Longarm and the Cry of the Wolf (9781101619506) Page 4

  “I’ll say you’re potent stuff,” Longarm said, running his left hand down her back and into the warm crack between her butt cheeks. He ran it still lower, until the tips of his fingers felt damp fur.

  She looked up at him again, her eyes sparkling. “How’s your wound?”

  “You did a damn fine job with that wound.”

  “Care to ravage me again, Longarm? Not to seem wanton, but having found a real man in the world, I feel I’ve been trifling with boys.”

  Longarm looked down. Her hand was wrapped around his fully engorged cock once more, pumping. He sighed. She smiled.

  He rolled her onto her back, mounted her, and began driving, as she spread her knees high and wide, throwing her hair into a lovely golden cloud across her pillow.

  • • •

  Longarm rose in the predawn darkness, gently slid out from beneath the regally lovely head of Catherine Fortescue, and dressed quietly. When he’d stepped into his boots, he leaned down to plant a tender kiss on the girl’s cheek. She groaned and sighed in her sleep, snuggling deeper into her pillow, and then he donned his hat, grabbed his rifle and saddlebags, and stepped into the hall.

  Slinging his saddlebags over his shoulder, he continued walking down the hall on the balls of his boots, hearing men snoring behind the closed doors around him. He assumed that the especially raucous snores were issuing from General Alexander Fortescue himself, exhausted from his own trek through the snow.

  Catherine probably kept the general’s old nerves tied in knots. What father of hers wouldn’t be on constant edge with a daughter so full of unbridled, absolutely unabashed passion? Longarm gave an amused snort, entertaining memories of his and her hijinks of the night before, and quietly dropped down the stairs into the main drinking hall, obscured with heavy, dark shadows, only a little milky light washing through the front windows.

  He was happy to see that his prisoner was where he’d left him, tied to the ceiling support post. The man’s head was down, chin dipped to his chest, and he was contentedly sawing logs. His greasy, dark brown hair hung down from the thinly haired top of his head, dangling around his shoulders, which were clad in a ratty plaid shirt beneath a cowhide vest.

  Longarm hauled a three-for-a-nickel cheroot out of his shirt pocket, struck a lucifer to life on his cartridge belt, and lit up. Puffing smoke, he kicked Goldie’s left boot, causing the man’s spur to grind against the floor. The escaped convict lifted his head with a gasp, blinking.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said in his gravelly voice.

  “Rise an’ shine, amigo.”

  “Where we goin’?”

  “To Crazy Kate. I’m gonna lock you up over there with orders to shoot you if anyone tries to spring you while I’m away, huntin’ them you’re s’posed to meet up with.” Longarm had set his gear on a table, and now with his folding Barlow knife, he cut the rope tying Goldie’s ankles together.

  “You ain’t takin’ me back to that federal hotbox. Ain’t no way. I’d rather die first.”

  “That can happen.” Longarm unlocked the handcuffs, and Goldie pulled his hands out from behind the ceiling support post, wincing at the stiffness in his shoulders.

  “God damn,” he crooned, rolling his shoulders. “I lost all feelin’ in my arms!”

  Longarm grabbed his rifle and his saddlebags off the table. “Get up.”

  Goldie grunted and wheezed as he pushed himself heavily off the floor, taking his time. “I didn’t sleep very well. I’m gonna be grumpy today, Longarm.”

  That last came out as a grunt as Goldie dropped his head and bulled toward Longarm, who’d been expecting the move. He stepped to one side and slammed the butt of his Winchester ’73 down hard against the back of Goldie’s neck. The man dropped straight to the floor like a fifty-pound sack of cracked corn, making the floorboards leap beneath Longarm’s boots, lifting a racket.

  Longarm sighed. “Let’s try it again, Goldie.”

  Goldie groaned. Again, he took his time rising. When Longarm finally had him on his feet, he let him fetch his blanket coat and fur hat from the chair he’d left them on the night before, when he’d been playing poker with his now-dead pards. As Longarm was prodding the outlaw toward the front door, he heard a footfall and a wooden creak behind him, and a woman’s voice said softly, “Longarm—that you?”

  Longarm turned to see Catherine standing in the shadows atop the stairs, holding a thick quilt around her shoulders. Her legs beneath the quilt shone creamy in the gradually intensifying, winter light.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Catherine. Just on the way out.”

  “You going to Crazy Kate?”

  “Yup.”

  “Maybe see you there.”

  Longarm smiled, genuinely enthused by the prospect, though he didn’t expect to be in town long. He had to find the men looking to hook up with Goldie and get them all back to Denver, to his boss, Chief Marshal Billy Vail, for formal proceedings, which likely would mean hanging. They’d killed several guards when they’d busted out of the federal pen.

  “Might at that,” Longarm said, pinching his hat brim to the girl.

  “Be careful out there,” Catherine said, in her sexily raspy voice. “Wolves on the prowl.”

  “Of several breeds,” Longarm muttered, turning away from the girl reluctantly and shoving Goldie out the winter door and onto the porch.

  Chapter 5

  “Damn, did you fuck that little fillie?” Goldie asked, widening his seedy eyes with open veneration and not a little envy as he and Longarm stepped onto the porch. “Holy shit, lawman, that’s a load o’ fine woman there. Maybe, on the way to Kate, you could tell me how it was. Come to think of it, you’re lookin’ right tired.”

  Goldie snickered.

  Longarm used his rifle butt to prod the outlaw down off the porch and into the roadhouse yard, wincing as pellet-sized snow clawed his cheeks as it fell from an iron-gray sky. Yips and snarls rose from across the stage road that curved along the perimeter of the Hawk’s Bluff Tavern, which doubled as a stage relay station. Tall pines and dark crags stood formidably all around the station, and beyond the trail to the southeast, murky shadows of four-legged figures jostled in a tight pack.

  “Ah, shit,” Goldie said. “You know what that is?”

  “I suspect the coyotes are enjoying a breakfast of your friends, Goldie.” Longarm gave Goldie a hard shove that sent the man stumbling off toward the barn and corral that hulked on the yard’s north side. “Quit dawdlin’ or you’ll be joinin’ ’em.”

  “You sure that’s only coyotes?” Goldie asked as he walked toward the barn, lifting the collar of his blanket coat up high against his jaws. “Some o’ them shadows look too big for coyotes. You know, wolves are known to be partic’larly big an’ mean in the San Juans. Lots o’ food for ’em, folks say, with all the minin’ camps.” He glanced meaningfully back at Longarm. “I’m talkin’ human food.”

  “Don’t worry,” Longarm said. “I’ll protect you, Goldie.”

  Goldie told Longarm to fuck himself. Longarm told Goldie to get on inside the barn and saddle his own horse. “I sure as hell am not gonna do it for you. One wrong move, though, and I’m gonna shoot you and put you out of my misery.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Longarm and Goldie had saddled their horses and were riding them out of the barn, when Longarm cast a quick glance into the forest on the far side of the stage road from where the yips and snarls still rose. He’d started to turn his horse to kick the barn door closed behind him, when he swung his gaze back to the forest.

  At least one of the creatures tearing and pulling and burrowing into the cadavers of Collie and Ulrich and the other man, a half-breed named Norman Two Moons, were just as Goldie had noted—larger than your average coyote. One swung his head toward Longarm, as though he’d read the lawman’s thoughts, and Longarm saw the two yellow eyes fairly burning there in the
night-like darkness of the woods that the growing dawn light had not yet touched. It was hard to tell because of the dense shadows, but the wolf not only looked as large as a small bear, though much more willowy, he also looked black.

  “See there!” said Goldie, nodding his head at the beast. “You see that big son of a bitch? That ain’t no coyote. Shuck your rifle an’ shoot him, Longarm!”

  Longarm stared at the wolf staring back at him, the yellow gaze flickering when the animal blinked. Suddenly, the wolf turned its head forward and lowered it to resume ripping and tearing. The growls and angry, competitive snarls grew louder.

  “Shoot him, Longarm!” Goldie encouraged, bouncing up and down in his saddle, his wrists cuffed behind his back. “You see the way he was lookin’ at us? Like we was next on the menu? Shoot him!”

  Longarm kicked the door closed, then curveted his horse and jerked on the reins of Goldie’s coyote-dun gelding. “He’s got plenty to eat right there,” he said, pointing his own army bay westward along the trail that hugged the trees and a creek rippling between ice-scalloped banks. “No point in comin’ after us.” Longarm believed in killing no beast unless he needed the food or he was under attack. Live and let live, was how he saw it, an attitude he’d acquired from having witnessed and partaken in way too much bloodshed.

  “He’s a devil, that one,” Goldie said as they rode, Longarm leading his prisoner’s horse up the trail along the forest and the half-frozen creek, tall, rocky crags rising around them. “You know legend tells there’s werewolves in these mountains. Came over with the Romanians who settled around Crazy Kate—right where we’re headed!”

  Goldie cast a haunted glance behind him, his breath vapor puffing around his head in the cold mountain air. He wore a Stetson tied to his head with a thick, blue muffler. Longarm glanced back at him and grinned, puffing his three-for-a-nickel cheroot. “Don’t worry, Goldie—I’ll protect you.”

  Goldie glared at him, bunching his unshaven, pugnacious face, his dark eyes set deep beneath thin, dark brows. “Fuck you, Longarm. My old man trapped in these mountains back before the war, and he said he seen ’em. Even lost a partner to one. He himself had to shoot said partner when, during a full moon, he turned into a man-wolf. A fucking werewolf!”

  Goldie threw his head back and howled. It was such an authentic-sounding howl, echoing off the jagged-topped, towering crags, that Longarm felt the skin beneath his shirt collar tighten. When the howl had finished echoing around the deep canyon they were riding through, Goldie laughed.

  “Ah, hell, I don’t believe that shit any more than you do. But you’ve heard the legend, haven’t you, Longarm?”

  Longarm had ridden through this part of the San Juans a couple of times before, and it was hard to pass through even once without at least hearing that there was a legend—having to do with a young woman from Little Bucharest, the mining and hide-hunting camp now known as Crazy Kate on account of the legend itself, but he’d never heard the particulars.

  He supposed he was going to hear them now. Goldie was one gassy cuss. Likely facing a hangman’s rope made him nervous and extra chatty.

  Longarm knew he didn’t have to respond to the question, so he merely relit his cheroot that the falling snow had put out, and half-listened in a bored sort of way as they rode and Goldie said, “Yessir, I reckon them folks from Romania brought the curse of the werewolves with ’em. An old curse, to hear to tell it. Started way back with Attila the Hun—can you believe that, Longarm?”

  Half-listening, Longarm sucked the rich smoke deep into his lungs, and when he had his cheroot drawing again to his liking, he flicked the match into the snow along the trail. It snuffed out with a slight phfft that the lawman could hear in the dense silence.

  They were climbing a gradually steepening grade toward a pass, so he had to hold the horses to a leisurely pace. Besides, while the stage road had been graded a few days ago, there were a good ten inches of fresh down on it, and that could mean unseen ice patches beneath. The last thing he needed out here was a horse with a thrown shoe or, worse, a broken leg.

  “Anyways,” Goldie continued, his voice obnoxiously loud in the silence, “a group of Romanians came here to the San Juans and built ’em their own special town, and took up minin’ and hide huntin’, an such. Queer mountain folks who didn’t much like livin’ amongst others ’cause they were so accustomed to keepin’ their own company back in Eastern Europe, they say. Anyways, as soon as they came, these mountains started attracting wolves. More than usual. And folks started gettin’ attacked, eaten. I ain’t shittin’—more than a few folks became wolf bait. That caused more than a few of the non-Romanians in the area to light a shuck.” Goldie chuckled. “I reckon I can understand lightin’ a shuck under such circumstances as those. Anyways, like I was sayin’, wolves kinda got a stranglehold on the place, but the Romanians just sorta learned to put up with it. But then somethin’ really terrible happened.”

  Goldie had slowed his voice down, spreading the words out for dramatic effect. Now, peevishly, he called behind Longarm, “Hey, you listenin’, Lawman? You really oughta listen to this. Give you more of an appreciation and healthy respect for these wolves, one of which you coulda shot and did not, I might add. That very easily coulda been a fuckin’ werewolf!”

  “Don’t piss down your leg, Goldie. That wasn’t no werewolf.”

  “Any-ways,” Goldie continued with an air of acutely strained patience, “there was this purty, young schoolteacher named Katarina Barkova. She was spreadin’ her legs for one of her boy students out in the woodshed behind the school one sunny autumn afternoon, when—what do ya know—a wolf attacks the boy. Tears him apart bad an’ bloody right there in front of the girl. Tears his arms and legs off. Chews out his heart and his liver. The girl herself? Well, she goes mad from the horror of what she sees. Her family locks her up with the nuns in the convent in the mountains overlooking the town, and after they done that, locked her up in there with them nuns, know what she did?”

  Goldie stared at Longarm as though actually awaiting a response. Longarm just stared back at him.

  “They said she started howlin’ with every full moon,” Goldie said.

  “Of course, she became a werewolf, too,” Longarm said, finding himself sort of half-enjoying the entertainment, since he had nothing else to think about and they still had a two-hour ride over the pass to Crazy Kate. These local legends were colorful, if nothing else.

  “I didn’t make up one word of that, Lawman,” Goldie intoned with haughty defensiveness. “Just wanna make that clear. That story there is told an’ retold in these here mountains, and they say that to this day, that Crazy Katarina—or Kate, as the locals call her now, there bein’ a fairly big mix of folks in Little Bucharest these days—howls like a damn she-wolf in season, puttin’ the whole town on edge.”

  “Suppose she was bit?”

  “Musta been. You figure it out.” Goldie jerked in his saddle, looking first to one side of the trail and then to the other. “You hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Longarm said, glancing over his shoulder.

  Goldie looked worried as he scanned the slope rising on their right side, his dark, deep-set eyes probing every nook and hollow of the boulder-strewn, forested mountainside.

  “Sounded like something prowling around in the woods”—Goldie turned to stare into the trees on the downslope, toward the creek that was rushing more loudly here, where it was dropping faster—“all around us.”

  “You’re just hearing the stream.”

  “Fuck the stream. That ain’t what I’m hearin’.”

  Longarm drew his bay to a stop and pricked his ears to listen, raking the area around him with his gaze.

  “I sure don’t like sittin’ this saddle with my hands cuffed behind my back, lawdog. I’m defenseless here. Hell, I couldn’t run if I had to!”

  “You should have thought of that bef
ore you robbed that harness shop in Cisco, and raped the harness maker’s wife. And then killed those guards when you escaped the pen.”

  Goldie cursed the lawman as he looked around warily.

  “Well, I don’t hear or see nothin’,” Longarm said. “Let’s get a move on. I’m hungry.”

  He turned forward and touched heels to the bay’s flanks.

  “Ah, shit, so’s he!” Goldie squealed.

  “So’s who?” Longarm had barely gotten the question out before a loud snarl rose and he turned around just in time to see a large, charcoal-black creature leap off a boulder on the upslope and swoop Goldie from his saddle with a shrill scream.

  Chapter 6

  Goldie and the wolf hit the ground with a snarl, a thump, and another shrill, beseeching squeal, the wolf chomping into Goldie’s upper right shoulder. Quickly, as the two rolled together down the slope and between two fir trees, Longarm shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot, racked a cartridge into the chamber, aimed, and fired.

  His bullet ruffled the charcoal fur on the beast’s hindquarters just as it prepared to bury its fangs into the outlaw’s neck that was protected by nothing more substantial than a knotted, dirty, blue muffler. The wolf yipped with a jerk, glanced angrily back at Longarm, yellow eyes glowing in the morning’s dullness, then leaped into the air, twisted around, and dashed off down the slope through the trees, snarling.

  Longarm’s Winchester leaped and roared twice more, but his slugs merely chewed bark from pine boles.

  Goldie groaned and grunted as he writhed in the snowy brush between the two firs, hands cuffed behind his back. Longarm swung down from the leather and walked over to the man, dropping to a knee.

  “Goldie, you poor bastard. How bad he get you?”

  The outlaw rolled onto his back with an especially loud grunt, writhing in pain and fear, his face twisted, lips stretched back from his tobacco-grimed teeth. “What’d I tell you, damn your lawdoggin’ hide? See what happened? See? Why in the hell didn’t you listen to me, lawman? Now look what he done! Damn near tore my arm off!”