Free The Old Wolves by Peter Brandvold Page A

forward to light a cigar while holding his Arab to a spanking trot just behind the others. “If his mind is gone, like the darkie said it was, what’s the damn point? We’d best head on to Cheyenne, maybe. Bill and the others is gonna wonder what’s keepin’ us.”
    â€œBill can wait,” Tatum said. “You know how many times I was bit by sewer roaches in the ole Hell Hole? One mornin’ I even woke to one sitting on my chest trying to chew out the food between my teeth!” He gave a shudder, shook his head. “No, sir—that ole bastard is gonna pay for that. I’m gonna pop a .44 pill into both his knees for that.”
    â€œTatum’s right,” Bone said. “I couldn’t sleep a wink from now on if I knew I had a chance to kill ole Spurr Morgan and didn’t take it. You know how many men have wanted to do that over the years?”
    â€œWell, it would have been more satisfyin’ a few years ago,” McCall said. “When he coulda remembered what he was gettin’ turned under slow for, but what the hell. I reckon you boys are right.”
    He tipped his hat brim low and held the bay at a steady pace beside Bone, who kept his gaze straight ahead along the trail. He didn’t like it that, aside from the fresh prints in the trail left on the wagon track, he could not see the old lawman riding ahead of them. Spurr had a wily reputation. He was liable to pull a bushwhack. At least, a younger Spurr would have done that. The old man he and Tatum and McCall had seen aboard the train was a used-up old shell of his former self.
    Hell, he probably didn’t even remember where he was heading most of the time but merely left it up to his horse to get him there.
    Bone, Tatum, and McCall held up once when, smelling a coffee fire on the wind, they suspected that Spurr had taken a break probably to rest himself as well as his horse. When they saw the man ride out from a copse of willows along the Cache la Poudre River, they mounted their own rested horses and rode on.
    They followed Spurr’s trail north along the Poudre and into the mouth of Poudre Canyon—a wide gap between limestone and sandstone peaks cut by the river tumbling down from ten-thousand-foot Cameron Pass eons ago.
    Bone knew that the canyon was one of the few routes from the eastern plains to both the Never Summer Mountains south of the pass and the Medicine Bow Mountains to the north of it. Spurr must be heading into one of those ranges, though why the marshals service would send a man as old as Spurr into that rugged country was anyone’s guess.
    Why in the hell was he still wearing a badge, anyway? He must have caught the governor with his pants down in the company of some other mucky-muck’s young wife.
    Bone smiled at that as he and the others rode up into the cooler climbs of the canyon, the river rippling through its rocky bed on the trail’s left side—a slow-moving stream this time of year though Bone, who’d once ridden the pass preying on stagecoach lines, knew that in the spring, when the snowmelt plunged down from the pass fifty miles west, it could be one hell of a mighty torrent.
    Bone and the other two men rode up the canyon until well after sunset, stopping when they spied the glow of a campfire off the trail’s right side, in some trees along the river. They picketed their horses well off the trail, shucked their rifles from their saddle scabbards, quietly pumped fresh rounds into the breeches, and slowly made their way toward the fire’s glow.
    The glow dwindled gradually as they approached the bivouac.
    Bone looked around carefully, wary of a bushwhack. As he and the others drew within forty yards of the camp in a small clearing amongst pines and aspens, Bone started hearing something. Low, regular snores.
    Bone couldn’t help smiling at that. He cut his eyes to the other two men—McCall moving slowly about ten yards to his left,