"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.
CHAPTER FIVE
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."
"There wasn't no storm last night," she told him soberly. "There was stars all over the sky. I was tellin' Colly."
"Like I say, it was just a dream." But what had happened to Wirt Sewell? He hadn't been a dream.
Gault returned to the shed, and within a few minutes Colly Fay was standing in the doorway. "Miss Esther says you're pullin' out."
"If you'll help me get the buckskin saddled."
"Which way will you be headin'?"
No sense starting a fight, Gault told himself. "Don't w
orry, Colly, I won't be headin' back to New Boston."
Colly brought up the saddled buckskin, then he helped Gault roll his bed and tie it on behind the cantle. "Deputy Finley said I'd get my Winchester back when I was well enough to ride out of here."
The posseman grinned. "Whatever the deputy says." He brought Gault his rifle. The firing pin had been replaced, but the magazine was empty. Gault knew without looking that the spare box of cartridges that he always carried would not be in the saddle pocket. He shoved the empty rifle into the boot.
Gault grasped the saddle horn and laboriously mounted the buckskin. The effort left him gasping. He leaned forward on the saddle horn, waiting for the pain to subside.
Colly was looking up at him, grinning widely. "You don't look too pert to me, Gault. A man in your shape, the best thing he can do is to stay out of trouble." Maybe Colly wasn't as simple as he appeared.
As Gault was pushing himself erect, Esther Garnett came out of the house carrying a grub sack. "It ain't much," she said apologetically. "Cold biscuits and dry salt meat. But maybe it'll last you till you get to your place in the Territory."
It seemed to Gault that no one ever missed an opportunity to suggest that he should make straight for Indian Territory and away from Texas. Wirt Sewell was the only one who hadn't offered some kind of argument in favor of his leaving Standard County as soon as possible—and Sewell hadn't been heard from since. "I'm much obliged for everything you've done, Miss Garnett," Gault said politely. "I'm sorry if I've put you out."
"You haven't put me out, Mr. Gault," she said with a placid smile.
The exchange was stilted and rang with false good humor. With a courteous little nod, Gault reined the buckskin away from the shed and started at an easy walk across the farmyard, heading north. He looked back once and Esther and the big posseman were deep in serious conversation. Gault rode on toward the river.
Shortly before sundown the indignant bellowing of a range cow caught Gault's attention. He reined to a knoll to see where the sound was coming from. The soft green valley of the Little Wichita was spread out in front of him, and in the center of that green carpet a man was kneeling beside a downed steer. A well-trained cow pony was standing patiently nearby.
Gault hesitated before moving in closer. If the stranger was a rustler, or an ambitious cowhand adding to his own stock, it would be smart to ride around him and pretend that he had seen nothing. But there was no branding fire that Gault could see. On impulse, he nudged the buckskin into the valley.
The man looked up at Gault. "Howdy." Then he went back to what he was doing. Beside him on the ground was an opened barlow knife, a syrup bucket half full of axle grease "dope," and a rag dauber. "Worms," the cowhand said without looking around. Meticulously, he cleaned a large sore on the steer's shoulder, cut away the proud flesh and coated the area with the black worm medicine. Finally he untied the animal and the steer loped across the valley, still bawling. The cowhand got to his feet and looked again at Gault. "You ain't from Colton, are you?"
Gault shook his head. "No."
"Colton's the straw boss. Manages the outfit for Mr. Cooper that lives in Kansas City. Hell of a way to run a cow outfit, if you was to ask me. From way off in Kansas." He put the lid on his bucket of "dope" and wrapped his dauber in a piece of tarpaulin.
"You ridin' line for Colton?" Gault asked.
The hand nodded. "South bank of the Red. Supposed to keep Cooper cattle from crossin' over and windin' up on Comanche cookin' fires. But I can't do it all myself." His tone turned to patient disgust. "Colton promised two days ago he was goin' to send me some help. You didn't see anybody along the way, have you?"
"No."
The cowhand scratched his unshaven jaw and cursed half-heartedly. "Most likely they forgot all about me." He gazed off to the south and something seemed to occur to him. "By the way," he said abruptly, "did you come by the Garnett place?"
Gault was surprised. "What makes you ask?"
"Most menfolks hereabouts wouldn't pass up a chance to see Miss Esther, if they was passin' anywheres near the place. You know Miss Esther, don't you?"
"We met," Gault said cautiously.
The cowhand grinned. "Pert as a spotted pup, ain't she? Be a powerful lucky man that gets her."
"In spite of her brother?"
The cowman waved off the notion that even an outlaw like Wolf in the family could tarnish the image of Esther Garnett. "Anyhow," he added, "Wolf's dead."
"So they say."
The cowhand wiped his hands on the seat of his worn California pants and said, "Name's Elbert Yorty."
"Frank Gault," Gault said, and vaguely embarrassed, they shook hands. Being plainsmen, they didn't ordinarily go in for handshaking, but sometimes a man, after a few weeks of talking to cows, got carried away.
"Got a piece of venison hangin' back at my line shack," Yorty said by way of invitation. "Unless you got somethin' better for supper."
Gault thought of Esther Garnett's hard biscuits and salt meat, and said gratefully, "I haven't."
On a distant knoll, directly behind Yorty, a familiar figure appeared on horseback and sat for a moment gazing down at them. Yorty didn't see him, and Gault didn't see any reason to mention it.
Yorty's line shack was a crude half-dugout affair nestled in the sprawling bottomland next to the Red. In Gault's honor, the cowhand carved a whole tenderloin out of the dressed venison and cooked it on a spit over a greenwood fire. "There's a monkey stove in the shack," Yorty explained, "but I never quite got the hang of cooking on it."
They ate with relish, hunkering around the fire as the cool spring night settled around them. A line rider lonesome for company, Yorty celebrated this occasion by opening a treasured can of tomatoes, and even produced some condensed milk for the coffee. In the time honored tradition of the frontier, they ate in silence, giving their entire attention to the meal at hand. Then they moved back a little from the fire and lit their smokes and sipped their scalding, faintly rancid coffee.
Gault cocked his head, listening for a moment with all his attention. If Colly was anywhere nearby he wasn't letting that fact be known. Gault thought with grim amusement that Colly must be getting pretty tired of cold grub and fireless nights.
"One lobo," Elbert Yorty was saying, "don't make a wolf pack. The Garnetts was a first-class family before Wolf started givin' it a bad name. Did you know his folks?"
"No. Esther Garnett told me her parents died four years ago."
"About that." Yorty nodded to himself. "I've been workin' cattle in Standard County longer'n I like to think about— and back in them days the Garnetts was as good as anybody in these parts. Even if they did start out as squatter farmers." This, from a cowman, was praise of the highest kind. "Even after Wolf started to go bad, nobody blamed it on the rest of the family. Course," he added after a moment's thought, "they was always thick as molasses."
"Who was?"
"The Garnetts. Everybody said that Miss Esther and Wolf was closer than most brothers and sisters. And the old folks, they never said anything against Wolf, even after he'd gone bad. But then, I guess nobody expected the Garnetts to say anything out loud against their own…"
Gault looked at his host thoughtfully. It almost seemed that Yorty was trying to tell him something without actually putting it in so many words. He said offhandedly, "Happened I was in New Boston the day of the funeral. Miss Esther didn't come."
"Pretty broke up, I guess," Yorty said, helping himself to more coffee.
"I guess." After several weeks of riding line by himself, it was clear that the cowhand was eager for human company. Still, it occurred to Gault that Yorty had talked a good deal without saying much of anything. Yorty had made no secret of his admiration for Esther Garnett, but he was no wet-nosed pup to dance a fandango—or hoe an acre of corn—just because a pretty woman smiled at him. Yorty was well into his fifties. An old man, considering the business he was in.
Gault sat for a moment, lost in his own dark mem
ories.
Suddenly he asked, "Was you well acquainted with Wolf Garnett when he was livin' in these parts?"
"Well acquainted?" Yorty rubbed his bristling chin. "I wouldn't say that. I knowed him, like most folks did."
"Tell me about him." Gault was surprised at his own question. Until this moment his only thought had been to find Wolf Garnett and kill him.
Yorty methodically built and lit another smoke. "Not a whole lot to tell. Wolf was a bad apple from the very beginnin'. In trouble of some kind nearly all the time. Hot temper. Fist fights. A cuttin' scrape or two. But folks in Standard County figgered he was just young and a little wild. Course, it begin to look some different when we got the reports from Kansas, when he killed his first man."
"Did he ever come back to his homeplace after that?"
"Folks said he did, but I never seen him."
"Can you tell me somethin' about the county sheriff, Olsen? And the young deputy that works for him?"
Elbert Yorty finished his smoke in silence. He snapped the dead butt into the fire and said, "Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to get somebody to talk to. But it does seem like you ask some queer questions, Gault."
Gault realized that he had been pushing too hard; it was a bad habit of his. "I've got an interest in Wolf Garnett," he said slowly.
"What kind of interest?"
"Not quite a year ago he killed my wife."
Gault had not meant to put it so bluntly and coldly. But there it was, where even the dullest kind of intelligence could understand it. Now he would see just where Yorty stood.
The cowhand rocked back on his heels like an Indian and stared at him for several minutes. "I'm sorry about your wife. But I can't help you about Wolf; I already told you ever'thing I know."
"What about the sheriff?"
The cowhand spread his hands. "Nothin' there to tell. He's a good hand far's I know, and he's been on the job a long time. As for Dub Finley, he's just a young pup that likes pony hide vests and nickel-plated badges, but he'll grow out of it in time."
"Is he in love with Esther Garnett?"
The Last Days of Wolf Garnett Page 6