The Old Wolves

by Peter Brandvold

  “Damn, that’s some awful nice pistol work, Spurr!” said one of the other riders, who slapped his horse’s rump with his rein ends and rode down the slope and into the wash.

  Irvin stared, dumbfounded, as the man climbed with the heaviness and grunting of an old man down from his saddle and dropped to a knee beside him, muttering, “Oh, god—what have I done?”

  He placed his hand around the boy’s arm. “Irvin, is that you, boy? I’m your grandfather, and everything’s gonna be just fine!”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Spurr swung down from the back of his rented horse. Greta did the same, and they both scrambled down the side of the slope and into the draw.

  “Where’s your, Pa, Irvin?” Drago asked the boy, who stared incredulously, still a little fearful, at his grandfather, shifting his gaze to Spurr and Greta.

  “It’s okay, son,” Greta said, dropping to a knee beside Boomer and placing a hand on the boy’s right knee. “We’re here to help.”

  “Who . . . who are they?” Irvin asked, flicking his gaze between Boomer and the strangers.

  “Bad men,” Greta said. “Very bad men. But we’re going to . . . settle things . . .”

  Again, Boomer asked his grandson where his father was.

  “He went around that way,” Irvin said, nodding in the direction of the trail.

  “He followed the wash around the ranch yard?” Drago asked.

  Irvin nodded.

  “How long ago?” Spurr asked the boy.

  Irvin hiked a shoulder. “Half hour ago, maybe.”

  Spurr turned to Greta. “Will you stay with the boy?”

  “Only if you . . .” She glanced at Irvin, who was watching her closely, obviously surprised to find a girl out here—especially one so pretty.

  Dropping her voice, Greta slid a breeze-blown lock of hair away from her cheek, and said, ”. . . Give me a shot at him. I want one last shot at him. You know who.”

  Spurr smiled grimly. “If we can, you got it.”

  Drago said, “Irvin, this nice lady is Greta. She’s gonna stay with you while me an’ Spurr go lend your ma and pa a helpin’ hand. You stay here with Greta, all right? This should all be over soon. When it is, we’ll come and fetch you back to the cabin where you belong. All right?”

  The boy swallowed, his eyes worried as he stared at his grandfather. “All right. I reckon.”

  Spurr straightened, as did Boomer. The old outlaw picked up the dead man’s rifle, worked the cocking lever, and then looked at Spurr, who glanced down at Greta and then at Drago and nodded. He walked off down the draw toward the trail, and Boomer followed, holding the rifle down low by his side.

  When they reached the trail, Spurr paused and stared at where the trail climbed the rise into the ranch yard. From here he couldn’t see over the brow of the hill and into the yard. The cabin was out of sight.

  “The men in the cabin probably heard them shots,” Spurr said, running the sleeve of his coat across his mouth. “We’d best assume Keneally sent someone to check it out.”

  “Oh, he will.”

  “How far back’s the cabin?”

  “About a hundred yards.”

  “How much cover between the top of the hill and the cabin?”

  “There’s a barn and corral on the left, some small shrubs. On the right there’s a pole barn for hay and a little shack that Cliff uses for a blacksmith shop though he ain’t much of a blacksmith.” Boomer gave a wry chuckle.

  “All right. I’ll keep to the left. You keep to the right.” Spurr started walking up the hill, half crouching, holding his Starr in one hand, the Schofield in his other hand. “We’ll approach the cabin slow . . .”

  “And then what?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Boomer walked beside Spurr also crouching, chin held up to get a look over the brow of the hill. Keeping his voice low, just above a whisper, Drago said, “If I got my daughter killed because I sent that loot, I’m gonna want you to drill a bullet through my fuckin’ head, Spurr.”

  “No problem at all, amigo.”

  Spurr kept walking until he could see up into the ranch yard, and then he stopped. Two men were moving toward him and Drago—two slightly jostling shadows against the cabin’s lit windows behind them.

  Spurr whistled under his breath, jerked his chin toward the cabin on the far side of the yard. At the same time, he and Drago bounded to opposite sides of the trail. They hunkered down in the brush at nearly the same place the trail dropped down over the side of the hill toward the wash.

  Spurr doffed his hat as he crouched behind a small boulder sheathed in buffalo grass and a spindly sage plant. The two shadows were moving between the barn on the left and the blacksmith shop on the right, the windmill a little behind them and right.

  Spurr looked toward where he’d last seen Drago. He couldn’t see the outlaw now, which was good. The man was hunkered down as low as Spurr, who slid his gaze back toward the two men sauntering toward them. Starlight winked off the rifles in their hands and off the silver trimmings that the man on the right wore on his cartridge belt and holsters.

  Behind them, the cabin hunched long and low, gray smoke rising from the stone chimney on the cabin’s left side.

  One of the men stopped in the yard, and Spurr dropped his head even farther, until he could no longer see the pair through the grass. “Hey, Avrial—you out here?”

  The outlaw’s call echoed briefly around the yard.

  Spurr inched his head up until he could see the two shadows stopped in the yard about halfway between Spurr and the cabin. One was a little ahead of the other. Both cradled rifles in their arms as they looked around.

  “Avrial?” the other man called. His voice was a little higher pitched than the other’s. “Hey, Avrial!” he said again, pitching his voice with impatience.

  On Spurr’s right, a low, rasping voice said, “Pssst! Over here, fellas!”

  Spurr stared at the two in the yard. They looked at each other and then they started walking again, moving toward where the trail started dropping down the hill but angling slightly toward Boomer.

  Spurr opened his mouth to breathe as quietly as possible. He squeezed the handles of the pistols in his hands, gloved thumbs caressing the hammers. He could hear the footsteps of the approaching men, the faint trilling of their spurs. One kicked a rock. It thumped as it rolled.

  “What you got there, Avrial?” one of the two called as they drew within twenty feet of where Spurr assumed Boomer was.

  They each took two more steps and then they stopped. At the same time, they began taking their rifles in their hands.

  The one with the silver trimming said, “Avrial, what in the hell . . . ?”

  Spurr raised his Starr above the weeds. Starlight must have glinted off the barrel, because the man on the left jerked his head toward him, yelling, “Hey!”

  Spurr’s Starr flashed and roared.

  A half a wink later, Drago’s rifle blasted.

  Through his own wafting powder smoke, Spurr watched both men stumble backward and away from each other. The man with the silver trimmings dropped his rifle. The other man was trying to regain his balance and swing his rifle toward Spurr, who popped off three more shots and watched the man stumble backward and dance in two quick circles before falling in a heap. As Drago’s rifle crashed twice, lapping flames about thirty feet off to Spurr’s right, the man with the silver trimmings was blown up off his heels and straight back to hit the ground with a hard smack.

  He gave a ragged groan. He lifted his hatless head and then let it fall back to the ground. Spurr could see both men jerking on the ground as they died. A rifle lay against the left boot of the man he’d killed. He needed a long gun bad . . .

  Before Spurr realized what he was doing, he took off running toward the dead men, Drago rasping
behind him, “Get back here, you crazy coon!”

  Almost simultaneously, there was a blast in each of the two front cabin windows, one on each side of the door. Then the door opened, and Spurr saw a murky shadow standing there, and then the doorway filled with the bright orange flash of the rifle in the man’s hands.

  The slugs tore up the ground around Spurr as he headed for the brush where Drago was crouched, because it was closer than his own original perch. The rifles yammered behind him. The slugs spanged off rocks around him, pluming dust and rustling the brush. When Spurr saw Drago crouched behind a low pile of weathered lumber, he dove forward and rolled twice down the slope behind the old outlaw.

  “Christ!” Drago raked out over his right shoulder, his lone eye bright in the starlight.

  Several yards behind Drago, Spurr grunted and sat up. He’d dropped the rifle but now he picked it up and rested it across his thighs. “I’ll be damned!” he said in amazement. “It’s my old ’66!”

  “Shut up, fool!” Drago shouted, ducking low behind the lumber and looking down the slope at Spurr. “You gone loco?”

  “I reckon so. Ow!” Spurr winced and released the rifle to clutch his left shoulder, which he’d set to yapping during his impersonation of a much younger man.

  “Serves ya right!”

  Spurr sucked back the pain in his shoulder, noticing that his knees and ribs were barking now, too, and crawled back up to where Drago hunkered behind the three-foot-high pile of lumber. The shooting from the cabin had stopped. A menacing silence had replaced it.

  Spurr wondered how many of Drago’s old gang were left. If he’d counted right, probably four. Those were better odds than seven against two, but Keneally’s men had a definite advantage, forted up as they were with Drago’s daughter.

  As if to corroborate his estimation of the predicament, a woman’s sharp, brief cry sounded from the cabin. The outlaws had blown out the lamps; the cabin was dark except for starlight reflecting off the shake-shingled roof. The only movement was the smoke rising from the chimney.

  The woman groaned inside the cabin. Nerves pinched the skin along Spurr’s spine. Drago sucked a sharp breath and shouted angrily, “You better not hurt her, Keneally! You lay one hand on her—”

  “That you, Boomer?” Keneally called from the dark cabin. The outlaw laughed. “Had a feelin’ it was you. I reckon you know who we got in here.”

  Boomer looked at Spurr. Sweat shone on him. Several beads rolled down from beneath the band of his eye patch. He anxiously drummed his fingers against the forestock of the rifle in his hands.

  The woman groaned again, and Boomer jerked his fiery-eyed gaze toward the cabin, gritting his teeth. He rested his rifle over the top of the lumber pile.

  “I s’pose you know she’s got a bun in the oven, Boomer!” Keneally’s jeering voice echoed. He hadn’t shouted it, but the night was so quiet, the air so light, that it had carried like a shout. “She’s in a very delicate condition. So easily harmed—her and the child!”

  The woman groaned again, louder. Spurr saw a shadow in the doorway atop the veranda. Two shadows. Keneally was just outside the open front door, holding the woman before him. A whole head shorter than the outlaw leader, she appeared to have her arms pinned behind her back. Keneally held a rifle in his free hand, straight up in the air.

  “I’ll exchange her for you, Boomer. Come on in!”

  The girl said through a hard sob, “Don’t do it, Boomer! Don’t do it!” She squealed and stumbled sideways, and then Keneally slapped the side of her head, and she dropped to the porch floor with a thump.

  Boomer jerked his head up, grinding his teeth. “I’m comin’.”

  Spurr shook his head slowly. Dread was a living, writhing snake in his belly. “He’ll kill you both, Boomer.”

  “Hurry up, Boomer!” Keneally shouted. “I’m gettin’ so frustrated I’m liable to kick this poor woman in her belly!”

  Boomer jerked another look at Spurr. “I don’t think he knows you’re out here. He thinks I came alone.”

  Spurr had been getting the same impression. He nodded slowly, holding the rear stock of his prized Winchester taut against his side. He was hunkered as low as he could get without pressing his face flat to the ground.

  “All right,” Spurr said, working out a plan. “All right, you go on ahead. I’ll work around.”

  “Be careful,” Boomer whispered, staring toward the cabin again. “Be damn careful. I don’t care if he kills me, but he kills my girl . . .”

  “You’re a damn fool, Boomer.” Spurr looked at him. “But we’ll get them sons o’ bitches if it kills us both. Now, haul your raggedy ass!”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I’m comin’!” Drago shouted at the cabin.

  Spurr stayed low as Boomer rose from behind the lumber pile and began making his way through the brush and into the yard.

  “Throw the rifle down!” Keneally called.

  Boomer tossed the rifle away and kept walking toward the cabin. As his figure diminished and became a shadow in the cool, starry night, Spurr back-scuttled lower on the slope and then, when he was sure he was out of sight from the cabin, began running along the side of the slope toward the north.

  He aimed to skirt around the yard’s north side, using the pines and scattered buildings and the windmill for cover, until he could swing back toward the cabin and take Keneally and the three other remaining gang members by surprise.

  When he’d reached the blacksmith cabin, he edged a look around the front corner. Drago was within twenty feet of the house, walking slowly, hands held chest high, palms out. Keneally remained on the porch, three steps up from the yard, Drago’s daughter crumpled at his feet.

  Spurr pulled his head back behind the blacksmith cabin and then jogged, breathing hard, down the side of the log building and around it. In the darkness, he didn’t see an empty barrel sitting snug against the building’s back wall, and rammed into it, knocking it over and falling on top of it. He snapped out a curse as he rolled off the barrel to the ground.

  Wheezing, he gained his knees and sucked a sharp breath. He pricked his ears, listening for any indication from the cabin that the outlaws had heard him.

  “Damn fool.” Spurr reached through his coat and into his shirt pocket for his pouch of nitro tablets. He shook one into his hand, popped it into his mouth, and rolled it beneath his tongue. “Should have gotten out of this work five years ago, when you still had enough health left to enjoy yourself with the senoritas down in Mexico. Shit, them girls get one look at your old sack of bones now, they’re liable to die laughin’!”

  He returned the pouch to his shirt pocket, heaved himself to his feet, his knees and ankles popping like an old wooden chair, and set off once more, heading in the general direction of the cabin.

  He didn’t have much time. Keneally was likely to start pumping Drago full of lead at any second. Spurr didn’t know why that mattered to him, but it did.

  At the far side of the smithy shop, he cast another glance toward the cabin. No one was outside. The front door was closed. Lamps had been lit. The glow washed through the front windows.

  Shouting rose from inside. Spurr could hear Keneally’s voice drowning out Drago’s.

  Spurr ran out from behind the privy. He covered the twenty feet at a crouch, breaths rasping in and out of his lungs, cold sweat drenching him. He ducked down behind the windmill’s stone stock tank, surveyed the cabin once more, and then ran from the stock tank to the cabin’s north wall.

  “Please, don’t hurt him!” Drago’s daughter said inside. “He did a foolish thing but he only did it to help me an’ my family!” She sobbed that last, her voice breaking and quaking.

  There was a grunt and a thump as a body hit the floor.

  Spurr’s old heart chugged. Cold sweat dribbled down his cheeks, drenching his beard. Strands of his grizzled hair hung
in his face. He raked it away from his eyes and sidled up to a window. A curtain had been pulled over the glass, but it was thin enough that Spurr could see inside.

  Drago was on his knees. Keneally and the other three men stood around him. One was just then drawing his leg back from a kick. Seeing that bit into Spurr like a war hatchet, fueling his rage.

  They were going to kick the old man to death in front of his daughter, who sat on the floor near the kitchen table, hands on her swollen stomach, her back against a ceiling post. Her lips were bleeding. Another man whom Spurr assumed was Sonja’s husband lay beside her on the floor. He lay on his side, unmoving. Blood shone brightly behind his left ear, matting the hair at the back of his head.

  “Well, that’ll be enough o’ that,” Spurr groused as he ducked under the window and ran toward the back of the cabin. He hoped there was a back door. The outlaws were so close to the front that they’d likely hear him if he mounted the porch.

  “Think you can steal from us and get away with it?” one of the tough nuts was shouting furiously.

  There was another sharp grunt and a groan as a boot hit its mark.

  The woman screamed, “Stop!”

  Spurr turned the cabin’s rear corner and was relieved to see that there was a back door. Now, if only it wasn’t locked. He stopped in the bald depression fronting the door, where a slender trail led off to both a privy and a woodshed. The door had a string latch, and the string was on the outside, thank god.

  Spurr gently tripped it. The latching bolt sprung free and the door hiccupped as it jerked toward Spurr, scraping lightly against the jamb. Slowly, biting his lower lip, Spurr swung the door half open. Ahead lay a dim hall that stretched for fifteen feet between curtained doorways before opening into what must have been the main part of the cabin, because there was light in it. Spurr could hear sharp, loud voices and the woman’s sobs.

  Drago was groaning. He sounded like a heifer in labor. They were beating him up pretty good.