The Last Days of Wolf Garnett (19 page)

Olsen raised his .45 and aimed it at the doctor's head. "Give him the medicine or I'll kill you."

"Even with the morphine there's no guarantee that he'll tell you what you want to know."

"Give him the medicine, or I'll kill the kid."

The doctor paled. He bent over Wolf and looked into those burning eyes. "You heard?"

"I heard," the outlaw breathed. "It don't make any difference. I don't aim to tell him anything."

"Listen, Wolf," the sheriff said anxiously, "it's on account of Esther, your own sister, that I want that gold."

Wolf grinned faintly. The doctor held the bottle to his lips and he gulped almost half the medicine.

"Give him the rest of it," Olsen said.

"It will kill him."

"Give it to him."

Resignedly, the doctor put the bottle to Wolf's lips again and he gulped until it was empty.

Several minutes passed. The sheriff stirred uneasily. "How long before it takes effect?"

"Not long now."

Wolf's eyes began to glaze. They turned curiously blank, as if an opaque curtain had quietly been drawn over his burning brain. "Wolf," Olsen said impatiently, "can you hear me?"

The outlaw sighed. "I hear."

"You've got to help Esther, Wolf. Think of all your sister's done for you. Tell me where the gold is and I'll see that she never wants for a thing."

"Go to hell, Olsen," the outlaw whispered.

The sheriff flushed. "Don't you care what happens to her?"

Wolf's pale lips twitched in a smile that said plainer than words that his hate for Olsen was stronger than his love for his sister.

"Wolf, listen to me!"

"Goddam you all," the outlaw said faintly but distinctly. It was the last thing he said. He closed his eyes and began gasping for breath. In a fury, Grady Olsen grabbed his shoulders and shook him savagely. But Wolf Garnett was dead.

For Gault, this was the end of the road that he had been traveling for almost a year. Wolf Garnett was dead. There was a taste of gall in his mouth but no satisfaction.

So, at last, Wolf Garnett was dead. He had to believe it now. This was no unknown body in a New Boston graveyard, this was the body of the famous outlaw himself. It took some time to get used to this. For almost a year his single purpose had been to see to the death of Wolf Garnett, and now he found himself without aim or direction. He didn't even care about saving his own life.

At the moment of Olsen's fury he might have jumped the sheriff and, with Sumpter's help, overpowered him. But he had let the chance slip away. Olsen, much quicker to recover, released his angry grip on the dead outlaw and grabbed his .45. "Set easy!" he snarled at Gault. "You too, Doc. Just back off and be quiet a minute. I got to do some thinkin'."

Young Timmy Sumpter began to cry. The sheriff glared at him and the boy fell into a stunned silence. Slowly, Olsen got to his feet and called, "Esther, come here."

Almost immediately Esther Garnett appeared in the doorway of the shack. "Wolf died," the sheriff said with brutal matter of factness, "without sayin' where he hid the gold."

Esther stared at the still form on the floor. She made a small, almost inaudible cry. Then she came rigidly, proudly erect. Esther Garnett was not the kind of woman to grieve in public. "You said the doc was goin' to fix him."

"I'm sorry, miss," the doctor started. But a look from Olsen silenced him instantly.

"He's dead," the sheriff said bluntly. "That's the important thing right now. And we still don't know where to find the gold."

"I don't care about that."

"You will. Later. It would mean a good life for us."

"I don't care."

"Without that gold we're just a pair of outlaws, like your brother was. And most likely we'll end up like him."

She looked at him coldly. "You're scared."

"I ain't in no big hurry to get myself hung, if that's what you mean. Look here…" He took a step toward her, and she took a step away from him. "Look here, with that gold in our hands we can be kings of the mountain, in Mexico."

"I don't like Mexico. I never aimed to go there, with you. All I wanted was your help in gettin' Wolf to a proper doctor."

Gault was surprised at the sheriff's bland acceptance of her hatred. "Tell you the truth, I never much figgered you'd go through with it. A pert thing like you, a wore-out old buzzard like me—we'd make a right queer team, to say the best of it." His eyes narrowed and his voice became harsh. "But I do want that gold. And I aim to have it."

"I don't know where it is."

"Much as you and Wolf talked together, all the time he was laid up at the farm, and he never told you?"

"I never asked, and he never said."

Olsen's heavy jaw was set like a steel trap. He looked at Esther for almost a full minute and then said quietly, "You're lyin'. It don't stand to reason that you could go all that time without learnin' somethin' about the gold."

"I don't care about reason. I don't care about you."

"I know." The sheriff nodded ponderously. "You never cared about anybody, except that no-account brother. Wompler and Finley and some of the others never seen that until it was too late. But you never fooled me. You want all that gold for yourself. That's how you are. But you're not goin' to get it."

"How many times," she said with limitless patience, "have I got to tell you that I don't know where it is."

"As many times as suits you, but I won't believe it." He fell into another brooding silence. Gault had the eerie feeling that they were two actors on a stage, and he was in the audience watching them act out their stilted plot of terror. Although Olsen still had his .45 aimed at Gault, he seemed to have forgotten that Gault was there. Only when Gault tried to move or change his position did the sheriff notice him.

Esther gazed bleakly down at the still form of her brother. There was grief somewhere in the depths of those blue eyes, but it was silent and still, wrapped in many layers of Garnett pride. "I want to bury him myself. Just by myself."

"Maybe later," the sheriff said, his voice taking a cold edge. "After we get it settled about the gold."

"There's nothin' to settle. I keep tellin' you." Grady Olsen leaned his heavy head on one shoulder and looked at her. Then he swung the .45 in a short arc so that the muzzle was casually aimed at the point of her chin. "Are you thinkin' I won't kill you? Is that what you're thinkin'?" Esther Garnett gazed coolly down the barrel of the revolver and said nothing. The sheriff went on. "I'm finished with lawin', you realize that, don't you? I burned my ships, like they say, and I can't ever go back to Standard County again. All because of you and your brother and that gold that you dangled in my face. Like danglin' a yellow carrot in front of a jackass. But I ain't no jackass, missie. I aim to have my carrot."

"You won't get it from me."

The sheriff sighed. "You got spunk, I'll say that much for you, Esther. You figger that I haven't got it in me to kill a woman—and you're right. It's the way I was raised. So you figger that sooner or later I'll lay my feathers down and run off and stop pesterin' you." He shook his head. "You're wrong."

"Grady," she said stiffly, "Wolf's dead, and he's the only one that knowed about the gold. Go back to Standard County where you belong."

"Too late for that." He gazed angrily at Gault. Then he turned to the doctor. Finally he looked down at the boy. "Tell me where it is," he said to Esther, "and I'll let the boy go. It's too late for Gault and the doc, they know too much. But I'll let the boy go."

"How many times do I have to tell you…"

"Tell me, or I kill the boy."

Sumpter stood frozen. Esther Garnett glanced quickly at Timmy; if she had any feeling for the boy, it did not show in her face. "I can't tell you what I don't know."

Gault found himself in a half-crouch, ready to spring. Olsen wheeled on him, snarling, "Set back against the wall, before I kill you here and now!" Then he smiled tightly at Esther and shrugged his big shoulders. "You'd let me kill the whole pack of them, wouldn't you? Even the boy. And you wouldn't say a word." He was getting an idea. Esther could see it forming in that busy brain behind those pale eyes, and she didn't like it. "That brother of yours is the only person you ever care a damn about, and I guess he still is."

"… Wolf's dead."

"No mistake about that," Olsen agreed, his tone quietly savage. "It don't make any difference what happens to him now—ain't that right? I mean, it don't make any difference how a man's buried, once he's good and dead."

She looked at him with a growing fear. "The dead wants to be buried decent."

Olsen grinned. "What I had in mind was takin' Wolf up the creek a ways and rollin' him into a bed of quicksand that I seen on my way to Fort Sill. No work, no bother for anybody. Everything quick and simple."

Her face went pale. She swayed for a moment, and Gault thought that she would fall. But she pulled herself together, set her jaw and made herself look at the sheriff. "All right," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I'll tell."

"I thought maybe you would," Olsen grinned. This was his moment of victory. He had risked everything—respectability, power, security—because of a woman and a half-dreamed shipment of gold. He had lost the woman; but that didn't matter, because he had never really had her. He had won the gold. That was the important thing now.

"Where is it?"

"Up the creek a ways. I'll have to show you."

"All right." He leveled his revolver at Gault.

Esther Garnett's voice went up in pitch. "What do you think you're doin'?"

"Everybody's got to die, one time or another. Their time is now."

"No." Her chin jutted stubbornly. "Not now. Not here."

Olsen scowled. "I can't leave them alive, with all the things they know."

"Kill them later, somewheres else. I don't want it done here, where Wolf is."

The ways of women, Olsen's look seemed to say, were past all understanding. But with the gold so close at hand he was not inclined to argue. "All right, I'll take them along with us." Now that he thought about it, it was the perfect solution. Three bodies at the bottom of a quicksand bed would be forever lost.

Gault tensed and prepared to shove away from the wall.

Calmly, Olsen pointed his revolver at Timmy Sumpter. "Make a move that I don't like, Gault, and I kill the boy." Gault looked into Sumpter's frantic eyes and made himself be still. "Now," the sheriff said comfortably, "that's some better. From here on out I'll keep the boy with me. Long as you and the doc behave yourselves the kid stays alive."

They made their way upstream on foot, Esther Garnett leading, followed by Gault and Dr. Sumpter. Olsen, with the frightened Timmy Sumpter tucked under one arm like a sack of meal, brought up the rear.

After several minutes Esther stopped and pointed. "There it is."

The procession came to a stumbling halt. Olsen, with Timmy still under his arm, pushed forward impatiently. "Where?"

"There at the overhang." Esther pointed toward a many-layered shelf of slate jutting out from the creekbank. Olsen squinted but could see no sign of the gold. "It's on the underside of the shelf," she told him. "I'll show you."

Gault was beginning to get a strange feeling about this sudden, almost casual surrender of Esther Garnett. He looked at the doctor for verification, but Sumpter only had eyes and thoughts for his helpless son. Impatiently, Olsen motioned them forward. "I don't see anything."

"Wolf hid it under a tarp—most likely it's covered with dirt, after all this time."

The sheriff moved cautiously out on the tiered roof of black slate. Suddenly he dropped Timmy Sumpter and thrust him toward Esther. "You watch the kid, and no monkey business. I'm still the only one here with a gun, in case anybody's forgot."

Esther took the sobbing boy, coolly, with no change of expression, as she might have accepted a lifeless bundle of rags. Then for just an instant, she looked at Gault. There was a certain glitter in her eyes. Light from the fires of hate that burned inside her, Gault thought. It was a cold, still look that said,
This is your chance Gault. The only one you'll get
.

"I still don't see it," Grady Olsen was saying with the beginning of anger and suspicion. He was bending slightly over the edge of the shelf when Esther Garnett threw herself at him.

Olsen was big and heavy, solid as a stump, and no bit of a woman like Esther Garnett was going to upset him. But it did surprise him. He blinked once, scowling and angry, as he brushed her aside. And then, before he could pull himself erect or fully regain his balance, Gault hit him.

A shower of pain went through Gault's injured side as he drove his shoulder into the small of the sheriff's back. It was like throwing himself at an oak tree. Gault could almost believe that he had taken root to that roof of slate. Nevertheless, in some impossible way, he did move. Gault dropped to his knees, gasping. The sheriff was standing on one foot, clawing the air with his free hand and cursing as he fell backward into the still water.

"Hurry!" Esther Garnett said hoarsely. "Maybe we can get to the horses before he hauls hisself out of the water!"

For a moment Gault looked at the world through the splintered light of pain. Sumpter, blind to everything else, rushed to his son and was holding the boy in his arms, rocking and crooning to him, tears of relief streaming down his dirty cheeks.

Gault pulled himself to his feet and got the doctor and the boy started downstream. "On the other side of the shack, where the horses are!"

But Olsen was faster than any of them would have believed. Somehow he had worked his way to the top of the opposite bank and was cutting off their retreat with riflefire.

Bullets ripped through the green mullein. Esther threw herself to the ground beside a cottonwood log. Gault and the Sumpters dropped a few paces behind. Olsen's voice, wild with rage, came from the other bank. "There ain't no gold under that shelf, missie! There never was! It's a sorry day for the Garnetts that you ever thought to trick me!"