Wompler didn't look convinced, but he said, 'Find somethin' to dig with. I'll keep an eye on the Garnett place.'
With a broken plow-handle Gault began gouging at the loose earth. Soon the jagged tip of the plow-handle struck something foreign to the loosely packed clay. It was a sensation that set Gault's skin crawling; he had experienced it once before while digging in the graveyard west of New Boston.
Wompler crouched on the lip of the wash. Slowly, Gault began clearing away some of the loose clay. What he had unearthed was not the missing express agent but the brown and white flank of a spotted calf.
Wompler slid into the wash for a closer look. 'Well,' he said, breaking an uneasy silence, 'maybe Shorty wasn't buryin' the express agent after all.'
'Why would he go to the trouble of buryin' a calf? When a cow gets itself killed on the prairie, you leave it where it falls. Unless it's diseased, then you bum it.'
'That's what a cowman would do. These are farmers— and sometimes there's no explainin' the things a sodbuster will do.' The former deputy began kicking dirt back into the hole. 'Maybe Esther took the calf as a pet, and couldn't bear to leave it for the buzzards. There's no explainin' women, either.'
Gault smiled grimly. 'It still doesn't tell me what happened to that express agent.'
The two men finished filling the hole and climbed out of the wash. Wompler built himself a smoke and said, 'You want to turn around and see if we can find Torgason and the Circle-R branding crew?'
Gault was reluctant to leave the farm, but he could think of no good reason for lingering there; he was no pink-cheeked cowhand looking for excuses to moon over Esther Garnett.
Wompler tramped into the river underbrush where he had tied the horses. In a few minutes he came back leading the animals, and Gault was quick to notice the pinched look of apprehension about the ex-deputy's eyes. 'Might be,' he said quietly, 'we got ourselves some trouble. Somebody's watchin' us. Back there in the brush.'
Gault studied the thicket from beneath the brim of his hat. 'I don't see anything.'
'He's there.' Wompler wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. 'You think it's Shorty Pike? He's already had one try at killin' you; maybe he's lookin' to finish the job.'
'Maybe…' Gault took the buckskin's reins and quickly put the animal between himself and the thicket, a common-sense precaution that Harry Wompler had already attended to. They began walking their horses away from the arroyo. Of course, Gault thought bleakly, there's nothin' to keep him from shootin' the horses first, then us.
A voice from the direction of the brush called, 'Hold up, Wompler. You too, mister, whoever you are.'
Gault grasped the buckskin's bitchain and froze. He shot a look at Wompler and was relieved to see the beginning of that familiar slack-mouthed smile.
'We won't have to go lookin' for Torgason. He's found us.'
Gault moved the buckskin aside and watched the tall, sunbrowned man coming out of the thicket. He carried a Winchester saddle rifle in one hand, cocked and ready to fire, as if it had been a Buntline pistol. He looked to be in his middle thirties, lean, tough, all business. He had a wooden, Indianlike face, and Gault got the feeling that it would shatter like overheated flint if he ever tried smiling.
'Good luck you found us,' Wompler said easily. 'We was about to go lookin' for you.'
'Why?' Torgason eased the Winchester's hammer to half cock and cradled the weapon in his arm.
'This here's Frank Gault. He's got kind of a personal interest in the Garnetts. But maybe you better let him tell you about it.'
Standing there beside the arroyo, Gault told the Association man everything he knew or suspected. About Martha, and Sewell, and Colly Fay. About getting himself shot by Shorty Pike, on Deputy Finley's orders. About the dreamed thunderstorm that appeared to be neither dream nor storm. About Shorty with the shovel, and the buried calf.
Torgason heard him out without the slightest change in expression. 'What makes you think I can help you?'
'An oldtime line rider, name of Yorty, thought you might be the one to talk to.'
Torgason studied him disinterestedly. Never a word of sympathy when he heard about Martha. A man of business was Del Torgason, and that business was seeing that the cattlemen of Standard County were kept happy and the county reasonably free of rustlers. 'Elbert Yorty,' he said bluntly, 'is an old fool. I've got no quarrel with the sheriff. My advice, Gault, is go back to where you came from and leave Standard County to look after itself.'
Gault smiled thinly. 'I get a lot of that kind of advice.'
The stock detective shrugged his wide shoulders, a picture of total indifference. 'A thunderstorm that's not a thunderstorm. A murder grave that turns out to be a buried calf. Seein' the sheriff and Doc Doolie on the prairie in the dead of night—you ought to know that's when docs and sheriffs do a good part of their business. Diggin' up the New Boston graveyard… It's a wonder Olsen didn't lock you in the calaboose and throw away the key.' He turned abruptly from Gault and said, 'What's all this got to do with you, Wompler?'
Wompler's smile was as bland as a baby's. 'Call it curiosity. Anything that affects the sheriff of Standard County, I take an interest in.'
'How do you know the sheriff's affected?'
'I live in hope.'
The two wills clashed like a meeting of swords. Gault expected to see Wompler give ground immediately; now he was surprised to see the silent struggle was on even terms. Wompler maintained his slack smile. Torgason's only sign of irritation was a slight narrowing of the eyes. 'One of these days,' he said flatly, 'Olsen's goin' to get enough of you. And that will be the end of Harry Wompler.'
'That,' the former deputy sighed, 'is a chance we all take, when we live in Standard County. Even you, Torgason. By the way,' he added, 'how'd you come to find us here?'
The detective looked woodenfaced. 'A hand from headquarters joined Colton's brandin' crew. He said you and a stranger had been that way, and I decided to see what you was up to.' Without warning, he grinned. It was a bizarre expression on that blank, brown face. 'I figgered this is where I'd find you. At the Garnetts.'
That afternoon Gault and Wompler pulled back from the farm and made camp again on the Little Wichita. From a distance they had scouted the farmyard and fields, without adding anything to their knowledge of the Garnetts. The young cowhand-cotton chopper had pulled out around midday. Shorty Pike had appeared from one of the barns and had gone to work in the vegetable garden near the house. A more peaceful scene would be difficult to imagine.
Shortly after the appearance of the posseman in the vegetable garden, Del Torgason had ridden south toward New Boston.
'Don't be fooled,' Wompler warned. 'He'll keep his eye on us. For the next few hours, anyway.'
Gault scowled. 'Why?'
'Because he's suspicious. It's his job.'
As it had been Wirt Sewell's job, Gault thought wearily.
The moist, enervating electricity of springtime was in the air. 'More rain,' Wompler said sourly, eying the western sky. 'Best see if we can find somethin' to get under.'
The memory of the lanky express agent was still in Gault's mind. 'The night I talked to Wirt Sewell, in the Garnett shed, he said he'd been layin' out somewhere. A shelf of some kind, along the riverbank.'
'Whereabouts along the bank? It's a long river.'
Gault tried to recall the agent's words. 'I don't know that he said. But it couldn't have been far from the farm.' They stood watching the thunderheads form in the west. Gault sighed wearily. The prospect of a cold soaking was not pleasant to think about. Without further discussion, the two men got saddled, pulled their stakepins and started back upstream.
The shelf was there, a big spearhead of limestone jutting out of the clay bank of the river. They staked the horses downstream and threw their beds beneath the rock roof. Not perfect, but a good deal better than no shelter at all.
Gault went through the futile motions of looking through his grub sack. It was empty. Wompler had never had any grub, only the bottle of whiskey from the Day and Night, and that had been emptied and discarded along the way. In the bottom of his saddle pocket Wompler found a piece of bone-hard jerky that some former New Boston livery customer had left. The two men divided the dried beef and hunkered down with their backs to the riverbank, cutting off small pieces with their pocketknives, working it between their teeth until it was soft enough to
