The Old Wolves (21 page)

TWENTY-SIX

From the downslope, silence like that in boneyard at midnight on Halloween.

A few more rocks clanked as they slid down the slope in the dead outlaw's wake. Dust tinted copper by the sun rose like smoke.

Spurr stared through his own gun smoke out the cave opening, but all he could see from his angle was the other side of the canyon. The outlaws were well below, apparently quietly pondering their amigo's demise. To Spurr's right, Drago snickered and said, “Did you really know that hombre was comin'?”

“Of course I did,” Spurr lied. He was tired and his senses had dulled. He'd just been fortunate to have looked toward the opening when the killer had lifted his head. “You don't think I'd let my guard down like what you done in Idaville, do you?”

Keneally's voice called from down the hill, “Nice shootin' up there!”

Spurr shouted, “Thanks but a shaver could've made that shot!”

“You two old wolves are better than I figured!”

“Why don't you come on up, Keneally, and me an' Boomer here can give you a few pointers!”

Another silence, a brief one.

And then another outlaw said in a sneering tone, “Why don't you come down here and we can give that whore a few pointers? A few more o' what she got last time!”

Several of the outlaws chuckled.

Greta lurched forward, grabbing her rifle and racking a round into the chamber. Spurr grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back away from the opening. “Hold on there, girl. That's just what they want you to do—don't you know that?”

She tried to wriggle out of the old lawman's arms. “Let me go, Spurr!” Her voice was hard but then he heard her sob. Spurr held her tight against him, gritting her teeth as she continued to struggle. Boomer lifted his head, snapped his Winchester to his shoulder, and triggered a shot down the slope.

One of the outlaws gave a surprised yell.

Drago lowered his rifle and shouted, “You sons o' bitches got no honor! The boys I rode with before you never woulda done that to a girl. We mighta been outlaws, but that was a line we never crossed, an' I'm damn ashamed to have ever ridden the coulees with you yellow-livered peckerwoods!”

He jerked his head back behind the ledge as two rifles popped on the downslope. One slug tore up sand from the ledge while the other hammered the roof of the cave opening. Sand sifted down from the roof. Dust wafted.

Drago lifted his head slightly above the floor and shouted, “You hear me, Keneally! You're a copper-riveted tinhorn, and I'm gonna kill you deader'n hell if that's the last goddamn thing I do!”

Keneally shouted, “Come down here an' try it, old man!”

Drago snarled, took hasty aim, and triggered a shot down the slope. The bullet gave a witch's screech as it ricocheted off a rock.

Keneally and several other outlaws laughed.

Spurr released Greta, who slumped, dejected, toward the cave floor. “Stop wasting ammo, you damn fool,” he snapped at Drago.

The old outlaw whipped his head toward him, lone eye blazing. “You're the damn fool! We wouldn't be in this mess if you'd have listened to reason.”

“Reason? You mean your lies!”

“You see now I wasn't lyin'!”

“If you wouldn't tell so many long, windy ones, maybe a man could figure out which ones was true!”

Greta lifted her head and shook her hair back. As she slid back against the cave's west wall, she said with a weary, depressed air, “Fellas, your arguin' ain't gonna save us.”

Spurr looked at her. Then he looked at Drago. The fire had gone out of the old outlaw's eye as he dropped his gaze to the cave floor.

Spurr curled his legs beneath him, trying to get somewhat comfortable on the uneven stone floor that was nearly as cold as a marble slab, and grabbed the bottle. He popped the cork, extended the bottle to Drago, and said, “Why don't we all have a drink?”

Drago looked at the bottle. He stared at it thoughtfully, appearing as depressed as Greta now, but finally grabbed it and threw back a couple of deep swallows. He extended the bottle to Greta, who shook her head, and then gave the bottle to Spurr, who finished it off.

“We got one more,” he said, whipping the empty bottle past Drago and hearing it shatter on the downslope. “We're gonna need it tonight. Gonna get cold up here.”

He set the bottle down against the wall near Greta, and scuttled onto his belly to Drago's left side. He crawled forward a little so that he could edge a cautious look down the slope. He drew his head back when a gun blasted, and sand flew up into his face.

Blinking the dust from his eyelashes, and spitting, he crawled back until he lay even with Drago, who gave him a wry look. “They got us bottled up purty good.”

Spurr said with a vaguely chastising tone, “You realize our only chance of getting out of this is you telling them where the money is, don't you?”

Drago pursed his lips as he stared darkly straight out over the lip of the ledge. “They wouldn't believe me even if I did tell 'em.”

“Couldn't hurt to give it a shot. If it was just me here, I'd say screw ‘em—we'll shoot our way out of this crypt. Prob'ly get blown to our rewards, but at least Keneally wouldn't win. But we got Greta to think about, Boomer. She's young, got her whole life ahead of her.”

“If you boys want to shoot your way out of here, count me in,” Greta said, setting her rifle across her knees and patting the forestock. Her blue eyes were resolute.

Spurr looked past Drago at her, wagged his head, and grinned. “If I were twenty years younger . . .”

“Thirty, more like,” Boomer said.

Greta's eyes crossed in that pretty way she had as she curled her split upper lip. “If we ever get out of here, I'll marry both of you.”

“You'd kill us both,” Spurr told her.

“But what a way to go,” she said, her eyes smoky.

Drago fingered his chin whiskers. “The only way Greta's got a chance is if I turn myself over to those boys. And that's just what I'm gonna do.”

Boomer had no sooner started to rise to all fours, than Greta said, “No!” She threw herself onto the old outlaw's back, and he collapsed belly down against the cave floor with a sharp grunt.

Greta wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his fur coat, between his shoulder blades. “We're in this together for the long haul, Boomer!”

“Crazy girl—it's your only chance!”

“Ah, shit—they're not gonna leave us alive, Boomer.” Spurr stared at the old outlaw. “You'd be throwin' yourself to them lobos for nothin'. Might as well stay here, help us shoot it out.”

Boom glanced at him sidelong, narrowing his eye. “And when we're out of ammunition?”

“We'll start hurling rocks.” Greta leaned forward and planted an affectionate kiss on the back of the old outlaw's nearly bald head.

* * *

The afternoon waned as shadows spilled down the ridges. Clouds slid into the sky over the canyon, making it even darker. Just after the sun went down, a fine snow began to fall.

Spurr could tell by the iron-sharp cold pressing into his bones from the cave floor and the increasing sting in his cheeks and nose, not to mention his gloved fingers and moccasined toes, that the temperature was dropping rapidly. There'd been no shooting since Drago's last shot, but, as though to taunt them, Keneally's men built a large bonfire about seventy yards down the slope, at the edge of the large boulder field.

Light from the fire danced across the rocks. Sparks columned upward.

Occasionally, one of the outlaws would shout up at the cave, “Sure is warm down here. Must be right chilly up there. You folks sure you don't wanna come down here and warm up, maybe have some beans and bacon? Got some rabbit to go with it. Plenty of hot coffee! Come on down, we'll make it a fandango!”

“We'll take turns dancin' with the whore!” another man shouted in a higher-pitched voice.

Several men cackled, and one yelled, “And then we'll draw straws for her—see who goes first!”

Spurr, sitting with his back to the cave's west wall, glanced at Greta, who sat beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. She did not react to the men's jeers. He could see her blinking, so she wasn't asleep, but she seemed deeply fatigued and on the edge of not caring about anything anymore.

Drago appeared the same way. The old outlaw sat against the opposite wall, staring blankly at the wall over Spurr's head, his rifle across his outstretched legs. Spurr probably looked as depressed as his cohorts. His shoulders were heavy, his chest tight, his heart beating feebly.

This was likely the end of his trail. He didn't care so much for himself, but he was damned sick about getting another girl killed. That's how he saw it, despite her following him and Drago of her own accord out from Diamond Fire. He could have turned her away, but he hadn't.

Always a sucker for a pretty blonde.

Well, now he'd more than likely gotten another one killed. He wasn't sure why—it made no sense whatever, as long as he'd been after the old outlaw—but part of him regretted Boomer Drago's imminent demise, as well. Maybe only because it would mean that his men had won. Or maybe it meant more to the old lawman than that. He couldn't be sure. His brain was as tired and as cold as the rest of him, and he couldn't trust his thinking anymore.

He dozed for a time with his eyes and ears open, but then, staring out past the cave's eastern wall, toward the solid stone ridge that trailed off beyond it, he came awake with a small fire kindling inside him.

The weird castings of the light beyond the cave—the blue of the twilight stitched with the white of the falling snow which in turn shimmered softly with the light of the outlaws' fire—revealed something that Spurr had not seen before in the ridge wall beyond the opening.

Sitting across from him but slightly left, Boomer said, “What is it?”

Greta lifted her head from where she'd leaned it forward against her rifle barrel.

Spurr glanced to his right, not wanting to get too close to the ledge, making himself visible to the men on the slope and get a hole drilled in his head for his carelessness. He slid a little closer to the ledge but leaned down low against the floor, looking up and out the cave opening on his left.

He narrowed his eyes, straining his vision, to get a better look at the ridge wall.

Sure enough, about six feet to the left of the cave there was a long, perpendicular cavity in what had previously looked like a flawless stretch of stone. It was like a tooth with a crack in it, and one side of the tooth had shoved out farther than the rest. The crack was now partly concealed by the outermost part of the tooth.

Spurr couldn't be sure from this far away, but the crack seemed to angle up the ridge. Rocks appeared to have fallen down from the crack to pile up on the ledge beneath the crack, which meant there might be ledges and cavities where someone climbing the crack could find foot– and handholds.

When Spurr did not respond to Drago's question because he was too intent on inspecting the crack, the old outlaw stretched his head out from the opening, craning his neck to follow Spurr's gaze. Someone from below caught a glimpse of the movement. A rifle belched loudly, echoing.

The slug missed Drago's head by inches and hammered into the ridge wall to his left with a tooth-gnashing screech. Rock shards ticked onto the stony ledge. Bits of gravel rattled down the slope.

The echo of the slug's crash chased the rifle's echo up and down the canyon, both echoes diminishing gradually to silence.

Drago had jerked his head back into the cave and was poking a finger in his ear as though to relieve the ringing from the slug's hammering.

“Damn near got a whole lot more pleasant in here,” Spurr told Greta.

Angrily, Drago said, “What the hell you see out there?”

Spurr told him. Greta crawled toward the opening, keeping her head down and away from the lip of the ridge. Drago did the same, and together they inspected the crack, tipping their heads this way and that.

“You think we can make it up that?” Drago asked Spurr, incredulous.

“I think we got a rat's chance in a hole full of rattlesnakes some kid teased with a stick, but it's better than no chance at all. Because that's exactly what we have otherwise.”

“Shit, even if the crack goes all the way up to the top of the ridge, and it's climbable—what makes you think us old men could climb it?”

“Nothin' does.” Spurr was sitting back against the west cave wall, slowly, thoughtfully rolling a cigarette from his makings pouch. “Does that mean we don't try?”

“Ah, hell,” carped the old outlaw. “I'm as droopy as a wrung-neck rooster. Even if I could make it out there to the crack without gettin' shot, I couldn't climb it. Not without wide marble steps and a bannister and someone pushin' from behind.”