The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (2 page)

As Gault was turning to leave, the clerk said, "Mister, maybe I ought to tell you somethin', for your own good. About that .45." He looked at Gault's wood-handled weapon. "We got an ordinance in New Boston against carryin' firearms. The sheriff don't like it."

Gault smiled his heatless smile. "What does the town marshal say about it?"

"Ain't got a town marshal, just the sheriff. And Dub Finley, that's Olsen's deputy."

Handy, Gault thought silently. A million-acre county, with only two lawmen to look over it. That kind of job called for strong men.

There was no problem finding the wagon yard. A group of men were gathered by the livery corral beside the barn. Town loafers, and a few visiting cowhands and farmers. Gault lowered his saddle to his hip as he moved in to see what it was that interested them. "What's the excitement about?" Gault asked a cowhand who was just leaving.

"Wolf Garnett's outfit," the cowhand told him. "His gun and the rig he was wearin' when the sheriff found him." He grinned and strolled away toward the nearest saloon.

Gault stood like stone for several moments. Then, without a word, he bulled his way through the crowd, oblivious of the hostile looks and the grumbling. He stood gazing down at the items of curiosity that so fascinated the citizens of Standard County.

"Them boots," someone was saying. "Only pair like those anywheres in the country. Hand-made by a saddler over at Fort Worth. Best money could buy—that was Wolf Garnett."

Gault lowered his saddle to the ground, knelt in front of the boots and inspected them minutely. They were white rimed now and stained by their long soaking in gyp water, but Gault would have recognized them anywhere. Once they had been richly black, with fanciful butterflies stitched above the vamps. They had been soft and smooth and expensive, and they had somehow smacked of the arrogance that had possessed the man who had worn them. And there was the cartridge belt, also black and probably bench made to order, for Wolf Garnett had not been one to stint on the necessities of his calling. The bone-handled .45, cast in the same mold of a thousand other Colts, was somehow distinctive because it had belonged to Wolf Garnett. And the foreign-looking Montana Stetson with its narrow brim and four-sided crease.

Gaunt studied the items one by one with great care. There was no doubt that they were real and that they had belonged to Wolf Garnett. The outlaw had worn these very items on the day, not quite a year ago, when he had so casually and offhandedly murdered Martha Gault.

In the back of Gault's mind he heard someone saying, "Mister, is somethin' the matter with you?" There was just the beginning of uneasiness in the voice. "You ain't about to have a fit, are you?"

Gault did not know what kind of expression had been on his face, but it was clear that this group of idlers had found it disturbing, if not outright alarming. They had quietly and without a word, started backing away from him, as they might have backed away from a dog that had suddenly started foaming at the mouth. Gault looked at them without actually seeing them. Then he got slowly to his feet and picked up his saddle.

He found the hostler filling feed troughs in the rear of the barn. "Have you got anything in the way of a camp shack for rent?" Gault asked him.

The hostler, a gimpy, buckshot-eyed little man of undeterminable age, was instantly alert and oozing greed. "Might be," he said cautiously. "How many of you?"

"Just myself. Tonight, and maybe tomorrow. I don't know how much longer."

"Won't come cheap," the little man warned him.

Gault made an inaudible sound in his throat and then gestured to indicate that the expense was of no importance. He owned no cattle now, no home, no land, no roots. But he did have money enough to see him through the next few months. After that it didn't matter.

Gault's shack was one of several green lumber boxes that had been built against the side of the barn to catch the overflow from the hotel on Saturdays and holidays. And days like today. Gault washed up at the livery pump. His face felt numb as he sloshed it with cold water. His insides felt numb too. And had for a long time.

He went to his shack, which was just big enough to hold the pole-and-rope bunk, and a few clothing pegs on the wall. There was no stove and no provision for one. Well, it was April, and the weather was mild in Texas. And there was an open fireplace next to the pump for guests who wanted to do their own cooking.

Gault sat on the bunk and began emptying the cartridges from the magazine of his Winchester. When the magazine was empty he began cleaning the weapon, swabbing and oiling and polishing until it shone like dark silver. One by one he cleaned the cartridges as meticulously as he had cleaned the rifle. Then he reloaded.

"The way you work on that rifle," a voice said, "a-body would guess you had some important work to put it to."

Gault looked up and quietly studied the man who was watching him through the open doorway. He was young— in his mid-twenties, Gault guessed. He was well rigged-out in California pants, gray flannel shirt and a pony hide vest. A nickel-plated star was fixed to the left side of the vest. So this, Gault reasoned, had to be Dub Finley, Standard County's one and only full-time deputy sheriff. "Did Olsen send you to keep an eye on me?"

Deputy Finley scowled. "Why would Sheriff Olsen want me to do that?" Gault noticed that Finley's thick black hair, which grew low on his forehead, formed a V between his eyes when he scowled. The eyes themselves were dark and wet-looking and without expression.

"I don't know," Gault said mildly. He gave the Winchester's breach a few wipes and put the rifle away. "What do you want?"

"I've had complaints about the pistol you're wearin'. New Boston ain't one of your rowdy trail towns, in case you landed here with that mistaken notion in your head. We're civilized. We got subscription schools, circuit courts, Methodist church, just like towns back East. Folks hereabouts don't feel called on to carry guns."

Gault heard the deputy's spiel out with a certain fascination. "All right," he said obligingly, "I'll take off the .45 and leave it with the hostler until I'm ready to leave."

"When will that be?"

"Hard to say right now. It depends."

Something crossed the deputy's mind and he frowned again. "You just mentioned the sheriff's name. Are you some kind of pal of Grady Olsen's?"

"No," Gault said with a thin smile. "I don't think you could rightly say that."

Finley worried this for a moment and then decided to take it up later with Olsen. He stepped up to the door of the shack and held out his hand. "I'll take that .45 now and leave it with the sheriff."

"I said I'd leave it with the hostler."

"That won't do." The deputy shook his head, and his hairline formed a black arrowhead that pointed straight down his narrow nose.

Gault hesitated for a moment, making no move to remove his cartridge belt. Still, there didn't seem to be much sense in making trouble for himself over the revolver. Like most plainsmen, he had never had much faith in hand guns anyway. He unbuckled the belt and handed the holstered weapon to Finley.

The deputy took it with a cool smile that seemed to imply that he had won some sort of victory. With a curt little nod, he tucked the holstered Colt under his arm and strode away.

The shadows in front of the camp shacks were growing longer and darker. The day was dragging to a close and Gault could sense that the excitement of the day was beginning to pall. The funeral was over if not forgotten. The newspaper reporters, for the most part, had taken the noon stage out of New Boston. Visiting cowmen and farmers were beginning to straggle off in various directions.

It would be a day to remember, for most of them. The day they buried Wolf Garnett. For Frank Gault the day hadn't rightly started yet.

He went to the barn and left his rifle on the rack with his saddle. "I may want to rent a horse later," he told the hostler.

The rawhide little liveryman grinned and nodded his head. "That's what we're in business for." He squinted out at the dusty street. "Crowd's beginnin' to thin out some. I got an end shack now, closer to the pump, if you'd like to make a change."

He was afraid that a good-paying cash customer might move to the more convenient hotel. But it didn't matter to Gault where he stayed or how he lived. A man with a hot coal in his gut doesn't complain about a lumpy mattress. "Whereabouts is the graveyard from here?" he asked suddenly.

"You mean where they planted Wolf Garnett? Off to the north, on the slope there, maybe quarter of a mile. You can see it from the back of the barn."

As Gault was walking out of the barn the hostler called, "There's a smart little buckskin in the rent corral. I can put him back for you, if you want."

Gault hesitated, his gaze resting on a long-handled shovel in one of the feed stalls. "Maybe," he said, "you better do that."

The night was unseasonably cold for April; the sky glittered with ice-blue stars. Gault put the buckskin up the rocky slope to the north of New Boston. He reined up as he neared the cemetery and sat quietly until he was sure that he was not being followed. For perhaps the thousandth time he reminded himself that it wasn't too late to turn back. There was no doubt now that the dead man was Wolf Garnett; even his sister had identified him. The man he had seen in the Nations had been someone else.

Leave it alone, he told himself. Just go away from here and leave it alone.

He couldn't do it. His anger was too hot, the gall too bitter, the days too empty.

He nudged the buckskin and the cautious little animal began picking its way through the maze of earthen mounds. Gault had no trouble locating the newest grave. The mound was taller than the others, the earth around it scraped raw. There was no marker, no flowers, nothing at all to indicate that beneath that mound of clay lay a man who had once been feared all over Texas.

Slowly, Gault dismounted and staked the buckskin. He took the wagon yard shovel and plunged it into the mound.

It had been a dry winter; the shovel rang as it clashed with the flinty lumps of clay. The work went slowly, but it went steadily, and Gault developed a kind of grim rhythm with the shovel as he cleared away the mound and began work in the cavity of the grave itself.

The work went on and on, and there seemed to be no end to the length and breadth and depth of that dark grave. He worked until his muscles quivered, until rivers of sweat flowed down his face and dripped from the point of his chin, until his shirt was soaked and even his canvas windbreaker was wet. At last he had to stop. He fell against the side of the grave and gasped for breath. And for the first time he looked around him and saw himself standing there, almost shoulder deep in the new grave, and for the first time the question asked itself:
Lord, what am I doing!

For one grim moment he thought that he would be sick. He closed his eyes and dragged great gulps of air into his burning lungs. Cold, moist air, smelling of the night and of the grave.

"Feelin' a little sick in your gut, are you, Gault?"

The big voice rolled and boomed with righteous indignation. Startled, Gault fell over his shovel and went to his knees. He wasn't sure whether he had actually heard the voice, or if it had been in his mind. He tilted his head and looked up from the depth of the grave, looked up at the huge figure of Grady Olsen looming against the star-scattered sky.

"Looks like you just ain't goin' to be satisfied any other way." The big sheriffs voice was slightly muffled now, sounding almost as if his jaws had been wired together. "All right, if that's what it takes to please you. Pick up your shovel. Dig."

Using the shovel as a support, Gault pulled himself to his feet. "Sheriff…" His mind was numb. He didn't know what it was that he wanted to say.

"Dig!" Olsen said again, this time with harshness and anger.

Almost without his willing it, Gault took the shovel in his hands and plunged it into the red clay. He lifted the shovel slowly while staring up at Olsen's wide, angry face, and dumped the few red clods over his shoulder. Only now did Gault notice the ugly twin muzzles of the sheriffs shotgun. As he dug, lifted, dumped the clay, the muzzles followed him like empty eyes.

Time dragged by. An hour. An eternity. "Careful," Olsen said finally. "You're about deep enough."

Gault had expected the solid feel of wood. But the dead man had been buried at county expense, and Standard County did not believe in squandering money on coffins.

"There," Olsen said at last. It was an angry sound.

The body had been sewn into a piece of castoff tarpaulin. Gault cast a curious glance at the sheriff. "You collected a thousand dollars in bounty. Would it have killed you to put him away in a pine box?"

"No time for that," the sheriff said impatiently. "Slit the tarp and look. Satisfy yourself once and for all. I don't want to have to go through this again."

Gault stood rigid, the shovel in his hands. He couldn't seem to make himself move.

"Have you got a knife?" Olsen asked.

Gault nodded. He felt in his pocket, took out a barlow pocketknife and opened it. For a moment the sheriff disappeared, then he appeared again, cast up against the dark sky. He had a lighted coal oil lantern in his hand. "All right, slit the tarp."

Again Gault's hand moved almost of its own will. He opened a two-foot slash in the tarpaulin. Grady Olsen got down on his knees and lowered the lantern into the grave.

Gault stared down at the horror at his feet. There was nothing there, nothing recognizable as a man.

"Gault, you all right?"

Gault could only stare at the horror. Two weeks in the water. He should have known. "Here," Olsen said. He pulled the lantern out of the grave. "Give me your hand."

Dumbly, Gault lifted his hand and the big sheriff hauled him out of the pit. Gault sat on the clay mound at the edge of the grave. "Are you satisfied now?" the sheriff asked.

He nodded wearily. The sheriff blew out the lantern. "Get your horse, we'll go back to town. I'll send somebody to fill the grave." When Gault didn't move, Olsen nudged him with the shotgun and his voice became harsh. "Nobody made you come up here and dig. And nobody told you it was goin' to be pretty."