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

frothed around the pot’s rim, the tan bubbles dribbling down the sides.
    He set the pot on a rock away from the flames and then went over and knelt down beside Goldie, who slowly tore bits of the sandwich off with his teeth, chewing as though the cold bread and meat hurt his choppers.
    He looked at the smoking blade in Longarm’s gloved hand. “Ah, shit, this ain’t my day. Wasn’t my night, neither. I was winnin’ big till you showed up and shot the hell out of the boys I was playin’ with.”
    â€œBite into that sandwich hard,” Longarm said. “This is gonna hurt like hell.”
    Goldie cursed again then leaned back against the log behind him, braced himself, and stuck one half of the sandwich in his mouth. “Okay,” he said around the food.
    Longarm pressed the blade against the front part of the wound. The skin melted like wax, and white smoke curled up from the blade, smelling like something dead. Goldie jerked and grunted, grinding his spurs into the ground. Quickly, Longarm removed the blade from the front part of the wound then laid it over the half that angled down over his shoulder, making sure the cauterizing encompassed each of the bloody puncture marks.
    Goldie bit the sandwich in two, and half of it dropped to his lap as he threw his head back and groaned, continuing to rake the ground with his spurs.
    Longarm lifted the blade, wrinkling his nostrils at the stench of scorched skin and blood, then reached into his saddlebags for a bottle. He popped the bottle’s cork, took a pull of the rye, then splashed a little over each cauterized area of the outlaw’s shoulder.
    It was a sad waste of good whiskey, but it was all he had. By the time the smoke stopped rising from Goldie’s shoulder, the outlaw had passed out, sagging back against the log with a ragged half of sandwich clamped in his jaws.
    â€œAh,” Longarm said, “quiet at last.”
    He took another pull from the bottle then hammered the cork back in with the heel of his hand. Setting the bottle aside, the lawman cleaned the Barlow’s blade off in the flames, wiped it with a handkerchief, and returned it to his pocket. He then took the other sandwich out of the burlap pouch, poured himself a cup of black, piping hot coffee, and sat back against a rock on the far side of the fire from the unconscious Goldie.
    He looked around as he ate and washed the sandwich down with the coffee. There was no movement except for the dark water of the stream sliding between its banks, and the lazily falling snow, flakes of which sizzled softly on the hot rocks around the fire. The only sounds aside from the cracking flames were the occasional bits of ice cracking off the fingers protruding into the stream, or the soft thud of a branch getting pinned up against the bank.
    The silence was dense, almost funereal. He glanced again toward the crag that had been decapitated by a low, heavy ceiling of goose down. Had the wolf really been standing up there?
    Was there any possibility that they could be more than just . . . well . . .
wolves
?
    Longarm pondered that for about five seconds and then, catching himself, gave a caustic snort. “Christ, I’m gettin’ as cork-headed as Goldie.”
    They might be rabid, but they sure as hell weren’t haunted, though now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure which would be worse.
    He finished his sandwich and washed down the final bite with the last of the coffee. He was about to toss the grounds into the fire, when he stayed the movement, lifting his head and frowning, staring downstream. The skin on his lower back began tingling as the faint yipping of a half dozen or so coyotes—or wolves—reached his ears. The gradually loudening cacophony echoed around the canyon, so that it was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from. It seemed to be coming from everywhere down canyon.
    The source of the commotion seemed