tarp.
As if motivated by a single mind, the three men wrapped the body in its canvas shroud and tied it on behind Wompler's saddle, because Wompler was the lightest of the three men and his rented gelding was the most docile of the animals. 'Now,' Gault said stiffly, 'I think it's time we saw about that light.'
But first they tied their horses at one of the small sheds and laid the express agent's body out on the straw- covered floor. The three men looked at one another and Wompler asked dryly, 'Is there anything anybody wants to say?'
What was there to say? The shot that Gault thought he had heard—he had heard. Sewell had put his hawkish nose into a place where it wasn't welcome. And someone had killed him. And buried him. And then, as an added safety measure, they had killed a calf to fill the grave, in case somebody found it. But they hadn't counted on a flash flood.
'Why would they bury Sewell in a wash so close to the house?' Wompler asked.
And Torgason answered softly and calmly, having thought it all out beforehand. 'Because it was handy. An easy place to dig. And because they didn't care about makin' a good job of it, because they didn't figger to be around when he was found. If he was found.' He started to build a cigarette, but his hands were not quite steady and he tore the paper. He put the makings away in disgust. 'Then somebody got worried and decided to hide the body with the calf.' He nodded to himself. 'It wasn't a bad notion. If it hadn't been for the storm.'
Gault was seeing the posseman's face as he came out of the wash that morning with the shovel. 'Shorty Pike,' he said.
'That's what I aim to find out.' The stock detective smiled coldly at Wompler and Gault. 'If you gents want to come along, that's all right with me.'
They circled wide around the sheds, keeping out of sight of the house. Torgason and Wompler arrived at the barn well ahead of Gault. His side was beginning to hurt again; his breathing was ragged. Torgason looked at him. 'You all right?'
Gault nodded, sagging against the side of the barn until he recovered his breath. Then they moved to the double plank door and Wompler said, 'Stand back out of the light when I open it.' Quietly, Gault and Torgason levered cartridges into their rifles.
No sound came from inside the barn. Well, Gault reasoned, it was well past bedtime, they were probably sleeping.
With the lantern burning? 'Open it,' he told Wompler.
The former deputy set himself, then suddenly flung the doors wide and dived for darkness. Torgason and Gault snapped their rifles to their shoulders. Nothing happened. No sound, no movement. After a moment Gault edged around one side of the door, Torgason around the other. Behind them, somewhere in the darkness, they could hear Wompler breathing. There was no one in the barn.
Without turning his head, Gault snapped to Wompler, 'Keep an eye on the house and the other sheds.' Then he and Torgason made an inspection of the barn. On the pole rack that served as a hay loft they found an area of packed hay where someone had been bedding down. But there was no sign of occupation now. Gault eased himself down on the hay platform and held his side. Torgason eased his Winchester hammer to half cock and called to Wompler. 'Anything movin' out there?'
'Quiet as a graveyard,' Wompler called from the gaping doorway.
Gault shoved himself to his feet. 'I want to see the house.'
Esther Garnett was not in the house. No one was. The three men stationed themselves as they had at the barn. Wompler pounded on the door several times. Then Gault stepped forward and kicked the door open.
'Miss Garnett?'
A muslin curtain sighed at one of the front windows. Nothing else moved. Gault felt along his hatband, found a match and lit a coal oil lamp. Wompler, who in better times had been in this house as a guest, stepped inside and made a sound of surprise as he stared around at the blank walls. 'There used to be pictures over there…' He pointed. 'Of Esther's ma and pa. And there was other things, too…'
Gault moved across the room to a closed door and kicked it open. It was a bedroom—black oak dresser, washstand, bed. But the bed had been stripped, the drawers of the dresser pulled out and emptied.
He moved to the kitchen where the iron cookstove was in place, and several pots and pans, but most of the dishes had been taken from the upright kitchen safe. Wompler came to the doorway and stood there, his face puzzled. 'Esther set great store in them dishes. Her grandma brought them from across the water, she told me once.'
'Look at this,' Torgason called from another part of the house. Gault followed the voice to a small, boxed-in porch, sometimes called a sleeping porch. What had caught Torgason's attention was a rude knock-up bunk, a thing of blackjack poles and haywire, strung with frayed well-rope. More interesting than the bed, which might have been accounted for, was the litter of burnt matches and brownpaper cigarette butts on the floor.
The three men studied the room, sized it up in their minds, but did not discuss it at the moment. 'Probably a waste of time,' Torgason said finally, 'but we might as well see if there's anything in the sheds.'
They found a heavy breaking plow, almost new, and other farm tools. But no wagon, and only odds and ends of harness. The milk cow had been turned out; the mule was gone. At last they returned to the house where Wompler's instinct led him to a fruitjar half full of clear whiskey, tucked away beneath the rope-strung bunk.
Gault and Wompler sat at the cooktable, which was still in place. Torgason stood in the doorway glaring at the box walls of the sleeping porch. Wompler drank deeply of the raw liquor and passed it to Gault, who tasted it, but Torgason would not touch it. 'Wompler, you and Miss Garnett was thick once, they say. What do you make of this?'
The whiskey worked rapidly on Wompler's taut nerves. He sagged in the chair, his eyes going slightly glassy. 'She's pulled out. That's clear enough, ain't it?'
'Why?' the stock detective demanded.
Wompler had another go at the fruitjar. 'I don't know. It's been a long spell since Esther and me…' He sighed and smiled his crooked smile. 'Pulled out, that's all there is to it. Took the wagon, the mule, the dishes, a few other things.'
'How about this bunk on the sleepin' porch.'
This was the thing that disturbed them. More than the missing mule and wagon; more, even, than Esther Garnett's disappearance. Esther was what was known as a 'decent' woman; none of them had any doubts on this point. But that extra bunk, and the whiskey, and the litter of cigarettes and matches… Even in Gault's mind it made a jarring picture.
'Shorty Pike?' Torgason asked at last.
Wompler snorted. 'A highbinder like Shorty, sleepin' in the same house with Esther Garnett?' he grinned loosely to show that the idea was ridiculous.
Gault had an idea that wasn't so ridiculous.
'Wolf Garnett,' he said.
They stared at him. 'Once,' Wompler said, after a long silence, 'I knowed an old galoot that got hisself in a scrap with a band of Kiowas. They killed his woman and his two boys, and then they strung him up over a torture fire and would of cooked him like a fat dog, except some horse soldiers from Belknap happened along before they finished him. From that time on, that old geezer seen Kiowas everywhere he looked. Behind every manure pile and fire-barrel, a Kiowa. Around every bend, behind every tree. Kiowa.' The former deputy took a long drink from the fruitjar. 'That's the way you are, Gault. Everywhere you look, there's Wolf Garnett.'
'Then who's been sleepin' on that bunk? Sleepin', smokin', and drinkin' clear corn whiskey?'
Wompler was silent for several moments. 'Wolf,' he said at last, 'is dead. Everything points to it. Still,' he went on thoughtfully, 'if he
From the doorway Torgason looked at the former deputy and said, 'Comes mornin' we'll know more about it. Just as soon as it's light enough to track that wagon.'
The tracks, for a way, were easy enough to follow, but the trace became confused when it crossed and mingled with other wagon tracks on the stage road to Gainsville. Then, on a bed of gravel and shale, they lost all
