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,
'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.
