The Old Wolves Read Online Free PDF Page B

there’d been a pronounced chill in the air for days.
    A gambling parlor lay through a curtained doorway, with blackjack tables, a roulette wheel, and a craps table, at the rear of Cranston’s, but Spurr tried his best to stay out of the place lest those holes in his pockets should grow even larger.
    â€œWhere in the hell you goin’ with my girl, Spurr?” This from the barman who also owned the place—Leonard Cranston, brother of George who’d been hit by a hansom cab a few years back, dying and leaving the business to his big, burly, blond-bearded brother, Lenny, who hired some of the prettiest doxies in Colorado.
    â€œWe’re off to get married!” As Spurr led the girl, who wore a much more sensible dress and shoes than she normally wore about Cranston’s, toward the front door that looked out on Arapaho Street, he lifted his hat high above his head. “Wish this ole duck good luck, will ya, fellers?”

FIVE

    â€œWish Miss Jane luck, more like!” called one of Cranston’s regulars, Pearl Isaakson, who came in most mornings to partake of a sudsy beer to start the day, and anything remaining of last night’s free lunch platter. He stood at the bar, grinning, one elbow on the bar top, a beer schooner in his fist.
    The others in the saloon this early weekday morning, including Cranston, laughed as Spurr led the girl through the heavy, glass-paned door and out onto Arapaho Street. Traffic was light on this narrow, gravel-paved side street, about three blocks from the Mint and the Federal Building.
    A beer dray was just now passing with two big mule skinners at the reins, both of whom waved to Spurr and lifted their battered felt hats to Miss Jane. The driver’s shaggy dog was following the dray, tongue hanging and tail wagging, making the rounds with its master though giving chase to the occasional stray cat now and then.
    Spurr had resided in or around Denver long enough to know well over half the faces—including the animals’ faces—in the fast-growing old cow town once known as Denver City.
    Spurr and the girl waited for a coal wagon to pass and then headed off across the street to angle toward an alley mouth, which would take them via the quickest route possible to the Chinaman’s café which, if Spurr remembered correctly, was called merely Good Food—Cheap.
    â€œYou ever been married, Spurr?” Jane asked as they stepped up onto the boardwalk on the street’s opposite side, passing the tonsorial parlor out front of which the barber, Roy Overhill, was sweeping horse and mule dung from his stoop.
    â€œMe? Hell, no!” Spurr laughed. “Oh, I lived with a few women too stupid to know no better, but no, I never been hitched.”
    â€œI bet you’d have made a good husband.”
    â€œReally? Why’s that, honey?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know. ’Cause you’re good. You’re kind. You’re sweet as all git-out in bed, and you got a nice laugh. Your eyes twinkle, too, and I like that in a man. Most men are so serious.”
    â€œWell, I’m old enough to know you can’t take life too damn serious. Why would you? It’s too damn short!”
    Jane laughed and rubbed her head against his arm as they walked. “Spurr, I hope you come back an’ see me sometime.”
    â€œAh, hell—you must be tired o’ my stringy hide by now.”
    â€œYou’re a good man, Spurr. Sure, you got a few years on you, but . . .”
    Spurr stopped and looked at her. “What is it, Miss Jane?”
    She gazed up at him concernedly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay, hon?”
    â€œWhat is it?” he urged, patting her hand.
    â€œSpurr, ain’t you just a tad old to be doin’ what you’re doin’?”
    â€œAh, hell,” Spurr said, twisting his leathery, patch-bearded, wart-stippled face like he’d just sucked a lemon. “Not you,