The Last Days of Wolf Garnett

CHAPTER EIGHT

Torgason had turned back to the storm and was glaring out at the slanting rain. Harry Wompler undertook to enlighten Gault on the life and death of General Mallard Springfield Heath. "The late General Mallard Springfield Heath," he said, with his slack smile.

Heath was a Texas man, born and raised in the brush country along the Nueces, although few Texans would admit to him since the war. Mallard Heath was one of those rare patriots—or traitors, depending on who was telling it —who abandoned his cow-hunting operations in Texas, ignoring the call of Hood and other Southerners, to throw in his lot with the Yankees.

It had been a wise and profitable decision—up to a point. He rose from the ranks and at the end of the war wore the eagle of a Union colonel on his shoulders. Wisely, he declined to return to Texas, except in line of duty and always in uniform. It was in the performance of such duty, in 1878, that General Heath personally oversaw the shipment of $200,000 in gold bullion from Fort Belknap, Texas, to Camp Supply, in the Indian Territory. And it was somewhere between these two points, in the foothills of the Wichitas, that the escort was ambushed, officers and troopers killed to a man, the gold vanished…

"Without a trace," Wompler finished in some excitement. "There's been Army men, and U.D. deputies, and all kinds of sharpshooters and highbinders lookin' for that gold. Never a trace. Mexican and U.S. troops have been watchin' the Bravo for eight years. Same up north on the Canadian line. Never a clue." He chuckled dryly. "Then one day a Territory cowman named Gault walks into Olsen's office and turns over old Fortes fortuna juvat's pocketwatch. And what does the sheriff do when he sees that watch? He don't do nothin'. Torgason, that's somethin' I find interestin'."

The stock detective glared at the rain and made no comment. "Picture it in your mind, Gault," Wompler was saying gleefully. "You took that watch off of the handpicked posseman of Olsen's handpicked deputy. I wish I could see the sheriff's face when he tries to explain that to the county judge. Squirmin' like a city dude with saddle galls. I've waited a long time to see that."

"You may have some waitin' to do yet," Torgason said sourly.

But Wompler only chuckled. "You're just mad because you never thought of it before now. Olsen and Wolf Garnett in cahoots all this time, and nobody guessin' a thing! Don't feel bad about it, Torgason, I never guessed it either. Like everybody else, I figgered the sheriff and Esther…"

Torgason turned from the mouth of the cave. "Whiskey's made your brain soft, Wompler. I don't say that Olsen ain't got his faults, but he wouldn't throw in with a killer like Wolf Garnett."

Almost gaily Wompler waved the objection away. "Might be surprisin' what any of us would do, if there was an army wagon full of gold in the balance." That thought had a quieting effect on Torgason, but Wompler went on with his dreaming. "Yes sir, nearly a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money. Think about it! We'd all be rich as hog fat if we could find out where it's hid. And we might even find out what happened to Wirt Sewell."

Torgason sounded indignant. "How could a stolen gold shipment have anything to do with Sewell?"

"Maybe his suspicious ways got him on the track of it— and Wolf killed him."

"Wolf Garnett's dead."

"Anyhow, that's what Olsen wants everybody to believe."

The rain was beginning to slacken as the storm moved on to the east. The men in the shallow cave sniffed the wet, clean smell of a washed earth. Within a matter of minutes the rain stopped completely. The thunder was a distant rumble, the lightning as delicate as foxfire on the far horizon. They could hear the rushing and splashing as water from a dozen flooded gullies and arroyos dumped into the river.

"It's all over," Torgason announced unnecessarily. Hurrying clouds slipped over the prairie, revealing a pale, cold moon, and stars that glittered like swordpoints.

Wompler had fallen into a strange silence. He sat hunched over, his back to the clay riverbank, smoking one of his poorly made sputtering cigarettes. Suddenly he got to his feet and began rolling his blanket.

"What do you think you're doin'?" Torgason demanded.

"Somethin's been botherin' me all day and I couldn't put a finger on it. But thinkin' about Wirt Sewell brought it back again—it's that calf that's buried in the wash back of the Garnett house."

Gault got to his feet. "What about it?"

"I'm not sure. But I aim to find out."

Torgason, who had been standing in the wet weeds beyond the shelf, came back into the cavelike darkness and said, with undisguised contempt, "In the middle of the night, and a wet one at that? Wompler, you're loco."

The former deputy looked at him with a dark grin and continued tying his bedroll.

Gault stood for a moment, thinking about the day and what had happened. In the back of his mind that calf had bothered him too. As Wompler ducked out of the cave carrying his bed and saddle, Gault said, "Bring the horses up here. I'll go with you."

Torgason sighed. It was a long-suffering sound of a reasonable man condemned to deal eternally with fools. "What you expect to find on a dark and boggy prairie, in the middle of the night, I don't know. But you might as well bring my horse too."

The horses plodded heavily over the spongy sod along the river. The men rode northward along the crest of the riverbottom, and soon they could see the field of young cotton, and the smaller one of corn, spread out below them, the neat rows standing in water and silvery in the moonlight.

The arroyo where they had found the calf lay like an open wound behind the farmhouse, slanting southward to the river. The house stood dark and sullen on the unfenced ground, but in one of the larger outbuildings, which Gault knew to be the main barn, the reddish light of a coal oil lantern shone through the cracks around the door.

The horsebackers reined up and studied the light. "What do you make of it?" Wompler asked at last.

"Shorty Pike," Gault said, more concerned with the arroyo than the barn. "Most likely that's where he throws his bed."

The wet clay walls of the gully glistened in the moonlight, but most of the water had already rushed headlong into the river. The riders got down and led their animals along the wash. Gault was the first to see what they were looking for. "This is where the calf was buried."

Wompler grounded his reins and eased himself down the slick wall of the arroyo. "This is it. Not much of a burial job, whoever done it. The calf's almost washed out."

He grunted several times and swore to himself. "Wait till I light a match."

A match flared on Wompler's thumbnail, and for an instant the floodswept bottom of the wash, the dead calf, and part of what lay beneath the calf, were etched with steelpoint sharpness. Wompler pulled away from that shallow grave, his face looking white and drawn in the sulphurish light. Then the match went out.

"Give me a hand, somebody."

Gault and Torgason slid down to the muddy bottom of the arroyo. They had seen what Wompler had seen, but they did not completely believe it. "Grab one of the forelegs," Wompler said with unaccustomed authority. "We'll have to get the calf out of the hole before we can be sure of anything."

Gault grabbed a foreleg and Torgason and Wompler took the hind quarters and pulled the animal out of the hole. With great care, Wompler dried his hands on the seat of his pants, then struck another match. Once again, by the light of that tiny sulphur fire, they looked into the grave. The dead eyes of Wirt Sewell looked back at them.

The three men seemed to breathe together. In and out. Then Wompler spoke. "Now I think I'd like to see about that light in the Garnett barn."

"Later," Torgason said quietly. "After we attend to Sewell."

"There ain't nothin' we can do for him."

They looked at one another, two men surprisingly equal now, and strong willed. Not dedicated enemies, exactly, but not friends, either. "First," Torgason said again in the same quiet tone, "we'll attend to Sewell."

Gault avoided further argument by climbing out of the wash and stripping his own bedroll of its tarpaulin cover. "Pass him up here. We'll cover him up and lay him out somewhere, out of the weather. The rest will have to wait till later."

After a moment's hesitation the two men in the wash nodded together. With gentleness that might have been surprising to some, they lifted the body out of the hole and passed it up to Gault who covered it with his tarp.

As if motivated by a single mind, the three men wrapped the body in its canvas shroud and tied it on behind Wompler's saddle, because Wompler was the lightest of the three men and his rented gelding was the most docile of the animals. "Now," Gault said stiffly, "I think it's time we saw about that light."

But first they tied their horses at one of the small sheds and laid the express agent's body out on the straw-covered floor. The three men looked at one another and Wompler asked dryly, "Is there anything anybody wants to say?"

What was there to say? The shot that Gault thought he had heard—he had heard. Sewell had put his hawkish nose into a place where it wasn't welcome. And someone had killed him. And buried him. And then, as an added safety measure, they had killed a calf to fill the grave, in case somebody found it. But they hadn't counted on a flash flood.

"Why would they bury Sewell in a wash so close to the house?" Wompler asked.

And Torgason answered softly and calmly, having thought it all out beforehand. "Because it was handy. An easy place to dig. And because they didn't care about makin' a good job of it, because they didn't figger to be around when he was found. If he was found." He started to build a cigarette, but his hands were not quite steady and he tore the paper. He put the makings away in disgust. "Then somebody got worried and decided to hide the body with the calf." He nodded to himself. "It wasn't a bad notion. If it hadn't been for the storm."

Gault was seeing the posseman's face as he came out of the wash that morning with the shovel. "Shorty Pike," he said.

"That's what I aim to find out." The stock detective smiled coldly at Wompler and Gault. "If you gents want to come along, that's all right with me."

They circled wide around the sheds, keeping out of sight of the house. Torgason and Wompler arrived at the barn well ahead of Gault. His side was beginning to hurt again; his breathing was ragged. Torgason looked at him. "You all right?"

Gault nodded, sagging against the side of the barn until he recovered his breath. Then they moved to the double plank door and Wompler said, "Stand back out of the light when I open it." Quietly, Gault and Torgason levered cartridges into their rifles.

No sound came from inside the barn. Well, Gault reasoned, it was well past bedtime, they were probably sleeping.

With the lantern burning? "Open it," he told Wompler.

The former deputy set himself, then suddenly flung the doors wide and dived for darkness. Torgason and Gault snapped their rifles to their shoulders. Nothing happened. No sound, no movement. After a moment Gault edged around one side of the door, Torgason around the other. Behind them, somewhere in the darkness, they could hear Wompler breathing. There was no one in the barn.

Without turning his head, Gault snapped to Wompler, "Keep an eye on the house and the other sheds." Then he and Torgason made an inspection of the barn. On the pole rack that served as a hay loft they found an area of packed hay where someone had been bedding down. But there was no sign of occupation now. Gault eased himself down on the hay platform and held his side. Torgason eased his Winchester hammer to half cock and called to Wompler. "Anything movin' out there?"

"Quiet as a graveyard," Wompler called from the gaping doorway.

Gault shoved himself to his feet. "I want to see the house."

Esther Garnett was not in the house. No one was. The three men stationed themselves as they had at the barn. Wompler pounded on the door several times. Then Gault stepped forward and kicked the door open.

"Miss Garnett?"

A muslin curtain sighed at one of the front windows. Nothing else moved. Gault felt along his hatband, found a match and lit a coal oil lamp. Wompler, who in better times had been in this house as a guest, stepped inside and made a sound of surprise as he stared around at the blank walls. "There used to be pictures over there…" He pointed. "Of Esther's ma and pa. And there was other things, too…"

Gault moved across the room to a closed door and kicked it open. It was a bedroom—black oak dresser, washstand, bed. But the bed had been stripped, the drawers of the dresser pulled out and emptied.

He moved to the kitchen where the iron cookstove was in place, and several pots and pans, but most of the dishes had been taken from the upright kitchen safe. Wompler came to the doorway and stood there, his face puzzled. "Esther set great store in them dishes. Her grandma brought them from across the water, she told me once."

"Look at this," Torgason called from another part of the house. Gault followed the voice to a small, boxed-in porch, sometimes called a sleeping porch. What had caught Torgason's attention was a rude knock-up bunk, a thing of blackjack poles and haywire, strung with frayed well-rope. More interesting than the bed, which might have been accounted for, was the litter of burnt matches and brownpaper cigarette butts on the floor.

The three men studied the room, sized it up in their minds, but did not discuss it at the moment. "Probably a waste of time," Torgason said finally, "but we might as well see if there's anything in the sheds."

They found a heavy breaking plow, almost new, and other farm tools. But no wagon, and only odds and ends of harness. The milk cow had been turned out; the mule was gone. At last they returned to the house where Wompler's instinct led him to a fruitjar half full of clear whiskey, tucked away beneath the rope-strung bunk.

Gault and Wompler sat at the cooktable, which was still in place. Torgason stood in the doorway glaring at the box walls of the sleeping porch. Wompler drank deeply of the raw liquor and passed it to Gault, who tasted it, but Torgason would not touch it. "Wompler, you and Miss Garnett was thick once, they say. What do you make of this?"

The whiskey worked rapidly on Wompler's taut nerves. He sagged in the chair, his eyes going slightly glassy. "She's pulled out. That's clear enough, ain't it?"

"Why?" the stock detective demanded.

Wompler had another go at the fruitjar. "I don't know. It's been a long spell since Esther and me…" He sighed and smiled his crooked smile. "Pulled out, that's all there is to it. Took the wagon, the mule, the dishes, a few other things."

"How about this bunk on the sleepin' porch."

This was the thing that disturbed them. More than the missing mule and wagon; more, even, than Esther Garnett's disappearance. Esther was what was known as a "decent" woman; none of them had any doubts on this point. But that extra bunk, and the whiskey, and the litter of cigarettes and matches… Even in Gault's mind it made a jarring picture.

"Shorty Pike?" Torgason asked at last.

Wompler snorted. "A highbinder like Shorty, sleepin' in the same house with Esther Garnett?" he grinned loosely to show that the idea was ridiculous.

Gault had an idea that wasn't so ridiculous.

"Wolf Garnett," he said.

They stared at him. "Once," Wompler said, after a long silence, "I knowed an old galoot that got hisself in a scrap with a band of Kiowas. They killed his woman and his two boys, and then they strung him up over a torture fire and would of cooked him like a fat dog, except some horse soldiers from Belknap happened along before they finished him. From that time on, that old geezer seen Kiowas everywhere he looked. Behind every manure pile and fire-barrel, a Kiowa. Around every bend, behind every tree. Kiowa." The former deputy took a long drink from the fruitjar. "That's the way you are, Gault. Everywhere you look, there's Wolf Garnett."

"Then who's been sleepin' on that bunk? Sleepin', smokin', and drinkin' clear corn whiskey?"

Wompler was silent for several moments. "Wolf," he said at last, "is dead. Everything points to it. Still," he went on thoughtfully, "if he wasn't dead, and if this is the bunk where he's been sleepin', it would clear up a lot of things in my mind. It would explain why Esther all of a sudden didn't want me on the place. It would explain why Olsen drummed up that rustlin' story and then fired me."

From the doorway Torgason looked at the former deputy and said, "Comes mornin' we'll know more about it. Just as soon as it's light enough to track that wagon."

The tracks, for a way, were easy enough to follow, but the trace became confused when it crossed and mingled with other wagon tracks on the stage road to Gainsville. Then, on a bed of gravel and shale, they lost all sign. The storm had washed it away, erased it from the prairie.

But there was a few things they had learned. One, the wagon was being drawn by two animals. They concluded, without discussing the matter, that Shorty Pike's horse had been put in harness with the Garnett mule. Also, it was now clear that Esther Garnett's destination was generally north from the Little Wichita, although she seemed to be taking a roundabout way of getting there—wherever it was. It occurred to the three men, almost at the same time, that she was carefully avoiding all steep slopes or grades, preferring to go farther and keep to flatter ground.

The same thought was in all their minds, but Gault was the one to voice it. "Gold, they say, is right heavy. I don't know how much $200,000 would weigh, but I don't expect I'd want to put a two-horse team up any steep grades if I was haulin' it."

Around midday they unbitted the horses, chewed some jerky and made coffee from Torgason's meager supplies. Wompler and the detective were strangely quiet. Sudden visions of wealth rose up like walls of gold and isolated them.

It was Wompler, with the honesty of a man who had nothing to lose, who finally voiced his thoughts. "I always wondered what it would be like to be rich. Maybe we'll all find out, before this little set-to is over."

"We don't know she's got any gold in that wagon," Gault said.

"I got a feelin'," Wompler said comfortably. "It's the only thing that makes sense. The way she's drivin' that wagon. General Heath's gold watch. Where would Colly get his hands on that watch if he hadn't been with the bunch that bushwhacked the escort? And Wolf's bunch is the only one he ever ran with." The ex-deputy smiled. His eyes had a faraway look. "We're on the track of that gold, all right. If it ain't in the wagon, then Wolf hid it somewheres. Either way, all we have to do is stay on the job, and Esther Garnett will lead us to it."

"Maybe," Del Torgason said dryly. "But the sheriff has seen that watch too. If there's any gold, he knows as much about it as we do."

They pulled their stakepins and continued to the north. As the mild spring sun slipped away to the west they spotted the two horsebackers moving over the sandhills along the north bank of the Red. "Colton," Torgason said with some surprise.

"And the old line rider, Elbert Yorty."

Gault studied them carefully. He easily recognized the old cowhand. The other man was a thick-set, heavy rider, one whose rocklike weight would punish even the strongest saddle animal. This was Gault's first look at the manager of the Circle-R.

"Let's talk to them," Wompler said. "Maybe one of them caught sight of the wagon."

The three men put their horses down the long grade toward the sandy banks of the Red. At first it appeared that Colton was going to pretend that he hadn't seen them; he and Yorty reined their animals toward a thicket of budding trees. Suddenly Wompler rose in his saddle and bellowed, "Hold up there, Colton!" Then, with a grin at his two companions, he said amiably, "Even if I ain't a deputy any more, I can holler like one."

It was effective. The ranch manager pulled up with a jerk. After a hurried conversation between the old line rider and his boss, Yorty headed west toward the line camp and Colton reluctantly pointed up the long slope.

"I figgered," Torgason told the manager, "you'd still be out seein' that the crew got all the strays branded."

Colton smiled wanly. "I got good hands; they tend to business without me watchin' over them all the time."

Torgason started to say something, but Wompler butted in. "You or your boys see anything of a wagon movin' up this way from the south?"

Colton looked at Wompler as if he were seeing him for the first time. "What kind of wagon?"

"Light spring rig; farm wagon. Had the sheet up, most likely."

The rancher shook his head slowly. "Nope, we never saw any kind of rig like that."

Gault was puzzled to see Torgason quietly fold his hands on the saddle horn, with the bored air of a man who had no personal interest in the proceedings. "Much obliged, anyhow," he said. "Nothin' to fret about—it ain't important."

Colton, with a look of relief on his face, started to rein toward Circle-R headquarters. At the last moment Gault reached out and caught his animal by the head stall. "Just a minute, Colton. There's somethin' I've been aimin' to ask you about, but I never got the chance before now. You recollect back several nights ago—there was a thunderstorm—that Doc Doolie was out at your headquarters patchin' up one of your men?"

The ranch manager turned to Gault and looked blank. "The doc hasn't been near my headquarters in over a year."

Gault smiled without warmth. "That's all I wanted to know."

Once again Colton reined away from them. Wompler, glaring at the rancher's back, said, "He was lyin' about not seein' the wagon—it was all over his face."

"Most likely," Torgason shrugged. "But you can't get a straight answer from a straw boss. If we want the truth about what they seen or what they didn't see, we'll have to talk to Yorty."

Gault was beginning to understand Torgason's reasoning. "Because," he said, "Yorty's an old man and scared of losin' his job? He'd be scared not to tell the truth, to a stock detective."

Torgason smiled coolly. "You're learnin', Gault."