The Old Wolves (16 page)

Her eyes flashing angrily, Greta removed the pan from the coals and slammed it down on a flat rock beside the fire ring. Some of the beans and bacon leapt out. She tossed her fork into the dirt and strode over to Spurr. She stood over him, glaring down at him.

“Are you going to tell me you're going to head back to Denver with your tail between your legs just because you're old and you got your nose broken? They took your prisoner, for chrissakes!”

“Greta, because of me, those men ravaged you. They could have killed you. I'm surprised they didn't!”

“They didn't kill me because they had no fear of me. They didn't kill you for the same reason. We weren't even worth a bullet to them, or the effort it would have taken to slit our throats. They didn't fear either of us. They even left our horses because they didn't figure either one of us was up to trailing them.”

“And they were right.”

“To them, you were just an old bag of bones. I was just a warm place to put their—!”

“Greta, for Lord sakes—that's enough of this! There is no way in hell I'm goin' after those firebrands, much less taking you with me to get what they done to you done all over again!”

Spurr shrunk beneath her harrowing gaze. He looked around sheepishly. Damn right he was scared. But what's more, he was smart. Finally, he knew when to call it quits.

But when he finally looked up at her again as she continued to stare down at him, he saw that her jaws were still hard, her face flushed with fury. But her eyes were filled with tears. The tears of humiliation and rage and a frustration as deep as the deepest hole anywhere on earth.

Her eyes spoke to him, reached in, and turned his heart.

Why shouldn't he go after them? Why shouldn't he take her along, if she could ride? True, he was old. But he might as well die out here on the trail of Greta's ravagers as back home on the slopes of Mount Rosalie.

She must have read the change of heart in his eyes.

Because suddenly she was smiling.

TWENTY

Something hard bounced off Boomer Drago's shoulder.

“Ouch, goddamnit!” the old outlaw intoned, lifting his head from his saddle and gritting his teeth.

“Rise an' shine, old man,” Keneally called from across the ash-mounded fire ring. “Get your rickety ass up and start breakfast. Better be tastier than last night's supper, or I'm liable to take a quirt to your double-crossin' old hide.”

Drago looked over his shoulder at the blond-bearded man sprawled beneath his blankets and lifting his head toward Drago, squinting his hard green eyes. The others, blanketed humps around Drago and the cold fire ring, were groaning or snarling at the rude awakening.

“That hurt, you bastard!” Drago lifted his cuffed hands to rub his shoulder.

“Get to work.” Keneally lay his blond, massive, lantern-jawed head back against his saddle.

“Pipe down, goddamnit—I was sound asleep!” This from Tio Sanchez, lying under an aspen on the south side of the fire, left of Sam Keneally.

Keneally picked up another rock and threw it at Sanchez. There was a dull thud. The rock must have hit its mark because Sanchez lifted his head, clapping a hand to his temple. “Ow! That hit me!”

“I meant it to.” Rolling onto his back and sitting up, Drago saw the yellow-brown line of Keneally's teeth against his blond-bearded face framed by bushy blond sideburns.

Sanchez sat up, glaring at Keneally, but he knew well enough not to push the matter. He gave an indignant grunt, rolled onto his side, and lay back down, drawing his blankets up to his chin.

“How'm I supposed to cook all trussed up like a pig?” Drago wanted to know, sitting up and holding his cuffed hands out in front of him.

“Get over here,” Keneally said and yawned.

Drago's heart thudded. Keneally had taken off his cuffs and his shackles last night, so he could tend the camp like a house slave. Drago had gone to bed hoping he'd be freed again in the morning, because he'd contrived a few things on the upslope side of falling asleep. He'd thought about it so hard, in fact, that his anticipation, not to mention anxiety, had kept him from getting the kind of rest an old man needed.

Oh, well—he'd sleep once he was free of these killers, who would surely kill him after they reached Martín's cabin and found out that he, Drago, had lied about stowing the money beneath the kitchen floor.

Feigning disgruntlement over having to play the kitchen help to this group, most of whom he'd once led, Boomer threw his blankets aside, rose with a heavy grunt, and dragged his shackled feet over to where Keneally lay against his saddle between Quiet Ed, who had not yet stirred, and the lizard-skinned, yellow-eyed Curly Ben Williamson, who lay belly up and grinning at the gang's disgraced leader.

The young wolves were thoroughly enjoying their downtrodden former alpha male's humiliation. However, they and Drago himself had known he'd mostly been a figurehead. He'd commanded respect because of his age and his reputation, but Keneally had for over a year been the gang's true leader before they'd all gotten together and relegated Drago to holding the horses' reins while the others pulled the holdups.

Drago had sensed that the green-eyed killer had been about to either kick him out of the group entirely or, more likely, kill him just before Drago had killed Rufus Teagarden and George White and ridden off with the loot they'd stolen from the bank in Stove Prairie.

Now Drago gave another snarl of feigned indignity and knelt down by the gang's new leader. Keneally smiled at the older man jeeringly as he dug the keys, which he'd taken from Spurr Morgan's coat pocket, out of his boot and removed Drago's handcuffs.

When he'd removed the clevis pin from the shackles, freeing Drago's ankles, Drago felt his heart quicken. Keneally narrowed an eye at him, as though reading his mind.

“Stay close, now. Don't try to run, old man. You know you can't get far, and I'd hate to have to drill such a notorious old outlaw between his shoulders.”

Drago drew a ragged breath, scowling down at Keneally, and rose and stepped into his boots. His breath frosted in the chill air around his head as he pulled his wolf coat on and donned his hat. He glanced around at the lumpy shapes of the other gang members, most still snoring beneath their army blankets or ragged quilts.

Keneally lay against his saddle, hands behind his head, grinning, enjoying the older man's humiliation. He seemed the only one awake now, as Williamson had closed his eyes, his belly rising and falling slowly, regularly. Quiet Ed was only quiet when awake. Sleeping, he snored as loudly as a hibernating grizzly.

Drago spat and raked his eye across the blanketed mounds once more, feeling the fires of fury kindle in him as he remembered Greta. Saw her running, trying to get away from them while they pulled at her clothes, stripped her naked. Then she'd screamed more shrilly as, one by one, they'd taken the poor girl on the hillside west of the camp . . .

Boomer muttered angrily under his breath. He drew air into his lungs, and got himself settled down. He wanted to kill these men, or at least as many as he could before they killed him, but that would have to wait.

First, he had to get himself free . . .

He looked around the clearing along the side of the hill they'd camped on, above the Crow River that ran along the hill's base, in the lower slopes of the Mummy Range. There'd been a wildfire through here several years ago, so most of the trees were dead and black, and there was lots of down wood strewn around boulders.

Just beyond the trees west of the camp—forty or so yards away—a canyon dropped off sharply toward the river.

Drago gathered a couple of armloads of wood nearest the camp first, and piled the wood near the fire ring. He started away for one more load of wood, and his heart increased its pace even more. As he walked toward the trees up the slope beyond him, he stared through the shadowy aspens at the lip of the canyon. He couldn't see the river from here, of course, but he'd seen it last night when he'd been off gathering wood at the top of the slope.

The night-dark water, slick with the salmon light of the autumn moon, had slithered along the bottom of the canyon about thirty feet below the ridge.

Not such a hard drop into water. At least, it wouldn't have been a few years ago.

Still, at sixty years old, Drago could weather it. He still had some sinew and muscle holding his old bones together. And he could swim. The only thing he wasn't sure about was how deep the river was this time of year, and how many rocks might impede its—and his—path. He'd feel like a damn fool if he made his escape only to be brained by a river rock.

He glanced over his shoulder. He couldn't tell from this distance in the hazy, dawn light, but he thought Keneally might have fallen back asleep.

A hard, throbbing pulse drummed in the old outlaw's temples.

To make it look good, in case Keneally was watching from beneath his hat brim, he stopped to pick up a charred deadfall from where it leaned against a fallen fir. He cradled the two branches in his left arm. He continued walking at a slant up the slope, wending through the trees, his boots crunching the short grass and fallen leaves.

He stooped to pick up another branch. He added it to the two in his arm. And then he reached the crest of the hill. He looked over the lip and into the dark water below.

It swirled gently around a couple of barrel-sized rocks. It was dark and cold-looking. It would probably stop Drago's heart the moment his boots broke the surface. If not, he might hit bottom and snap his spine. But the darkness of the water told him it was deep enough that he wouldn't hit bottom.

His mouth was dry. His knees trembled slightly. His heart hammered in his ears.

He almost laughed at his trepidation. What the hell was he worried about? If he didn't die here on his own terms, he'd died tomorrow when he led the gang to Martín's cabin in the northern apron slopes of the Never Summers, in the shadow of Crow Mountain.

When they discovered that not only was the money not hidden beneath the floorboards but that there were not even any floorboards in the old outlaw Martín de Segura's ancient cabin, where they'd holed up once to cool their heels two years ago after robbing a payroll shipment outside Laramie, they'd probably gut-shoot Drago and toss his slow-dying carcass to the wolves in the nearest ravine.

He glanced a cautious look over his left shoulder. He drew a short, sharp breath through his nose, and hardened his jaws.

His heart hammered like a locomotive's pistons.

Curly Ben Williamson was strolling toward him, grinning. The yellow-eyed killer in a long, ratty, deerskin duster over a sheepskin vest was thirty yards away, just now entering the trees at the top of the slope, and closing slowly. He had his pale thumbs hooked behind his double cartridge belts. His cut-down holsters were thonged low on his slender thighs clad in black denim, the cuffs of which were stuffed into the tops of his black Cheyenne boots.

“You'll never make it, old-timer. You'll hit one o' them rocks. That'd be a bad way to go out, after all you been through.” Williamson spoke in a soft, cold voice though he continued to smile, showing the even line of his teeth between his thin, pink lips.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I seen you pondering that stream last night. You didn't think I was watching, but I was.” Williamson kept coming, pausing to nonchalantly kick a rock, as though he were taking a slow, dawn walk to gather his thoughts.

“Shit,” Drago said, feeling water pool in his belly as Curly Ben stepped up beside him and dropped his chin to stare down into the shallow canyon. “Kid, you give me too much credit.”

“Yeah, well, I gave you credit for not double-crossin' us, too. Killin' two of your loyal partners and makin' off with nearly fifty thousand in scrip and specie.”

Williamson narrowed a yellow eye at the old man beneath the brim of his black hat. “I didn't think you'd do such a corkheaded thing as that, too. And then be stupid enough to get caught by some bounty hunter while you was throwin' the wood to some whore in Idaville.”

He shook his head. “You're old and washed up. Too many miles in the saddle. Too many cases of clap. Too much whiskey and too much tobacco. Too many times you'd been throwed on your head. Ah, shit—just too many years, Boomer.”

Williamson laughed softly, keeping his mouth closed. He didn't laugh long. When he saw the chunk of wood arcing toward his head, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He opened his mouth and raised his arm to shield himself too late.

Thunk!

The branch Boomer was wielding smashed across Curly Ben's left temple, flattening his hat brim against his forehead.

Williamson screamed and flew backward, stumbling.

Gritting his teeth, hatred flaring in his lone eye, Drago walked after him. The old outlaw smashed the branch across Williamson's left cheek.

Curly Ben cursed and tried to grab one of his pistols from its holster but then he was sent stumbling back again when Drago hammered his right jaw on the backswing, cracking the branch in two, the half not in his hand winging off through the trees.

One of the other outlaws shouted. As Curly Ben rolled up against the base of an aspen, squalling, his face and head bloody, Drago cast a quick look toward the camp.

Three of the other men, including Keneally, were scrambling out of their bedrolls, yelling and reaching for their guns, one climbing into his boots and grabbing his Winchester. Drago turned to the lip of the canyon. He stared down at the water. It looked like oil, its skin dappled gray in the gradually strengthening light.

Drago stepped off the ridge into thin air, stretching his arms out to both sides. As his body dropped, his heart leapt into his throat. He drew a deep breath and stopped when his boots hit the water.

He broke through the surface and jetted toward the bottom as the current instantly grabbed him and swept him downstream. The water ensconced him like a frozen hand, squeezing. His heart was a hammering war drum. He could feel it pounding in his feet as well as his head.

A rock slammed into his left knee but then the sweeping current thrust him back to the surface, and his head broke through the frigid skin to cold air. He gasped, drawing a deep breath, but he sucked water into his lungs, too, and he started coughing while at the same time trying to breathe.

He wondered if Keneally's men were shooting at him from the ridge but he was too busy trying to keep his head above water to look upstream, though he doubted the current would even let him.

The canyon dropped quickly. The water moved faster, thrashing boulders jutting out from both canyon walls. Drago tried to give himself over to the water and not fight it—because it was one battle he could not win—though he knew he couldn't stay in the cold stream long without it jellying his blood and drowning him.

There wasn't must use in trying to swim. The fast-moving current kept his head above water. Drago held his arms above his head to cushion himself from the rocks the current dashed him against.