The Old Wolves (12 page)

Spurr dropped to a knee beside the girl and dug a handkerchief out of his pants pocket. “Here, let me tend that for you. What's your name again? I'd forget my own if I didn't have it written down.”

“Greta. Greta Ford, originally of Hayes, Kansas.”

“Greta, I'm Spurr.” He dabbed gently at the jelled blood on the girl's lip. “Hurt bad, does it, girl?”

“Nah.” She smiled at him. Her long legs crossed sexily. “You're such a nice, good man,” she said. “I just know you're gonna help me down out of these mountains, aren't you, Marshal Spurr?”

Spurr looked at her. Her smile seemed to grow, her pretty eyes twinkling.

“Ah, hell,” Spurr said as he continued dabbing at her rich, red lip.

SIXTEEN

“Sorry for the long walk, girl.” Spurr had rigged up her horse, which she'd tied a ways off from her camp, and he was leading the mount up the steep hill toward his own bivouac.

He was breathing hard with the effort. Walking along beside him rather than ride the horse over such treacherous ground at night, she was, too. He supposed her profession didn't allow her to get out for fresh air overmuch, to build up her lungs.

“Why on earth did you camp this high up, Marshal Spurr?”

“Please, Greta,” Spurr said as they came out of the trees to see the faint glow of the dying campfire. “Just Spurr will do. I don't hold much with form. And I camped up here to hold the high ground . . . in case it needed holding.”

“Why would it need holding?”

“Some mighty unsavory characters in these parts. Mighty unsavory. I'm sharin' my camp with one.”

Spurr nodded toward the dying fire's dim glow as he continued leading the girl's paint mare—he didn't even want to know if the horse was stolen, but it most likely was—up the slope and into the camp at the base of the cliff. Drago sat against the tree that Spurr had tied him to. He was a vague silhouette in the near darkness relieved only by the lambent glow off the chalky ridge wall and the kindling stars.

Drago was muttering through his gag. Spurr had heard enough men mutter through gags to be able to translate the muddy language, and he could tell that Drago was reading him and his entire family out to show his distaste at being bound and gagged and left by a dying campfire with the cold mountain night falling hard.

Spurr dropped the horse's reins and leaned his rifle against a tree. He walked over and pulled the bandanna down beneath Boomer's chin, and the outlaw instantly laid into Spurr, cursing like a sailor. When Spurr had tossed several dry deadfall branches on the fire, and the flames had leapt up to reveal the beautiful blonde standing by the fire, staring down skeptically at the raging outlaw, Drago cut himself off midsentence.

His lone eye flashed as it swallowed the girl like a giant, hungry mouth. It flicked up and down her willowy frame, the voluptuousness of which was poorly disguised by her cheap floral-pattered pink-and-white cotton dress showing beneath her waist-length, ragged wool coat. The hem of her white pantaloons shone beneath the dress, brushing across the tops of her rabbit-fur moccasins.

The outlaw's lower jaw hung to his chest. He stared unblinking at the girl for a good thirty seconds before he rolled his lone eye to Spurr, who was breaking branches to add to the pile by the fire, and said, “Spurr, I underestimated you. Truly, I did. I thought you done hoofed off like a lamb to the slaughter. But, no—you've returned, bearin' a blond-headed angel minus the wings.”

Greta laughed as she stood warming herself by the fire. “This is your prisoner, I take it?”

“I don't normally truss up my friends like calves for the brandin', Miss Greta.”

“I'm relieved to hear that, Spurr.”

Voice pitched with unabashed awe, Drago said, “Holy moly—I like how she talks. There's nothin' like a woman's voice, especially when you've been incarcerated as long as I have, to sing like Lillie Langtry in an old man's ears.”

“I'm standing right here, sir,” said Greta. “As I'm not a mute, there's no need to speak as though I was out of hearin' range.”

“Sassy one, too,” said Boomer, lifting one cheek. “I like sassy women.”

The old lawman shrugged at Greta, who arched a skeptical brow at the old outlaw and then walked around the fire toward her horse.

“You leave the mount to me,” Spurr said. “Here, I'll take down your bedroll, and you can rest easy like, Miss—”

“Don't you worry about my horse, Spurr,” Greta said. “And just so you don't think me a stock thief, I bought the lovely mare, Betsy, from a down-at-heel saddle tramp in Diamond Fire. She has all the cowboy's rigging. I can ride and tend her just fine. I don't want my tagging along with you boys to cost you any extra work. To earn my keep, I'll cook, and I make damn good coffee if you like it strong.”

“Strong enough to singe a nun's habit,” Boomer said.

She winked at the old outlaw and led the paint into the woods toward where Spurr had picketed his and Drago's mounts.

Spurr stared after her, smitten in spite of himself. What was it about women that tied his tongue in nearly as many knots now in his old age as it had when he was twelve years old?

“Quit droolin', Spurr,” Drago admonished him. “It ain't becomin' of that badge you're wearin'.”

“Ah, shut up, you old burnin' sack of dog shi . . .” Spurr cast another quick, sheepish glance toward Greta, and let civility steer him to silence.

Drago chuckled. “Where did you find her, Spurr? If you got more stashed somewhere down there in the canyon, it would have been nice if you'd brought back an extry one for me. Or is
she
for me? She looks like she'd be a catamount in the mattress sack. With your ticker, you'd better swing shy!”

Drago laughed. “And, say, would you mind untying me? It's a mite embarrassin' to be all trussed up like this when I'm trying to lure a purty little lass into my bedroll.”

“You ain't leadin' her anywhere, amigo.”

Spurr had set the coffeepot and a kettle of beans and bacon on the fire, figuring that Greta might be hungry. He stirred the beans and glanced off to where he could see the girl's blond-headed shadow moving in the dark pines just west of the camp, where the horses were all snorting and nickering as they got to know one another.

“She's on the run from the varmints that had her imprisoned in some parlor house in Diamond Fire,” he told Boomer. “She's gonna join us on the trail down the mountains. You best be on your best manners. She's been through a bucket o' buffalo dung.”

“That's what the shootin' was about?”

“I don't normally shoot game after dark.”

“You leave any of 'em alive?” Boomer asked with a snort.

“Alive but one with a sore foot.”

“Trigger-happy's what you are.”

“You didn't accuse me of that back in Diamond Fire.”

Drago scowled and brushed a cuffed wrist across his nose. He didn't say anything for a time but only stared off across the open slope and into the dark trees that moved slightly every now and then when a breeze stole across the mountainside.

“Spurr,” he said finally, as the old lawman lay back against his saddle, waiting for the coffee to boil.

“What is it?”

“You might've done that girl a great disservice.”

“How's that?” Greta asked, moving up out of the trees, grunting under the weight of her saddle, bedroll, and large, overstuffed carpetbag.

“Here, let me get that for you, girl.” Spurr's bones popped as he heaved himself to his feet. “You shoulda whistled for me.” Seeing a girl working under such a heavy load just went against his grain, even though she was young enough to be his granddaughter, damn the friggin' fates, anyway . . .

Drago chuckled again jeeringly as Spurr hurried over and grabbed the girl's saddle and bedroll off her shoulder.

“Thanks!” she said, drawing a deep breath as Spurr set the gear down beside the fire. “I haven't hauled a saddle around in a while. They didn't used to seem so heavy. I reckon that's what I get for makin' my livin' on my back for the past two years.”

Spurr's ears warmed at the girl's frankness, and he could see Drago's cheeks darken and his eye acquire a sharp, amused light.

Greta frowned as she cut her eyes from Drago to Spurr, who untied her blanket roll from her saddle and unrolled it on the ground for her, doting on her like an old woman. “How could letting me trail with you fellas be a disservice to me? If it wasn't for Marshal . . . if it wasn't for Spurr, I'd be heading back to Diamond Fire tied across my horse's saddle!”

Spurr said sharply, “Boomer, will you stop cuttin' with that old saw?” He glanced at Greta as he gave the beans another stir, making sure they didn't stick to the bottom of the pan. “Boomer there's been blowin' smoke up my . . . well . . . he's been spinnin' ragged yarns about his old gang gunnin' for him. First, they was just trailin' him to turn him loose and fill me full o' holes. Now they're trailin' us to fill us
both
full o' holes.”

Spurr winked at the girl, who was now kneeling by her carpetbag by the fire. “Truth is, he's so old his gang likely turned him out. Sort of like the buffalo do with the old bulls. He was caught by a bounty hunter with his pants down in a bawdy house, and he just can't get over it. So he's tryin' everything he can to convince me I gotta cut his hobbles lest I should contract a bad case of lead poisonin'.”

Drago said gravely, “I feel it's fair to warn you, my dear, that your life is in more danger now than before this old badge-toting reprobate hauled you up here. The truth is, I've piss-burned the members of my old gang, and they are most likely right now gathering from all points of the compass in Diamond Fire—in preparation for heading this way. They've been scouring these mountains for me.”

He turned his dark, one-eyed stare at Spurr, who was spooning beans and bacon onto a plate and chuckling quietly. “Two or three of those boys could track a snake across the ocean, my aged amigo.”

“Here you are, Greta. Supper beans warmed up special for you.”

“Why, thank you, Spurr.” The girl accepted the plate and then scuttled onto her bedroll and sank back against her saddle, lines of consternation cutting across her forehead as she poked a spoon at the beans.

“And don't listen to him,” Spurr advised her. “The man's a gravel-crawed criminal. He'll do anything he can to get himself shed of those cuffs. Shut him from your mind, Miss Greta, and take heart that you're with one of the wiliest lawmen west of the Mississippi. I will make certain sure you trail down out of these mountains without one hair mussed on your purty head.”

“Ah, Christ, Spurr—you're gonna make me air my paunch!”

“Shut up, Drago, or I'll take my cartridge belt to your rancid hide!”

“Unchain me, and we'll make a fair fight of it!”

“Boys, boys!” Greta intoned, cutting her wide, startled eyes between them. “Please, don't fight on my account!”

Spurr glared at his prisoner. Drago glared back at him.

Ashamed and embarrassed at his behavior in front of the pretty girl, realizing he was probably behaving like the men she was fleeing in Diamond Fire, Spurr sank back against his saddle. “I do apologize. I guess I just don't cotton to takin' much guff off a snake such as that.”

Greta started eating her beans, continuing to cut her slightly skeptical gaze between the two men. “You two seem to know each other. You go back, do you?”

Drago said, “Too damn far, Miss Greta.”

“We go back a ways, that's for sure,” Spurr said, rummaging around in his saddlebags until he'd produced his small, flat brown bottle, which he held up. “I take it you don't disapprove of busthead . . .”

Greta's pretty, blue eyes flashed eagerly. “I should say I don't! And boy, do I have a surprise!” She set her plate aside and dipped into her carpetbag. She pulled out two bottles of Kentucky bourbon, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

“Boys, how about a drink on Boyd Reymont and Mark Chaney?”

Spurr's heart lightened at the sight of those two, labeled brown bottles. He didn't think it was possible to find labeled bottles in this neck of the woods.

He and Drago whistled at the same time. “Lookee there,” Spurr said. “And here I was already gettin' the fantods over the prospect of emptyin' this little medicine flask of mine.”

“Not to worry,” Greta said. “I took three bottles out from behind the bar before I left this mornin'. If we ration ourselves, we should make it down to the eastern plains with a sip or two to spare!”

“What're you doin' with so much liquor, Miss Greta?” Boomer asked as the girl spilled liberal portions into three tin coffee cups. “I didn't figure you of the swillin' type sort.”

“I figured I'd have to pay my way down these mountains one way or another,” Greta said. “And after all I been through, I'd just as soon pass around the liquor as pass around myself.” She winked and handed one of the cups to Spurr.

“Hey, what about me?” Boomer scowled at the old lawman as Spurr took a deep pull from his cup.

“It's against federal regulations for prisoners to imbibe,” Spurr said, though he'd heard no such regulation. “Don't worry, Boomer—I'll make sure yours don't go to waste!”

“Oh, Spurr, it's a cold night!” the girl said, her eyes making a plea for Drago's case.

Playing it to the hilt, Drago hung his head toward his upraised knees.

“That one-eyed old killer don't deserve no Kentucky who-hit-john!” Spurr said. But the girl kept her wide, pleading eyes on him. “Ah, hell,” the old marshal relented, handing Drago's cup to the pretty girl. “I reckon it's your busthead, Miss Greta. Yours to waste on the likes of that ole curly wolf, if you're so inclined.”