Day of the Wolf

by Charles G. West

  “Much obliged,” he replied. “I wasn’t countin’ on gettin’ fed. I reckon I oughta apologize for not leavin’ the deer meat I brought you, but me and Rose ate it up.”

  “It was a good thing we had it,” Rose said. “We’d have both starved if we’d had to count on me to do the hunting.”

  “She took care of me, and I don’t reckon I’ve thanked her enough for that,” Wolf said in an attempt to express his appreciation for Rose’s sacrifice. He was about to say more when he was interrupted by a knock on the door. Without having to think about it, he picked up his rifle from the floor.

  “Who is it?” Lorena asked.

  “It’s me, Marvin,” came the answer. “Open the door.”

  Lorena got up from the table and went to the door. “Whaddaya want?” she asked as Marvin stepped inside.

  His eyes reflected the displeasure he felt upon seeing the gathering in Lorena’s room. “I saw the horses tied up behind the building, and I was wonderin’ if you had some early visitors,” he said. He didn’t have to express the disappointment he felt when he found out who they were. He stood there a few moments, trying to decide whether to risk triggering the violence he had witnessed before in the man called Wolf by asking him to leave. One violent shooting was enough in his saloon. He didn’t relish the possibility of another, and Wolf seemed to be the kind that attracted trouble.

  “Don’t worry,” Wolf said, reading the obvious message in the man’s face. “I’m fixin’ to leave right now. I just had to bring Rose back.”

  The worried frown on Marvin’s face relaxed in relief. “You know best,” he said, then backed toward the door. “I’ll get back to the saloon, then. I was just stoppin’ by to see if Lorena was comin’ in this mornin’.”

  “I’ll be in directly,” Lorena said as she closed the door behind him. “Like I do every damn mornin’,” she said to those left in the room. “I swear, it’s gettin’ to where he can’t get started in the mornin’s without me there to help him.” She didn’t feel it necessary to admit that her assistance in operating Marvin’s business was by design. She hadn’t even told Billie Jean of her plans to work her way into a partnership with Marvin, the result being to eventually take over the saloon entirely. She had to think about the future, and she did not have to be told that her body, the only asset at present for her support, was already approaching retirement. Her original plans to be the first of her profession to establish herself in Deadwood had not been entirely successful. Already she found herself behind in that endeavor with madames like Dora DuFran and Mollie Johnson enjoying unlimited success. But Lorena knew that the demand for women in the towns along the gulch was great enough for all competition. Her plans might take a little longer, but she was confident that she could manipulate Marvin Sloan into a partnership to her liking.

  Wolf got to his feet, drained the last swallow of coffee from his cup, and placed it on the table. “I best get in the saddle,” he announced. “Much obliged,” he said to Lorena. After a nod to Billie Jean, he turned to Rose. “I ain’t got words good enough to thank you for takin’ care of me.”

  She avoided meeting his gaze. “It wasn’t much trouble,” she said. “No more than I would have done for anybody.” She stepped deliberately away from him then as if to let him pass.

  Only Lorena saw her gesture as symbolic in releasing him from her heart. It might take a little time before she got over this disappointment, Lorena thought. But every whore Lorena ever knew was scarred from some disappointment in her life. After a while Rose would change her mind about getting out of the profession, and be back to work. What choice did she have? In the meantime, I’ll take care of her until she returns to pull her weight. Then her practical mind came back to remind her. She’s got a lot of good years left in that young body.

  Outside, Wolf slipped his rifle back in the saddle sling, then took a few moments to check his horses. He remembered to say a few words to Brownie, since the gelding no longer had Ned to speak to him. The thought filled him with a moment of regret. He hadn’t thought about the big deputy marshal for a while. Too bad, he thought. Ned might have been a good friend. He untied the bay’s reins and said, “Well, your load’s gonna be a little lighter without Rose behind the saddle.” He pictured the slender girl then, and added, “But not a helluva lot.” He patted the horse’s neck for a few moments before stepping up in the saddle, wincing a little when the motion caused a stinging sensation in his side. He glanced down to make sure the minor pain was not a signal that something had torn loose and made it bleed again. When he found no evidence of it, he swung the horses away from the corner of the building where they had been tied. He was in a melancholy mood, and he couldn’t explain why. Shaking his head in an attempt to rid it of meaningless thoughts, he nudged the bay and started back on the trail he had just ridden in on. Behind him, in the saloon, Marvin glanced up from behind the bar when a couple of early customers walked in the front door.

  Too startled to speak, Marvin stared wide-eyed at the two rough-looking men walking toward the counter. He had truly hoped that he would never see them again. Hearing the door to the back hallway open, he glanced briefly in that direction to see Lorena standing in the doorway, frozen speechless as well. His next thought was to hope that Wolf had gone. “Good mornin’,” he heard himself say, when he finally found his voice. “What can I get for you gentlemen?”

  “You know who we’re lookin’ for,” Buck growled, then turned and pointed in Lorena’s direction. Wiggling his index finger, he summoned her to him. “Best check them back rooms, Skinner, see if they’ve got any company.”

  It took a moment for Lorena to recover her usual bravado, but she did as she was told, stepping aside as Skinner brushed rudely past her. “He ain’t here,” she told Buck as she walked up to face him. “You oughta know he ain’t. You took off after him when he left here. Hell, we need to ask you where he is.”

  “You know, that mouth of yours is liable to get your face busted up,” Buck threatened. He was about to say more when Skinner called out from the back door.

  “Lookee here what I found,” he announced, herding Billie Jean and Rose into the saloon ahead of him.

  “Well, now,” Buck crowed smugly. “All three of them whores is here. There weren’t but two of ’em here that night, ’cause one of ’em went with him—that little young one, I bet, ’cause I ain’t ever seen her before. You ever seen her before, Skinner?”

  “Nope,” Skinner replied.

  “So that looks to me like that murderin’ bastard came back here,” Buck went on. “And that means you all have been lyin’ about it.” He pulled his pistol and stuck it in Marvin’s face. “And I don’t like bein’ lied to.” Terrified, Marvin clutched the bar to keep from collapsing.

  “He ain’t got nothin’ to do with the man you’re lookin’ for,” Lorena insisted angrily. “He doesn’t know where Wolf is.”

  Buck cocked his head to gaze at her. A smug smile spread slowly across his rough features. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he don’t know where Wolf is. I’m askin’ the wrong person. Bring that one over here, Skinner.” He pointed to Rose. Skinner grabbed her by the back of her neck and pushed her over to face Buck. Buck took hold of her throat and pulled her up close against him. “Now, here’s the way we’re gonna play this game,” he said, glaring deeply into her terrified eyes. “I ain’t gonna ask you but once, and you’re gonna tell me where your boyfriend, Wolf, is. ’Cause if you don’t, I’m gonna put a bullet right between your eyes. And then I’m gonna ask the same question to the next one, and the next one, till somebody tells me what I need to know.” He clamped down hard on Rose’s throat. “Now, what about it, missy? Is he worth dyin’ for?”

  “You lookin’ for me?”

  The voice came from the front door of the saloon and startled everyone. Buck reacted quickly, shoving Rose out of the way and swinging his .44 around to aim at Wolf, but his pistol fell from his hand to clatter loudly against the floor. Then he dropped to the flo
or beside it, an ugly hole in the side of his head. Skinner managed to fire once, but not before Wolf ducked behind the door frame, where he dropped to one knee, swung his rifle around the frame, and fired a second shot. This one, because of his haste to fire, was not a killing shot, only hitting Skinner in the lower leg, but it was enough to cause him to panic, and he dived back through the doorway into the hall. He attempted to peek around the door to take another shot at Wolf, but the angry avenger was now walking across the barroom floor toward him, firing one shot after another as fast as he could pull the trigger and chamber another round. The one-man volley was tearing the door and its frame to pieces as chunks of wood flew in every direction. Fearing his life was about to end, Skinner scrambled to his feet and ran for the door at the end of the hallway, ignoring the bullet wound in his lower leg. Wolf reached the hallway in time to see the frantic outlaw as he neared the outside door. He raised his Winchester with time to place the front sight squarely between Skinner’s shoulder blades and pulled the trigger, only to hear the metallic click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber. A second later Skinner was gone. Wolf started to give chase, anxious to end his war with the Dawson brothers, but he felt compelled to make sure Rose and the others were all right and no one had been hit by a stray bullet. He could not explain what had caused him to return to the saloon: instinct, gut reaction, or something else. He just knew that he had felt that something was wrong. Whatever the reason, it had been a critical decision.

  Reloading the magazine in his rifle as he went back into the saloon, he looked at Rose first. She was shaken, sitting on the floor by the bar where she had fallen when Buck had shoved her, but otherwise appeared to be unharmed. Marvin, his face still ashen with fright, exclaimed, “Somebody go find the sheriff!”

  “What for?” Lorena responded. “He won’t come.” A sheriff had recently been appointed by a committee of business owners in the gulch, but fighting and shootings went pretty much unpunished in the wild boomtown.

  His rifle fully loaded again, Wolf looked around the room once more before declaring, “I reckon everybody’s all right. I’ll be going after the other one.” He turned and went out the door. Rose scrambled to her feet and ran to the door to watch him leave. He untied Brownie’s lead rope from his saddle and retied it on the hitching post, then turned to a wide-eyed miner who was one of a dozen spectators drawn to the sound of the gunshots. “A man just rode outta here—” Wolf started to ask.

  That was as far as he got before the man blurted excitedly, “That way! Ridin’ hell-for-leather!”

  All thoughts of a tender wound in his side gone from his mind, Wolf jumped aboard the bay and was off at a gallop down the narrow street toward the north end of the gulch. Rose turned back to find Lorena watching her. “He’ll be coming back,” Rose told her, a hopeful look upon her face. “He left his packhorse here.”

  Lorena did not comment, but to herself she thought, She ain’t learned her lesson yet. She shook her head sadly and went to help Marvin clean up another puddle of blood. “Tell that undertaker it might be to his advantage to have an office here.”

  Marvin didn’t appreciate the joke.

  It was not difficult to follow Skinner’s wild flight down the middle of the busy street, for the people were still parted after their attempts to avoid being run over or, in the case of wagons, a head-on collision. Near the end of the street, the parting of the crowd ended, causing Wolf to pull back on the reins and scan the alleys between the buildings. Then a lone horseman climbing up the side of the mountain caught his eye, just as he disappeared into a stand of pines near the top. Wolf swung the bay’s head toward the mountain and was immediately off again, his horse laboring up the steep slope.

  Confident that the bay could match the horse Skinner rode, Wolf encouraged him on until reaching the pine belt near the top of the mountain. Then judging from the condition of the gelding, he figured that Skinner’s horse would be no better off, and Skinner would be forced to rest it or face the possibility of being on foot. That increased the high possibility that Skinner had positioned himself for an ambush, so Wolf dismounted and left his horse behind while he continued on foot.

  By God, Skinner told himself, in an attempt to bolster his courage, let him come on. He was aware that Wolf was close on his trail. He had seen him take to the hill behind him, so he had whipped his horse mercilessly until coming to a narrow ravine that led to the crown of the mountain. It was deep enough to hide him and his horse, so he hurriedly dismounted and left the horse to stand with its head drooping, trying to recover its wind. Skinner, his rifle loaded and cocked, his left boot filled with blood from the slug that had torn through his calf, burrowed into the side of the ravine and waited for the man chasing him. While he waited, lying flat against the hard ground, he thought of the image of his brother’s head as it was suddenly slammed to one side with the impact of the rifle slug. He could not rid his mind of that horrible image as he stared back along the path he had taken to the ravine. It was combined with frequent flashes of the determined countenance of the hunter stalking him now. He had killed Buck! And that was something Skinner had thought could never happen, and it was a crushing blow to his confidence. Always before, no one had stood up to the Dawsons, especially Buck, and he thought again about running but knew that his horse was spent. These thoughts were causing havoc in Skinner’s brain, and he tried to calm himself. He ain’t nothing but a man. He ain’t no spirit. He just got lucky with that shot that killed Buck, and he’s got to come up through those trees to get me. And when he does, he’s a dead man. His attempted reasoning did little to steady nerves already frayed with fear.

  With his eyes riveted on the pines below him, he shifted his rifle to his other hand and wiped the sweat from his palm on his trouser leg, quickly returning the weapon to a ready position to fire. Minutes passed with no sign of his pursuer. He should have been there by this time. Where the hell is he? he thought, and turned his head to one side and then the other, scanning a wide swath of the forest before him. There was nothing. The forest seemed to have gone deathly silent. Still he waited. Finally he had to assume that Wolf had broken off the chase for some reason. He had gotten away! Time to get the hell out of this place, he told himself, and turned to hurry back to his horse. He didn’t see him right away, and he had taken half a dozen steps toward the bottom of the ravine when he suddenly discovered the pitiless form standing on the opposite side of the ravine, patiently awaiting him. In his panic, Skinner dropped his rifle when he tried to raise it to shoot, and watched in horror as it slid down the gravel side of the gully. He cried out his terror until silenced forever by the rifle slug that struck his chest.

  It was over then. Wolf ejected the spent cartridge, chambered another, and took careful aim before making sure the man was dead with one more shot. Suddenly he was overcome with a feeling of weariness, as if his body had released all the tension built up during the heat of battle. Standing now, gazing down at the body of one who had come to kill him, he took a moment to consider the rage with which he had attacked the two brothers. Unlike the coolness typical of his actions in times of combat, his passion for vengeance had increased when going after Ned Bull’s killer. Ned was his friend. The passion he felt to kill Buck and Skinner must have been created by the threat to Rose’s life, and the rage that he had felt was another result. These thoughts were troublesome, and he decided it best to clear his mind of them.

  A twinge of pain in his side reminded him that he was still not totally healed, but now that the threat to his life was over, he could take more time to recover. He made his way down to the bottom of the ravine to strip Skinner’s body of weapons and ammunition, then took his horse’s reins and led the weary animal back down through the pines to the place where he had left the bay. Like his brother Buck, Skinner had carried a ’73 model Winchester. It would be worth a great deal in trade.

  After a leisurely ride back to Marvin Sloan’s saloon, Wolf dismounted and tied the horses beside Brownie at th
e hitching rail. Although it was still early in the day, there was a noisy crowd inside, generated by the shooting that morning. About to enter the saloon, Wolf paused, then stepped back when the undertaker and his helper came through the door carrying Buck Dawson’s body. “I reckon we’ll plant him beside that other fellow that got shot here,” Wolf heard the undertaker say to his assistant. “Somebody said they were brothers.” The assistant replied, “The two of ’em might turn the soil sour.”

  Inside, Marvin appeared to be selling a lot at the bar. Gunfights must be good for business, Wolf thought. He glanced around the room, looking for the women, and spotted Lorena standing over a table of four miners. A second later, he heard Billie Jean’s raucous laugh from a table in the back, but there was no sign of Rose, and the thought entered his mind that she might be entertaining a customer in her room. It’s no concern of mine, he told himself, and walked over to the end of the bar. Two men who were standing there took one look and moved away to give him room. Their movement happened to catch Lorena’s eye, and she came to join him.

  “You came back,” she announced, primarily to herself. “Did you catch up with the other one?” she then asked.

  “Yep,” he answered.

  “And I reckon he’s dead,” she said.

  “He is,” Wolf replied.

  “What are you gonna do now? Off in the mountains to your camp, I reckon.”

  “Maybe, I don’t know,” he answered honestly, for his mind was a little mixed with emotions he wasn’t sure of.

  It was an unusual answer coming from the man she had come to know. He always knew what he was going to do. She watched him closely for a few moments, noticing his gaze constantly sweeping the crowded room. “She’s in her room,” she said, studying his reaction. When the look in his eye confirmed her speculation, she added, “Alone.” Still watching his eyes, she suggested, “Why don’t you go see her? I know she’ll be glad to know that this whole terrible mess is over with.”