The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (14 page)

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."

They found the old line rider hurriedly rolling his bed in front of his half-dugout hut. There was dismay, and maybe a little fear, in his eyes when he saw the three horsebackers coming toward him.

"Aimin' on takin' a trip, Yorty?" Torgason asked, smiling his smile so thin and heatless that it was almost a smirk.

The old man's gaze darted from Gault to Torgason to Wompler. "Not a trip. There's a outbreak of colic over on the west pasture that the boss wants me to see about."

"Fine." The detective honed his knife-edged smile. "Proud to see an old hand lookin' after his job." The words "old hand" had not been wasted on Elbert Yorty. His face became a little longer, his eyes a little paler. No one had to point out to him that a word from an Association man could get even the most competent cowhand fired without notice or explanation. With that unpleasantry behind him, Torgason softened a little. "What we want to know, Yorty, is about the wagon."

The old man seemed to sigh. "The spring rig? Farm wagon, from the looks of it, with the sheet up?"

"That's the one."

Wompler shot a glance at Gault and smiled crookedly.

He had used this same technique on the old wrangler at Circle-R headquarters.

The line rider shrugged and spread his hands in an attitude of surrender. "Come across the prairie first thing this mornin', headin' west along the river. I figgered it was headin' for the old Indian crossin' about a mile upstream, but I didn't foller to make sure."

Gault leaned over his saddle horn. "Who was drivin'?"

"Kind of squarebuilt bird, not too tall. I think it was Shorty Pike."

"Anybody else?"

"That's all I seen. But like I said, the sheet was up. Could of been somebody under it, I guess." He paused for a moment, trying to remember. "Nope, that's all. Just the stubby-lookin' galoot up on the box, that might of been Shorty Pike. A black mule and a chestnut stud was in the traces."

Wompler broke in impatiently. "Why didn't you want to tell us about this?"

"Boss told me not to."

"Why wouldn't Colton want you to tell us about the wagon?"

The old man smiled sadly. "Not so long ago—around dinnertime, I guess it was—the sheriff and that young sprout of a deputy, they come up to our camp and asked about that wagon, just the way you're askin' now."

Gault came suddenly erect. Torgason looked surprised. But Wompler only smiled his slack smile and grunted. "The sheriff told you and Colton not to say anything about seein' the wagon."

"That's the way it was."

Scowling, Gault turned this information in his mind. "Is that all?" Wompler asked.

"Just about. The sheriff said him and the deputy seen some Circle-R strays as they was comin' from headquarters. He didn't put it in so many words, but it was easy to get the feelin' that it might be a good notion for us to pull away from the river and work the brandin' crew back south for a day or so. That's what Colton was doin' when you found us."

"Does Colton take orders on ranch business from the sheriff?"

"When the sheriff is Grady Olsen, he does." Torgason laughed quietly. "You better see about that outbreak of colic," he told the old man, with as much gentleness as he could manage. But it was too late for gentleness, as far as Elbert Yorty was concerned. The fear of old age was in his bones.

Gault and Torgason and Wompler rode upstream, with Wompler taking the lead. The greedy light of gold was in the former deputy's eyes. Torgason, despite a conscious effort to stay disinterested, allowed his wooden mask to slip from time to time. Even Gault, whose obsession was revenge, not riches, could not escape the fascination of $200,000.

"What do you make of it?" Gault asked the stock detective. "About the sheriff and the deputy showing up here, so far from New Boston?"

"The sheriff," Torgason said dryly, "don't let hisself get hemmed in much by county lines. State lines neither, for that matter." He shrugged and smiled his brittle smile. "When Olsen seen that watch, I figger he started thinkin' just the way we did. About that army gold. And he aims to get it."

"Wompler tells me that Olsen is in love with Esther Garnett."

The stock detective looked as if he might be laughing on the inside, though his wooden face never changed expression. "Our Sheriff Olsen is a sensible man. He knows he could buy a whole pack of women, maybe some of them even better lookin' than Esther Garnett, for almost a quarter of a million dollars."