Gault sat very still, looking into the muzzle of the .45. "How bad is your brother hurt?"
She glanced affectionately at that hot, dry face. "I don't know for sure. His horse went off a cut bank one night and fell on him. That was almost a month ago. Shorty and Colly brought him to the farm to mend." She shook her head dumbly. "But he wouldn't mend. And there wasn't nothin' I could do for him. Doc Doolie says he's all busted up inside and there wasn't nothin' he could do for him either. But there's a army doc at Fort Sill that Grady says can fix Wolf up fine. That's where he is now, gone after the doc."
Now Gault understood what the young boy was doing there. He was the doctor's son and they were holding him hostage.
Esther saw the look on his face and said defensively, "We never aimed to hurt the boy; we'll let him go as soon as his pa gets Wolf fixed up."
Gault looked deep into the girl's cool eyes. She refused to believe that her brother was dying; her faith in the miraculous power of an unknown army doctor was calm and unshakable. She believed that the boy would go unharmed and that everything would somehow work out fine. Grady Olsen would engineer their escape out of the country, they would take the gold with them and they would live like nabobs somewhere in that huge land below the Bravo.
"You say that Colly and Shorty brought your brother to the farm," Gault said. "And Olsen says they were workin' as honest drovers at the time."
She smiled faintly. "Grady figgered it sounded better that way."
Gault said patiently, "Do you actually believe that Olsen can steal a boy from an army post like Fort Sill, and then steal the post doctor, and get away with it?"
"Grady wants me a whole lot," she said complacently. "And he wants that gold, too. Whatever needs to be done, Grady will do it."
The night wore on. The boy slept fitfully, waking from time to time in fits of terror. Esther Garnett coolly ignored him and kept her unblinking gaze on Gault. Once Gault said, "You've told me what Olsen hopes to gain out of this. But what about the others."
"The others?" She looked puzzled. "Shorty and Colly knowed about the gold. That's what they was after. And Deputy Finley…" She smiled an icy smile of recollection. "I'm afraid Deputy Finley had the notion I'd put Grady Olsen off, once we was all safe in Mexico, and marry him."
"I thought maybe it was somethin' like that," Gault said with a grim smile of his own.
Wolf Garnett lay like a dead man, and from time to time his sister would bathe his forehead with a damp rag—but in one hand she always kept the revolver, and the muzzle never strayed more than an inch or two from Gault's chest.
At last the iron-hard light of dawn sifted down on the derelict shack. Outside, there was a waking and stirring of small things that lived near the water. A raucous bluejay shattered the stillness with its chattering. Then, in the distance they heard the sound of horses.
Esther touched her brother's shoulder and said excitedly, "It's Grady; he's comin' with the doc!"
Wolf opened his feverish eyes and looked at his sister. "Is there any of that tobacco left?"
Watching Gault, Esther placed the cocked revolver in her lap and rolled the cigarette. Wolf smoked in silence, and it seemed to Gault that his face looked even drier and deader than it had the night before. To relieve the oppressive silence, Gault said, "I don't understand why you're goin' to all this trouble because of a doctor. There was Doc Doolie in New Boston—he was lookin' after your brother, wasn't he?"
Esther's eyes narrowed angrily. "Doolie ain't fit to doctor a sick mule. He admitted hisself there wasn't nothin' he could do to help Wolf."
"Still, Doolie was a doctor and a respected citizen of the county. Why would he involve himself with an outlaw like Wolf Garnett?"
Esther answered his question with a shrug and a sneer. "The doc does what the sheriff tells him. Like everybody else in Standard County."
The horsebackers were going around to the back of the shack. Gault mopped a fine bead of sweat from his forehead and looked at the man who had killed Martha. "There's one more thing that bothers me."
Wolf Garnett chuckled dryly. "I bet. You got a right curious turn of mind, Mr. Gault."
"I warned him it was apt to get him killed," Esther said, and her brother smiled.
"Shorty Pike bothers me. The way he died," Gault went on stubbornly. "When me and Torgason and Wompler found the wagon, Shorty was wedged under the box with his head stove in. It wasn't no accident. We found the wagon bow that was used to kill him."
Wolf Garnett sighed. "I'm afraid Shorty Pike was cursed with greed, Mr. Gault. He was bound and determined to get his hands on that army gold. And I guess he would of, too, because me and him was the only ones left that knowed where it was." He closed his eyes, listening to the horsebackers behind the shack. "Tell you the truth, I would of killed Shorty myself, if I'd had the strength. Turned out I needn't of worried about it. Grady Olsen found Shorty addled by the wreck and attended to it hisself."
Gault stared at him. "The sheriff murdered his own posseman?"
Wolf grinned wearily. "Happens all the time, Gault. You'll see."
A figure loomed suddenly in the doorway. Gault turned to see a stocky, plumpish young man in a ridiculous Burnside beard, blinking at the gloom inside the shack. "Timmy?" he said anxiously. "Are you all right?"
The young boy began sobbing. The man stumbled into the room and knelt beside his son and took him in his arms.
"I thought I said we'd have no fires," Sheriff Olsen said angrily, standing in the doorway.
"Wolf was cold," Esther told him defiantly. "Anyhow, who's to see the smoke, way out here on the edge of the prairie?"
"I saw it. More'n a mile away. And the Fort Sill stage road ain't more'n five miles to the north of here." He looked at Gault, obviously disappointed to see that he was still alive. "You die hard," he said grimly. "But I'll fix that." He came on into the shack and dropped a pair of saddlebags on the floor beside Wolf. "How you feelin'?" he asked the injured man.
"All right, I guess." It was barely a whisper. The hot eyes moved about the cabin. "Gettin' a little crowded in here, ain't it?"
"I aim to thin it out before long," Olsen said meaningfully, with a look at Gault. He nudged the doctor with the toe of his boot. "Don't fret over the boy. You do your job good and he'll be fine."
The doctor looked up at Olsen. "Untie my son and let him go. I'll do what you want."
"You'll do what we want, and then we'll bargain," the sheriff told him bluntly.
The doctor set his jaw and turned back to his son.
"Everything's goin' to be all right, Timmy. Try to rest, and don't be afraid. I'll be here with you." Reluctantly, he left his son and turned to his patient.
"This here's Doc Sumpter," Olsen told the room in general. "He's had plenty practice fixin' up busted troopers. Before you know it he's goin' to have Wolf fixed up ready to travel. Ain't that right, Doc?"
Dr. Sumpter placed the back of his hand to Wolf's forehead, then began opening his saddlebags. The sheriff hunkered down next to the fireplace and looked hungrily at Esther Garnett. "How did he get here?" Nodding in Gault's direction.
Esther told him how they had met. "I didn't know what to do with him. So I just kept him here, waitin' for you to come back."
"I told her to kill him," Wolf said with a tired sigh. "But you know how women are."
"Never mind," the sheriff said coldly. "I'll attend to it."
The doctor had frozen in the act of laying out his instruments. Olsen and Wolf were discussing the subject of murder as coolly and disinterestedly as another person might discuss the vagaries of Southwestern weather. It was coming to Sumpter—slowly at first, and then with a rush—that they had no intention of letting him and his son go after he had attended the patient.
"Get on with it, Doc," Olsen said impatiently. "The sooner you get him on his feet the better it'll be for all of us."
The doctor glanced quickly at his small son. "You'd better get the whiskey," he said to Olsen.
"I almost forgot, Wolf. I brought you some whiskey from the doc's own stock." The sheriff smiled coolly, rose to his feet and went to get the whiskey.
Dr. Sumpter unbuttoned Wolfs shirt. "Tell me if this hurts." He applied pressure with his fingers near the center of Wolf's chest. The outlaw screamed. It was a shrill, piercing whisper of a scream that shredded the air like a flight of arrows.
Esther Garnett lurched to her feet and shoved the muzzle of her .45 in the doctor's face. "You do that again I'll kill you!"
The doctor, showing a courage that Gault had not noticed before, glanced at the revolver and said, "It's the only way I can tell how badly he's hurt."
"There must be some other way."
"Possibly." Sumpter shrugged. "But this is my way."
Sheriff Olsen stepped through the doorway carrying a bottle of whiskey. "He's the best doc in these parts, according to Doolie," he told Esther. "Besides that, he's the only doc around. Why don't you go outdoors a while, and I'll call you when he's got Wolf fixed up." He uncorked the bottle. "Here," he told Wolf, "take some of this."
At one time during this brief scene, when there were no guns pointed toward him, Gault had started to push away from the cabin wall. Olsen had met the move with a flinty smile. "Try it," the look seemed to say. "It will be the last move you'll ever make."
Wolf drank some of the whiskey and lay panting shallowly. Olsen spoke to Esther again, gently, "Go outdoors now. I'll see that everything's all right."
She took a deep breath, handed him the revolver and nodded reluctantly. "Here," the doctor said flatly, when she was gone. And he touched another place. "Let me know if it hurts."
The probing and the muffled cries and the cursing went on for a small eternity. Suddenly Wolf gasped and went limp. His hot, dark eyes rolled up in their sockets, and for one savage moment Gault thought he was dead.
"Fainted," the doctor said, looking at Olsen. "It's just as well. There's nothing I can do for him."
Olsen's face became a mask. "He's goin' to die?"
The doctor nodded. "He's bleeding to death inside. No one can help him now." He began replacing his instruments. "Do you want me to inform his wife?"
"His sister," Olsen said absently. His mind was on other things. "I'll tell her, when the time comes. How long has he got?"
"Not long. A few hours at the outside. May I untie my son now?"
"Later." The sheriff had a frustrating problem to solve. If Wolf died now, the secret of the army gold would die with him. Olsen would be a rogue sheriff, dishonored and hunted in his own land. "Can you bring him around so I can talk to him?"
"It would be more humane to leave him the way he is."
"He'll be a long time dead; he can rest then. Bring him around."
The doctor uncorked a small bottle of ammonia salts and held it beneath Wolfs nose. "Listen to me, Wolf," Olsen said with ponderous sincerity. "The doc's got you fixed up now. You're goin' to be fine, but it'll be a day or so before you can travel. So why don't you tell me where to find the gold, and I'll get everything ready…"
Wolf was smiling a cold, thin knife-edge of a smile. "I ain't goin' to make it. Is that the way it is, Doc?"
The doctor folded his arms and looked at him and said nothing.
"I'm tellin' you, Wolf," Olsen said quickly, "you're goin' to be fine. But the quicker I get that gold ready to travel, the quicker we can bee-line it to Mexico."
"You want that gold pretty bad, don't you, Olsen?"
"It ain't for me, it's for Esther. You got to think about her, Wolf. It would be mighty hard on a woman, throwed out on her own, without family or money."
"Family? I'm family, Sheriff. And you just told me I was goin' to be fine."
The sheriff was sweating. Wolf Garnett was about to die, and nobody knew it better than Wolf himself. He was toying with Olsen, enjoying watching him squirm.
The doctor said, "There's nothing more I can do. Let me untie my son."
Olsen's temper boiled over. "You fix up your patient, and the boy gets let go. That was the bargain."
"I told you how it is. I can't work miracles."
"Doc," Wolf told him through clinched teeth, "you better learn. The sheriff wants that gold mighty bad, and he knows he won't get it if I die." The effort of speaking left him breathless. He lay back panting, little rivulets of sweat plowing along his bone-colored face.
The doctor sized up the situation. What at first had been incredible was now a brutal matter of fact. Even if he could save the injured outlaw—which he couldn't—Olsen would still kill him and his son. Alive they would be witnesses, and a rogue sheriff couldn't afford to have witnesses haunting his future. Still, Sumpter reasoned, he might postpone the inevitable if he could make Olsen believe that he was accomplishing something. While there was life there was hope, of sorts. "There is something… I don't know how much use it will be to you…"
Olsen grinned. "I figgered you'd think of somethin'."
The doctor reached into one of his saddlebags and took out a bottle of brownish liquid. "Liquor morphinae citralis. Morphine, citric acid, cochinel, alcohol, and a little distilled water."
Olsen eyed the bottle dubiously. "What does it do?"
"Relieves pain. It also induces a sense of dreamlike well being. The patient, after taking a few teaspoons of Liquor morphinae citralis often says things that he would not say otherwise."
Olsen digested this slowly. "Why didn't you give him a drink out of that bottle when you seen what kind of shape he was in?"
"I believe your friend has a punctured lung, in which case morphine would only aggravate the condition."
The sheriff thought about it, then nodded. "Give him a drink."
"It could kill him."
"He's goin' to die anyhow. Might as well let him go in peace."
They had been talking back and forth across the body of the injured outlaw, as though he were already dead. Dr. Sumpter stared at the big sheriff and swallowed with difficulty. "Medical ethics would not permit me…"