The Last Days of Wolf Garnett

THE LAST DAYS OF WOLF GARNETT

by Clifton Adams

Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1970

CHAPTER ONE

The stranger arrived in New Boston on the Tuesday stage from Gainsville. The driver handed down his warbag and saddle. 'Big day for New Boston,' the driver said, eying the crowd that milled on the plank sidewalks in front of the false-fronted stores.

The stranger mutely shouldered his saddle and bulled his way through the crowd of curious onlookers. A late-model Winchester under one arm, he went through the massed loafers with the unmindful arrogance of a war chariot going through light infantry. He had taken perhaps a dozen steps when he suddenly reached out and stopped a passing cowhand. 'Which way to the sheriff's office?'

'Across the street.' The cowhand pointed. 'Over Rucker's feed store.'

With not so much as a nod of thanks, the newcomer plowed across the deep-rutted street. He took the outside stairway to the second-floor gallery that overlooked the street. Two business offices had been built on top of the feed store, small boxlike affairs with single sash windows looking down on the colorless prairie town. There was a scaling sign beside the first door bearing the legend: MARVIN DOOLIE, M.D. In smaller letters, was the message:

TREATMENT AND CONSULTATIONS ON A CASH BASIS ONLY. POSITIVELY NO CREDIT.

The stranger studied the sign for a moment and moved onto the next door. GRADY OLSEN, announced the faded lettering on the door. SHERIFF, STANDARD COUNTY. The sign looked as if it had been there, unchanged, for a long time. The stranger went in.

A large, slope-shouldered, balding man sat at an oilcloth-covered table, laboriously writing in a tablet of ruled paper. 'Set down,' he said without looking up. 'I'll talk to you in a minute.'

The stranger eased his saddle and warbag to the floor but held onto his rifle. 'The name,' he said flatly, 'is Frank Gault.'

'Set down, Gault.' The sheriff waved absently at a cane-bottom chair and went on writing.

'I came about Wolf Garnett.'

'Lots of folks did.' There was a note of irritation in the sheriffs voice. For the best part of an hour he had been trying to compose a bounty claim for the express company. It was the first bounty he had ever put in for, and it did not come easy.

'Where is he?' the stranger asked in the same flat tone.

'Where's who?'

'Sheriff,' Frank Gault said with a cold snarl, 'if you're deef, just nod your head and I'll try to talk louder. If you're simple-minded I'll look for your deputy and talk to him.'

The big lawman straightened up at the table and looked at the stranger for the first time. He looked at him steadily, unblinkingly, his gray plainsman's eyes as hard as bullets. Sheriff Grady Olsen had been the chief lawman of Standard County for as long as most of its citizens could remember. He was not accustomed to strangers—or anybody at all, for that matter—tramping uninvited into his office and telling him to his face that he was deaf or simple-minded, or possibly both.

The small room, which served as the sheriff's office and living quarters, rang with hostility. Olsen quietly studied every detail of Gault's big-boned frame, his sun-cured face and hawkish features. He did not speak until he was sure that he could do it calmly. 'What,' he asked at last, 'is this about Wolf Garnett?'

'I want to see him.'

'That ain't likely. We buried him this mornin'.'

'Dig him up.'

The sheriff blinked once, slowly, like a faintly curious owl. 'Why,' he asked ponderously, 'would I want to do a thing like that?'

'I don't think the man you buried was Wolf Garnett.'

'… I see.' Sheriff Olsen crossed his arms across his vast chest and asked coldly, 'If we didn't bury Garnett, who did we bury?'

'I don't know.' Gault gestured impatiently. 'Some drifter, maybe.'

Olsen assumed an air of limitless patience. 'Fine,' he droned. 'Well and good. We buried the wrong man. His sister identified him as Wolf Garnett. He was wearin' Wolf Garnett's clothes. His black butterfly boots and the Montana Stetson. He had Garnett's bone-handled .45 in his holster when he was found. Two first-class lawmen recognized the Colt and identified it as the one that Garnett always carried. By the way,' he added softly, gazing at Gault's own .45 which he wore high up, pilgrimlike, on his right hip, 'there's an ordinance in New Boston that disallows the wearin' of firearms—except maybe if you're a traveler just passin' through.' He smiled what was probably the smallest smile that Gault had ever seen. 'Gettin' back to the point here. Like I said, we got plenty reason to believe that we buried Wolf Garnett and nobody but Wolf Garnett. You say we didn't. Why?'

'I saw Garnett four days ago in the Creek Nation, in one of those honky-tonks just across the line from the Unassigned Lands.'

The sheriff seemed to fall asleep with his eyes open. After several seconds of silence he sat a little straighter and asked, 'You know Garnett? You'd seen him, before that time four days ago?'

'… Yes.'

There was something in the way he said it that caused the big lawman to squint. 'When was that?'

'About a year ago.' Gault's eyes lost their sharp focus. He seemed to be gazing at some invisible spot several inches above Olsen's head. 'I was in the coach that Garnett and his bunch held up and robbed, over on the Trinity.'

It had not happened in Standard County, but Olsen nodded, remembering the incident. Almost a thousand dollars in grass money—rent money that cowmen paid the Indians for the use of their pastureland—had been taken from the strongbox. And there had been something else. After the robbery the highwaymen had run off the team. The coach had overturned and one of the passengers had been killed.

'My wife,' Gault said harshly, as if he had been reading the sheriff's mind. 'Killed. For no reason at all. They already had the money.' He continued to gaze at that invisible spot above Olsen's head.

The sheriff sat for what seemed a long while, saying nothing. Then he sighed to himself. The sound whistled through his teeth. 'You better set down, Gault. Go back to the startin' mark and tell me about Wolf Garnett.'

Gault ignored the chair. 'I've already said everything there is to say. I saw him. He's alive.'

'Tell me again just where it was you saw him.'

'An illegal whiskey place on Little River. Just across the line from the Unassigned Lands.'

'Did the place have a name?'

Gault gritted his teeth and made an obvious effort to hold his temper. 'Places like that don't have names. The sharpshooter that ran it was called Marcus. He might of been part Indian.'

'This man you saw that you thought was Garnett, how close was you to him at the time?'

'Close enough to know it was Garnett.' Gault's eyes glittered.

'How close?' Olsen persisted.

Gault hesitated. 'Maybe… maybe a quarter of a mile.'

The sheriff sat up and grunted. 'Quarter of a mile. Must of been a right good-sized honky-tonk.'

'He wasn't in the honky-tonk,' Gault said, his anger rising. 'He was just leavin', on horseback. Goin' into a stand of timber.' Until this moment he had been absolutely sure that the man he had seen