta’s head on his right shoulder, her warm breath caressing his neck, and he thought how nice it would be for death to come now.

  Something gave a deep, menacing snort up the slope behind him and right. There was the echoing crack of a branch beneath a heavy tread. The savage bugling that he and the others had heard last night rose again, causing Spurr’s heart, which had been ticking so slowly and sweetly, to begin chuffing and hiccupping.

  He snapped his head around to see a large, ginger-brown beast crashing through the forest behind and east of him and his trail mates, maybe a couple of hundred yards away, on the far side of a little ravine running down the slope to their right.

  Spurr was about to call the others, but then Boomer, who’d been sleeping with his head bowed toward his chest and his crossed arms, jerked his head up. He gave a painful cry as his neck crackled like a dry branch, and he clapped a gloved hand to the back of it as he turned to see the demon coming down the slope at a slant.

  The beast’s fur was painted cinnamon by the morning sun filtering through the pine boughs.

  The bruin gave a raucous snarl and continued lumbering down through the trees, trampling a juniper shrub in its wake. The shrub crunched and crackled loudly in the morning’s quiet air.

  Spurr placed his hand on Greta’s arm and squeezed gently. The girl lifted her head with a groan and opened her eyes, squinting and blinking sleepily.

  “Sorry, girl,” the old lawman said. “Trouble.”

  Spurr pushed off the rock they’d all slept against and found that his legs had no feeling in them. His feet were stiff. He dropped to his knees with a grunt, stretching his lips back from his teeth as pain rocketed through every joint in his old sack of bones.

  “Oh my god!” he heard Greta say. She dropped to a knee beside him, wrapped an arm around his waist. “Spurr, can you get up?”

  She didn’t wait for his reply but, holding his right hand down taut against her breasts, rose, sort of hoisting him with her. He straightened, gritting his teeth.

  “Damn, that ground was cold!” Spurr looked past Greta toward the bear still tearing down the mountain.

  “Things are about to get a whole lot colder,” Boomer said. “It smells us.”

  “Yeah.”

  Spurr raked a hand down his face and tugged on his beard. He stepped away from Greta and slid his Starr .44 from its holster. “You two head off to the west. Run and keep on runnin’.”

  Greta jerked a worried look at him. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna distract him.”

  “There ain’t no distractin’ a bruin on the kill scent, Spurr!” Drago stared at him gravely. “There’s only feedin’ one.”

  “Then I’ll feed him. Shit, I came to the end of the line yesterday. Last night ’bout done me in.”

  Spurr looked at Greta, jerked his head to indicate down the hill on his left. “Go, girl! Boomer, take her and haul your freight like you never hauled it before!” He tossed his canteen to Drago. “You might as well take that. I won’t be needin’ it.”

  He walked past them both, angling down the slope through the trees on his right.

  “Spurr!” Greta lunged toward him.

  Drago grabbed her as Spurr wheeled toward them, scowling. “You two get movin’!”

  Drago swallowed, glanced toward the bear that had disappeared into the ravine though the bruin could still be heard, cracking brush and groaning savagely, hungrily. Leaves and pine needles rose in his wake.

  The outlaw turned back to Spurr. “We’re all three in this together, partner.”

  “How many times I gotta tell you, old man? We ain’t partners!” Spurr lunged threateningly toward Drago, who had ahold of Greta’s arm, both of them staring worriedly at the old lawman, who threw his gun hand out angrily. “Get movin’. Now—before it’s too damn late!”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Spurr wheeled and began running down the slope slantwise through the pines and scattered, gray, moss-rimed boulders. He clicked the Starr’s hammer back and triggered a shot toward the bruin as he ran.

  The bear was just then loping up the near side of the ravine, its hump bulging savagely atop its shoulders. Its cinnamon coat glistened in the sunshine. Just Spurr’s luck to run into a rogue bull with a chip on its shoulders.

  It was about a hundred yards away and moving down the slope toward Spurr’s old pos
ition, but the bullet that plumed dust and dead leaves near its front feet gave it pause. Slowing slightly, it looked down the slope toward Spurr, both ears pricking, dark eyes seemingly moving a little closer together.

  “Oh, boy,” Spurr said, breathing hard as he increased his pace, his sore feet crying out with every step. “Here we go! Bear bait!”

  He triggered another shot in the direction of the bruin, knowing a .44 slug could never penetrate a hide as tough and as thick as a grizzly’s but only piss the beast off more. “Come and get it, you big, ugly, smelly son of a bitch! My meat might be a little chewy but it’ll fill the gullet just fine!”

  Spurr bounded around a stout, fragrant juniper and continued running down the hill. Behind him, Greta screamed and shouted but a glance over his left shoulder told Spurr that Boomer was leading her off to the northwest.

  Spurr paused to lean a shoulder against a birch tree and catch his breath. He glanced up the slope behind him.

  The bear was running toward him, looking like a billowy brown rug thrown over a fat horse. The copper in its fur flashed like the sun off a high-mountain lake. The bear’s eyes glistened savagely. It shook its head as it ran, lifting its black lips high above the long, yellow, savagely curved fangs.

  A glimpse of those fangs made Spurr’s loins tingle.

  He squeezed off another shot at the bear to keep him coming, and then he pushed off the tree and continued running straight down the slope. His right foot hooked a downed branch, and he flew forward, slamming against the ground on his belly and chest, dropping his pistol.

  “Shit!” he bellowed, ignoring the pain shooting through him and reaching for his pistol that was partly covered by bits of pinecones and needles.