The Old Wolves (10 page)

TWELVE

Spurr opened his eyes and stared up past the cocked pistol pressed against his head to the rugged, bearded face glaring down at him. The man's own eyes widened as though in shock, and he stitched his black brows together.

“You ain't Albert.”

“No, I ain't,” Spurr said, his voice raspy from sleep. “If you don't remove that gun from my face in the next second, you best go ahead and use it.”

The bearded man pulled the pistol back, tipped the barrel up, and depressed the hammer. “Sorry, amigo.” He shook his head, chuckled wryly. “I almost shot the wrong man.”

He straightened, turned away, dropped the hogleg back into its holster on his right hip, and walked away through the thick, purple morning shadows. Men snored around him, one grinding his teeth and wheezing.

Spurr rose to his elbows and stared at the man walking away from him until the man had ducked out through the tent's front pucker. Then the old lawman blinked for the first time that morning, smacked his lips, and ran a hand down his face, pinching the sleep from his eyes with thumbs and index fingers.

He shook his head, noted the gradual slowing of his heart that had commenced to beating a war drum in his chest when he'd awakened to the pistol and the glaring eyes. He chuckled, a little giddy. That had been close.

But then, this was a mining camp, really no woolier than most—he remembered hearing guns popping last night in his sleep—and mining camps didn't place much value on a man's life. There was damned little civility, which was refreshing in some ways, downright horrifying in others.

Well, time to hit the trail. The silence and solitude of the open mountains beckoned. He just hoped he could enjoy it with Boomer Drago in tow.

Spurr threw the wool blanket back and immediately noticed the steely chill in the air as he dropped his feet to the floor, which was bare ground with tufts of sage growing here and there amongst the prickly gravel. From somewhere nearby, beneath the snoring, he could hear the scratching of a rodent, probably a pocket mouse.

Spurr took his time dressing. Over the past several years, it had taken him longer and longer to wake up in the mornings and he never really came around until he'd had a mug of black coffee with a jigger or two of whiskey in it. When he'd gotten his boots on, and had donned his hat, he sat down on the cot, fished around in his saddlebags until he found his hide-covered traveling flask, and took a generous pull.

The prickly heat washed down inside him, and blossomed throughout his being, smoothing out the ratcheting in his feeble heart. He returned the flask to his saddlebags, strapped his Starr and his cartridge belt around his waist, pulling his hickory shirt tight across his slight paunch and stuffing it into his wash-worn canvas trousers.

His rifle in his right hand, saddlebags draped over his left shoulder, he made his way on out of the hotel tent to the restaurant tent, and indulged in a hearty breakfast of flapjacks, ham, and pinto beans, with a cup of a coffee and a jigger of the proprietor's expensive, rotgut whiskey. He'd save his own for the trail back down to Denver.

He'd likely need it.

With his belly padded and his ticker ticking with a relative and pleasingly noticeable lack of discomfort, he dropped coins onto the table, gathered his gear, retrieved his horse from the liveryman, and rode on over to the jail. He was pleased to see a saddled horse—a stocky bay—tied to the hitchrack fronting the stoop.

Burke was inside, building another fire in the stove while Boomer Drago berated him for the chill. Drago's breath plumed through the bars of the cell door.

“Spurr, I protest my mistreatment here in Diamond Fire. I didn't sleep a damn wink last night. This son of a bitch, the friggin'
Tooth Fairy
, done banked the fire and left. Only, he must have banked it with green wood, because it went out an hour later without ever workin' up any heat!”

Spurr closed the jailhouse door behind him.

Burke stood, slapping his hands together, and closed the stove door with a metallic clang. He turned the squeaky latch handle, and favored Spurr with a pleading look.

“Please, get him out of here—I beg you.”

“About that, Spurr,” Drago said, directing his gaze to the old lawman standing in front of the plankboard door. “I hope you had time to think it over real good. My gang will be showin' up here any time now.” He shook his one-eyed head darkly. “When they do, you sure don't wanna be here. There'll be hell to pave an' no hot pitch!”

Spurr looked at Burke. “Do you have any confirmation his gang really is headed this way, Mr. Mayor?”

Burke shook his head. “Just his word.”

Spurr chuckled. “You know what I think, Boomer? I think you're just an old wolf that your gang done kicked out of the pack. I don't think they're comin' after you at all. I think you an' me are gonna have a nice, quiet, easy ride all the way down the mountains to the railroad and on into Union Station. Nice an' quiet. Maybe we can even do some catchin' up.”

Spurr glanced at Burke. “Open the door. Let him out of there.” He removed a pair of handcuffs from his coat pocket, and tossed them to the sitting mayor of Diamond Fire. “Throw those on him.”

“Hold on, now!” Drago snarled. A red scarf was tied over the top of his ragged bowler, over his ears, knotted under his chin. “I ain't had breakfast yet. I ain't even had a cup of coffee. My old ticker don't get goin' until I've slurped down a cup o' mud!”

“Don't make me tear up, now, Boomer. It's so cold in here my eyes'll likely freeze open!” Spurr gave the dentist another impatient nod. “Get him out of there, Burke. We're burnin' daylight.”

“My pleasure!”

Burke walked over to the cell.

“Hold on!” Spurr said, unsheathing his .44 from beneath his buckskin mackinaw. He clicked the hammer back and wagged the piece at the prisoner. “Get back away from the door, Drago. Good Lord, Burke, how often you done this?”

The dentist looked sheepish as Drago grinned and, removing his hands from the strap-iron bars, backed away from the door.

While Spurr held his pistol on Drago, Burke shoved the key in the lock and swung the door wide on caterwauling hinges.

“Step out here, Drago. Let the Tooth Fairy cuff you. You make one false move, I'm gonna make this trip a whole lot easier for both of us.”

Drago's eyes glinted angrily. “You're a bad one, Spurr. I always knew it. Heart like granite, makin' a man hit the cold trail without nary a bread crumb in his teeth. No coffee.”

He shook his head as he walked slowly out through the cell's open door, holding his wrists out in front of him. He kept his hard eyes on Spurr. “When my boys catch up to us, it ain't gonna go well for you. Not well at all!”

“It'll go well enough,” Spurr said as the dentist clicked the cuffs closed around the prisoner's wrists.

Burke stepped back away from Drago. Spurr walked around behind the old outlaw and prodded him on outside with the barrel of his cocked Starr. When Spurr had Drago on his horse, Burke came out with a rifle and saddlebags.

“What about these?”

“Any weapons in the saddlebags?” Spurr asked.

“Just pots and pans.” The dentist snorted. “A couple of wanted dodgers with his own likeness on them. Several different aliases.”

Spurr glanced at Drago, who smiled and shrugged.

“You keep the rifle,” Spurr said. “Toss those saddlebags over his horse.”

“That's a prized Colt's repeating rifle, Spurr. I'd admire to have it with me till the end.”

“You can kiss my ass.”

Drago told Spurr to do something physically impossible to himself.

Spurr looked up and down the canyon. There were no humans out, just a couple of dogs sniffing around trash heaps. Smoke fluttered under the cold, gray sky, snagging on the false fronts of the buildings lining the canyon. The silence after the previous night's din was funereal.

Or did it just seem ominous to Spurr, whose nerves were drawn taut from the possibility that Drago's men might be on the lurk, possibly planting a bead on his back at this moment?

He honestly didn't know if Drago was lying about his gang being headed toward Diamond Fire. Something told him the old outlaw was not.

That would be the first non-lie for Boomer Drago.

When Burke had draped the saddlebags over Drago's horse and walked back up onto the porch, Spurr caught Drago grinning at him shrewdly. “Oh, they'll be along soon, partner. I'll guarantee you that.”

“I'm not your partner,” Spurr said with a grunt as he untied the reins of his and Drago's horses, and heaved himself into the leather. “I'm the lawman who is finally going to ride you to justice.”

Drago laughed.

Spurr pinched his hat brim at Burke, who just stared back at him, and then Spurr put Cochise east along the canyon, avoiding a dead man lying in front of a pink-painted brothel with one boarded-up window. He ground his heels into Cochise's flanks, and jerked Boomer's bay along behind him, Boomer saying, “No such thing as justice, my friend. You'll find that out soon enough, partner!”

* * *

They'd been on the long trail down the mountains for three hours, when Spurr cast another in a series of suspicious looks behind him, over Drago's left shoulder. Boomer turned to follow Spurr's gaze.

“Let me ease your nerves, partner,” Drago said. “If my boys was back there, you'd know it. They ain't the type to do any sneakin'.” He chuckled devilishly, showing his yellow, crooked teeth inside his grizzled black beard, squinting his lone brown eye.

“How many are they?” Spurr asked. “Not that I believe they're behind me, but someone's been shadowin' us for the past hour or so.”

“You sure?” Drago widened his eye in surprise and glanced behind him once more, holding his saddle horn with both his cuffed hands. “How do you know?”

“My lawman's sixth sense. How many?”

“Uh . . . let me see,” Drago said, lifting his gaze and moving his lips, counting to himself. “There's Tommy and Leo and Quiet Ed and Tio Sanchez and Sam ‘Coyote' Keneally, and. . . . Oh, I'd say an even twenty, if you count Curly Ben Williamson. You ever meet Curly Ben, Spurr? He's a gunman out of Texas. One o' them new kind with cutdown holsters and steely eyes. Scaly skin that takes no color even when he's out in the sun all day every day, all year long!”

Drago chuckled, pleased with himself. “You ever hear of him, Spurr?”

Drago knew Spurr had heard of him. Curly Ben was a big name these days in Texas and Oklahoma. Most lawmen had heard of him. What Spurr had not known was that Drago had been riding with the likes of the cold-blooded killer out of Texas.

If Drago was telling the truth, that was—something Boomer hadn't been known for even when he'd been riding on the right side of the law.

“Never heard of him. But if I see him, I'll be sure to shoot the son of a bitch on sight. Any cork-headed prissy bastard goin' around callin' himself a Nancy-boy name like Curly Ben deserves a bullet drilled through both ears and his carcass sent home to his no-account family in pieces.”

Drago guffawed. “Damn, Spurr—you got a burr in your bonnet! Hey, where we goin'?”

Spurr had reined Cochise off the right side of the trail and was splashing across a shallow creek, jerking Drago's bay along behind him. “Time to build a fire and boil some coffee. I don't know about you, Boomer, but I'm hungry.”

THIRTEEN

In truth, Spurr was tired.

The trail to Diamond Fire had taken more out of the old lawman than he'd expected. The trail hadn't gotten any easier when he'd reached Diamond Fire to discover that his prisoner was his old enemy, Boomer Drago, a man he'd been after for years and had finally given up on ever running to ground.

While he was pleased as punch to finally be bringing the man to trial, the truth was, he hadn't caught the old bastard himself. Some bounty hunter had. Spurr was just the delivery man. That took some pop out of his punch. Besides, the delivery wasn't going to be easy—not if Drago wasn't just stringing silver beads and his gang really was behind him.

Spurr was tired and his mood was sour. That seizure on the street out in front of the bank on Arapaho might have taken more out of him than he'd thought. The high altitude of the Medicine Bows wasn't doing him any good, either. His lungs felt tight. His head ached dully. He constantly felt hungry though food didn't seem to fill him up.

What he needed was some bacon, beans, biscuits, and coffee, all of which he'd lain in at a stage relay station the day before he'd reached Diamond Fire, figuring that game might run scarce near the settlement. Another couple of belts from his flask would ease the twinge in his ticker. He might even have to have one of his heart-starter pills. He'd gotten a fresh supply from his sawbones in Denver though the man had told him to go easy and warned him that taking the pills with whiskey was liable to blow him sky-high.

Spurr didn't know if the old bone cutter was serious or not. He didn't think so. He'd been washing the nitro down with his whiskey for the past two years, and he'd be damned if it didn't always put a grin on his face and for a brief time cause naked girls to dance before his eyes.

“Get down,” Spurr ordered Drago, when he'd stepped down from Cochise's back about a mile off the main trail, in a little ravine through which another creek gurgled, its water speckled with fallen autumn leaves.

Spurr couldn't see much of his back trail from here, but he kept his ears skinned for hoof thuds. He hadn't taken the time to cover his trail, but he didn't think the horses had left much of one over the country they'd traversed—mostly thin soil over shale and sandstone.

Drago hooked his cuffed hands around the saddle horn and gave a grunt as he swung his right leg over his bedroll and saddlebags. He dropped to the ground, stumbling slightly, wheezing. He fell back against the side of his bay, his cheeks red above his beard, his lone eye watery and red-rimmed.

He smiled weakly. “Christ, look at us, Spurr. A couple of old goats. We don't belong out here. We should be laid up with some fat whores and Kentucky bourbon.”

“Hell, I oughta just lay you out with a bullet in your depraved old head.” Spurr narrowed an angry eye over the barrel of his extended .44. “Make this job a whole lot easier. Why don't you make a play on me, give me the right excuse?”

“Ah, shit—what do you need an excuse for?” Drago's eye flashed fire. “It's just you an' me here, Spurr. Brackett's a long ways away. Just us and the crows. Go ahead and drill me, you cantankerous old bastard. Do it now and get it over with or finally shut the hell up about it!”

“Ah, hell.”

Spurr felt cowed. He and Drago both knew Spurr wasn't going to shoot the old outlaw in cold blood. He'd never pulled such a stunt before—he'd always given men at least half a chance to be taken in—and he had no intention of starting now, on his last assignment.

Spurr jerked his head to a small, flat-topped boulder near a lightning-topped pine. “Get over there and sit down.”

When Drago had done as he'd been told, Spurr hauled his own saddlebags off Cochise's back, dropped them near the base of the tree, fished out an old, rusty pair of ankle-irons, and slung them over to Drago. They landed at the outlaw's feet.

“Put 'em on.”

“You don't need them, Spurr.”

“Put 'em on, so I don't have to watch you like a hawk. You ain't goin' anywhere or doin' much of anything—at least, not very fast—with them ankle bracelets. Go on, they'll look purty on ye!”

Spurr chuckled.

When Drago had grudgingly closed the irons around his ankles, he sat down against the boulder, dug his makings out of a pocket of his shaggy gray wolf coat, and began rolling a smoke.

Meanwhile, Spurr unsaddled their horses, hobbling both mounts so they could drink and forage with limited freedom. Spurr gathered dry wood from the bottom of the ravine and built a small fire under the pine.

When the flames were popping and crackling, he started coffee boiling with water from the creek and got out his five-pound flitch of bacon wrapped in burlap. He sliced the pork into a cast-iron skillet, set the skillet on a rock near the flames, and then fished his burlap bag of baking powder biscuits from his saddlebags. He set those on a rock near the skillet then sat back against the pine with his whiskey flask.

“I'd take a pull from that,” Drago said.

“Sure you would.” Spurr popped the small cork on the flask, and took a pull. “Damn good stuff. But coffee will do for you.”

Again, Drago told Spurr to do something physically impossible to himself. Spurr chuckled and took another conservative sip, sloshing the liquid around to judge how much he had left. Only about half. Somewhere, he'd have to get more. He hadn't been about to buy any tarantula juice in Diamond Fire, where it would have cost him two days' pay. He had to start keeping a watchful eye on his dinero from here on in, if he didn't want to starve or freeze to death.

Spurr returned the flask to his saddlebags and began forking the bacon around in the pan that had begun hissing and crackling, juice bleeding out from the meat to glisten in the pan that had been blackened from countless fires.

The white-speckled black coffeepot was beginning to chug, steam rising from the spout.

“Spurr, I got a confession to make.”

Spurr chuckled.

“I ain't tryin' to hornswoggle you, now. I admit I was before, but not now, 'cause I see you're still tough as spikes and ornery as a Brahman bull down in the Brasada country.”

“All right, go ahead,” Spurr said, smiling indulgently as he dumped a handful of Arbuckles into the boiling coffeepot.

“My gang has no intention of turnin' me loose.”

“No, shit? Well, damn, now you've gone and surprised me, Boomer!” Spurr had cast his words in irony, but the old outlaw's confession had buoyed his spirits some. He didn't know what or what not to believe when it came to Boomer Drago, but having his back trail clear would sure take a load off his mind.

He turned away from the steaming coffeepot and the sputtering sidepork and narrowed a skeptical eye at his prisoner. “But how can I take your word on anything?”

“You can take my word on this, partner. I got no reason to lie about it. In fact, I got every reason to finally tell you the truth, since it don't look like you'll listen to reason and turn me loose.” Drago wagged his head sadly, and sighed. “Like I said, my boys ain't out to free me from you, Spurr. They're out to kill me.”

“
Kill
you?”

“Hey, you're burnin' the belly wash!” Drago said, glancing at the roaring coffeepot that was spewing black coffee and copper bubbles from its spout and lid.

Spurr grabbed a burlap swatch and removed the pot from the fire. Letting the pot cool near the two cups he'd retrieved from his saddlebags, he kept scowling skeptically at his prisoner. “Why would they wanna kill you, Drago—you bein' such a likeable cuss an' all?”

“We got crossways.”

“You don't say!”

“Yes, we did. And I have lived to regret it. I was on the run from that bunch when that bounty hunter, Kershaw, caught me with my pants down in that little whorehouse in Idaville.”

“What'd you do to piss them boys off so bad, Boomer?”

“Ah, hell—the usual stuff. You know how it is with my kind, Spurr—we're always out to double-cross each other. Well, they tried to double-cross me by givin' me a smaller percentage of a recent haul on account of I was old and they'd started delegatin' me to holdin' the horses outside the banks we robbed. They said I was no longer worth a full share. So, damnit, I went and
took
my share and rode out on 'em.”

“And that piss-burned 'em bad enough to make 'em wanna
track
you and
kill
you?”

Drago licked his lips as he stared at the coffeepot, gray smoke now curling from its spout. “Spurr, you wouldn't mind pourin' me up a cup o' that mud, would you? I swear, I've been thinkin' about a cup all mornin', and here it is after noon!”

Spurr filled both cups, handed one to Drago, who took it in both cuffed, gloved hands, staring at the smoking brew like he'd just been handed a pound of pure gold. He blew into the steam and closed his upper lip over the brim, sucking. “Damn, it's hot! But it sure tastes good. I remember you made good coffee, Spurr. One of the few things I liked about you.”

Drago laughed.

Spurr lifted his own cup to his lips and looked at the horses that were grazing contentedly along the creek a ways down the ravine. Cochise had a good sniffer as well as keen ears, and he usually announced riders a good ten, sometimes fifteen minutes before Spurr could hear or see the company coming. He was happy to see the big roan hadn't spiked his ears or arched his tail.

He didn't know what to think about Boomer's new story. He wasn't sure if it made any difference from the previous one he'd told. Whether they wanted to free Drago or kill him, Spurr was pretty much in the same tight spot. All it could change was that the gang might strike with a little more venom if it wanted to kill Drago rather than free him. They could circle around Spurr and his prisoner and spring a bushwhack without warning.

If Boomer's gang really was trailing them, that was. Or everything Drago had told Spurr was in fact nothing more than smoke fog, trying to distract Spurr from his purpose, instilling fear, and possibly looking for the old lawman to make a mistake which Drago could take advantage of and use to shake himself loose.

Spurr sipped his coffee and leaned forward to fork the bacon around in the pan. Drago was staring at him over the brim of his own smoking cup.

“If they kill me, partner, they'll sure as hell kill you, too. Bet on it.”

“I done told you to quit callin' me ‘partner,'” Spurr groused. “We haven't been partners in damn near twenty years. And I don't know what you hope to gain from all this jawbonin'. You an' me is headin' for Denver. I hope to make the Union Pacific tracks east of Camp Collins by Wednesday, and that's that.”

“You won't make it.
We
won't make it.”

Spurr was peeling the biscuits open with his thumbs.

“We're old, Spurr. Both of us. Why don't you just turn me loose? I don't have much of a chance, because they'll follow me and I know they ain't far behind. Probably within a mile or two right now, followin' our sign. I seen a couple scoutin' ahead of the others near Idaville, so they're on my scent, all right. But you got a fair chance of making it out of this thing alive. They got no truck with you. You'll live long enough to retire and frolic with fat whores till the end of your days.”

“I appreciate your concern for me, Boomer. Makes my old ticker feel warm.” Spurr folded the bacon and shoved the chunks into the biscuits he'd opened. He set two on a plate and set the plate on the ground near Drago's chained ankles. “But you an' me are gonna be tight as Siamese twins all the way back to Denver, when I turn you over to the turnkeys in the basement prison of the Federal Building.”

“Damn, that's good!” Drago said, chewing a mouthful of biscuit and sidepork. He looked up at Spurr as he chewed, narrowing a shrewd eye. “What I just told you is bond, Spurr. I just want you to know that. I ain't gonna say another word about the situation, because I can see I ain't gonna change your mind. You'll see soon enough how it lays out, and by then, I'm sorry to say, it's gonna be too late.”

Boomer took another big bite and chewed, groaning and shaking his head. “I will say this, though—you make one hell of a breakfast sandwich, partner!”