The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (4 page)

He climbed up to the saddle and sat there for a moment before reining away from the rack. The sheriff was looking down at him, his big face blank, his hands grasping the railing of the second-floor gallery.
What's he up to?
The question rolled in Gault's mind but found no satisfactory answer. For a moment he was tempted to dismount and buy another revolver—but he had the uneasy feeling that New Boston stores would be out of revolvers that day. Gault turned a last curious glance up at Grady Olsen.

With the innocence of angels, the sheriff smiled down at him. Gault hauled the buckskin away from the rack and pointed the animal up the main street of New Boston, heading north.

Was it his imagination, or did the town actually seem to hold its breath for a moment? A prickling sensation scurried across Gault's scalp. He had the feeling that from behind every window along the street a pair of eyes was watching him. The hostler was standing in front of the livery barn, arms folded across his chest, his eyes fixed on Gault. Gault nodded as he rode past. The hostler turned abruptly and walked into the barn.

When he had put the town behind him and it was no longer in sight, Gault reined off the Gainsville mail road and struck northwest toward the Little Wichita. He had been out of New Boston for a little more than an hour when a disquieting thought came to him. He jerked the Winchester out of the saddle boot and began inspecting it.

It took only a few seconds to discover that the firing pin had been neatly filed away. When or by whom he couldn't say, but he guessed it to be the work of the hostler, or possibly Deputy Dub Finley. Probably while Gault had been digging in the New Boston graveyard.

Not that any of those things mattered now. The thing that mattered was that someone, for reasons of his own, had very quietly and efficiently disarmed him.

It was a pleasant spring day in North Texas. The rolling prairie was sparkling green, the sky a dazzling blue. Cattle, fat and sleek, lazed in the new grass. Along the streams budding cottonwoods and oaks were coming into leaf. The sun was warm, the air so clean that it tasted faintly of flint and steel. All in all, it was a near perfect day for travelers.

Frank Gault did not enjoy it. He was not even aware of the calm beauty that surrounded him.

For the past hour he had suspected that he was being followed; within the past few minutes he had become certain of it. There were two of them at least, maybe three. They lay far back on his backtrail, popping up from behind ridges and knolls, moving when Gault moved, stopping when he stopped. Usually there was only one of them in sight at a time, and never more than two.

Near midafternoon Gault dismounted at a small stream and let the buckskin drink and graze for several minutes. Far to the south, appearing as little more than a speck on the horizon, one of the riders topped a rise and stopped. Could it be the sheriff? Gault didn't think so. Even at that distance, Gault was sure that he would recognize Grady Olsen's slope-shouldered figure if he were to see it.

The deputy, maybe? Gault had met the deputy only once, and the young lawman had not greatly impressed him. It was impossible to tell at that distance.

Whoever they were, they seemed to be playing a waiting game. Waiting and watching. Gault would have given a great deal to know why.

He rebalanced and tied the bulky bedroll behind the saddle and once again pointed the buckskin toward the northwest. The horsebacker on the far horizon moved casually across the green prairie and disappeared in a stand of blackjack. In a few minutes one of the other riders appeared on a wooded knoll, maybe a mile to the east of the first one.

Gault began to experience an ill-defined ache in his gut. At first it occurred to him that the surly proprietor of the New Boston Ritz had poisoned him. Then he recognized it for what it was—a subtle but steadily growing fear. It was not an unfamiliar experience—all cattlemen knew it well. A horse going off a cut bank on a dark night. The suck of quicksand. Stumbling in front of a stampede.

But this was different. It was a quiet but growing thing. The kind of sensation that went with the knowledge that he was unarmed and helpless in a hostile country.

Late that afternoon Gault reached the Little Wichita and prepared to make camp in a grove of rattling cottonwoods. The distant horsebackers were not to be seen, but he had no doubt that they were there. Waiting and watching.

The prairie sun took a long time dying. Gault staked the buckskin in new grass and built his fire. He did not bother to make it small or smokeless—the watchers would see it, however small he made it. Methodically, he inspected the meager camp gear that the hostler had thrown in with the buckskin. A small skillet, a granite coffeepot, a spoon, all wrapped in a faded tarpaulin and a dirty patchwork quilt. In his own warbag he had a small parcel of cornmeal, a piece of dry salt meat and some crushed coffee beans.

He cut off a slab of salt meat and put it in the skillet to cook. He dipped some water into the coffeepot, added the crushed beans and set it beside the skillet. From far upstream he heard the faint rustle of brush. It might have been a deer. Or a wild turkey settling on a cottonwood branch for the night. But he didn't think so.

Gault smiled thinly to himself as the smell of cooking meat spread on the still air. He wondered if the watchers would dare to build fires, or if they would lay back cautiously and make do with cold trail fare that night.

The shadows along the river became longer and blacker. Night, with its hundreds of fluttering and scurrying sounds, came to the Little Wichita. The darkness of springtime was chill and damp, but no fires appeared on the prairie. It was small satisfaction knowing that his watchers were hungry and cold—but it was better than no satisfaction at all.

Gault stirred cornmeal and water into the meat grease and cooked the panbread over glowing embers. He ate in silence, without relish or satisfaction, and then he washed the skillet with sand and water and put it away.

They must know I'm unarmed, he reasoned to himself. If they wanted to finish me off they could have done it any time. Still, they're not going to all this trouble on a mere whim.

They were waiting to see what his next move would be. Now that he had reached the Little Wichita, would he cross the stream and head due north toward the Nations, or would he bear to the east and scout the river valley, looking for the Garnett farm?

If he made for the Nations, that would indicate that he had convinced himself that the body in the grave was actually that of Wolf Garnett and that any further investigation was useless. In which case, Gault speculated, the riders would trail him as far as the Red to satisfy themselves that he was actually making for the Nations. Then they would go back to wherever it was they came from.

On the other hand, if he struck up the valley of the Little Wichita looking for Wolf Garnett's homeplace, the watchers would likely regard it as a suspicious move.

And then what? The watchers—or someone—had managed to disarm him. Would they go as far as killing him? It didn't seem reasonable—but he was learning that the world wasn't necessarily a reasonable place. The coldblooded act of whipping a stage team off a mountain road hadn't been reasonable. But it had happened.

When the fire had burned down Gault threw his bed near a gnarled elm. He lay quietly, gazing blindly through the twisted branches. Was it possible that the men who were following him had been with Wolf Garnett that day?

For the thousandth time he saw the frightened horses racing off into thin air, and the coach turning slowly, end over end, before crashing on the rocks below.

He sat up suddenly in a cold sweat. I've got to stop this, he thought grimly. Pretty soon I'll be keening like a Comanche squaw and slashing my arms with knives. He dug into his windbreaker for makings and built a smoke. The sulphur match flared like a muzzle flash when he lit the cigarette.

He looked back at the dark trees along the river. Not since sundown had there been any sign of the men who were watching him. But they were there. He had no doubt of that. How long do you aim to sit out there, he thought bleakly, without hot grub, without even a smoke?

Gault snapped his own smoke toward the dying embers. To hell with you, he told them silently. Sooner or later I'll find out who you are. But for right now, to hell with you. He closed his eyes and made a desert of his mind. An April dew settled on his bed with clammy coldness, but he ignored it. He drifted into a state of dreamlessness that passed as sleep. The watchers, wherever they were, remained silent and invisible.

The morning was chill and damp and heady with the smell of green things growing. Gault stirred himself before first light and rebuilt the fire and put coffee on to boil. He saw to the buckskin and then scouted the upper banks for tracks. But the watchers of the night had kept their distance.

From somewhere upstream a wild bird beat the air with its wings. The watchers were moving in closer, and they were not being so quiet about it now. Gault gulped his gritty coffee and chewed on leftover panbread that he had cooked the night before.

He got the buckskin saddled, then rolled his bed and made it fast behind the cantle. He slid the Winchester into the saddle boot without bothering to check it, as he normally would. If his trackers were watching, maybe they would think that he hadn't yet discovered the ruined firing pin.

Gault climbed up to the saddle. All right, boys, he thought quietly, from here on out you better keep a close watch. Because I ain't right sure myself which way I'm going to take.

A short distance downstream he put the buckskin over a rock crossing that Comanches and Kiowas had probably used not many years before when they were raiding down from the Territory. Due north was the Big Pasture and the Nations, where Frank Gault was known and respected. Where there were men who would lend him money to get started again, if he were to ask for it.

But he did not head north. He bore east, making for the upper reaches of the Little Wichita. And behind him he could almost hear his trailers shrug resignedly and check the loading of their weapons.

Around midmorning Gault caught a glimpse of the lead rider. He was a short, blocky man with a blunt, pugnacious look about him. Expertly, he threaded a sturdy little claybank in and out through the stands of cottonwood and oak. They were moving in fast now, not overly concerned with whether or not Gault spotted them.

A few minutes later Gault raised the fields that he guessed belonged to the Garnetts. There were several acres of cotton in even rows, almost ready for its first thinning and chopping. Set farther back from the river there was a good-sized patch of early corn, young and tender green and languid looking on that mild spring morning. Closer to the house and sheds was what Gault knew to be a vegetable garden, although he couldn't tell at that distance what was planted there.

The house itself was a half sod, half timber affair, maybe three rooms. A big house, Gault thought immediately; an unusually prosperous looking spread for that particular part of Texas. The rare farm that Gault had chanced across in North Texas usually amounted to no more than a one-room soddy and maybe two or three acres of scratched red clay. The Garnett place included several permanent sheds and outbuildings, some work animals, a wagon, a scattering of chickens and probably a cow for milking. A
very
prosperous looking layout, Gault thought again with bitterness. Either the Garnetts were exceptionally industrious, or they had received considerable help.

A rider that Gault had not seen before appeared from a wild plum thicket near the water. He was a stolid, slack-jawed man in his middle years, with coarse features and the impersonal stare of simple-mindedness in his pale eyes. He rode toward Gault with an abstracted grin tugging at the corners of his mouth—but there was nothing simple-minded or unbusinesslike in the way he held a short saddle rifle pointed at Gault's chest.

"Set easy," the man said placidly. "We don't aim to hurt you. If you behave yourself and mind what we say."

Gault twisted in the saddle and saw the short man coming toward them from a thicket farther upstream. When he was close enough to be heard, the short man said, "My advice is do like Colly tells you. He may not look right bright, but there ain't many men hereabouts that can best him with a rifle."

Colly
. The name struck a spark in Gault's mind. He remembered the two pals of Wolf Garnett's that the sheriff had mentioned. One had been Colly Fay. The other Shorty Pike. Two harmless drovers working a herd up the Western Trail to Dodge, the sheriff had said. Two ignorant farm boys who had fallen in with bad company for a while. But they had seen the error of their ways and turned back to the path of honesty and truth—according to Sheriff Grady Olsen. Gault wondered if Sheriff Olsen would be surprised if he could have seen his two farm boys now, both of them with snub-barreled rifles pointed at Gault's chest.

Gault did not look at the rifles. He did his best to act and talk as if they were not there at all. "You boys strayed pretty far from bedground, looks like. Sheriff Olsen seemed to figger you'd gone back to drivin' cattle, after you took it on yourselves to ride over to New Boston and identify Wolf Garnett's body."

Colly Fay continued to smile abstractedly. Shorty Pike shrugged his shoulders and casually slipped his saddle gun back in its boot. "We won't go into that now. Just say we changed our mind."

All right, Gault thought, let's see what kind of cards you're holding! He glanced toward the field of green corn and asked, "Is that the Garnett place?"

Shorty took a deep breath and made a quiet decision of his own. "That what you been lookin' for? The Garnett place?"

Gault made himself smile. "Just wonderin'. Curiosity, you might say."

The muzzle of Colly's rifle moved a fraction of an inch, as if hunting the exact center of Gault's chest. Shorty folded his hands on the saddle horn and looked at Gault and said nothing. Apparently the next move would come from another direction.