The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  As he did, he glanced behind. The bear was now sixty yards away and barreling toward him, coat buffeting in the wind and glistening in the breeze.

  Spurr hauled himself to his feet and, despite the agony in every limb, kept running. He had to buy Drago and Greta more time. He had to get as low on the mountain as he could before the bruin overtook him.

  When he did, he just hoped the bear made it fast. He’d heard of men being eaten slowly while half-alive and able to watch the big, smelly beast dipping its bloody snout in and out of its quarry’s private parts . . .

  The thought made Spurr run faster—so fast, in fact, that he was afraid he’d outrun his balance and take a header down the slope and into a boulder. Easy pickings . . .

  He could feel the ground bouncing as the beast bounded closer and closer, straight behind him now and closing fast.

  He moved out of the trees and into an open area bathed in sunshine. The valley spread out below him, broad and vast. The bear was so close now that Spurr could hear the bruin’s heavy panting, the air raking in and out of its lungs with the squawking sounds of dried leather.

  Spurr slowed. His heart hammered, but a strange peace fell over him. He stopped and stared out over the tan and lime-green valley opening below him, beneath the spruce-green of the sun-hazed, pine-carpeted opposite slope. The sun was hot on the left side of his face.

  He turned toward the bear lunging toward him, so intent on him that it would have taken a deadheading locomotive to cause the bear to swerve from the old lawman’s path. But then, its eyes meeting Spurr’s, the huge beast skidded to a halt, kicking up dirt and grass and pine needles before it. It slid several feet toward Spurr on its butt before it finally got itself stopped about twenty feet away.

  It eyed its prey cautiously, shook its massive head, rippling the thick fur around its neck to which pine needles, dirt and bits of dead leaves clung. The bear’s eyes were flat and molasses-colored, speckled with copper. They owned not the slightest hint of mercy, only a depthless, wanton savagery.

  It pawed the ground, whipping up a thick dust cloud speckled with pine needles.

  The beast smelled like old piss, the tang of grapefruit and pine. The fetor was so strong that it made the old lawman’s eyes water.

  Spurr threw his arms up straight above his head, aiming the Starr at the sky. “Come on, you smelly bastard. I’m all yours, an’ I hope you choke on me!”

  The beast lifted up off its front paws that were easily the size of supper plates, and waddled toward Spurr on its back legs. It lifted its long, black snout toward the sky and loosed its bugling cry, which was so loud that Spurr thought his head would explode. The old man involuntarily backed away from it, squeezing his eyes closed.

  The bear’s bellow broke off sharply, on the heels of what sounded like a thunderclap.

  Spurr opened his eyes. As the thunderclap echoed, growing shrill as it dwindled, the bear staggered toward Spurr almost drunkenly, its head wobbling on its massive shoulders. Spurr stumbled backward and fell on his butt at the same time that the bruin fell toward him, piling up on the ground and throwing several shovelfuls of dirt and gravel over Spurr’s legs.

  Dust wafted around the old lawman, who sat squeezing his eyes closed and shaking his head against it.

  When he opened his eyes again, the bear gave a low groan, turned its head back and forth. Spurr stared down at it. Blood matted the back of its head. It was oozing out around the bruin’s head to pool on the short, brown grass, dirt, and red gravel beneath it.

  “What in tarnation?” the old lawman said, looking up past the bear to see a short, stocky gent in a long bear coat standing on a flat rock about forty yards behind the beast.

  The man was dark-haired, distinctly Indian featured. As he slowly lowered the massive rifle in his hands—a Sharps Big Fifty buffalo gun, if Spurr made his guess—he stretched his lips back from his teeth in a grin.

  “Spurr!”

  The old lawman turned to see Greta running toward him from upslope on his right. Boomer half ran, half stumbled along behind her, sort of dragging his right ankle as though he’d twisted it. The two canteens flopped against his sides.

  “Spurr, you crazy fool!” Greta dropped down before him and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him so tightly he thought she’d crack his ribs, sobbing into his neck.

  “Now, now,” Spurr said, eyeing the bear lying still behind her and continuing to bleed out on the ground. “There, there.”

  Greta drew her head away from him. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine as frog hair,” the old lawman said. “Couldn’t be better.”

  He stared at the Indian standing on the flat rock upslope from him. He spied movement to the Indian’s right and turned to see a woman dressed similarly to the man pulling a two-wheeled cart down the slope toward the bear. In the back of the cart, a large wooden bucket rattled with its cargo of a half-dozen knives.

  The Indian woman was even shorter than the man, and she was as round as a rain barrel. Straight, coal-black hair hung to her shoulders.

  “Who’re they?” Spurr asked Greta.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Drago said, limping up, chuckling, as he inspected the bear.

  “That man ran past us when we were running down the hill,” Greta told Spurr, glancing at the Indian now walking toward them. He wore knee-high, lace-up moccasins and he was still grinning, dark eyes flashing in his copper-skinned face. “The woman was pulling the wagon behind him.”

  “You good bear bait, white man!” the Indian said, stopping near the bear’s outstretched back legs.

  He pointed at the bear as he said, “I been huntin’ him for couple weeks now. Been killin’ folks down in the town.” He ran a hand around on his belly covered by the bear fur coat. “Very hungry! Deer, rabbits not enough for him. Human blood taste good to him. Killed the schoolteacher last week—Master Embry, the white folks called him. Dragged him up high on the ridge there, had his meal. They heard big shaggy one there moanin’ and groanin’ all night long, breakin’ bones. Master Embry musta taste very good!”

  Greta regarded the grinning Indian distastefully. The Indian woman, sober as a parson’s wife and taking no part in the conversation, stopped the cart near the bear and began stropping one of her knives.

  Spurr held his hand out to the Indian. “Spurr.”

  The Indian shook Spurr’s hand. “Lincoln.”

  Spurr was not surprised by the name. It had become the Ute way to name their sons and daughters after prominent people, even prominent white people. “Lincoln, I’d like to thank you for savin’ my stringy hide.”

  “Ah, hell,” the Indian said, flushing now as he looked down at the bear. “That’s what I do, that’s all. Hunt meat for the town yonder, the villages farther out in the mountains. Me an’ Opin.” He glanced at the Indian woman who’d set one knife down on the cart to begin sharpening another. “She’s my woman.”

  “Market hunter,” Drago said, nodding. “But what town are you talkin’ about, son?”

  “The one there. Green Valley.”

  Spurr followed Lincoln’s glance down the long slope and into the valley. On a flat bench along the side of the opposite ridge, at least a mile, maybe two miles away, there indeed sat a small town.

  It was too far away for Spurr to tell much about it except that there were maybe only twelve cabins, a few white tent shacks, and two or three false-fronted frame buildings straddling a wagon trail that curved in from the east and ran on out of the town to the west, climbing farther up the valley.

  The town looked little larger than a tobacco sack from this distance, dwarfed as it was by the broad valley and the high, gradual slope on the other side of it.

  A great deal of smoke rose from the town’s brick chimneys and tin stove pipes, roiling around the roofs and touched with the gold of the climbing morning sun. As Spurr st
ared, however, he saw that it wasn’t only smoke hovering over the town but steam, as well. The steam seemed to be rising from a rocky slope on the town’s far side, near a broad, wood-frame tent.

  “Mulligan.”

  Spurr turned to frown curiously at Lincoln, who stepped up beside Spurr, pointing toward where the steam rose from the rocks near the tent. “Irishman. Mulligan. Steam baths. The water—it boils out of ground. Very healthy, the white folks think.” He chuckled as he tapped Spurr’s belly with the back of his hand. “Good for an old man’s bones, huh, Mr. Spurr?”

  “’Specially for one nearly ate up whole by a bear,” said Drago, shaking his head and regarding the old lawman incredulously.

  “You got that right,” Spurr said. “I could use a smoke and a shot of whiskey, too.”

  Greta looked warily toward the east, around the far side of the ridge they’d climbed over. “What about our . . . friends?”

  THIRTY

  “They’ll be comin’—that’s for damn sure,” Drago said as he, Spurr, and Greta made their slow, weary way down the slope toward the little trail town of Green Valley. They’d left Lincoln and Opin dressing out the bear in a businesslike fashion.

  Obviously, the husband and wife hunting team had killed their share of game.

  “Maybe there’s a lawman in the town,” Greta said, walking between the two old men. “Someone who can help.”

  “Doubt it.” Spurr was surveying the little town growing before them. “Not much there. What is there is fairly new because I never heard of it before. My guess is it’s a little supply camp for the boomtowns deeper in the mountains—the Laramies, the Mummys, and the Medicine Bows. Not enough folks around to support a lawman. Oh, maybe a constable, but even that’s doubtful. Certainly no one with the gun savvy to stand against Drago’s bunch.”

  “They ain’t my bunch,” Boomer said testily.

  “Well, they were.”

  “Well, they ain’t no more!”

  “Please, you two.” Greta looked weary. “I’m too exhausted and hungry and thirsty to listen to anymore of your consarned jawboning. That steam sure looks good, but I’ll fall asleep in such hot water and drown. I need a nap.”

  They were at the bottom of the valley now, a shallow stream trickling over rocks along a line of aspens whose bright yellow leaves littered the ground and the edges of the creek. As Spurr and the others crossed the creek, he looked up the hill toward the town and the steam from the natural hot springs rising on the other side of it.

  Although the sun was a lemon drop in the clear, faultless blue sky, the air was cool. It had been bone-splintering cold all night, and Spurr could still feel that cold through every inch of him, as though his very marrow had turned to ice.

  “Yeah,” was all he said, staring up at the steam rising with the smoke of breakfast fires. He gave a shudder as he thought about stepping into a hot bath with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, a cigar in the other.

  As they followed a path up the hill toward the town, a cacophony rose on the hill above them. The sounds resembled buzzards or pigeons fighting over carrion. Spurr lifted his head to see five or six young boys in all manner of rough garb run down the hill toward him, Greta, and Drago. The boys were jostling and yelling, trying to get ahead of each other, obviously excited about something.

  A tow-headed, freckle-faced boy of around ten stopped in front of Spurr, and the other six boys ran up behind him, crowding close and regarding the strangers eagerly.

  “Did Lincoln get the bear that ate Master Embry?” the towhead asked. “We heard a shot, and one shot’s all it usually takes Lincoln. Did he get it? Did he get it?”

  “He did at that,” Spurr said.

  “Oh, boy!” the freckle-faced lad intoned as he ran around Spurr and splashed into the creek, heading for the slope where Lincoln and Opin were dressing the bear. “I wonder if Master Embry’ll fall out when they cut the nasty critter open!”

  “Nah,” said the tallest of the six boys, long arms and legs scissoring as he ran after the towhead. “I’m sure Ole Satan chomped him up good before he swallowed him.”

  “Yuck!” yelled one of the other lads splashing wildly across the creek. One of the boys slipped and fell in the stream with an oath but gained his feet quickly, casting a sheepish look back toward Spurr, Greta, and Drago, and then went running through the aspens behind the others.

  “Ah, to be young and full of vinegar,” Spurr said, and continued up the trail.

  He and Greta and Boomer gained the relatively flat area the town had been built on, and entered the village from its east end. They stopped and stared ahead of them, where the dozen or so buildings and a few shabby tents sat on either side of the rutted wagon trail, awash in the high-country sun.

  There were two saloons housed in low log shacks, sitting almost straight across the street from each other, but what caught the brunt of Spurr’s attention was a two-story, pink brick affair standing in the middle of the town, on the street’s left side. The simple, elegant little building was the town’s crown jewel.

  A diamond in the rough, it was pretentious as hell yet it bespoke a civic optimism in the little supply camp’s future. The shingle extending into the street before the place announced the Albuquerque Hotel and Restaurant. The tight, elegant little flophouse, trimmed in Victorian gingerbread and boasting a whitewashed front veranda with two colorful planters hanging beneath the rafters, connoted cotton sheets, thick quilts, and goose-down pillows. The stout but neatly attired and aproned middle-aged lady just now sweeping off the veranda while a black-and-white cat lounged on a near rail in the sun looked like she’d cook a juicy steak, as well. And she likely kept the premises free of bedbugs.

  Spurr’s old bones cried out for all those comforts.

  First thing first, however. A general store was the first building on the right, and Spurr pointed his hat in that direction, bending his tired legs. Greta and Drago followed him up the porch steps, and they all sat down together on the steps, facing the street and leaning back, resting and letting the sun leech into their cold, exhausted bodies.

  When Spurr had caught his breath, he pulled off each of his calf-high moccasins in turn and let his swollen stocking feet extend out over the edge of the next step down. Around the toes, the socks were bloody. The feet ached and burned. Blisters had opened, the ooze soaking the bottoms of his socks. He felt as though he’d walked miles over glowing coals.

  Greta sat beside him, leaning back against Boomer’s knees. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. She lifted her face abruptly. “Spurr, what about Cochise?”

  “Yeah, I know,” the old lawman grumbled, staring off toward the ridge cloaked in pines and on the other side of which he’d left his prize roan stallion. “He’ll stay where I left him, unless they took him. Either way, I’ll find him.”

  He nibbled his lower lip as he considered the matter of Keneally’s gang.

  The mercantile’s front door opened, and a short, bespectacled man stepped out, clad in a long green apron. “Did he get the bear? Lincoln—did he get the bear?” He stood against the railing, staring up the ridge. “I heard the rifle shot that could have been made by only the Indian’s cannon.”

  “He did at that, sir,” Boomer said.

  “Oh, there’ll be a party in the ole town tonight!” The man whom Spurr assumed was the mercantiler did a little two-step shuffle in his brown brogans and snapped his red armbands. “That bruin has caused all manner of misery around Green Valley over the past several weeks. Ole Satan dragged the schoolmaster out of his woodshed last Saturday, ate him up on the ridge yonder.”

  “We heard,” Greta said, giving a shudder.

  “Lincoln wasn’t around, and no one in town felt up to the task of going to Embry’s aid, not against a bear as cunning and ferocious as Satan.”

  The mercantiler danced another shuffling two– or three-step, tap
ping his soles on the rough pine boards. “But we’ll be celebratin’ in Green Valley tonight. Mark my words. Miss, I hope you brought your dancin’ shoes!” He chuckled and frowned at the hitchrack fronting his place. “Say, where are your horses, anyway?” He glanced at Spurr’s bloody feet. “Don’t tell me you three walked to our fair town!”

  Drago groaned as he massaged his own right, bare foot, that ankle resting on his other knee. “We needed a walk to clear our noggins. You got any whiskey in there, mister?”

  “And cigars?” Spurr added.

  “Why, of course I have both . . . for . . . payin’ customers.” The mercantiler added that last with a halting, tentative air. The three strangers before him no doubt looked a little raggedy-heeled, trailworn, and empty-pocketed.

  Spurr flipped the man a cartwheel. “Bring us three bottles of your best whiskey and a handful of your best cigars. And, tell me, would you recommend the hotel yonder—the Albuquerque?”

  “The finest flophouse in northern Colorado, don’t ya know.” The mercantile chomped down on Spurr’s coin and winced, nearly cracking a tooth.

  Then he contentedly flipped the coin in the air. “Why, the owner, Fred and Abigail Bertram, who came out West for poor Fred’s ailing lungs, built the place after the fashion of their hotel in Memphis. We’re all expecting Green Valley to grow considerably once the narrow-gauge railroad is laid through here, serving the mining camps farther up in the Laramies, the Medicine Bows, and the Never Summers.”

  “Where’ve I heard that before?” Spurr grumbled.

  When the mercantiler had fetched the whiskey and cigars, Spurr uncorked one of the bottles and passed it around to his compatriots before he himself drank. “Not bad,” he said, accepting his change from the mercantiler. “Much obliged, friend.”

  “Where you folks headed?” the man asked, fists on his hips as he stared down at the unlikely threesome.

  Spurr gritted his teeth as he pulled on his left moccasin. “Right now, we’re headed for a bath in that healthy hot water we seen steamin’ up yonder.”