The Old Wolves (20 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

Gaining his feet and shoving the cork down into the whiskey bottle, Spurr shuttled his glance between Cochise and the trail. “The girl's right, Boomer. That hoss don't start at forest sprites.”

“Ah, shit, I was just gettin' comfortable,” Drago said as Greta helped haul the old outlaw to his feet.

Spurr walked over to Cochise and draped the spare saddlebags over his own pair behind his bedroll. Quickly, he and the others tightened their latigos and shoved the bridle bits through their horses' teeth.

Spurr racked a round into the chamber of his “new” carbine, all the while staring nervously back along the creek.

While Greta and Drago continued to ready their own mounts, Spurr walked out toward the creek, leading Cochise by his reins. When he was halfway between the cabin and the trees, he stopped. His heart hiccupped when he saw a single rider trotting toward him along the game trail, holding a rifle across his saddlebows. The man's head was turned to his left. When he turned it forward, staring toward Spurr, he drew back on his horse's reins, stopping the mount in the trail.

Facing Spurr, he kept his rifle resting across his saddle.

Spurr said out of the side of his mouth, “Come on, Boomer. You rode a horse before—let's pull foot.”

Drago said, “I just got one more stirrup to adjust. Leave it to me to pick out the hoss of the shortest rider of the three!”

“Pick out another one,” Spurr said through his teeth as he continued to have a stare down with the rider, who sat his horse about seventy yards north along the creek.

“I like this one,” Drago said, then lifted his chin to stare over the saddle of the speckled barb he'd picked out. He winced. “That's Avrial Farmer—no-account from Tennessee.”

“I didn't know there was any accountin' for anyone in Tennessee,” Spurr said as he wrapped his reins around his saddle horn and then poked his left boot through his right stirrup.

“Christ, you two oughta throw a tea party!” Greta complained, already astraddle her mare.

“It's age,” Spurr said. “We realize we soon ain't gonna have no one to talk to in our cold graves, so we gotta get it out now. Why don't you boot Betsy on up the trail, Greta? We're gonna have to find some high ground to fort up on . . . if this Avrial Farmer ain't alone, that is. If he is—shit, I might just go ahead and shoot him right now from here.”

Spurr had just started to raise his carbine when Farmer snapped his own rifle to his shoulder. Farmer got off the first shot though Spurr's was only an eye blink behind.

His bullet plumed dust over Farmer's left shoulder while Farmer's plumed dust over Spurr's right shoulder. Spurr pumped a fresh bullet into the carbine's breech. His heart hiccupped again when two more riders galloped around a bend behind Farmer.

They were followed by two more. And then three more, as far as Spurr could tell, which meant the others were likely close, as well—just out of sight. He had to believe the whole gang was here . . .

Spurr and Farmer each exchanged another wild round apiece and then Drago was ramming his boots into his barb's flanks and shouting, “Come on, Spurr—stop playin' with yourself and lets kick up some dust! We can't make a stand out here in the open!”

Spurr snapped off one more shot, holding Farmer and the other riders back, and then turned Cochise south. Greta was galloping off ahead with Boomer not far behind her, riding crouched low in the saddle, his thin, dark brown hair blowing around the bald top of his head. Spurr kicked Cochise after them, casting another look back to see Farmer and the others now cutting out after him.

Shouts rose from behind. Then guns popped and cracked above the thudding of the outlaws' galloping horses.

Slugs plunked into the trail behind Spurr and to each side, one shaving a small branch from an aspen tree on his right. Spurr shoved his Winchester into its scabbard, slid his Starr from its holster, and snapped off a shot behind him. He snapped off another and then one more and was glad to see that his return fire slowed the trail wolves if only slightly.

He and Greta and Drago tore on up the trail, past where the creek curved to the right and into another canyon. Spurr looked around desperately for high ground they could reach and try to hold before they all got perforated by the gang's screeching bullets.

Just ahead of Spurr, Boomer jerked back on his horse's reins and flung his right arm out. “Canyon this way—we might be able to lose 'em in there!”

Reining Cochise to a halt while Greta stopped her own mount just ahead of both men, Spurr said, “I don't think there's gonna be any losin' this bunch, but I got no better idea!”

“Ha-
yahhh
!” Boomer cried, ramming his heels into his barb's loins and shooting up the trail angling off to the right of the main one they were on.

Spurr waited until Greta had passed in front of him, and then he flung two more .44 rounds toward the outlaws just now galloping around a bend in the trail behind. Holstering the Starr, he booted Cochise into a gallop up the narrow canyon trace.

The trace was hemmed in on both sides by heavy shrubs. It twisted and turned and then rose and fell over a low divide, and then they were heading through a gorge dark and fragrant with spruces and balsams. They rose up and over another divide, and then the trail grew wider and the trees gave way to steep, weathered, rocky ridges rising on the right and left.

Suddenly, Drago reined his barb in so quickly that Greta nearly ran her paint into him. The old outlaw cursed shrilly. Spurr saw why.

The trail through here had been entombed under a rockslide. Boulders, rocks, and broken pines like giant matchsticks formed a hundred foot dam across the trail. Only a mountain lion could get across that ridge, and such a climb would take some doing even for a wildcat.

“Great idea, Boomer!” Spurr bellowed, as mad at the fates as at his old nemesis. “Got any others?”

He and Drago looked around. The ridge to their left was sheer rock for two thousand feet above the gorge. The one on their right was gentler but it rose to a line of trees and rock that appeared to have tumbled from the ridge crest above maybe at the same time the canyon trail had been blocked.

Beyond the trees was another broad boulder field rising more steeply to the high, gray ridge top.

Guns cracked on the trio's back trail. Spurr whipped a look behind. Keneally's men were hammering over the last saddle, galloping toward him, shooting and shouting, horse hooves clacking on the stony trail.

“Up there's our only choice!” Spurr shouted. “Come on, Greta—let's go!”

Spurr put Cochise up the northern slope.

The first part was steep and the horse had to take lunging strides, almost unseating Spurr, who was trying to keep an eye on Keneally's men, who were now opening up on him, Greta, and Drago in earnest. Greta's paint leapt up the ridge to Spurr's left. Drago's barb leapt up on Spurr's right side, Boomer groaning and clamping his left hand to his upper right arm.

“Sons o' bitches!”
he carped, jerking an angry look back at his old gang.

“Keep movin', Boomer!”

“What the hell you think I'm
doin'
?” Drago shouted back, grinding his heels into his barb's flanks.

They climbed the ridge around the rocks and stunt cedars, boulders, and the trees that the boulders had mowed over when the rocks had tumbled down from the ridge. Bullets sang and danced through the air around them, pluming dust and blowing doggets of rock shards from boulders and bark and wood slivers from the trees that slanted amongst the rubble.

Greta grunted and shook her head wildly as a bullet curled the air too close to her right ear, and then her horse gave a shrill cry and lunged forward and sideways, falling hard.

“Spurr!” the girl screamed as she tumbled out of her saddle.

“Greta!”
Spurr jerked back on Cochise's reins and leapt out of his own saddle as three bullets kicked up dust and rocks around his boots and around Cochise's dancing hooves.

Spurr grabbed his canteen and his Winchester from the horse's scabbard before Cochise ran on up the slope, wending its way amongst the boulders and screaming at the shooters flinging lead at him from below.

Spurr glanced toward Greta, who had fallen beyond her horse that appeared to have taken a bullet through its lungs.

Spurr dropped to a knee and triggered several rounds at Keneally's men, who were leaping off their horses' backs and shooting from the canyon floor. Spurr's shots sent them all diving for cover. The old lawman lowered his rifle and ran toward where Greta was climbing heavily to her feet, the heels of her hands bloody, her denims dusty and torn.

“You all right?”

Before she could answer, Spurr grabbed her wrist and began jerking her along behind him as he headed on up the ridge through the boulders, some of which were as large as wagons. A few were larger than cabins, offering the best cover.

“You got her, Spurr?” Drago called as he triggered lead back down the slope at his old gang.

“I got her!” Spurr paused to drill a Winchester round through the head of Greta's wounded paint, putting the mare out of her misery.

Spurr then led the girl around one of the largest boulders and continued on behind it and up the slope. His old heart was chugging madly and his chest felt like someone had slammed a horseshoe against his breastbone. But he kept moving his legs, knowing they had to get higher on the ridge. They had to gain the highest ground possible. Outnumbered as badly as they were, with the whole gang back there, it was their only chance.

As he moved through the jumble of fallen and standing trees and smaller boulders, holding his Winchester in one hand, the girl's hand in the other, Spurr noted a sudden drop off in the shooting. That meant at least for now the gang below didn't have Spurr's party in its sights. They were back down behind the larger boulders.

Boomer came around a boulder to Spurr's right, wearing two pistols on his waist and holding Sanchez's rifle in his hands. His canteen was slung over his neck and shoulder. He, too, was breathing hard and sweating, his thin hair pasted to his forehead.

“We're gettin' too old for this shit, pardner,” Drago said as they moved as quickly as they could up through the trees and the rocks.

Spurr swallowed hard, shook his head. “I told you we ain't partners.”

“We sure been through a lot not to call each other partners!”

“I'm with Boomer,” Greta said, breathless, walking on her own now and casting wary looks behind. “I think you'd best resign yourself to the fact that you two have thrown in together, Spurr.”

“You two keep movin',” Spurr said, ignoring them both. “I'm gonna fetch my saddlebags.”

Cochise was standing between the trees and the steep slope climbing to the gray ridge, eyeing its rider skeptically. Spurr ran up and grabbed his saddlebags off the horse's back and then wrapped his reins around the roan's saddle horn. “Hightail it, now, Cochise. Go find cover!”

Spurr slapped the horse's rump, and the horse lunged off to the right along the edge of the trees.

As Spurr caught up to Greta and Drago now climbing the steep slope hard, guns began cracking behind them once more. Bullets spanged off rocks with ear-rattling whines. Spurr dug his moccasins into the steep slope, keeping his tired legs moving, breathing so hard that he could taste copper in his mouth.

His feet were raw and sweat-soaked in his boots. His throat was tight and dry. His breaths sounded like unoiled door hinges.

As they continued climbing into the large boulders, both Spurr and Drago stopped occasionally to forestall the outlaws with a few wild shots. Keneally's men kept coming, however, weaving around boulders and triggering lead.

Ahead and above, the ridge crest was like a heavy brow. There was no way that Spurr's party could climb it.

It appeared to the old lawman that there was a cave at the base of that brow, however—one with plenty of clear, steeply sloping ground around it. If they could gain the cave, they could hold the outlaws off—at least until they themselves ran out of ammunition, which, at the rate they were snapping caps, probably wouldn't be long.

TWENTY-FIVE

Spurr shouldered up to a wagon-sized boulder, turning to the downslope. Greta was ahead of him, climbing crouched forward and using her hands. Boomer was behind, face shiny with dripping sweat. He was breathing with his mouth open, his eye wide and sharp with agony. His lungs wheezed like a bellows.

“Keep goin', Boomer. Head to that cave yonder. I'll cover you.”

Boomer staggered past him, lower jaw hanging, only nodding once in acknowledgment.

Spurr raised the carbine. The gun was unfamiliar, making him yearn harder for his own '66 Winchester, but he drew a bead on one of the outlaws just now coming around a boulder, crouched over the rifle in his hands.

The man was broad-shouldered, with a head like a big rock. He wore a full blond beard beneath a black opera hat, and his green eyes were pinched to enraged slits. The man stopped, crouched over his own rifle, and looked up the slope toward Spurr, his breath frosting the bright air around his head and the collar of his dark blue coat.

Spurr squeezed the carbine's trigger. The damn rifle strayed left or he would have drilled Keneally between his two green eyes. Instead, the bullet crashed into the boulder to the man's right, and the outlaw leader jerked back behind the boulder and out of sight.

Spurr took aim at two other outlaws, both of whom had seen him and were diving for cover, and triggered three quick shots. As he ejected a spent round, he stepped back behind a boulder and, seating a fresh round in the carbine's chamber, glanced up the slope toward the cave, which Greta had reached. She knelt on the lip outside the ragged-edged, black, egg-shaped opening that appeared about ten feet wide at the bottom and maybe six feet high at its apex, and was reaching down to help Drago up the last few steps.

Spurr edged a look out from behind his own covering boulder but jerked it back as he saw smoke plume from over the top of a rock about thirty yards downslope and left.

The slug hammered the boulder a few inches above his head and set his ears to ringing as he aimed and triggered the carbine, and blew the top of the shooter's head and hat off. The man was dead instantly, flying back down the slope, his hat bouncing along the ground ahead of him. It flew a half-dozen yards before the wind caught it and swept it even farther down toward the canyon floor.

Several of Keneally's men shouted.

Spurr grinned despite the hammering of his heart and the straining of his lungs. Behind him, guns popped and cracked, and Greta shouted, “Come on, Spurr—we got you covered!”

“What the hell you waitin' on—
Christmas
?” Boomer bellowed as, cheeked up against Sanchez's Winchester, he fired downslope at the angrily shouting renegades.

Spurr looked at the sharp rise of ground—a fifty-foot stretch—between him and the ledge. He felt as though he'd been beaten about the head and shoulders by a madman wielding an axe handle, but he drew a deep breath, pushed off the boulder, and lunged toward the cave.

He ground the heels of his moccasin boots into the gravel and heaved himself up the slope.

His left boot slipped and he dropped to a knee but bounded off the opposite heel and continued moving. His lungs now felt like a locomotive chugging uphill too fast for its own good, and low on water, but a bullet crashing into the slope to his right kept him lunging and bounding, leaning forward and willing himself toward the cave.

“Take my hand!” Greta shouted, setting her own carbine down and reaching toward Spurr.

A bullet crashed into the lip of the ledge between her and Spurr. She screamed and jerked back, startled, and Boomer fired his Winchester, evoking a yelp from one of the outlaws.

The old outlaw guffawed loudly as he racked another shell into his Winchester's chamber. “Got him, Greta. Don't you worry, hon—Boomer Drago's here!”

Spurr scrambled up the slope unassisted, crawled over the lip, and collapsed on his belly, lower legs still hanging down over the ledge. “That's supposed to make her feel
good
, Boomer?” he raked out between breaths that sounded like the raucous squawks of a red-winged blackbird piss-burned by squirrels.

Greta was sitting back against the rock wall right of the cave's mouth, her knees up, head down, rubbing her face with the heels of her hands. Her rifle lay beside her.

“You all right?” Spurr crawled up to her, back and out of sight of the shooters on the downslope, as Drago continued firing every ten seconds or so.

“Just got sand in my eyes,” Greta said. “I'm all right.”

“Come on,” Spurr said, taking the girl's hand and tugging gently.

He crawled into the cave and she followed.

As Spurr eased back against the cave's east wall, Greta rested against the west wall, a foot or so from the opening. Spurr let the saddlebags tumble down off his shoulder and stretched his legs straight out in front of him, drawing deep breaths in and out of his lungs that felt as though they'd been scoured inside and out with sandpaper.

“Christ,” he said when he was able to speak, sweat dribbling down his forehead and cheeks, making his eyes sting. He shook his head. “Oh, Christ almighty—it ain't no fun gettin' old. Used to be I could make a climb like that in half the time it just took this old bag of crippled bones.”

“Ah, quit braggin',” Boomer said, rising to all fours and crawling straight back away from the opening.

The outlaws continued to fire, but most of their slugs were merely ripping sand and gravel from the lip of the ledge or blasting the cave's ceiling at the edge of the opening.

Pressing a cheek against the cave floor, Boomer said, “I coulda made a run like that in a third the time and still had the strength to fight a wildcat with only a bowie knife.”

Spurr snorted. Boomer relaxed there on the cave floor, keeping his cheek to the ground. Spurr looked at Greta, who sat with her knees up, forearms resting on them, head hanging. Her hair obscured her face.

Spurr reached into the saddlebags, hauled out the pouch of jerky and the whiskey bottle, and, keeping out of sight from the men on the downslope, who were still triggering occasional shots, crawled over to her.

He pressed his back against the cave wall beside her and popped the cork on the bottle.

“Have you a pull o' that, girl. Do you good.”

She lifted her head, shook her hair back from her face. She looked drawn and pale behind the bruising. The cut on her lips had come open and was oozing a little blood.

“You okay?” Spurr asked. He didn't like how she looked. She appeared as drained as the two oldsters around her.

“Just tired.” She took the bottle, threw back a deep swallow, and handed the bottle back to him. “Thanks.”

She drew a breath and stared wearily down at her moccasins. “I reckon this is it, ain't it? There's no way out of this.”

Spurr looked around. The cave appeared deeper than he'd expected, but through the shadows he could see the rear wall at the base of which lay a pile of stone rubble. They were surrounded by three stone walls and seven or so outlaws no doubt packing plenty of ammunition.

Despite those steep odds, and as exhausted as he was, Spurr wasn't yet ready to give in to despair. He patted Greta's hand, and then crawled up beside Drago, who lay unmoving on the cave floor, and doffed his hat.

He brought his carbine up close against his chest as he edged a look over the lip of the ledge. He pulled his head back behind the lip when he saw a gunman bear down on him from behind the boulder Spurr himself had used for cover only a few minutes ago.

The slug tore into the lip of the ledge, spraying Spurr, Drago, and Greta with sand and gravel.

Silence.

Dust sifted. Greta coughed and shook her head, her tangled blond hair jouncing on her shoulders.

“Might as well come on outta there, Spurr!” Keneally shouted from the downslope. “You got nowhere to go! If Drago tells us where he hid the loot, we'll let you an' the whore go!”

Spurr kept his head low as he shouted, “Well, you're just a kindhearted feller, Keneally. The only problem is this: I ain't goin' anywhere until I kill every last one of you low-down, dirty, girl-abusin' sons o' bitches!”

He rose up on his knees and snapped a shot down the slope a half second after Keneally had pulled his big, blond head back behind a boulder. Spurr's slug tore into the side of the boulder where the killer's head had been a moment before.

Spurr ducked his head again and arched an appreciative brow at the carbine in his hands. “Damn, I'm startin' to get the hang of this little devil.”

“Spurr?”

He turned to Greta. She was staring down at Drago, who lay as he had before, cheek turned to the floor of the cave. He lay flat on his belly, Sanchez's rifle by his side.

Greta glanced fearfully at Spurr before lowering her eyes again to Drago. The old man's fur coat ruffled in the cool breeze funneling up the slope and into the cave. Half of Drago was in the crisp autumn sunshine, the other half in the heavy purple shadows of the cave.

Spurr said, “Boomer?”

“He hasn't moved since he lay down there,” Greta said, tonelessly.

Spurr nudged the old outlaw's shoulder with the back of his left hand. “Hey, Boomer, ain't no time for a nap.”

Drago didn't move. Spurr stared at his back, which did not appear to be rising and falling as he breathed.

“Goddamnit, you old bastard—don't tell me you got us into this mess and slipped out the back door. If that wouldn't be just like you!” Spurr wrapped a hand around the man's shoulder and started to turn him over onto his back.
“Boomer!”

Drago jerked his head up and snapped his eyes open.

“What is it?” he cried, bringing his rifle up and looking around wildly. “Where in hell are we? We best haul freight before that posse gets here!”

Greta sighed with relief.

“Hold on, hold on!” Spurr said. “You crazy old coot, the posse's already done got here!”

Boomer looked at Spurr as though he'd never seen him before. Then he looked at Greta, and he seemed to remember. A sheepish expression passed over his bearded face, and he blinked his lone eye.

“Ah, shit. Here I thought we was in the Nations headed for Kansas City.” He cast a cautious glance down the slope and then scuttled back against the wall beside Greta, set his rifle across his knees, and picked up the whiskey bottle. “Had a girl there, years back. Her name was Maybelline.” He popped the cork on the bottle. “Maybelline Walker.”

“Percentage gal?” Greta asked.

“Preacher's daughter.”

“Figures,” Greta said. “What happened?”

Drago took a long pull on the bottle, some of the whiskey dribbling down around the bottle lip and into the patchy beard on his chin and neck. When he lowered the bottle, he stared at it for a time, and then turned his sad eye to Greta.

“We had a place we met up at whenever I was in the country. An old stage relay station, part of the old Weston and Nash Line out of St. Louis. Anyways, I went there to take her away to marry me and give up my evil ways, and she'd been there only to leave a note. She'd done married up with the banker's boy, an' she was movin' to Denver where the boy was openin' up his own bank.”

Drago's lone eye acquired a gold sheen. A tear oozed out of its corner to drop down his cheek and roll up in the dust caking his grizzled black beard. Greta smiled sympathetically, laid her hand upon the old man's cheek.

“I think I know how this story ends,” Spurr said, lifting his head to peer carefully over the lip of the ledge and down the slope, where the outlaws had gone eerily quiet.

“How?” Greta asked, frowning.

“He robbed the parson's daughter's young husband's bank.”

Greta gasped and turned to Drago, who was snickering like a schoolboy with a frog in his pocket.

“Boomer, you didn't!”

Laughing, squeezing his eye closed, Drago shook his head. “Spurr, you know me too damn well!”

Greta's lower jaw sagged as she regarded the old man, aghast. But then, despite herself, she started laughing, as well. And then Spurr began laughing, and they were all three cutting up when a shadow leapt up from below the lip of the cave—a Stetson-hatted shadow with a rifle in his hands.

The outlaw grinned as he leveled the carbine in his hands a half second before Spurr's own Winchester thundered loudly inside the cave. Flames lapped from the barrel.

The outlaw screamed as the slug tore through his brisket, pluming dust from his ankle-length rat hair coat, and punched him back down beneath the lip of the ledge and out of sight. His big body thudded and caused a small rockslide as it rolled.

Gritting his teeth, Spurr ejected the spent brass from the Winchester's breech, heard it clink onto the cave floor beside him, and then rammed a fresh cartridge into the chamber.

“Don't worry,” Spurr growled. “I seen him comin' all along.”