Scowling, Gault turned this information in his mind. 'Is that all?' Wompler asked.
'Just about. The sheriff said him and the deputy seen some Circle-R strays as they was comin' from headquarters. He didn't put it in so many words, but it was easy to get the feelin' that it might be a good notion for us to pull away from the river and work the brandin' crew back south for a day or so. That's what Colton was doin' when you found us.'
'Does Colton take orders on ranch business from the sheriff?'
'When the sheriff is Grady Olsen, he does.' Torgason laughed quietly. 'You better see about that outbreak of colic,' he told the old man, with as much gentleness as he could manage. But it was too late for gentleness, as far as Elbert Yorty was concerned. The fear of old age was in his bones.
Gault and Torgason and Wompler rode upstream, with Wompler taking the lead. The greedy light of gold was in the former deputy's eyes. Torgason, despite a conscious effort to stay disinterested, allowed his wooden mask to slip from time to time. Even Gault, whose obsession was revenge, not riches, could not escape the fascination of $200,000.
'What do you make of it?' Gault asked the stock detective. 'About the sheriff and the deputy showing up here, so far from New Boston?'
'The sheriff,' Torgason said dryly, 'don't let hisself get hemmed in much by county lines. State lines neither, for that matter.' He shrugged and smiled his brittle smile. 'When Olsen seen that watch, I figger he started thinkin' just the way we did. About that army gold. And he aims to get it.'
'Wompler tells me that Olsen is in love with Esther Garnett.'
The stock detective looked as if he might be laughing on the inside, though his wooden face never changed expression. 'Our Sheriff Olsen is a sensible man. He knows he could buy a whole pack of women, maybe some of them even better lookin' than Esther Garnett, for almost a quarter of a million dollars.'
It was Wompler who saw the wagon first. The three men reined up sharply and studied it for some time without speaking.
The driver, apparently, had lost control of the wagon before it had ever reached the rock crossing. It had skidded off the near bank, plunging off the shoulder of sand and landing in one of the shallow channels on the Texas side of the river. There it lay now, on its side, the bows shattered, the dirty white sheet trailing in the reddish water. Several yards from the wagon a broken wheel was partially imbedded in the sand. There was no team.
'Like Gault says,' Wompler said excitedly, 'that gold's heavy stuff. She couldn't of took it with her. It must still be in the wagon.'
'We don't know there was ever any gold in the wagon,' Gault reminded him.
But Wompler was already spurring his horse down the sandy embankment. The former lawman swung out of his saddle and clambered into the half-submerged wagon box. After a moment his head appeared over the sideboards. 'Everything's a mess in here. Get a loop on this wagon box and pull it right-side up, then we'll see where we stand.'
Obediently, Torgason and Gault tied onto the submerged bow brackets, then backed their horses in the shallow water and pulled the wagon upright. Wompler scrambled back inside and began tearing away what remained of the canvas sheet.
Esther Garnett's prized china dishes lay shattered in the bottom of the wagon. A bundle of clothing had broken open and odds and ends of female attire floated on the dirty water. What appeared to be a bedroll was wedged in mud beneath the driver's seat. If there had ever been any gold in the wagon, it was not there now.
Wompler stared at the waste of useless articles floating in the wagon box. His face was crumpled in disappointment, and for one uneasy moment Gault thought he might break into tears. 'There ain't nothin' here!' he exploded. He grabbed up an unbroken plate and smashed it against the sideboards. 'No gold! Nothin' at all!'
Torgason put his sturdy claybank into deeper water and slowly circled the wagon. He leaned over in the saddle, looking intently at something beneath the front wheels. 'Not quite nothin',' he said without expression. 'Here's Shorty Pike.'
The stock detective eased the claybank against the front of the wagon box and rocked it gently in the shallow water. The body of the stocky posseman came to the surface, floating face up, the wide eyes staring unblinkingly at the blue spring sky.
Wompler made a whistling sound as he sucked in his breath. He stared over the side of the wagon. 'Has he been shot?'
'Can't tell,' Torgason said matter of factly. He shook out his loop and expertly caught one of the corpse's feet and dragged it onto the sandy beach. With cool competence, the detective got down, turned the body over and examined it. 'He wasn't shot,' he said at last. 'He didn't need it.' He pointed to the saucerlike dent in the back of Shorty's head. 'Pitched out when the wagon went off the bank. Hit a rock, maybe. Whatever it was, he never knowed what hit him.' With a faintly surprisingly show of delicacy, he closed the dead man's eyes.
Wompler's eyes widened in alarm. 'Maybe somethin' happened to Esther, too.'
'Maybe the sheriff and his deputy,' Gault offered.
Torgason nodded but made no comment. They put their horses across the river and picked up some tracks on the north bank. 'But whose tracks are they?' Wompler asked. 'Esther, or Olsen and Finley?'
Gault rode up to the crest of sandhills that lined the north bank of the Red. 'What're you lookin' for?' Wompler wanted to know.
'The mule that was in the traces with Shorty's animal. It don't make sense that she'd hang onto that mule when she had a perfectly good saddle horse to ride.'
Wompler had a bright idea. 'Maybe that's what happened to the gold. She packed it on the mule.'
Torgason regarded him with contempt. In the back of Gault's mind he heard the two men bickering angrily, but his thoughts were somewhere else. He rode along the collar of the sandhills and picked up more tracks, but again it was impossible to say whose they were.
Lord, Gault thought wearily, I feel like I've been traveling half a lifetime. Without sleep or rest. Sometimes he almost forgot why he was doing it. There were even times when the face of Wolf Garnett became mingled with other faces in his memory. 'It's because I'm tired, Martha,' he said aloud. 'It ain't that I'm forgetting. It ain't that I've got any notion of lettin' it rest—you can depend on that.' He looked up to see Torgason and Wompler staring at him strangely.
They pressed on to the north, following what may or may not have been trail left by Esther Garnett.
They were in Comanche country now, somewhere below the west branch of Cashe Creek which, in places, was more of a river than the Red. They crossed one of the many small streams that fingered out from the west branch. They were now in a country of gentle green hills and valleys, country that would one day be rich farmland but was now leased pasture.
Suddenly Wompler came up in his stirrups and said, 'What's that?' He pointed to a small piece of broken ground in the valley below. The crooked rows of poorly planted corn could only mean that the Quaker Indian agents had converted a Comanche to farming.
Gault told them that it was an Indian farm, and Torgason said quickly, 'You used to run cattle in this country. Talk to the Indian, ask if he's seen anything of a white woman horsebackin' it this way.'
Gault shrugged. 'If I remember any Comanche.'
The Indian's name was Watch Horses and he was a Quahada Comanche which, according to white horse soldiers, made him one of the best light cavalryman in the world. But not any more. His people were beaten, scattered, and there was defeat in his dark Indian eyes as he leaned on his hoe and looked up at Gault.
With the aid of sign and a few words of Comanche, Gault asked if a woman horsebacker had passed this way.
Watch Horses said that his wife had gone to the Indian agency that morning to trade some skins. 'No,' Gault corrected himself. '
Watch Horses considered for a moment. It was possible, he said at last, that a white woman had passed this way. But he had not seen her.
'Did he see Olsen and Finley?' Torgason asked.
Gault relayed the question, and Watch Horses shrugged. Yes, two white men passed this way not long ago, heading north. But nowdays Indianland was overrun with white cowmen; the Quahada had not paid them any particular attention.
