Free The Old Wolves by Peter Brandvold

played along the rails, running after each other and yelling—two boys and a younger girl, while a young woman in a Mother Hubbard dress and matching bonnet stood nearby, cradling an infant in her arms. Several men stood beyond the woman, smoking and conversing, just waiting for the order to reboard.
    Tatum hefted the Remington in his right hand and said, “Ain’t no one ever told you not to ask questions, you dark-skinned old son of a bitch?”
    The old man stopped and scowled at the three men standing by their horses. “I reckon I’m old enough to ask any questions I want.”
    â€œThat a fact?” Tatum held his pistol in the flat of his hand as he walked slowly toward the old station agent, holding the gun up menacingly.
    â€œThat’s enough, Tatum. Take that hump out of your neck.” Collie Bone, the unofficial leader of the outlaw trio, swung up onto his buckskin, and gave Tatum a commanding look. “We got other fish to fry, my friend.”
    â€œAny o’ them fish named Marshal Spurr Morgan?” the black man asked darkly.
    â€œWhat’s that to you?” asked McCall, stepping up onto his bay Arab. “What if it is about Spurr?”
    The station agent slowly, thoughtfully licked the cylinder he’d just pressed closed. “Spurr’s old and feeble,” he said, shaking is head gravely. “Why, he hardly recognized me, an’ we been friends for years. Bad ticker, too. He’s on his last job now, an’ then he’s headin’ for Mexico.”
    â€œThat right?” Tatum chuckled. “Well, he should’ve headed for Mexico last week. ’Cause it as it turns out this here is the last week of his . . .”
    â€œTatum!” Collie Bone jerked his chin toward the sorrel. “Fork leather an’ let’s ride!”
    Grinning shrewdly, Tatum did as Bone had bid, while Bone jutted his spade-shaped chin carpeted in a thick black goatee at the old station agent. “And you, old man, best keep your mouth shut from now on—understand? Otherwise, you’re gonna wake up some night in that shed yonder screamin’ and just so damn surprised to see your tongue hangin’ off the blade o’ my bowie knife!”
    The black man lowered his hands to his sides and shook his head. “Please, leave him be. Leave Spurr be. He ain’t half the man he once was.”
    â€œSmoke your cigarette, you old darkie!” McCall snarled as he booted his Arab after Bone, who’d put his buckskin into a ground-eating gallop up the wagon trail toward Camp Collins.
    â€œOh, please, leave that feeble old man alone,” beseeched the station agent, staring after them, his eyes wide with concern.
    As the three obvious long-coulee riders dwindled to blurs kicking up a single dust trail, Sebastian Polly lit his freshly rolled quirley and grinned through the smoke.
    * * *
    â€œThat old goat keeps a steady pace—I’ll give him that,” Bone said as he and the others followed a northward bend in the trail.
    â€œProbably too senile to know what he’s doin’ to his horse.” Tatum was checking the loads in one of his Remingtons again, which he did obsessively.
    â€œMaybe he just has a good horse,” said Bone, glancing toward Camp Collins, which lay to the north, off the trail’s right side—a shabby collection of mud-brick, brush-roofed dwellings languishing in the prairie sun. Since the Indian trouble had become almost nonexistent, the stockade-less encampment was now garrisoned by twenty to thirty soldiers at a time. These days, Bone had heard that desertion was the outpost’s biggest problem. That, prairie fires, drunkenness, and syphilis.
    The camp’s flag looked washed out and dirty in the bright sun, buffeting in the cool, dry breeze of the barren parade ground a half a mile from the main trail.
    â€œMaybe he ain’t worth it, fellas.” McCall leaned