The Last Days of Wolf Garnett

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 had been Wolf Garnett. But now, facing the sheriff's bland smugness, he wasn't sure any more.

Olsen looked at him for several seconds. At last he said, "I'll let you talk to Doc Doolie. He's the one that laid Garnett out and got him ready for buryin'."

"I didn't come here to talk, I came to see the body."

"Mister," the sheriff said wearily, "the thing's done. He's buried, fair and legal. The coroner attended to him and made his report. The sister of the dead man identified him. A hundred folks from hereabouts, and newspapermen from as far away as the Nations, was here to see the plantin'. I can't go diggin' him up again just because you was late."

"My horse went lame up north of the Red, that's the only reason I'm late. I headed south the minute I heard that you'd found somebody you thought was Wolf Garnett."

"South from where?" Olsen asked sleepily.

Frank Gault forced himself to answer without shouting. "South from the Big Pasture where I lease some grass from the Comanches—or used to."

"Used to?"

"I sold my stock after…" His eyes became remote and cold. "I sold out about a year ago and went lookin' for Garnett."

The sheriff sighed, pushed his chair back from the table and got up. He lumbered over to the wall and pounded on it with a hairy fist. "Doc, get yourself in here a minute!" He returned to the table and sat down again.

"I told you," Gault said angrily, "I didn't come here to talk, I came to see."

"There ain't nothin' to see," the sheriff told him placidly. "Nothin' that wouldn't wrench your guts, anyhow. When we found the body it was lodged in some roots of a salt cedar, over on the Little Wichita. It had been in warm water maybe two weeks, Doc says, when we found it. Like I say, it wasn't nothin' pretty to look at by that time."

"Who found it?"

"I did."

"How'd
you
come to find the body?"

"Lookin' for horse thieves. Comanches, most likely. They like to raid across the Red every chance they get. That's what comes of havin' Quakers as Indian agents." He smiled lazily. "Poor Lo ain't as dumb as some might figger. He knows them Quakers ain't goin' to do anything to him just for stealin' a few white men's horses. But I guess you know about that, runnin' cattle in the Big Pasture."

A figure appeared in the sheriff's open doorway, and Olsen said, "Doc, this here's Frank Gault. Mr. Gault runs cattle on Comanche grass. Or used to. He claims he seen Wolf Garnett up in the Choctaw Nation about a week ago, alive and kickin', fit as you please."

"Creek Nation," Gault said. "Four days ago."

Doc Doolie was a wizened little brown nut of a man. He came into the room, peering up into Gault's face. "Seen Garnett's ghost, maybe. But not Garnett. Not four days ago. He's buried. I seen to it myself."

"How can you be so sure it was Garnett?"

The little doc glanced at Olsen and shrugged. "I admit he wasn't much to look at by the time I got him. But his sister identified him."

"How?"

"By his clothes. By his size and general appearance. The sheriff must of told you that. Besides all that, there was a scar on the back of his neck in the shape of a cross. Wolfs sister said her brother had a scar just like that."

"Lanced boil," Gault said, unimpressed. "Half the men in Texas carry cross-shape scars caused from lanced boils."

Doolie looked at him and said dryly, "So you're a doc as well as a lease cowman."

"I know what a lance scar looks like."

Sheriff Olsen held up a hand and said patiently, "All right, it's not much. But a lot of little things, and they all add up to Wolf Garnett." He spread his big hands on the oilcloth. "Sorry, Gault. I know how you feel—guess I'd feel the same way, in your place. But it's a fact you'll just have to get used to. Garnett's dead. There's nothin' you or anybody else can do about it now."

Gault made no effort to hide his anger and disgust. "Where is this sister of Garnett's that was so handy when it came to identifying the body?"

"She's back at the family place on the Little Wichita." Olsen's eyes narrowed and his voice became cooler. "And don't you go botherin' her, Gault. She's had a hard time these last few days. I don't want her bothered any more."

"Then let me look at the body."

The big lawman shook his head. "I can't do it. We got decent folks here in New Boston. We don't go diggin' up the dead."

Frank Gault's angular jaw set like concrete. "Then you won't help me?"

"I'll do better'n that, I'll give you some good advice. Let it alone. What's done's done, and there's no way you can change it."

"I see." Slowly and deliberately, Gault slipped his Winchester under his arm and picked up his saddle and warbag. He got as far as the door when he turned and glanced back at the sheriff. "I wonder," he said, "if there happened to be a price on Wolf's head?"

Something happened behind those pale eyes, but Gault couldn't be sure just what it was. "Yes," the sheriff admitted, with no change in tone, "there was a reward. The express company that Wolf had robbed put up a five-hundred-dollar bounty. And there was a cattlemen's association up in Kansas that claimed Wolf had killed one of their detectives—they put up another five hundred."

One thousand dollars. Gault had known men who would do anything, including murder, for much less. "Who's doing the collecting?" he asked.

Sheriff Grady Olsen managed a small smile. "I am. Now, if you don't mind, Gault, I've got a letter to write."

Gault answered him with a smile of his own, as taut as a fiddle string and etched with acid. "Two five hundred dollar 'dead or alive' bounties, and you collect them. Now it's not hard to understand why you're not in too big a hurry to open up that grave."

Gault was not surprised to find there were no vacancies in New Boston's only hotel, due to the holiday atmosphere brought on by the funeral and burying of a famous outlaw. "Mister," the desk clerk beamed at Gault, "we ain't had a room for rent since before suppertime yesterday. Seems like the whole county's gathered here. Just to be able to say they was on hand when the famous Wolf Garnett was planted, I guess. You might try the wagon yard at the end of the street. If they ain't got a camp shack for rent, they might allow you to sleep in the loft."