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."
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 tha
t 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 w
orried 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.
The Last Days of Wolf Garnett Page 10
