Read Online The Last Days of Wolf Garnett by Clifton Adams - Free Book Online

difficult as he had expected. He might even be able to ride for a short distance, but he was in no hurry to try it just yet.
    Around midafternoon he saw Dub Finley come up from the cornfield and wash up at the Garnett well. Colly Fay brought up two horses and began saddling them. In a little while the deputy appeared in the doorway of the shed and stood there, arms folded across his chest. "Miss Esther gives you another day or so," he said, "then you'll be in shape to ride. Are you goin' to keep crowdin' your luck, Gault, or are you goin' to let Standard County alone?"
    Gault gazed at the deputy and tried to size him up. He saw a brash young man who could be deadly when pushed. No doubt he was smitten with Esther Garnett's beauty and was probably in love with her. But that alone did not set him apart from other men—Gault suspected that most of the men in Standard County were in love with Esther Garnett, or thought they were. "How long have you been deputyin' for Sheriff Olsen?" Gault asked.
    The question caused Finley to frown. "What makes you ask?"
    "I was wonderin' if he knew he had a murderer for a deputy. Or if he knew and just didn't care."
    Gault watched with interest as the deputy's face paled. His strong shoulders tensed, and for a moment Gault thought he was going for his .45. Then Shorty Pike came up behind him and said, "I'll be ready in a little while. I want to give the horses a feed before we do." With an uncurious glance at Gault, the little gunhand turned and strode back across the farmyard.
    "You goin' back to New Boston?" Gault asked. "Ain't you afraid to leave me here by myself?"
    The deputy looked at him and flexed his shoulders and made himself relax. "You won't be all by yourself. We're leavin' Colly back to see that you get a good start toward the Territory." He allowed himself a small smile. "Colly may not look like a man that would hold a grudge. But he'll be a long time forgettin' the way you knocked that rifle out of his hand and made him look foolish. My advice is handle him gentle and do like he tells you."
    "What if I don't want to head back for the Territory?"
    Finley shook his head in mock sorrow and turned from the doorway.
    A few minutes later Colly brought up the saddled horses, and Finley and Shorty Pike rode back to the south. Esther Garnett stood in her back dooryard waving to them and smiling. It was a warm, common scene, one that Gault had seen hundreds of times before, and he wouldn't have thought anything about it if the two horsebackers hadn't been killers, and if the woman hadn't been the sister of Wolf Garnett.
    Late that afternoon a young cowhand stopped by and spent an hour making cow eyes at Esther Garnett and helping Colly with the evening chores. Gault was beginning to understand how Miss Garnett could keep her farm in excellent repair without actually doing much of the work herself.
     
     
     
    With the coming of the night the year-long rage caught fire in Gault's gut. He sat alone in the darkening shed, thinking of Martha. A blackness much blacker than the coming night, came down on him.
    He did not know how long it took sleep to overtake him. But he awoke suddenly to the sound of scurrying outside the shed. A long, thin figure appeared in the doorway and slid into the darkness.
    "Gault, you awake?"
    The voice belonged to no one that Gault had ever heard before. "Who are you?"
    "Name's Sewell. Wirt Sewell. I want to talk to you."
    "What about?" Gault peered into the dark corner where the stranger was crouching, but he could see nothing of the man's face.
    "Wolf Garnett," Sewell told him. "It might be we can do one another some good."
    For several seconds Gault didn't even breathe. At last he said, "Move over in the light where I can see you."
    The stranger hesitated, then moved into the soft moonlight that sifted through the shed's only opening. He had a hatchet face and a bobbing Adam's apple and a nose that hooked like the beak of a bald eagle. He might have been a