by Evans, Tabor
Longarm glanced toward where the wolf had hightailed it, then set his rifle against a fir. He leaned down over Goldie once more, inspecting the tear in the shoulder of his blanket coat through which blood oozed. “Ah, hell, he didn’t get you that bad. Quit carryin’ on; you’re embarrassin’ yourself. What kind of a hard case are you, anyways—can’t take a little nip from a puppy dog?”
“Puppy dog?” Goldie squirmed from side to side as he hoisted himself to a sitting position with his hands cuffed behind him. He jutted his enraged red face at the lawman, his gold ear spike glinting dully in the gray light. “That wasn’t no goddamn puppy dog, you idjit. That was a wolf. Possibly a fuckin’ werewolf. And you know what that means?”
“Yeah, I know—you’ll be howlin’ along with Crazy Kate at the full moon.” Longarm stood and looked around. He’d better find a place to build a fire and get the outlaw’s shoulder cleaned out and the blood stopped. The killer and rapist didn’t deserve it, but Longarm would have some explaining to do to Billy Vail if he let him die from a wolf bite before Billy and a federal judge could get his neck stretched.
“No!” Goldie intoned, his shrill voice echoing. “We can’t stay here. They might be all around us. A whole pack of ’em! And, if I remember right, tonight the moon’ll be full!”
Longarm looked around carefully. He didn’t see anything moving among the trees and rocks—only a few chickadees and nuthatches performing acrobatic feats among the branches as they pecked for grub. His not hearing anything didn’t mean much, the lawman realized.
He hadn’t heard the wolf that had swooped Goldie out of his saddle. Apprehension and befuddlement weighed heavy on him. He didn’t believe any of that gothic shit about werewolves, but these woods were obviously home to a ferocious pack of real wolves, just as he’d heard they were. It was strange for a single wolf to attack a man in the daylight, but maybe the beast was especially hungry and had seen that Goldie was defenseless, having his hands cuffed behind him.
“Demons is what these wolves around here are,” Goldie said in a low growl, as though offering an alternative explanation, looking around and gritting his teeth. He was still breathing hard, still terrified from the attack.
“Hogwash.”
“You could at least uncuff me, goddamnit!”
Longarm walked over and freed the outlaw’s wrists from the cuffs. As afraid as Goldie was of the wolves, he wasn’t going to try anything against Longarm, who slipped the key back into his coat pocket and walked off down the slope. When he’d found a good place to set up a camp for a short time, he retrieved his horses and gathered wood. Goldie gathered a few sticks halfheartedly, favoring his right side and continuing to look around as though another attack were imminent.
When Longarm had gotten a fire going and had set a pot of coffee to boil with water he’d fetched from the creek, he told Goldie to take his coat off. “I’ll see to that wound. Wouldn’t want you to die on me, an’ cheat the hangman.”
“That’s real nice of you,” Goldie said, unbuttoning his coat. “I’m so mighty pleased to hear your sympathy, lawdog. Fuckin’ bastard.”
“Goldie,” Longarm said, helping the man pull his coat off his right arm, exposing the bloody wound at the top of the arm. He was trying to settle him down, as the outlaw’s fried nerves were beginning to singe his own. “Where’d you ever get a name like Goldie? Your hair’s brown.”
“Goldspoon,” Goldie said. “Last name’s Goldspoon.”
“Oh, that’s right—I remember now.” Longarm used his pocketknife to cut the man’s bloody shirt around the wound that kept pushing up liver-colored gobs of blood, which dripped over Goldie’s shoulder and down his chest, staining his wool shirt and his vest. “From the warrant the prison sent out. Marion Goldspoon.”
“I don’t go by Marion, so I’ll thank you not use that handle.” Goldie slanted a look up the wooded mountain on the far side of the creek that ran darkly between snowy, icy banks. “It’s Goldie, plain an’ simple. How bad’s it look?”
“Shit, you’ve cut yourself worse shavin’.” It was a lie. The puncture wounds were deep and widely spaced, the top teeth having laid open the back of the man’s shoulder worse than the bottom ones had dug into the top of it. No point in telling Goldie that. Longarm was tired of the outlaw’s mewling. “I’m just gonna cauterize it, an’ you’ll be good to go.”
“Ah, shit—you’re just gonna love that, ain’t ya? Let me get all chewed up, and then burn me with a knife.”
Longarm chuckled. He cut it off when a wolf’s howl sounded from a ridge up the mountain to the north, on the far side of the trail.
Goldie stiffened. “Shit!”
Longarm scrutinized a jagged crag towering far above the tree line. The black rocks were dusted with snow, the very top of the crag fuzzed with low clouds from which snow continued to fall—large, woolly flakes falling slow. Again, the wolf howled, shrill and echoing, half-mournful, half-menacing.
“Give me my gun, Longarm.”
“No.”
“What happens if they come? Turns out you ain’t as good at protectin’ your unarmed prisoner as you claimed to be!”
“You got me there, Goldie,” Longarm said, reaching into his saddlebags and withdrawing a small burlap bag. He tossed the bag to Goldie. “You’ll find a coupla roast beef sandwiches in there. Help yourself. A saloon girl made ’em for me back in Crestone yesterday.”
Goldie raked his gaze from the towering crag that was now suddenly completely lost in the clouds, and then looked into the bag. He withdrew a small waxed paper bundle and unwrapped the sandwich. “Frozen,” he said in disgust.
“Might break a tooth, but it’ll fill your belly.” Longarm had tossed a handful of coffee into the boiling pot and was heating the blade of his Barlow knife in the leaping flames. The blade had turned black and was beginning to glow when the coffee frothed around the pot’s rim, the tan bubbles dribbling down the sides.
He set the pot on a rock away from the flames and then went over and knelt down beside Goldie, who slowly tore bits of the sandwich off with his teeth, chewing as though the cold bread and meat hurt his choppers.
He looked at the smoking blade in Longarm’s gloved hand. “Ah, shit, this ain’t my day. Wasn’t my night, neither. I was winnin’ big till you showed up and shot the hell out of the boys I was playin’ with.”
“Bite into that sandwich hard,” Longarm said. “This is gonna hurt like hell.”
Goldie cursed again then leaned back against the log behind him, braced himself, and stuck one half of the sandwich in his mouth. “Okay,” he said around the food.
Longarm pressed the blade against the front part of the wound. The skin melted like wax, and white smoke curled up from the blade, smelling like something dead. Goldie jerked and grunted, grinding his spurs into the ground. Quickly, Longarm removed the blade from the front part of the wound then laid it over the half that angled down over his shoulder, making sure the cauterizing encompassed each of the bloody puncture marks.
Goldie bit the sandwich in two, and half of it dropped to his lap as he threw his head back and groaned, continuing to rake the ground with his spurs.
Longarm lifted the blade, wrinkling his nostrils at the stench of scorched skin and blood, then reached into his saddlebags for a bottle. He popped the bottle’s cork, took a pull of the rye, then splashed a little over each cauterized area of the outlaw’s shoulder.
It was a sad waste of good whiskey, but it was all he had. By the time the smoke stopped rising from Goldie’s shoulder, the outlaw had passed out, sagging back against the log with a ragged half of sandwich clamped in his jaws.
“Ah,” Longarm said, “quiet at last.”
He took another pull from the bottle then hammered the cork back in with the heel of his hand. Setting the bottle aside, the lawman cleaned the Barlow’s blade off in the flames, wiped it with a handkerchie
f, and returned it to his pocket. He then took the other sandwich out of the burlap pouch, poured himself a cup of black, piping hot coffee, and sat back against a rock on the far side of the fire from the unconscious Goldie.
He looked around as he ate and washed the sandwich down with the coffee. There was no movement except for the dark water of the stream sliding between its banks, and the lazily falling snow, flakes of which sizzled softly on the hot rocks around the fire. The only sounds aside from the cracking flames were the occasional bits of ice cracking off the fingers protruding into the stream, or the soft thud of a branch getting pinned up against the bank.
The silence was dense, almost funereal. He glanced again toward the crag that had been decapitated by a low, heavy ceiling of goose down. Had the wolf really been standing up there?
Was there any possibility that they could be more than just . . . well . . . wolves?
Longarm pondered that for about five seconds and then, catching himself, gave a caustic snort. “Christ, I’m gettin’ as cork-headed as Goldie.”
They might be rabid, but they sure as hell weren’t haunted, though now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure which would be worse.
He finished his sandwich and washed down the final bite with the last of the coffee. He was about to toss the grounds into the fire, when he stayed the movement, lifting his head and frowning, staring downstream. The skin on his lower back began tingling as the faint yipping of a half dozen or so coyotes—or wolves—reached his ears. The gradually loudening cacophony echoed around the canyon, so that it was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from. It seemed to be coming from everywhere down canyon.
The source of the commotion seemed to be gradually growing nearer.
Beneath the yips and occasional howls, hooves thudded. The thudding, too, grew in volume and then it was coupled with men’s harried voices. Longarm looked up the slope to see riders coming along the trail, showing glimpses of themselves between the trees. They were jouncing in their saddles, leaning forward, their horses’ heads bobbing as they galloped up the slope toward Longarm’s position. The riders were all clad in furs—good quality furs, it appeared from Longarm’s vantage point.
The general’s hunting party?
The yipping continued getting louder in small increments, but judging by how the riders galloping up the trail kept casting wary looks behind them, toward the coyotes—or wolves—they believed the madly yipping creatures were chasing them.
Longarm rose and grabbed his rifle. He looked at Goldie, who must have heard the noise in his sleep. As the outlaw leaned to one side, head sagging toward the ground, he muttered and blinked and moved his lips like a dreaming dog. A dog dreaming about being chased.
Longarm walked over and kicked the man’s left boot. “Goldie, get up.” He heard the tautness in his own voice. The apprehension. If the yips were coming from wolves, there must have been at least a small pack of the creatures. And from what he’d seen of them so far, he and Goldie had best get on up the trail toward Crazy Kate.
“Goldie,” he said, louder, above the thundering of riders’ hooves on the trail above him. He turned to see the shaggy line of them galloping on upstream and upslope beyond him, none looking toward him, their attention riveted on the trail ahead or the trail behind.
Longarm’s and Goldie’s horses snorted and stomped and tugged at their reins tied to pine branches.
Longarm grabbed Goldie’s coat collar and pulled the man to his feet and held him there. Goldie stumbled around as though drunk. “Wha—what is it?”
“We’re pullin’ foot, so get your damn land legs, and get ’em fast!”
Longarm emptied his coffeepot on the steaming flames, kicked dirt, snow, and rocks on the fire, and stowed the pot in his saddlebags. As Goldie looked around, blinking and wincing against the pain of the wolf bite, Longarm brushed past him as he headed for their horses. He slung his saddlebags over the bay’s back, behind the saddle, and then slid his rifle into its scabbard.
Meanwhile, the yips and howls and occasional snarls continued to grow louder, but the wolves seemed to be hanging back for some reason. If they were giving chase, it was a slow, cautious chase. Why? Were they aware in the wolfish, cunning brains that their prey had weapons that could hurt them?
Goldie had stopped near the horses and was staring down canyon through the snowy brush and over-arching pine boughs. “Shit, that’s wolves, ain’t it? They’re comin’ fer us!”
“I don’t know who they’re comin’ for exactly, but I do know that it sounds like a few of ’em. We’d best haul our asses on up the trail.” Longarm went over and grabbed the man’s collar, giving him a hard jerk and throwing him against his horse. “Get mounted!”
He didn’t bother with the handcuffs. Goldie wasn’t going anywhere but where Longarm was heading—to the sanctuary of Crazy Kate.
Longarm swung onto the bay’s back and reined the mount up the hill through the pines. The yips and squeals were getting louder, but as he stared down the trail, the fresh snow on which had been ruffled by the passing riders, he saw nothing. There were only trees and rocks and the creek all swaddled in the grayness of the low sky and the lazily falling snow. It was almost as though the wolves, if that’s what was out there, were invisible.
Longarm half-scoffed at the thought, but the apprehension dragging cold fingers up and down his back was hard to deny. And he had no explanation for the especially brave, savage wolves he’d encountered in this canyon. Not to mention the disembodied cries he was hearing now.
“Where are they?” Goldie asked, slumped in his saddle, looking miserable, as he booted his dun onto the trail.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Longarm slid his Winchester from the saddle boot, cocked it one handed while he held the reins taut with his other hand, then set the rifle across his saddlebow. He depressed the hammer but kept his thumb on it. “Let’s ride.”
“Yeah, that’s been my point all along!”
Goldie touched spurs to his dun’s flanks and trotted the mount off Longarm’s left flank, grunting against the pain of his jouncing perch. He kept looking back over his bloody shoulder as he and the lawman followed the scuffed tracks of the hunting party.
“How come they don’t show themselves?” he asked. “They sound so damn close. But I don’t see ’em!”
“Shut up and ride!” Longarm said, feeling a little foolish as well as incredulous.
He glanced behind, as the yips seemed to be originating from only twenty, thirty yards away, but there was not a single yipper in sight. That couldn’t be. It defied logic. His lack of an explanation for the odd events offended his sense of rationality, a trait he’d always prided himself on.
What the hell was going on here?
When they crested the pass, they checked their horses down between towering walls of boulder-strewn cliffs, the cliffs’ peaks lost in the clouds. Longarm looked back down the trail threading the bottom of the canyon. It wound away until it looked little more than a white thread between the gray boulders and dark green, black-trunked pines.
Suddenly, the yipping, which had not grown any louder since they’d left the spot where they’d entered the trail, fell silent. There was no tapering off, just a sudden and total silence. It was so quiet in the wake of the shrill yipping that Longarm could hear the soft snicking sounds of the flakes landing on the snowy ground around him.
The horses stared down trail, as well, ears twitching as though they, too, were wondering what had become of the wolves. The lungs of the bay expanded and contracted testily beneath Longarm.
“Shit,” said Goldie softly, breathing as hard as Longarm’s horse. “What you suppose they’re up to?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Goldie.” Longarm reined the bay around and started down the other side of the pass, the next canyon shallower than the previous one. “Come on.”
&nbs
p; Longarm glanced back at Goldie. The outlaw sat staring into the pass they’d just left. “Don’t make me throw the cuffs on you, Goldie. Come on.”
The outlaw shook his head and turned the dun around to follow Longarm down the pass. He rode up to Longarm’s left, the snow clinging to his long, greasy, dark brown hair like lice. He looked troubled as he rode along, saying nothing until: “You think I’m one o’ them, now?”
“One of what?”
Goldie looked at Longarm sharply. “What do you mean—what? A fuckin’ werewolf!”
“I guess we’ll find out later tonight,” Longarm said, slanting a glance at the cloudy sky and continuing to ride.
Chapter 7
An hour later, Longarm and Goldie topped the next pass and stared off into another, broader canyon to the west. The clouds had parted and the sun shone through the gaps, but the snow was still falling. It looked like gold dust in the sunshine.
The creek angled away to Longarm’s left, running along the base of a high, gray cliff wall devoid of trees. The ground sloped up to the right of the trail, and on a broad shelf, hunkered at the base of the opposite cliff, sat Crazy Kate. It was a shabby collection of dun shacks that were almost indistinguishable from the boulders and thick clumps of brown brush they sat among. If you didn’t know a town lay there, you’d have to look carefully before you spotted Crazy Kate.
Up canyon to the west lay the green of more forest behind the hazy white curtain of falling snow. The smell of wood fires touched Longarm’s nostrils, bespeaking food and warmth and sanctuary from whatever in Christ’s name lay behind them.
Goldie was the first to start down the slope, riding slumped even lower in his saddle. He was eager for a cot even if that cot lay in a six- by ten-foot cell.
Longarm followed him down the gentle grade. At the bottom, the trail forked, with the main tine leading off up canyon and into forested low country, while the right tine angled up the slope through piñon and sage until it became the main street of the village once known as Little Bucharest.