The Old Wolves by Peter Brandvold Page B

three, and he got off two shots. One kissed the nap of Spurr’s left coat sleeve before ricocheting off the cell door with an ear-ringing clang. The other, fired just after Spurr’s first bullet had torn a quarter-sized hole in his heart, was triggered into his own left ankle.
    â€œOh,” Louis said as he flew back against the open door and stood there, his smoking pistol aimed at the floor.
    The cutthroat stared down at the blood pumping out his chest, between the flaps of his bear coat, and he said, “Oh. Oh, shit.” And then he looked at Spurr in disbelief, his head wobbling on his shoulders, his eyes rolling back in his head.
    He staggered forward, pinwheeled, and hit the floor on his back.
    Silence.
    Spurr’s gun smoke wafted in the lantern-lit room. The fledgling fire, whose weak flames were dwindled, softly cracked and popped.
    Behind Spurr, Boomer Drago whistled. “You old coot. You still got a few left in the chamber.”
    Spurr himself was amazed. He looked down at the Starr and the old hand wrapped around it, as though they belonged to another person.
    â€œYeah, I got a few,” he said.
    He walked over to the door and stared out at the two in the street. Neither was moving. He turned back into the office. Boomer stood up near his cell door, amazement lighting his lone eye. Burke was squatting against the far wall, his hair rumpled. He held his hat in his hands and was staring, pale-featured, at the hole in its crown.
    He slowly lifted his eyes to Spurr and said in a low, shocked voice, “Bleedin’ ricochet. Might have taken my eyes out.”
    â€œOr your brains,” Drago opined.
    Burke looked down at his hat again, nodding gravely.
    Spurr flicked the Starr’s loading gate open and began plucking out his spent shell casings, tossing them into a small wastebasket near the desk.
    â€œSpurr.”
    The old marshal looked at Drago.
    â€œThem three were nothin’ compared to the men in the gang comin’ to fetch me. Come on. Let me out of here. You’ll never make it against them. Hell, there’s twenty, twenty-five of ’em. You did good here tonight, and I do appreciate it, but these three never were good with them hoglegs. Slow as molasses in January.”
    Spurr stared at the old outlaw as he plucked fresh cartridges from his shell belt and slid them into the Starr’s wheel, rolling the cylinder between his thumb and index finger, listening to the soft clicks. Burke continued staring at his hat as though the hole were really bird shit and he was wondering how he was going to get the stain out.
    Spurr’s heart fluttered. He’d had too much excitement for one day.
    â€œI’m tired,” he said, shoving the pistol down into its holster and fastening the keeper thong over the hammer. “I’m gonna go stable my beast and then stable myself for a long autumn night’s nap. I’ll see you in the mornin’, Boomer. Sleep tight. Burke, make sure his horse is saddled and ready to go at first light.”
    Burke stared up at him, the barber/dentist’s lower jaw hanging.
    As Spurr turned and walked through the door and stepped over the dead men in the street, he heard Burke say behind him, “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary—that’s just bloody wonderful!”

ELEVEN

    Spurr stabled Cochise in a livery barn he’d seen on his way into town, leaving his prized roan in the hands of the black liveryman, Mortimer Lang, who assured Spurr the mount would get the best care in all the Rocky Mountains. Lang smiled broadly and held out his gloved hand for Spurr to drop several coins into.
    For grub, Lang recommended the tent shack next door to the livery barn. For sleep, Lang said the man who owned the grub shack also had cribs behind the place, with cots as comfortable as any bed in Diamond Fire.
    â€œThe bedbugs there don’t bite as hard as elsewhere around here,” Lang said, chuckling as he led Cochise into