The Last Days of Wolf Garnett

Those blue eyes looked at him steadily. 'What kind of dream?'

'A storm. Thunder and lightnin', that kind of thing.'

'There wasn't no storm last night,' she told him soberly. 'There was stars all over the sky. I was tellin' Colly.'

'Like I say, it was just a dream.' But what had happened to Wirt Sewell? He hadn't been a dream.

Gault returned to the shed, and within a few minutes Colly Fay was standing in the doorway. 'Miss Esther says you're pullin' out.'

'If you'll help me get the buckskin saddled.'

'Which way will you be headin'?'

No sense starting a fight, Gault told himself. 'Don't worry, Colly, I won't be headin' back to New Boston.'

Colly brought up the saddled buckskin, then he helped Gault roll his bed and tie it on behind the cantle. 'Deputy Finley said I'd get my Winchester back when I was well enough to ride out of here.'

The posseman grinned. 'Whatever the deputy says.' He brought Gault his rifle. The firing pin had been replaced, but the magazine was empty. Gault knew without looking that the spare box of cartridges that he always carried would not be in the saddle pocket. He shoved the empty rifle into the boot.

Gault grasped the saddle horn and laboriously mounted the buckskin. The effort left him gasping. He leaned forward on the saddle horn, waiting for the pain to subside.

Colly was looking up at him, grinning widely. 'You don't look too pert to me, Gault. A man in your shape, the best thing he can do is to stay out of trouble.' Maybe Colly wasn't as simple as he appeared.

As Gault was pushing himself erect, Esther Garnett came out of the house carrying a grub sack. 'It ain't much,' she said apologetically. 'Cold biscuits and dry salt meat. But maybe it'll last you till you get to your place in the Territory.'

It seemed to Gault that no one ever missed an opportunity to suggest that he should make straight for Indian Territory and away from Texas. Wirt Sewell was the only one who hadn't offered some kind of argument in favor of his leaving Standard County as soon as possible—and Sewell hadn't been heard from since. 'I'm much obliged for everything you've done, Miss Garnett,' Gault said politely. 'I'm sorry if I've put you out.'

'You haven't put me out, Mr. Gault,' she said with a placid smile.

The exchange was stilted and rang with false good humor. With a courteous little nod, Gault reined the buckskin away from the shed and started at an easy walk across the farmyard, heading north. He looked back once and Esther and the big posseman were deep in serious conversation. Gault rode on toward the river.

Shortly before sundown the indignant bellowing of a range cow caught Gault's attention. He reined to a knoll to see where the sound was coming from. The soft green valley of the Little Wichita was spread out in front of him, and in the center of that green carpet a man was kneeling beside a downed steer. A well-trained cow pony was standing patiently nearby.

Gault hesitated before moving in closer. If the stranger was a rustler, or an ambitious cowhand adding to his own stock, it would be smart to ride around him and pretend that he had seen nothing. But there was no branding fire that Gault could see. On impulse, he nudged the buckskin into the valley.

The man looked up at Gault. 'Howdy.' Then he went back to what he was doing. Beside him on the ground was an opened barlow knife, a syrup bucket half full of axle grease 'dope,' and a rag dauber. 'Worms,' the cowhand said without looking around. Meticulously, he cleaned a large sore on the steer's shoulder, cut away the proud flesh and coated the area with the black worm medicine. Finally he untied the animal and the steer loped across the valley, still bawling. The cowhand got to his feet and looked again at Gault. 'You ain't from Colton, are you?'

Gault shook his head. 'No.'

'Colton's the straw boss. Manages the outfit for Mr. Cooper that lives in Kansas City. Hell of a way to run a cow outfit, if you was to ask me. From way off in Kansas.' He put the lid on his bucket of 'dope' and wrapped his dauber in a piece of tarpaulin.

'You ridin' line for Colton?' Gault asked.

The hand nodded. 'South bank of the Red. Supposed to keep Cooper cattle from crossin' over and windin' up on Comanche cookin' fires. But I can't do it all myself.' His tone turned to patient disgust. 'Colton promised two days ago he was goin' to send me some help. You didn't see anybody along the way, have you?'

'No.'

The cowhand scratched his unshaven jaw and cursed half-heartedly. 'Most likely they forgot all about me.' He gazed off to the south and something seemed to occur to him. 'By the way,' he said abruptly, 'did you come by the Garnett place?'

Gault was surprised. 'What makes you ask?'

'Most menfolks hereabouts wouldn't pass up a chance to see Miss Esther, if they was passin' anywheres near the place. You know Miss Esther, don't you?'

'We met,' Gault said cautiously.

The cowhand grinned. 'Pert as a spotted pup, ain't she? Be a powerful lucky man that gets her.'

'In spite of her brother?'

The cowman waved off the notion that even an outlaw like Wolf in the family could tarnish the image of Esther Garnett. 'Anyhow,' he added, 'Wolf's dead.'

'So they say.'

The cowhand wiped his hands on the seat of his worn California pants and said, 'Name's Elbert Yorty.'

'Frank Gault,' Gault said, and vaguely embarrassed, they shook hands. Being plainsmen, they didn't ordinarily go in for handshaking, but sometimes a man, after a few weeks of talking to cows, got carried away.

'Got a piece of venison hangin' back at my line shack,' Yorty said by way of invitation. 'Unless you got somethin' better for supper.'

Gault thought of Esther Garnett's hard biscuits and salt meat, and said gratefully, 'I haven't.'

On a distant knoll, directly behind Yorty, a familiar figure appeared on horseback and sat for a moment gazing down at them. Yorty didn't see him, and Gault didn't see any reason to mention it.

Yorty's line shack was a crude half-dugout affair nestled in the sprawling bottomland next to the Red. In Gault's honor, the cowhand carved a whole tenderloin out of the dressed venison and cooked it on a spit over a greenwood fire. 'There's a monkey stove in the shack,' Yorty explained, 'but I never quite got the hang of cooking on it.'

They ate with relish, hunkering around the fire as the cool spring night settled around them. A line rider lonesome for company, Yorty celebrated this occasion by opening a treasured can of tomatoes, and even produced some condensed milk for the coffee. In the time honored tradition of the frontier, they ate in silence, giving their entire attention to the meal at hand. Then they moved back a little from the fire and lit their smokes and sipped their scalding, faintly rancid coffee.

Gault cocked his head, listening for a moment with all his attention. If Colly was anywhere nearby he wasn't letting that fact be known. Gault thought with grim amusement that Colly must be getting pretty tired of cold grub and fireless nights.

'One lobo,' Elbert Yorty was saying, 'don't make a wolf pack. The Garnetts was a first-class family before Wolf started givin' it a bad name. Did you know his folks?'

'No. Esther Garnett told me her parents died four years ago.'

'About that.' Yorty nodded to himself. 'I've been workin' cattle in Standard County longer'n I like to think about— and back in them days the Garnetts was as good as anybody in these parts. Even if they did start out as squatter farmers.' This, from a cowman, was praise of the highest kind. 'Even after Wolf started to go bad, nobody blamed it on the rest of the family. Course,' he added after a moment's thought, 'they was always thick as molasses.'

'Who was?'

'The Garnetts. Everybody said that Miss Esther and Wolf was closer than most brothers and sisters. And the old folks, they never said anything against Wolf, even after he'd gone bad. But then, I guess nobody expected the Garnetts to say anything out loud against their own…'

Gault looked at his host thoughtfully. It almost seemed that Yorty was trying to tell him something without