The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (9 page)

"Is he still in New Boston?"

"Last I heard." Yorty built himself another smoke and began kicking out the fire. "You're welcome to stay around the shack, Gault, but I've got to get back on the job." He lit his smoke and asked with studied unconcern, "You aimin' to go back to New Boston and talk to Torgason and Wompler?"

"Not now. Some of the sheriff's pals are expectin' me to head back to the Territory. I wouldn't want to disappoint them."

The Red was swollen with spring rains. Gault rode west, along the south bank of the river, looking for a crossing. In places the reddish water sprawled over a quarter of a mile of sandy bottomland. In the main channel, where the water was deepest, fallen cottonwoods bumped from sandbar to sandbar as they made their tortuous way downstream.

He selected a place where he knew a solid bottom of limestone existed. It was not his personal discovery, it had been discovered by the Comanches and Kiowas and Southern Cheyennes many years ago, when they were still raiding through Texas into the heart of Chihuahua.

Gault drew his Winchester from the saddle boot and put the nervous buckskin into the river. Ripples of fear passed along the animal's withers as the cold water washed his belly. The water crept higher along the stirrup leathers, but the bottom remained firm as far as mid channel. Gault took a deep breath and slid out of the saddle. The buckskin plunged into the deep water and thrashed frantically.

Gault clung to the saddle horn and held his Winchester in the air. The Winchester with the new firing pin and no ammunition. His boots filled with icy water. It lapped at his chest and soaked the elaborate bandages that Esther Garnett had applied with so much care. Then the buckskin found solid bottom again, and Gault climbed back into the saddle.

They had reached the north bank. He was now in Indian Territory—possibly in the Chickasaw Nation, but most likely in the southeast corner of the Comanche-Kiowa grasslands known to cowmen as the Big Pasture.

Gault put the buckskin up the sandy slope and stopped for a few minutes to empty his boots and squeeze some water from his windbreaker. His bedroll had been soaked in the crossing, and so had his warbag, but there was no help for that now. Sitting on a rock, he pulled on his boots and studied the south bank.

There was no sign of Colly.

Gault mounted and rode on to the north, over a string of sandhills. When he was on the far side of the hills he dismounted again and crawled up to the brush-strewn ridge and studied the south bank some more.

Apparently Colly had decided that Gault was going to be reasonable, return to his own business and put Standard County out of his thoughts.

Gault spent the rest of the morning on the north bank of the Red, watching for the big posseman while slowly drying out in the gentle sun. At last he decided that enough time had passed and that Colly had surely started back to the Garnett farm. He put the buckskin into the river again.

The buckskin hated that swift cold water even more than Gault did. The animal's eyes rolled in fear as it scrambled for solid bottom. His small ears lay back on his head. Gault leaned forward in the saddle and stroked the quivering withers. That was when Colly Fay stepped out of a cedar thicket and said angrily, "Shorty said you'd try to slick me! And you did!"

Gault, with a sudden ache in his gut, stared at the big posseman and continued in his efforts to gentle the buckskin. Colly had his rifle aimed at Gault's chest. It was always a bad sign when a man took up his rifle instead of his revolver—the killer who meant business did not waste his time with hand guns.

Colly walked steadily toward Gault on the nervous buckskin. Gault took a deep breath and prepared to speak to the posseman in a reasonable tone. But he knew instinctively that Colly could not be reached with reason. Dull-witted men could endure almost any humiliation except the thought that they had been tricked—and this was the thought that Colly had locked into his own dull mind.

Yet, Gault heard himself saying quietly, "Colly, listen to me…"

But Colly wasn't listening to anyone. Gault was already as good as dead, as far as the posseman was concerned. He smiled his loose smile and came a few steps closer. Gault sat like stone. The temptation to grab for his Winchester was almost irresistible—but the rifle was useless and Colly knew it.

Then, because there seemed nothing else to do, Gault kicked his spurs into the buckskin's ribs.

The nervous animal lunged forward as if released by a spring. The slow-witted Colly stared blankly. Gault caught a glimpse of the posseman's face as the buckskin reared and crashed down on him. He was still smiling that slack smile; in his slow-moving mind he was seeing Frank Gault laid out for burying. It was probably the last thought he had, in that instant before he died.

After it was over Gault imagined that he had heard the sound of iron-shod hoofs slashing down on Colly's skull, but reason told him it was highly unlikely. It had happened too fast. The trembling buckskin had surged forward like a bullet, all but unseating Gault in the process.

There Colly had fallen beneath the buckskin's hoofs, his shabby hat crushed down over his bloody face. Gault did not have to look a second time to know that he was dead. He spurred the animal away from the scene. For several seconds he sat bent over the saddle horn, his insides strangely cold, his stomach pushing into his throat.

For almost a year Gault's thoughts had been concerned exclusively with the subject of death. In his dreams, waking and sleeping, he had killed Wolf Garnett a thousand times. But it had never been like this, with the crunch of bone and rush of blood. In his mind it had always been swift and clean and right.

He kneed the buckskin into a gully where the corpse could not be seen nor the blood smelled, and then he slowly dismounted and tied up in a flowering redbud. He knew that he would have to go back and do something about the body. But at the moment he didn't want to think about it.

So he stayed with the buckskin, gentling the animal until it stood calmly. Only then did he make himself return to that sandy flat where the body lay. "I didn't aim to kill you, Colly," he heard himself saying aloud. "Even though," the voice continued, "you sure as hell was aimin' to kill me."

He still wasn't sure what ought to be done about the body. Bury it? He had nothing to dig with. Take it with him to New Boston? He smiled grimly at the thought of bringing in one of Olsen's possemen, like a dog with a bone, and laying it at the big lawman's feet.

He postponed the decision by tramping downstream to where Colly had staked his own animal. He pulled the stake pin and gentled the posseman's black gelding. Almost as an afterthought, and without much hope, he began searching the saddle pockets for ammunition to fit his Winchester.

He gave a little grunt of surprise as he pulled out a full box of .30 caliber shells. Maybe his luck was changing. He dug deeper in the saddle pocket and lifted out a carefully wrapped parcel, a package several times the size of the shell box, wrapped with considerable care in a flannel shirt and an oilskin covering. But in spite of the care that had gone into the wrapping, one end had come open. As Gault took the parcel in his hands two gold double-eagles spilled out and fell to the ground. Colly Fay was still full of surprises.

Gault hunkered down beside the gelding and carefully opened the package. For a long while he remained in that position, staring down at the contents. A yellow gold watch, and a heavy chain of the same metal. A silver penknife. Several loose coins, including four more double-eagles. A roll of greenbacks wrapped in its own protective oilskin cover. Gault unwrapped it and counted them—they came to three hundred and ninety dollars.

There was also a small buckskin pouch which Gault opened and emptied onto the oilskin. One by one, he ticked off the small items in his mind. A pair of earrings set with small stones that might have been diamonds. A string of milky white beads that could have been pearls. And at the bottom of the buckskin pouch there was a plain rose gold wedding band. It was the ring that Gault had given to Martha when they were married.

Gault could not remember how long he crouched there, holding that small ring in his hand, trying to feel something of his lost wife in the rose-colored metal. But Martha was a year dead almost. There was nothing of her in the ring.

Still he crouched there, staring out at the sprawling sandy banks of the Red. He remained so still that a squirrel darted out of a liveoak tree and scurried in front of him without seeing him. It was almost as if he had been captured there in a block of invisible ice, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, aware of nothing but that small gold ring.

The black gelding tugged at its stakerope. Gault turned and looked at the animal as if he were seeing it for the first time. Slowly, he dropped the ring into his shirt pocket. Then he rewrapped the small parcel with the same great care that Colly had taken in wrapping it for the first time.

Finally he led the black to the gully where the buckskin was waiting. Then he walked back to where the dead man lay sprawled in the sand.

"Time to get up, Colly. We're going to New Boston."

It was early afternoon and the town was quiet when Gault entered it. Much quieter than it had been on the day of the funeral. Farmers were back working their crops. Stockmen were finishing up their spring branding. A slack day in a slack season. A town dozing beneath a gentle North Texas sun.

The hostler at the wagon yard was the first to see them. The little bandy-legged man came pushing a wheelbarrow of manure around the corner of the livery barn when he first saw Gault slouched wearily on the buckskin. Colly's black gelding plodded behind on a lead rope, with the dead posseman across the saddle.

The hostler, whose name was Abe Tricer, dropped the wheelbarrow and started running toward the center of town. Gault watched him without expression.

A curious storekeeper stepped out to the sidewalk to see what the running was about. He took one look at Gault and the burdened black and called to someone in the store. By the time Gault reached the general store where the sheriff had his office, there were several little clusters of men gathered on the sidewalk. They did not venture away from the storefronts but stood quietly, watching.

The sheriff and the little hostler appeared in the doorway of Olsen's office as Gault tied up in front of the store. The big lawman stepped out on the second-floor gallery and looked down at them with thunder in his face. He came down the stairway two steps at a time.

"What's goin' on here?" he snarled.

"Your posseman's dead. I brought him home," Gault said with a flatness of tone that caused the sheriff to blink. Then Olsen strode to the black, lifted the dead man's head and studied the dead face. "He's not my posseman."

"Your deputy's, then. It comes to the same thing."

The little hostler was fairly dancing with excitement. "I was the first one seen him, Sheriff. Come ridin' into town, just like he owned it. I recognized Colly's black geldin' right off. Recognized Colly too. Dead as a fencepost. I'd figgered you'd want to know about it right off."

"See if you can find Doc Doolie," Olsen said.

"What you want with the doc? Colly's done for. Don't take a doc to see that."

"Get him." This time there was no nonsense in Olsen's voice. "The rest of you…" He raked the gathering of loafers and storekeepers and a scattering of cowhands. "Get back to whatever you was doin'."

The hostler made for the upper end of the street in a rolling, lurching lope of the oldtime horseman. The rest of the crowd began backing up, reluctantly. They were curious to see what was going to develop, but none of them was anxious to tangle with Grady Olsen.

"You," the sheriff said harshly to Gault. "Give me a hand here."

Together they slipped the dead posseman off the saddle and laid him out beside Rucker's store. "Have you got a tarp or somethin' to cover him with?" the sheriff asked.

"No."

Glaring, Olsen returned to the gelding, unsaddled the animal and covered the dead man with the saddle blanket.

Then he pointed toward the stairway. "Up to my office. I'll talk to you there."

Inside the combination office-living quarters the sheriff slumped behind the oilcloth-covered table and motioned Gault to a chair. As Gault sat down somewhat cautiously, Olsen noticed for the first time that his face was pale and drawn beneath the stubble of trail beard. "You ailin' with somethin', Gault?"

"I'm fine," Gault said gratingly, "except for a busted rib, that comes from bein' shot by another one of your possemen. But I guess you got the whole story about that— when you rode out to the Garnett farm the night of the storm."

Gault watched him closely, wondering what his reaction would be. But Olsen only sat looking at him, his expression unchanging.

The lawman picked up a stub of a pencil and began turning it over and over in his blunt fingers. "My deputy told me about the shootin'," he said coldly. "Accident. Too bad it happened, but that's the way it goes when you mess with things that's none of your business. Anyway…" He made a motion with one hand, waving the subject away. "Anyway, that ain't the thing we're concerned with right now. You just brought me a dead man." His eyes narrowed. "Did you kill him?"

Gault breathed as deeply as he could against the tight bandaging. "Yes."

The sheriff blinked owlishly. "Why?"

The question was not as simple as it might first appear, and Gault was aware of it. "For one thing, he was about to kill me."

"Why would Colly Fay want to kill you?"

"He thought I wanted to trick him—and Colly couldn't stand the notion of somebody trying to make him look foolish. Anyway, he had orders to see that I returned to the Territory. When I came back across the river, that's when he tried to kill me."

The big sheriff shot him a bleak look. "I don't guess there was any witnesses that could testify it was an accident?"

"No. But there was this." Gault dug the flannel-wrapped parcel from the pocket of his windbreaker. He put it on the table. "When it was over, I went lookin' for Colly's horse. This is what I found in the saddle pocket."