The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (7 page)

She nodded thoughtfully and got to her feet. "If there's anything you need, Mr. Gault…"

"There's something you can tell me. I'm curious about the gunhands that follow the deputy around—I'm curious about why they do it."

"Colly and Shorty?" Her tone was incredulous. "They ain't gunhands. Most of the time they work cattle, like most men hereabouts. Right now Deputy Finley's got them on as possemen. That's the deputy's right, in Standard County—hirin' possemen when he feels like he needs them."

Gault let the matter drop. He wasn't satisfied, but he had a feeling that Esther Garnett had said all she was going to say on the matter. "I'm much obliged for the breakfast, Miss Garnett."

"I'll have Shorty kill one of the old hens and cook you some chicken and dumplin's for dinner," she told him. Her eyes were so clear and youthful, and her smile so pleased, that Gault didn't have the heart to tell her that there were few things in the way of food that he detested as much as chicken and dumplings.

The noontime meal of chicken and dumplings arrived as promised. The dumplings were as tough as rawhide; the chicken was remarkable in that it seemed to be all bone and tendon. Gault asked, "Are the deputy and his two possemen still here?"

"Down in the bottom, thinnin' out the cotton."

"Do you work this farm all by yourself?"

She smiled wistfully. "With the help of good men like Shorty and Colly and Deputy Finley."

"Did you know Shorty and Colly when they rode with your brother?"

The smile remained at the corners of her mouth, but those blue eyes were still and thoughtful. "That's just a story folks tell. Shorty and Colly never rode with Wolf. I never saw them before…" She turned her head and blinked rapidly.

"Before they rode in from their trail-driving job to identify Wolf's body?" Gault was not an unfeeling man, but for this one moment he was deliberately brutal. He felt, without knowing just why, that it was important to know how Miss Garnett would react to this kind of bluntness.

She only glanced at him fleetingly and nodded. If she was offended in any way, she did not show it.

The afternoon Gault took a short turn at walking back and forth across the shed. Esther had bound his rib cage firmly, and walking was not as difficult as he had expected. He might even be able to ride for a short distance, but he was in no hurry to try it just yet.

Around midafternoon he saw Dub Finley come up from the cornfield and wash up at the Garnett well. Colly Fay brought up two horses and began saddling them. In a little while the deputy appeared in the doorway of the shed and stood there, arms folded across his chest. "Miss Esther gives you another day or so," he said, "then you'll be in shape to ride. Are you goin' to keep crowdin' your luck, Gault, or are you goin' to let Standard County alone?"

Gault gazed at the deputy and tried to size him up. He saw a brash young man who could be deadly when pushed. No doubt he was smitten with Esther Garnett's beauty and was probably in love with her. But that alone did not set him apart from other men—Gault suspected that most of the men in Standard County were in love with Esther Garnett, or thought they were. "How long have you been deputyin' for Sheriff Olsen?" Gault asked.

The question caused Finley to frown. "What makes you ask?"

"I was wonderin' if he knew he had a murderer for a deputy. Or if he knew and just didn't care."

Gault watched with interest as the deputy's face paled. His strong shoulders tensed, and for a moment Gault thought he was going for his .45. Then Shorty Pike came up behind him and said, "I'll be ready in a little while. I want to give the horses a feed before we do." With an uncurious glance at Gault, the little gunhand turned and strode back across the farmyard.

"You goin' back to New Boston?" Gault asked. "Ain't you afraid to leave me here by myself?"

The deputy looked at him and flexed his shoulders and made himself relax. "You won't be all by yourself. We're leavin' Colly back to see that you get a good start toward the Territory." He allowed himself a small smile. "Colly may not look like a man that would hold a grudge. But he'll be a long time forgettin' the way you knocked that rifle out of his hand and made him look foolish. My advice is handle him gentle and do like he tells you."

"What if I don't want to head back for the Territory?"

Finley shook his head in mock sorrow and turned from the doorway.

A few minutes later Colly brought up the saddled horses, and Finley and Shorty Pike rode back to the south. Esther Garnett stood in her back dooryard waving to them and smiling. It was a warm, common scene, one that Gault had seen hundreds of times before, and he wouldn't have thought anything about it if the two horsebackers hadn't been killers, and if the woman hadn't been the sister of Wolf Garnett.

Late that afternoon a young cowhand stopped by and spent an hour making cow eyes at Esther Garnett and helping Colly with the evening chores. Gault was beginning to understand how Miss Garnett could keep her farm in excellent repair without actually doing much of the work herself.

With the coming of the night the year-long rage caught fire in Gault's gut. He sat alone in the darkening shed, thinking of Martha. A blackness much blacker than the coming night, came down on him.

He did not know how long it took sleep to overtake him. But he awoke suddenly to the sound of scurrying outside the shed. A long, thin figure appeared in the doorway and slid into the darkness.

"Gault, you awake?"

The voice belonged to no one that Gault had ever heard before. "Who are you?"

"Name's Sewell. Wirt Sewell. I want to talk to you."

"What about?" Gault peered into the dark corner where the stranger was crouching, but he could see nothing of the man's face.

"Wolf Garnett," Sewell told him. "It might be we can do one another some good."

For several seconds Gault didn't even breathe. At last he said, "Move over in the light where I can see you."

The stranger hesitated, then moved into the soft moonlight that sifted through the shed's only opening. He had a hatchet face and a bobbing Adam's apple and a nose that hooked like the beak of a bald eagle. He might have been a cowhand, or a muleskinner, or just a common drifter. There was nothing special about him. "I never saw you before," Gault said.

"I seen you. Over at New Boston, talkin' to the sheriff. And I was in the crowd in front of Rucker's store when you lit off the Gainsville stage."

"You still don't tell me who you are."

The man called Sewell edged back into the shadows. "I'm an express agent. Detective, I guess you'd call me. As maybe you know, the express company had a five hundred dollar bounty on Wolf Garnett's head. That may not sound like a lot of money, but the express folks figger you got to watch the pennies if you want the dollars to take care of theirselves. Anyway, they sent me over to make sure that it was actually Wolf that the sheriff was plantin' before they turned over the money."

"Did he satisfy you it was Wolf?"

"Oh, there wasn't no doubt about that," Sewell said with a vague wave of his hand. "I wrote and told my boss that he could go ahead and pay the scalp money. That wasn't the thing that interested me."

Gault scowled. The lanky express agent was going too fast for him. "Just a minute. Did you follow me all the way from New Boston?"

"Well, more or less. I seen you pull out of town, and not long after that I seen the deputy sheriff and his two sidemen light on your trail. So I decided to follow them." His tone became slightly apologetic. "I was layin' back downstream when the little one, the one called Shorty Pike, shot you. But there wasn't nothing I could do without givin' the game away."

"And you wouldn't want to do that," Gault said acidly. "How did you know I was interested in Wolf Garnett?"

"Everybody in New Boston that day was interested in Garnett, one way or another. Besides that, I was loafing around the livery barn that night and saw you heading off toward the graveyard."

Gault sighed to himself. "You seen a lot of things, seems like."

"It's my job. Like I say, I seen you headin' off toward the graveyard, carryin' a long-handled shovel, so I didn't have to work too hard to figger what you was up to. Did you open up the grave before the sheriff caught you?"

Gault stared at the dark figure in silence. Wirt Sewell shrugged. "Well, if you did open it, did you satisfy yourself it was Wolf Garnett?"

"I thought you was already satisfied on that score."

"I am, but it never hurts to have another opinion to lean on, when you work for a big outfit like an express company. What was you lookin' for, if you don't mind sayin'?"

"I was hopin' to prove to myself that Wolf Garnett was still alive," Gault said truthfully. "When his time came to die, I wanted to be the one to kill him."

Sewell's head bobbed up and down on his long neck. "When I got your name from the wagon yard hostler it was easy to figger out who you was. There was a Gault woman that got herself killed in one of our coaches during the Garnett holdup. She was your wife?"

The question was straightforward to the point of bluntness. Collecting information was Sewell's job, and he had learned early that there wasn't time enough to apologize for unpleasant questions. "My wife," Gault said bleakly.

Sewell sucked in some air and it whistled through his teeth when he let it out. "I know how you feel. But Wolf's dead. Nothin' you can do about him now." He hunched his shoulders in a shrug. "All the same, there's somethin' queer."

"What do you mean?"

"I ain't sure where it begins. But for one thing, there's the county sheriff. Olsen's got a good name in these parts— and it's not a common thing for good men to put in for scalp money."

"He didn't kill anybody for it, as I understand it."

Wirt Sewell grunted. "Don't misunderstand me. There's nothin'
wrong
with takin' reward money. Federal deputies, and a lot of county lawmen, do it all the time. It's just that Olsen hisself never did it before. I wonder why he's startin' now."

"I think he aims to hand it over to Miss Garnett."

"Why'd he do a thing like that?"

"Have you ever seen Miss Garnett?"

Crouching in his dark corner, Gault sensed that the lanky express agent was smiling. "I seen her. And it might be you're right. Half the heads in New Boston was nigh twisted out of joint when the sheriff brought her to town to identify the body. I don't reckon Olsen would be the first one to let a pretty face make a fool out of him."

The two men thought about it for a moment. Gault said with a touch of dryness, "You've been watching over things since I left New Boston, seems like. Did you see the deputy's two visitors last night?"

The express agent made a startled sound. "What visitors?" He listened intently as Gault told about the arrival the night before of Olsen and the stranger. "When the storm came up," Sewell said, "I scooted back down the creekbank and throwed my bed under a rock shelf. How long was they here?"

"Two hours maybe. They pulled out before first light."

"I wish I knew who it was that Olsen had with him."

"A little stoop-shouldered geezer, that was all I could see. What do you make of it?"

The agent slumped like a poorly tied bedroll in the corner of the shed. "I don't know. I'd like to take a look inside that house."

"Not much chance. That's where Miss Garnett's sleepin'."

"Do you know where Colly Fay throwed his bed?" Gault pointed to the main shed on the other side of the farmyard. Wirt Sewell uncoiled slowly and got to his feet. "Set easy for a few minutes. I want to take a look around." He slipped quickly through the doorway. Gault watched the slender figure mingle with dark shadows and disappear.

Several minutes passed but Sewell did not reappear. After a time it was almost possible to believe that the express agent had never existed. Gault lay back on the loose hay, every bone in his body aching. How long had it been since he had had any real rest or decent sleep? He couldn't remember.

He drifted toward unconsciousness, slowly, quietly, like a fallen leaf caught on a dark current. He thought fleetingly of Esther Garnett, but not with undue concern. He had little doubt that Miss Garnett could take care of herself. And anyway, Colly Fay was in the shed just on the other side of the farmhouse, in case Sewell was fool enough to cause trouble.

Sour with exhaustion, Gault allowed sleep to overtake him. And for once he did not dream of Martha. He dreamed of another storm. Of dark rolling clouds, and faraway lightning and thunder. When he awoke it was daylight again. There had been no storm. The morning was bright and clean-smelling and cool. And there was no sign of Wirt Sewell, nor could Gault discover any evidence to suggest that the lanky express agent had been there at all.

Gault took some practice steps outside the shed, and Esther Garnett appeared at her kitchen door. "Seems to me like you're on the mend, Mr. Gault."

"Thanks to you, Miss Garnett," Gault said. Colly Fay appeared from a deep arroyo in the back of the house carrying a shovel.

Esther only gave Colly a casual glance. She said, "Pretty soon you'll be wantin' to leave us, I expect."

"I was thinkin'," Gault said, "that I've caused you about enough trouble. I'm much obliged for all you've done, but I'm able to ride now, any time. If Colly could help me get the buckskin saddled…"

In the back of Gault's memory lingered the shadowy figure of Wirt Sewell, and a puzzled expression showed in his face. Esther Garnett saw it immediately. "Is somethin' wrong, Mr. Gault?"

He couldn't bring himself to mention the mysterious express agent. He knew that Sewell had been there in the shed with him, and he knew that they had talked—he also knew that he could prove none of it.

"Nothin's wrong," he said, managing a small smile. "It was just a dream I had last night."

Those blue eyes looked at him steadily. "What kind of dream?"

"A storm. Thunder and lightnin', that kind of thing."