The Old Wolves by Peter Brandvold Page B

aunt’s shoulder. “Uh . . . do pardon my French, ladies,” he said, lowering the window halfway and then stepping back against his own seat, remaining standing and giving a gentlemanly bow to the ladies.
    The young girl, dressed in a plaid dress with a delicate little bow tie and bullet-brimmed straw hat with a brown silk band, wriggled her way around her portly aunt and sagged into the chair directly across from Spurr. The big woman then sort of half-tumbled and half-folded herself down into the seat beside her niece, and Spurr slacked back down into his own seat.
    He took another drag from the cigar and made a point of blowing the smoke out the window. Still, both the girl and the big woman scowled at him, the big woman making a face and waving her hand though Spurr couldn’t see any smoke blowing at her.
    â€œI do apologize,” Spurr growled and, knowing he could no longer enjoy the panatela, carefully raked the coal off the end and onto the floor and stuffed the remaining cigar back into his shirt pocket for later.
    He ground the coal beneath his moccasin boot. Both the girl and the big woman regarded him like an unsightly something a cur had left on the parlor rug. Spurr smiled at them and, since they were all sitting here together in the rocking, rattling parlor car, heading north across the vast, lonely plain, he tried to make conversation.
    â€œYou ladies headed far?”
    The girl turned to the woman and arched a brow. The woman touched the girl’s wrist, wagged her head not to speak to the unwashed stranger, and snootily directed her gaze out the window. The girl shuttled her own gaze past Spurr and out the window, and Spurr gave a snort, wishing he’d gone ahead and kept his panatela lit.
    Uppity bitches.
    He sighed, sagged down in his seat, and pulled his hat brim down low on his forehead. Might as well catch a catnap or two before detraining at the little station east of Camp Collins. His mind stayed with the women, however. He couldn’t help feeling a little injured by their rude dismissal.
    He opened one eye, furtively looking out from beneath his down-canted hat brim at the girl sitting across from him, her head turned toward the blond prairie sliding by, beyond the smoke lacing back from the locomotive. A pretty, young thing, this girl. Prettier than young Jane if you only took surface features into account, but Jane was far more lovely because of the tenderness in her eyes. Jane had had a hard life, and it had softened her heart, whereas this girl had lived a pampered life, and she had little time for anyone but herself.
    Spurr tried to shunt his mind onto a different track than the one Jane was on. She was dead, and there was no bringing her back. As he turned his mind to other pursuits, he opened one eye again to regard the pretty girl sitting across from him once more.
    He found himself remembering a time—years ago, of course—when he’d raised a flush in the cheeks of such a girl as the one sitting across from him. When such a girl would respond to him shyly, maybe bat an eyelash or two, and indulge him in demure conversation.
    He remembered taking walks along country creeks with such a girl as this one, walks down country lanes, of picnicking with such a girl in the hills above his father’s farm in Kansas, before he’d lit out west to make a new, wild life for himself.
    Well, he’d had that life. Used it all up. He’d burned the fuse from both ends, and here he was in warty old age, sitting across from a pretty girl who wouldn’t even look at him let alone indulge his conversation.
    He was old enough to be the girl’s grandfather, of course. The unkind fat woman sitting beside her was young enough to be Spurr’s daughter. And neither one had the time of day for such a man as the one he’d become—old and used up and ugly and now only fit to transport one prisoner nearly as old as he himself was down the