Longarm and the Cry of the Wolf (9781101619506) by Tabor Evans

at least uncuff me, goddamnit!”
    Longarm walked over and freed the outlaw’s wrists from the cuffs. As afraid as Goldie was of the wolves, he wasn’t going to try anything against Longarm, who slipped the key back into his coat pocket and walked off down the slope. When he’d found a good place to set up a camp for a short time, he retrieved his horses and gathered wood. Goldie gathered a few sticks halfheartedly, favoring his right side and continuing to look around as though another attack were imminent.
    When Longarm had gotten a fire going and had set a pot of coffee to boil with water he’d fetched from the creek, he told Goldie to take his coat off. “I’ll see to that wound. Wouldn’t want you to die on me, an’ cheat the hangman.”
    â€œThat’s real nice of you,” Goldie said, unbuttoning his coat. “I’m so mighty pleased to hear your sympathy, lawdog. Fuckin’ bastard.”
    â€œGoldie,” Longarm said, helping the man pull his coat off his right arm, exposing the bloody wound at the top of the arm. He was trying to settle him down, as the outlaw’s fried nerves were beginning to singe his own. “Where’d you ever get a name like Goldie? Your hair’s brown.”
    â€œGoldspoon,” Goldie said. “Last name’s Goldspoon.”
    â€œOh, that’s right—I remember now.” Longarm used his pocketknife to cut the man’s bloody shirt around the wound that kept pushing up liver-colored gobs of blood, which dripped over Goldie’s shoulder and down his chest, staining his wool shirt and his vest. “From the warrant the prison sent out. Marion Goldspoon.”
    â€œI don’t go by Marion, so I’ll thank you not use that handle.” Goldie slanted a look up the wooded mountain on the far side of the creek that ran darkly between snowy, icy banks. “It’s Goldie, plain an’ simple. How bad’s it look?”
    â€œShit, you’ve cut yourself worse shavin’.” It was a lie. The puncture wounds were deep and widely spaced, the top teeth having laid open the back of the man’s shoulder worse than the bottom ones had dug into the top of it. No point in telling Goldie that. Longarm was tired of the outlaw’s mewling. “I’m just gonna cauterize it, an’ you’ll be good to go.”
    â€œAh, shit—you’re just gonna love that, ain’t ya? Let me get all chewed up, and then burn me with a knife.”
    Longarm chuckled. He cut it off when a wolf’s howl sounded from a ridge up the mountain to the north, on the far side of the trail.
    Goldie stiffened. “Shit!”
    Longarm scrutinized a jagged crag towering far above the tree line. The black rocks were dusted with snow, the very top of the crag fuzzed with low clouds from which snow continued to fall—large, woolly flakes falling slow. Again, the wolf howled, shrill and echoing, half-mournful, half-menacing.
    â€œGive me my gun, Longarm.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhat happens if they come? Turns out you ain’t as good at protectin’ your unarmed prisoner as you claimed to be!”
    â€œYou got me there, Goldie,” Longarm said, reaching into his saddlebags and withdrawing a small burlap bag. He tossed the bag to Goldie. “You’ll find a coupla roast beef sandwiches in there. Help yourself. A saloon girl made ’em for me back in Crestone yesterday.”
    Goldie raked his gaze from the towering crag that was now suddenly completely lost in the clouds, and then looked into the bag. He withdrew a small waxed paper bundle and unwrapped the sandwich. “Frozen,” he said in disgust.
    â€œMight break a tooth, but it’ll fill your belly.” Longarm had tossed a handful of coffee into the boiling pot and was heating the blade of his Barlow knife in the leaping flames. The blade had turned black and was beginning to glow when the coffee