The Last Days of Wolf Garnett

CHAPTER SEVEN

Headquarters for the Circle-R was a scattering of sheds and branding pens and corrals, an hour's ride from New Boston. There was no owner's "big house," as the owner rarely visited the place. The manager lived with the hands in a split-pole bunkhouse.

Such a spread was not impressive, but there were a number of them on the plains below the Cap Rock. When well managed they were efficient and productive and made money for the owner who might live as far away as England or Scotland and never get within five thousand miles of his holdings. An aging wrangler appeared from behind a brush-covered shed and met them as they headed for the main buildings. The old man glared at Gault with distrust, but his reaction to Wompler was undisguised anger.

Wompler smiled his meaningless smile and said, "Seth here is Colton's headquarters wrangler and cook. This is Frank Gault, Seth. We're lookin' for Del Torgason."

The old man glared at Wompler and suddenly spat at the ground in disgust. "I don't make it a habit to socialize with cow thieves!"

"Seth," Wompler went on with a disinterested air, "firmly believes that up to a year ago I headed a rustlin' operation here in Standard County. That's what most folks believe, I guess." He spread his hands and smiled benignly down at the old man. "Well, it was never proved, and anyhow it's water over the dam. Just tell us where to find Torgason."

The wrangler jutted his jaw defiantly. "Torgason went out with the boss, Mr. Colton. I don't know where."

Wompler's tone turned menacing. "Mr. Gault here is a beef buyer for the Kiowa-Comanche agency. Mr. Colton won't like it, missin' a big beef sale, just because he's got a stubborn old wrangler on the place."

The old man paled. He knew very well that a missed sale could mean his job. And for men his age even wrangler jobs were next to impossible to come by. "Last I seen of Mr. Colton," he said shakily, "him and two hands and Torgason was headed toward north camp, brandin' strays they missed in the roundup."

"We're much obliged for all your help, Seth," Wompler said with heavy sarcasm. He reined his rented black gelding around the old man and headed north. Gault, after an instant's hesitation, followed on the buckskin.

"Was it necessary," Gault asked angrily, "to scare the old man like that?"

"Yes," Wompler said. "As you'll learn, Gault, it's the only way to get anywheres in Standard County. Fear. It's a little lesson I learned when I was deputyin' for Grady Olsen."

By sundown Gault was tired of the saddle and sick of the company of Harry Wompler. They arrived at the banks of the Little Wichita as the sun was touching the dark green horizon. "We can make camp here," the ex-deputy said. "Or we can make it on to the Circle-R camp in maybe another hour."

Gault's side was aching. "We'll camp here. I've had enough of the saddle for one day." They staked the horses downstream, boiled coffee and ate what was left in Gault's grub sack.

Wompler held one heavy biscuit to the fading light and said, "Don't have to ask where you got these. Esther never was no prize as a cook. Even I would admit that much."

"Did you know Miss Garnett long?"

The ex-deputy smiled his slack smile. "Long enough."

They finished the meal in silence, then Wompler dug the bottle out of his saddlebag and downed a carefully measured ration of whiskey. He put the bottle away without offering it to Gault. A faded army blanket and a yellow slicker known as a "fish" had come with Wompler's rented horse and saddle. He dumped it beneath the budding branches of a cottonwood, then walked up the grade from the river and stood for a while, building and smoking his highly combustible cigarettes, gazing upstream toward the Garnett place.

Gault decided the former lawman was not an easy man to know. In the Day and Night he had been a common drunk. At the Circle-R headquarters he had been ill-tempered and brutal to the old wrangler. Since that time he had shown flashes of sensitivity and the rudiments of education, neither of which were very common in a place like Standard County.

Gault sat beside the dying fire, smoking, trying to keep his mind away from the past. Wondering what he was going to say to the stock detective, Torgason, when he found him. How could Torgason help him? How could anybody help him?

When Wompler came back down the slope and stood beside the fire, Gault said, "Tell me about Torgason."

"Torgason…" Wompler considered his subject. "He's an old hand, good at his job, no nonsense. I don't like him, but he knows his business. And he ain't afraid of Olsen." With a curt nod, Wompler got to his feet and went to his bedroll. Tugging off his boots, he said, "You might not think it, Gault, but I used to be a man of ambition. I read law with old Judge Tabor at Gainsville. I set myself the task of learnin' the law, and then politics, and then…" Gault could not see his face, but he knew that Wompler was smiling that loose-lipped smile of his. "There wasn't no limit to the ambition I had in those days. A year ago I lost more than a job and a woman. I lost the man that used to be Harry Wompler. And I guess I won't be satisfied until I find out where he went."

During the night Gault came suddenly awake. Wompler was snoring. Far to the north a spring storm was passing. Silent lightning blinked in the distance.

Lightning …

Frowning, Gault rubbed his hands over his face. He sat for a long while, thinking, as a damp chill worked its way into his bones. Had it been a dream that had shocked him awake? He could remember no dream—and Lord knew he had no trouble remembering the nightmares of the past. No, he was convinced that it had not been a dream.

He pulled the blanket around him and continued to sit there beside the dead fire. Had it been a noise that had wakened him? Something, or someone, coming up on their camp?

No… He shook his head, staring at the distant lightning. Then, very faintly, he heard the thunder, rolling over the prairie so far away that it was hardly a sound at all.

Thunder … For a moment the thought hung there.

"It wasn't thunder that night," he said aloud. "It was a gun."

Wompler rolled over and raised himself on one elbow. "You talkin' to me?"

"No. I was thinkin' out loud." Then, still thinking it out in speech, he said, "The next mornin' there was Shorty Pike comin' out of the arroyo with the shovel. He killed him, and down there somewhere is where he buried him."

Wompler threw off his blanket. "Shorty Pike killed somebody and buried him in an arroyo?"

"An express agent named Wirt Sewell." Gault was trying to pull together the loose ends. "I was talkin' to Sewell that night. He had his suspicions about the new deputy and his possemen, so when Deputy Finley and his sidekicks followed me out of New Boston, he followed all of us. And we all wound up at the Garnett place. Me with a bullet graze and a busted rib. But I never saw him after that talk…" He could still see that lanky figure hunkered in the dark corner of the shed.

"Never saw who?"

"The express man. After I went back to sleep there was another thunderstorm. But next mornin' the ground was dry, so I figgered it was a dream. But it wasn't a dream, it was a gunshot. Not thunder. And that morning Shorty Pike was comin' out of the arroyo with a long-handled shovel in his hand."

Harry Wompler gave a snort of exasperation, and Gault went back to the beginning, back to the moment when Wirt Sewell had first appeared in the doorway of the shed. He recreated the scene word for word, as well as he could remember it, and Wompler did not interrupt until he had finished. Then he said, "I think we better have a drink."

The former deputy brought the bottle to the dead fire and the two men drank silently. Wompler shook the bottle sadly; it was almost empty. "It sounds loco," he said. "Maybe that's why I believe it. Folks told me I was loco, too, when I tried to convince them I had nothin' to do with cattle rustlers."

"What did the cattlemen think about it?" This was something that Gault had wondered about for some time.

Wompler turned up the bottle, had another swallow and corked it. "Cowman is a contrary critter. Sometimes he goes off on a short fuse. Sometimes, if you get his suspicions up, he'll dog you like a Kiowa tracker. But there's one thing you can bank on—if the cowmen was sure I was in with rustlers, I'd of been hung months ago. I figger they've turned it over to Torgason and his Association, to find out for sure."

"Can Torgason get to the bottom of it?"

"If anybody can." Wompler shrugged.

At first light they rolled their beds and started upstream.

They topped the grassy rise near the place where Gault had been shot by Shorty Pike. For several minutes they sat their horses, studying the placid scene before them. A young cowhand, his pony tied to a fencepost, had stopped off long enough to chop a few rows of cotton. The fields were neat and sparkling. The yard and sheds appeared well kept.

"One thing about Esther," Wompler said ruefully, "she never had no trouble keepin' the place in shape. Always a cowhand or one of the sheriff's men stoppin' by to help out." Then, as they watched, Esther Garnett stepped out of a shed and began scattering feed to a small flock of chickens. Wompler came erect in his saddle, his face stiff and cold. Then, slowly, he began to relax. "The wrong kind of woman," he said flatly, "is a good deal like the wrong kind of whiskey. Poison to the system. But," he added with a cold smile, "a man gets over it in time." He pointed toward the deep wash behind the farmhouse. "Is that where you figger the express agent is?"

"That's where I saw Shorty comin' from."

They put their horses down the slope, out of sight of the house, and walked the rest of the way to the arroyo. They stood for several minutes on the edge of the gully. The bottom was strewn with casual rubbish, along with the cleanings of the barn and chicken house, waiting for the next spring flood to wash it away. There was nothing that looked like a grave.

"You sure this is the place?" Wompler asked doubtfully.

"Maybe it's farther down toward the river." He started to climb down into the wash when the former lawman caught his arm.

"One thing I learned settin' in the Day and Night for almost a year, and that's to be suspicious. If you're goin' to scout the gully, I'll keep watch up here with the rifle."

Gault didn't like parting with his Winchester, but he handed it over and accepted Wompler's .45 in exchange. "Keep an eye on the house, in case Deputy Finley's put on more possemen." He slid into the wash.

For the best part of an hour Gault explored the arroyo. At last, beneath a stinking pile of straw from a cow stall, he found freshly dug earth. He looked up at Wompler. "I think we've found Wirt Sewell."

Wompler didn't look convinced, but he said, "Find somethin' to dig with. I'll keep an eye on the Garnett place."

With a broken plow-handle Gault began gouging at the loose earth. Soon the jagged tip of the plow-handle struck something foreign to the loosely packed clay. It was a sensation that set Gault's skin crawling; he had experienced it once before while digging in the graveyard west of New Boston.

Wompler crouched on the lip of the wash. Slowly, Gault began clearing away some of the loose clay. What he had unearthed was not the missing express agent but the brown and white flank of a spotted calf.

Wompler slid into the wash for a closer look. "Well," he said, breaking an uneasy silence, "maybe Shorty wasn't buryin' the express agent after all."

"Why would he go to the trouble of buryin' a calf? When a cow gets itself killed on the prairie, you leave it where it falls. Unless it's diseased, then you bum it."

"That's what a cowman would do. These are farmers— and sometimes there's no explainin' the things a sodbuster will do." The former deputy began kicking dirt back into the hole. "Maybe Esther took the calf as a pet, and couldn't bear to leave it for the buzzards. There's no explainin' women, either."

Gault smiled grimly. "It still doesn't tell me what happened to that express agent."

The two men finished filling the hole and climbed out of the wash. Wompler built himself a smoke and said, "You want to turn around and see if we can find Torgason and the Circle-R branding crew?"

Gault was reluctant to leave the farm, but he could think of no good reason for lingering there; he was no pink-cheeked cowhand looking for excuses to moon over Esther Garnett.

Wompler tramped into the river underbrush where he had tied the horses. In a few minutes he came back leading the animals, and Gault was quick to notice the pinched look of apprehension about the ex-deputy's eyes. "Might be," he said quietly, "we got ourselves some trouble. Somebody's watchin' us. Back there in the brush."

Gault studied the thicket from beneath the brim of his hat. "I don't see anything."

"He's there." Wompler wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "You think it's Shorty Pike? He's already had one try at killin' you; maybe he's lookin' to finish the job."

"Maybe…" Gault took the buckskin's reins and quickly put the animal between himself and the thicket, a common-sense precaution that Harry Wompler had already attended to. They began walking their horses away from the arroyo. Of course, Gault thought bleakly, there's nothin' to keep him from shootin' the horses first, then us.

A voice from the direction of the brush called, "Hold up, Wompler. You too, mister, whoever you are."

Gault grasped the buckskin's bitchain and froze. He shot a look at Wompler and was relieved to see the beginning of that familiar slack-mouthed smile.

"We won't have to go lookin' for Torgason. He's found us."

Gault moved the buckskin aside and watched the tall, sunbrowned man coming out of the thicket. He carried a Winchester saddle rifle in one hand, cocked and ready to fire, as if it had been a Buntline pistol. He looked to be in his middle thirties, lean, tough, all business. He had a wooden, Indianlike face, and Gault got the feeling that it would shatter like overheated flint if he ever tried smiling.

"Good luck you found us," Wompler said easily. "We was about to go lookin' for you."

"Why?" Torgason eased the Winchester's hammer to half cock and cradled the weapon in his arm.

"This here's Frank Gault. He's got kind of a personal interest in the Garnetts. But maybe you better let him tell you about it."

Standing there beside the arroyo, Gault told the Association man everything he knew or suspected. About Martha, and Sewell, and Colly Fay. About getting himself shot by Shorty Pike, on Deputy Finley's orders. About the dreamed thunderstorm that appeared to be neither dream nor storm. About Shorty with the shovel, and the buried calf.

Torgason heard him out without the slightest change in expression. "What makes you think I can help you?"

"An oldtime line rider, name of Yorty, thought you might be the one to talk to."

Torgason studied him disinterestedly. Never a word of sympathy when he heard about Martha. A man of business was Del Torgason, and that business was seeing that the cattlemen of Standard County were kept happy and the county reasonably free of rustlers. "Elbert Yorty," he said bluntly, "is an old fool. I've got no quarrel with the sheriff. My advice, Gault, is go back to where you came from and leave Standard County to look after itself."

Gault smiled thinly. "I get a lot of that kind of advice."

The stock detective shrugged his wide shoulders, a picture of total indifference. "A thunderstorm that's not a thunderstorm. A murder grave that turns out to be a buried calf. Seein' the sheriff and Doc Doolie on the prairie in the dead of night—you ought to know that's when docs and sheriffs do a good part of their business. Diggin' up the New Boston graveyard… It's a wonder Olsen didn't lock you in the calaboose and throw away the key." He turned abruptly from Gault and said, "What's all this got to do with you, Wompler?"

Wompler's smile was as bland as a baby's. "Call it curiosity. Anything that affects the sheriff of Standard County, I take an interest in."

"How do you know the sheriff's affected?"

"I live in hope."

The two wills clashed like a meeting of swords. Gault expected to see Wompler give ground immediately; now he was surprised to see the silent struggle was on even terms. Wompler maintained his slack smile. Torgason's only sign of irritation was a slight narrowing of the eyes. "One of these days," he said flatly, "Olsen's goin' to get enough of you. And that will be the end of Harry Wompler."

"That," the former deputy sighed, "is a chance we all take, when we live in Standard County. Even you, Torgason. By the way," he added, "how'd you come to find us here?"

The detective looked woodenfaced. "A hand from headquarters joined Colton's brandin' crew. He said you and a stranger had been that way, and I decided to see what you was up to." Without warning, he grinned. It was a bizarre expression on that blank, brown face. "I figgered this is where I'd find you. At the Garnetts."

That afternoon Gault and Wompler pulled back from the farm and made camp again on the Little Wichita. From a distance they had scouted the farmyard and fields, without adding anything to their knowledge of the Garnetts. The young cowhand-cotton chopper had pulled out around midday. Shorty Pike had appeared from one of the barns and had gone to work in the vegetable garden near the house. A more peaceful scene would be difficult to imagine.

Shortly after the appearance of the posseman in the vegetable garden, Del Torgason had ridden south toward New Boston.

"Don't be fooled," Wompler warned. "He'll keep his eye on us. For the next few hours, anyway."

Gault scowled. "Why?"

"Because he's suspicious. It's his job."

As it had been Wirt Sewell's job, Gault thought wearily.

The moist, enervating electricity of springtime was in the air. "More rain," Wompler said sourly, eying the western sky. "Best see if we can find somethin' to get under."

The memory of the lanky express agent was still in Gault's mind. "The night I talked to Wirt Sewell, in the Garnett shed, he said he'd been layin' out somewhere. A shelf of some kind, along the riverbank."

"Whereabouts along the bank? It's a long river."

Gault tried to recall the agent's words. "I don't know that he said. But it couldn't have been far from the farm." They stood watching the thunderheads form in the west. Gault sighed wearily. The prospect of a cold soaking was not pleasant to think about. Without further discussion, the two men got saddled, pulled their stakepins and started back upstream.

The shelf was there, a big spearhead of limestone jutting out of the clay bank of the river. They staked the horses downstream and threw their beds beneath the rock roof. Not perfect, but a good deal better than no shelter at all.

Gault went through the futile motions of looking through his grub sack. It was empty. Wompler had never had any grub, only the bottle of whiskey from the Day and Night, and that had been emptied and discarded along the way. In the bottom of his saddle pocket Wompler found a piece of bone-hard jerky that some former New Boston livery customer had left. The two men divided the dried beef and hunkered down with their backs to the riverbank, cutting off small pieces with their pocketknives, working it between their teeth until it was soft enough to swallow.

"Life," the former deputy observed, "would be a good deal pleasanter if we had some coffee." He closed his eyes and dreamed for a moment. "Or whiskey."

The sun had fallen behind the bank of thunderheads. A steely grayness settled on the land, and there was no breath of movement in the air. The hush was so intense that they could hear each other breathing—or imagined that they could. "I'm beginnin' to wish," Wompler said to himself, "that I'd stayed where I was, back at the Day and Night." The reddish water of the Little Wichita shone dully, like sheet metal.

Suddenly the wind scent of ozone was in the air. In the distance there was a rustle of wind, faint but ominous. Wompler hunched his head down between his shoulders and groaned. "Here she comes!"

By common consent they had not built a fire. Without coffee, it hardly seemed worth the trouble. Anyway, they both felt more comfortable behind a cover of darkness. Gault buttoned his windbreaker to the throat, pulled his hat down firmly on his forehead and settled himself for a miserable night.

The first fat raindrop struck the river underbrush like a liquid bullet. Then there was another sound. Gault heard it, listened to it dully. Suddenly, with wrenching pain in his side, he lurched to his feet. "Somebody's after the horses!"

He grabbed the Winchester and jacked a cartridge into the chamber with one motion. Wompler already had his .45 in his hand. For a moment he was as taut as a finely tuned fiddle. Then, just as suddenly, he relaxed. "It's Torgason. I told you he'd be watchin' us."

The stock detective appeared in a stand of gaudy sumac. He bulled his way through the brush and ducked beneath the shelf as the first wave of the storm swept over them. Torgason, his saddle on his left shoulder, his rifle in his hand, stood looking at them with a wooden-faced stare. He eased the saddle to the ground but did not put aside the rifle. "I knowed you'd manage to find a soft place for yourself, Wompler. Don't mind if I set a while, do you?"

Wompler smiled his heatless smile. "Proud to have you. If you brought some coffee."

Thunder broke over their heads and rain fell in shimmering sheets. "Plenty of coffee," the detective told them. "Dry salt meat, and cornmeal, too. Now, if somebody thought to bring in some firewood before the rain started…"

Wompler groaned. Somehow the discomfort of their cold, damp cave was made even less appealing, knowing that hot trail fare was there within easy reach. If they could only have built a fire.

Torgason turned to Gault, and Gault met the detective's chilly stare with one of his own. "Seems like you didn't have much trouble finding us."

"Not much," Torgason rested his rifle on his saddle. "I've been watchin' you since we split up at the Garnett place."

"Would you mind tellin' us what makes us so interestin'?"

Torgason looked as if he might smile, but he didn't. "Wompler here's a suspected cattle rustler—that's always interestin' to a stock detective. And there's some things about you, too, Gault. A stranger lands in New Boston on the day Wolf Garnett's buried, bustin' full of questions that's none of his business. On top of everything else, by your own word, you killed a county official."

"A posseman."

"A paid official. As legal, according to county law, as the sheriff hisself."

"I didn't know you'd took to readin' law," Wompler said dryly.

Torgason ignored him. "You killed him," he said to Gault. "And the sheriff let you go. I find that interestin'."

Gault felt anger rising in his throat, but he choked it down. The old line rider had said that Torgason could help him, and he didn't want to fight with anyone who might be able to do that. Harry Wompler regarded the two with a loose smile and seemed totally undisturbed. "Don't mind Torgason," he said lazily. "He likes to get folks riled. In the hopes they'll spout somethin' he can hang them with later."

More thunder rumbled in the darkness. Beyond the shelf the rain was driving down like silver spikes.

Wompler yawned. "If you boys can stand the loss of my company, I think I'll catch myself some sleep." He untied his roll and threw it on the ground next to the riverbank.

Gault and the detective sat with their backs to the rock, staring out at the storm. "How'd you come to get tied up with Wompler?" Torgason asked when the silence became uncomfortable.

"Same way I heard about you. Yorty told me about him."

"That old man," Torgason said coldly, "has got a big mouth."

For some time the two men crouched in uncomfortable silence. Between gusting attacks of the storm they could hear Wompler snoring. When Torgason finally decided to speak, his tone was controlled and thoughtful. "I've been thinkin'. It must of been on a night like this that you talked to Wirt Sewell."

"Just about. But darker."

"And again when you heard what you thought was a shot."

"That was a dream—about the storm, anyway." Gault studied him cautiously. "Why do you ask?"

"Like Wompler said, it's my job to be suspicious."

For some time they crouched silently, watching the storm. Then Torgason said abruptly, "Tell me again about Colly Fay. The things you found in his saddle pocket."

Gault had already gone over this part of the story, but apparently Torgason was still unsatisfied. Patiently, Gault collected his thoughts and prepared to cover the ground again. "There was the ring, the one I gave to my wife. I told you about that." Torgason, a crouching shadow backlighted by sheet lightning, nodded. Gault went on. "There were six double-eagles, and some other coins. A roll of greenbacks wrapped in oilskin. A silver pocketknife, the kind a city dude might carry for cuttin' cigars. Woman's earrings, set with glassy sparkles. Maybe diamonds. A string of milk-colored beads that might have been pearls."

"Is that all?"

Gault drove his memory back to that bitter moment when he had opened the little buckskin pouch and found the ring. "No, there was a watch."

The big-shouldered shadow cocked its head thoughtfully. "What about the watch?"

Gault could see it lying there on the dirty flannel shirt, surrounded by Colly's other items of loot. "It was gold—yellow gold—stem-wound, with a gold face cover. There was a heavy gold chain that must of cost the owner plenty, if it was real gold. There was some writing—engraving—on the face cover."

Torgason's shadow came almost rigidly erect. "What did it say?"

"It was foreign writin' of some kind; I couldn't read it." He thought for a moment. "Somethin' about a fort."

Wompler, who had been snoring only a moment before, sat up on his blanket and said, "Fortes fortuna juvat."

And Torgason said—with something like a drawn-out sigh—"General Mallard Springfield Heath." He lurched to his feet and stared out at the night. The rain was still coming down. "What," he asked in a curiously flat tone, "did the sheriff say when he saw that watch?"

"Olsen?" Gault tried to think back to the moment when he had dumped the parcel on the sheriff's table. "Nothin' special that I recollect. He just looked at it and wanted to know where I got it. Look here," he said, irritated by the air of mystery that had suddenly built up inside the cave, "what's this about forts and generals? What do they have to do with Colly Fay and the sheriff?"

"Not forts," Wompler drawled with the dry superiority of the half-educated. "Fortes fortuna juvat. 'Fortune favors the brave.' The motto of General Heath's cavalry regiment, when he was a colonel. Before he was promoted to general and got hisself killed."

Torgason turned to Gault and asked sharply. "You never heard of General Mallard Heath?"

Gault glanced from one dark, tense figure to the other. "No, I never heard of him. I guess maybe it's time I did."