The Last Days of Wolf Garnett

enlighten Gault on the life and death of General Mallard Springfield Heath. 'The late General Mallard Springfield Heath,' he said, with his slack smile.

Heath was a Texas man, born and raised in the brush country along the Nueces, although few Texans would admit to him since the war. Mallard Heath was one of those rare patriots—or traitors, depending on who was telling it —who abandoned his cow-hunting operations in Texas, ignoring the call of Hood and other Southerners, to throw in his lot with the Yankees.

It had been a wise and profitable decision—up to a point. He rose from the ranks and at the end of the war wore the eagle of a Union colonel on his shoulders. Wisely, he declined to return to Texas, except in line of duty and always in uniform. It was in the performance of such duty, in 1878, that General Heath personally oversaw the shipment of $200,000 in gold bullion from Fort Belknap, Texas, to Camp Supply, in the Indian Territory. And it was somewhere between these two points, in the foothills of the Wichitas, that the escort was ambushed, officers and troopers killed to a man, the gold vanished…

'Without a trace,' Wompler finished in some excitement. 'There's been Army men, and U.D. deputies, and all kinds of sharpshooters and highbinders lookin' for that gold. Never a trace. Mexican and U.S. troops have been watchin' the Bravo for eight years. Same up north on the Canadian line. Never a clue.' He chuckled dryly. 'Then one day a Territory cowman named Gault walks into Olsen's office and turns over old Fortes fortuna juvat's pocketwatch. And what does the sheriff do when he sees that watch? He don't do nothin'. Torgason, that's somethin' I find interestin'.'

The stock detective glared at the rain and made no comment. 'Picture it in your mind, Gault,' Wompler was saying gleefully. 'You took that watch off of the handpicked posseman of Olsen's handpicked deputy. I wish I could see the sheriff's face when he tries to explain that to the county judge. Squirmin' like a city dude with saddle galls. I've waited a long time to see that.'

'You may have some waitin' to do yet,' Torgason said sourly.

But Wompler only chuckled. 'You're just mad because you never thought of it before now. Olsen and Wolf Garnett in cahoots all this time, and nobody guessin' a thing! Don't feel bad about it, Torgason, I never guessed it either. Like everybody else, I figgered the sheriff and Esther…'

Torgason turned from the mouth of the cave. 'Whiskey's made your brain soft, Wompler. I don't say that Olsen ain't got his faults, but he wouldn't throw in with a killer like Wolf Garnett.'

Almost gaily Wompler waved the objection away. 'Might be surprisin' what any of us would do, if there was an army wagon full of gold in the balance.' That thought had a quieting effect on Torgason, but Wompler went on with his dreaming. 'Yes sir, nearly a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money. Think about it! We'd all be rich as hog fat if we could find out where it's hid. And we might even find out what happened to Wirt Sewell.'

Torgason sounded indignant. 'How could a stolen gold shipment have anything to do with Sewell?'

'Maybe his suspicious ways got him on the track of it— and Wolf killed him.'

'Wolf Garnett's dead.'

'Anyhow, that's what Olsen wants everybody to believe.'

The rain was beginning to slacken as the storm moved on to the east. The men in the shallow cave sniffed the wet, clean smell of a washed earth. Within a matter of minutes the rain stopped completely. The thunder was a distant rumble, the lightning as delicate as foxfire on the far horizon. They could hear the rushing and splashing as water from a dozen flooded gullies and arroyos dumped into the river.

'It's all over,' Torgason announced unnecessarily. Hurrying clouds slipped over the prairie, revealing a pale, cold moon, and stars that glittered like swordpoints.

Wompler had fallen into a strange silence. He sat hunched over, his back to the clay riverbank, smoking one of his poorly made sputtering cigarettes. Suddenly he got to his feet and began rolling his blanket.

'What do you think you're doin'?' Torgason demanded.

'Somethin's been botherin' me all day and I couldn't put a finger on it. But thinkin' about Wirt Sewell brought it back again—it's that calf that's buried in the wash back of the Garnett house.'

Gault got to his feet. 'What about it?'

'I'm not sure. But I aim to find out.'

Torgason, who had been standing in the wet weeds beyond the shelf, came back into the cavelike darkness and said, with undisguised contempt, 'In the middle of the night, and a wet one at that? Wompler, you're loco.'

The former deputy looked at him with a dark grin and continued tying his bedroll.

Gault stood for a moment, thinking about the day and what had happened. In the back of his mind that calf had bothered him too. As Wompler ducked out of the cave carrying his bed and saddle, Gault said, 'Bring the horses up here. I'll go with you.'

Torgason sighed. It was a long-suffering sound of a reasonable man condemned to deal eternally with fools. 'What you expect to find on a dark and boggy prairie, in the middle of the night, I don't know. But you might as well bring my horse too.'

The horses plodded heavily over the spongy sod along the river. The men rode northward along the crest of the riverbottom, and soon they could see the field of young cotton, and the smaller one of corn, spread out below them, the neat rows standing in water and silvery in the moonlight.

The arroyo where they had found the calf lay like an open wound behind the farmhouse, slanting southward to the river. The house stood dark and sullen on the unfenced ground, but in one of the larger outbuildings, which Gault knew to be the main barn, the reddish light of a coal oil lantern shone through the cracks around the door.

The horsebackers reined up and studied the light. 'What do you make of it?' Wompler asked at last.

'Shorty Pike,' Gault said, more concerned with the arroyo than the barn. 'Most likely that's where he throws his bed.'

The wet clay walls of the gully glistened in the moonlight, but most of the water had already rushed headlong into the river. The riders got down and led their animals along the wash. Gault was the first to see what they were looking for. 'This is where the calf was buried.'

Wompler grounded his reins and eased himself down the slick wall of the arroyo. 'This is it. Not much of a burial job, whoever done it. The calf's almost washed out.'

He grunted several times and swore to himself. 'Wait till I light a match.'

A match flared on Wompler's thumbnail, and for an instant the floodswept bottom of the wash, the dead calf, and part of what lay beneath the calf, were etched with steelpoint sharpness. Wompler pulled away from that shallow grave, his face looking white and drawn in the sulphurish light. Then the match went out.

'Give me a hand, somebody.'

Gault and Torgason slid down to the muddy bottom of the arroyo. They had seen what Wompler had seen, but they did not completely believe it. 'Grab one of the forelegs,' Wompler said with unaccustomed authority. 'We'll have to get the calf out of the hole before we can be sure of anything.'

Gault grabbed a foreleg and Torgason and Wompler took the hind quarters and pulled the animal out of the hole. With great care, Wompler dried his hands on the seat of his pants, then struck another match. Once again, by the light of that tiny sulphur fire, they looked into the grave. The dead eyes of Wirt Sewell looked back at them.

The three men seemed to breathe together. In and out. Then Wompler spoke. 'Now I think I'd like to see about that light in the Garnett barn.'

'Later,' Torgason said quietly. 'After we attend to Sewell.'

'There ain't nothin' we can do for him.'

They looked at one another, two men surprisingly equal now, and strong willed. Not dedicated enemies, exactly, but not friends, either. 'First,' Torgason said again in the same quiet tone, 'we'll attend to Sewell.'

Gault avoided further argument by climbing out of the wash and stripping his own bedroll of its tarpaulin cover. 'Pass him up here. We'll cover him up and lay him out somewhere, out of the weather. The rest will have to wait till later.'

After a moment's hesitation the two men in the wash nodded together. With gentleness that might have been surprising to some, they lifted the body out of the hole and passed it up to Gault who covered it with his