The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (11 page)

The former deputy closed his eyes, and for a moment Gault was afraid he'd fallen asleep. At last he said, "This mornin' I was down at the livery corral. Torgason came by to get his horse. There was somethin' said about the Circle-R."

The name had a familiar ring. The oldtime cowhand, Elbert Yorty, rode line for the Circle-R. Also it had been an injured Circle-R hand that Doc Doolie had been tending the night of the thunderstorm—according to Doc Doolie. "Is there anything queer about the Circle-R? Or about Torgason heading that way today?"

Wompler looked at him blearily. "Nothin' I can think of."

"You ever have any trouble with the outfit, when you was deputy?"

The ex-lawman shook his head. "Nope. What you lookin' for?"

It was a reasonable question, but Gault didn't have a reasonable answer. What was he looking for? Gault only knew that the fire in his gut wouldn't let him rest until something was done. "What I'm lookin' for is not something I can put a finger on. It's a feelin'."

"About the sheriff?"

Gault nodded. "That's part of it."

"Is it true what they're sayin'? That Wolf Garnett killed your wife?"

The former deputy, Gault decided, was more alert than he appeared to be. "It's true." He waited a full minute for Wompler to go on, but the ex-lawman only shrugged and let the matter drop. Gault said, "What's the best way for me to get to the Circle-R? I want to talk to Torgason."

"He's close-mouthed. You won't get much out of him, even if he knowed somethin' to tell." Wompler brightened slightly as a thought occurred to him. "Have you got the money to pay for a rent animal over at the livery corral?"

"I guess so. Why?"

"If there's a chance of puttin' somethin' over on Olsen, I'd like to deal myself in. You pay for the rent animal and I'll ride with you to the Circle-R." Gault hesitated, and Wompler added flatly, "I ain't as useless as I might look. I can use a gun, if I have to."

Gault was vaguely disturbed by the way he said it. "Do you expect to have to?"

"Don't expect nothin' but tricks and slick dealin' when doin' business with Grady Olsen. Will you pay for the horse?"

Wompler was not the kind of man that Gault would have chosen to ride with. But he found himself nodding, reluctantly.

Wompler sighed, smiled crookedly, and with considerable effort pushed himself to his feet. "One more thing," he said, tucking the bottle of liquor under his arm. "You might pay the barkeep for this."

Against his better judgment, Gault paid for the whiskey. They left the Day and Night and walked the short distance to the wagon yard. The exertion left Wompler winded, but his watery eyes had cleared a bit and his speech was not so slurred. "Of course," the former deputy said, "I don't aim to drink this down all at once." He fondly caressed the bottle. "It's just that I've been promisin' myself for a long time that I'd kill Grady Olsen if I ever got the chance. And I might just do it if I was to catch myself completely sober."

Headquarters for the Circle-R was a scattering of sheds and branding pens and corrals, an hour's ride from New Boston. There was no owner's "big house," as the owner rarely visited the place. The manager lived with the hands in a split-pole bunkhouse.

Such a spread was not impressive, but there were a number of them on the plains below the Cap Rock. When well managed they were efficient and productive and made money for the owner who might live as far away as England or Scotland and never get within five thousand miles of his holdings. An aging wrangler appeared from behind a brush-covered shed and met them as they headed for the main buildings. The old man glared at Gault with distrust, but his reaction to Wompler was undisguised anger.

Wompler smiled his meaningless smile and said, "Seth here is Colton's headquarters wrangler and cook. This is Frank Gault, Seth. We're lookin' for Del Torgason."

The old man glared at Wompler and suddenly spat at the ground in disgust. "I don't make it a habit to socialize with cow thieves!"

"Seth," Wompler went on with a disinterested air, "firmly believes that up to a year ago I headed a rustlin' operation here in Standard County. That's what most folks believe, I guess." He spread his hands and smiled benignly down at the old man. "Well, it was never proved, and anyhow it's water over the dam. Just tell us where to find Torgason."

The wrangler jutted his jaw defiantly. "Torgason went out with the boss, Mr. Colton. I don't know where."

Wompler's tone turned menacing. "Mr. Gault here is a beef buyer for the Kiowa-Comanche agency. Mr. Colton won't like it, missin' a big beef sale, just because he's got a stubborn old wrangler on the place."

The old man paled. He knew very well that a missed sale could mean his job. And for men his age even wrangler jobs were next to impossible to come by. "Last I seen of Mr. Colton," he said shakily, "him and two hands and Torgason was headed toward north camp, brandin' strays they missed in the roundup."

"We're much obliged for all your help, Seth," Wompler said with heavy sarcasm. He reined his rented black gelding around the old man and headed north. Gault, after an instant's hesitation, followed on the buckskin.

"Was it necessary," Gault asked angrily, "to scare the old man like that?"

"Yes," Wompler said. "As you'll learn, Gault, it's the only way to get anywheres in Standard County. Fear. It's a little lesson I learned when I was deputyin' for Grady Olsen."

By sundown Gault was tired of the saddle and sick of the company of Harry Wompler. They arrived at the banks of the Little Wichita as the sun was touching the dark green horizon. "We can make camp here," the ex-deputy said. "Or we can make it on to the Circle-R camp in maybe another hour."

Gault's side was aching. "We'll camp here. I've had enough of the saddle for one day." They staked the horses downstream, boiled coffee and ate what was left in Gault's grub sack.

Wompler held one heavy biscuit to the fading light and said, "Don't have to ask where you got these. Esther never was no prize as a cook. Even I would admit that much."

"Did you know Miss Garnett long?"

The ex-deputy smiled his slack smile. "Long enough."

They finished the meal in silence, then Wompler dug the bottle out of his saddlebag and downed a carefully measured ration of whiskey. He put the bottle away without offering it to Gault. A faded army blanket and a yellow slicker known as a "fish" had come with Wompler's rented horse and saddle. He dumped it beneath the budding branches of a cottonwood, then walked up the grade from the river and stood for a while, building and smoking his highly combustible cigarettes, gazing upstream toward the Garnett place.

Gault decided the former lawman was not an easy man to know. In the Day and Night he had been a common drunk. At the Circle-R headquarters he had been ill-tempered and brutal to the old wrangler. Since that time he had shown flashes of sensitivity and the rudiments of education, neither of which were very common in a place like Standard County.

Gault sat beside the dying fire, smoking, trying to keep his mind away from the past. Wondering what he was going to say to the stock detective, Torgason, when he found him. How could Torgason help him? How could anybody help him?

When Wompler came back down the slope and stood beside the fire, Gault said, "Tell me about Torgason."

"Torgason…" Wompler considered his subject. "He's an old hand, good at his job, no nonsense. I don't like him, but he knows his business. And he ain't afraid of Olsen." With a curt nod, Wompler got to his feet and went to his bedroll. Tugging off his boots, he said, "You might not think it, Gault, but I used to be a man of ambition. I read law with old Judge Tabor at Gainsville. I set myself the task of learnin' the law, and then politics, and then…" Gault could not see his face, but he knew that Wompler was smiling that loose-lipped smile of his. "There wasn't no limit to the ambition I had in those days. A year ago I lost more than a job and a woman. I lost the man that used to be Harry Wompler. And I guess I won't be satisfied until I find out where he went."

During the night Gault came suddenly awake. Wompler was snoring. Far to the north a spring storm was passing. Silent lightning blinked in the distance.

Lightning
…

Frowning, Gault rubbed his hands over his face. He sat for a long while, thinking, as a damp chill worked its way into his bones. Had it been a dream that had shocked him awake? He could remember no dream—and Lord knew he had no trouble remembering the nightmares of the past. No, he was convinced that it had not been a dream.

He pulled the blanket around him and continued to sit there beside the dead fire. Had it been a noise that had wakened him? Something, or someone, coming up on their camp?

No… He shook his head, staring at the distant lightning. Then, very faintly, he heard the thunder, rolling over the prairie so far away that it was hardly a sound at all.

Thunder
… For a moment the thought hung there.

"It wasn't thunder that night," he said aloud. "It was a gun."

Wompler rolled over and raised himself on one elbow. "You talkin' to me?"

"No. I was thinkin' out loud." Then, still thinking it out in speech, he said, "The next mornin' there was Shorty Pike comin' out of the arroyo with the shovel. He killed him, and down there somewhere is where he buried him."

Wompler threw off his blanket. "Shorty Pike killed somebody and buried him in an arroyo?"

"An express agent named Wirt Sewell." Gault was trying to pull together the loose ends. "I was talkin' to Sewell that night. He had his suspicions about the new deputy and his possemen, so when Deputy Finley and his sidekicks followed me out of New Boston, he followed all of us. And we all wound up at the Garnett place. Me with a bullet graze and a busted rib. But I never saw him after that talk…" He could still see that lanky figure hunkered in the dark corner of the shed.

"Never saw who?"

"The express man. After I went back to sleep there was another thunderstorm. But next mornin' the ground was dry, so I figgered it was a dream. But it wasn't a dream, it was a gunshot. Not thunder. And that morning Shorty Pike was comin' out of the arroyo with a long-handled shovel in his hand."

Harry Wompler gave a snort of exasperation, and Gault went back to the beginning, back to the moment when Wirt Sewell had first appeared in the doorway of the shed. He recreated the scene word for word, as well as he could remember it, and Wompler did not interrupt until he had finished. Then he said, "I think we better have a drink."

The former deputy brought the bottle to the dead fire and the two men drank silently. Wompler shook the bottle sadly; it was almost empty. "It sounds loco," he said. "Maybe that's why I believe it. Folks told me I was loco, too, when I tried to convince them I had nothin' to do with cattle rustlers."

"What did the cattlemen think about it?" This was something that Gault had wondered about for some time.

Wompler turned up the bottle, had another swallow and corked it. "Cowman is a contrary critter. Sometimes he goes off on a short fuse. Sometimes, if you get his suspicions up, he'll dog you like a Kiowa tracker. But there's one thing you can bank on—if the cowmen was sure I was in with rustlers, I'd of been hung months ago. I figger they've turned it over to Torgason and his Association, to find out for sure."

"Can Torgason get to the bottom of it?"

"If anybody can." Wompler shrugged.

At first light they rolled their beds and started upstream.

They topped the grassy rise near the place where Gault had been shot by Shorty Pike. For several minutes they sat their horses, studying the placid scene before them. A young cowhand, his pony tied to a fencepost, had stopped off long enough to chop a few rows of cotton. The fields were neat and sparkling. The yard and sheds appeared well kept.

"One thing about Esther," Wompler said ruefully, "she never had no trouble keepin' the place in shape. Always a cowhand or one of the sheriff's men stoppin' by to help out." Then, as they watched, Esther Garnett stepped out of a shed and began scattering feed to a small flock of chickens. Wompler came erect in his saddle, his face stiff and cold. Then, slowly, he began to relax. "The wrong kind of woman," he said flatly, "is a good deal like the wrong kind of whiskey. Poison to the system. But," he added with a cold smile, "a man gets over it in time." He pointed toward the deep wash behind the farmhouse. "Is that where you figger the express agent is?"

"That's where I saw Shorty comin' from."

They put their horses down the slope, out of sight of the house, and walked the rest of the way to the arroyo. They stood for several minutes on the edge of the gully. The bottom was strewn with casual rubbish, along with the cleanings of the barn and chicken house, waiting for the next spring flood to wash it away. There was nothing that looked like a grave.

"You sure this is the place?" Wompler asked doubtfully.

"Maybe it's farther down toward the river." He started to climb down into the wash when the former lawman caught his arm.

"One thing I learned settin' in the Day and Night for almost a year, and that's to be suspicious. If you're goin' to scout the gully, I'll keep watch up here with the rifle."

Gault didn't like parting with his Winchester, but he handed it over and accepted Wompler's .45 in exchange. "Keep an eye on the house, in case Deputy Finley's put on more possemen." He slid into the wash.

For the best part of an hour Gault explored the arroyo. At last, beneath a stinking pile of straw from a cow stall, he found freshly dug earth. He looked up at Wompler. "I think we've found Wirt Sewell."

Wompler didn't look convinced, but he said, "Find somethin' to dig with. I'll keep an eye on the Garnett place."

With a broken plow-handle Gault began gouging at the loose earth. Soon the jagged tip of the plow-handle struck something foreign to the loosely packed clay. It was a sensation that set Gault's skin crawling; he had experienced it once before while digging in the graveyard west of New Boston.