Gault wormed his way through the weeds and lay down beside Esther. "Are all the horses on the other side of the shack?"
She nodded. "We'd stand a chance if we could get to the guns."
Gault searched back in his mind. How far was it to the shack? Four, five hundred yards? It might as well be five hundred miles. Olsen would simply move ahead of them, cross the creek below the shack and wait for them to come into the clearing. Gault inched his way back to the Sumpters and asked, "Is there any chance of help comin' from Fort Sill?"
The doctor, still looking dazed and clinging to his son, shook his head. "I don't think so. Some people saw me leaving with Olsen, but they don't know where we were going."
"No one at the fort knew that your son had been taken?"
Sumpter shook his head. "Timmy had the run of the post; it wasn't unusual for him to wander about the grounds for hours at a time."
"His mother didn't mind?"
"His mother has been dead almost three years."
Gault lay with his face against the cool ground. By this time the doctor and his son would probably be missed; it was even possible that a detail had been sent to look for them. But that wasn't going to be any help. With Olsen and his rifle just on the other side of the creek. "How," he asked, "did Olsen get the boy in the first place?"
Sumpter looked blank. "Olsen just came on the post and told Timmy that his father wanted to see him. Somebody must have seen them leaving together, but…"
"I know." Gault sighed to himself. None of it made any difference now.
On the other side of the creek Olsen was strangely quiet. Was he playing patient sharpshooter, waiting for someone to give his position away? Or had he moved downstream to where the horses were?
Esther Garnett glanced back at him. She was wondering too. Then, cautiously, she began crawling toward the shack. Almost immediately the sheriff opened fire. Esther scrambled to a shallow gully and lay there panting.
"What are we going to do?" the doctor asked worriedly.
Timmy, frightened by the burst of riflefire, began sobbing. "Keep him quiet!" Gault heard himself snarling. Then, in a quieter, gentler tone: "For the sake of all of us, try to keep him quiet." He began inching through the weeds, heading again toward Esther Garnett.
"The sheriff's in love with you," he said, as though he were continuing a conversation that had been going on for some time. "You can still talk to him and get yourself out of this, even if the doc and I can't."
She shot him an icy smile. "The sheriff never was in love with anybody but hisself. He wanted me, maybe, but that ain't the same thing, is it?"
"I guess not. But it's something. It could still save you."
"No." The word had the ring of finality to it.
Gault shrugged. It was her life; if she was bent on throwing it away, he couldn't stop her.
For some time Gault studied the opposite bank of the creek. Like the near side, it was a thicket of budding cottonwoods and weeds. "Is there a place upstream where I could cross over to the other bank?"
She thought for a moment. "There's a rock crossing just above the shelf. Most likely that's how Grady got across after he fell."
"I'm goin' back and see if I can surprise him. Do you think you and the doc can hold the sheriff's interest for a few minutes without gettin' yourselves killed?"
She looked at him levelly. "Grady Olsen ain't an easy man to take by surprise." For a moment she closed her eyes and looked the way she would look in about ten years—slack faced, dull, and in no way desirable. "But if you're bound to try it, I'll do what I can to hold his attention." She lobbed a small pebble into the weeds ahead and instantly a rifle bullet ripped through the spot.
Gault was sweating. It didn't seem possible that he could make it all the way back to the shelf without giving himself away. Esther Garnett was looking at him in a way that gave no indication of what she was thinking. There didn't seem to be anything else to say. Gault nodded and continued his inch by inch journey toward the shelf.
Dr. Sumpter watched him silently. He had the frightened Timmy tucked under one arm, the other hand ready to clap over the boy's mouth if he started to cry.
The way back to that jutting overhang seemed endless. Every weed, every pebble in the path, every dappled bit of shade and dazzling shaft of sunlight had to be considered before every move. Along the way the rifle on the opposite bank fired only once. That might or might not be a good sign. Gault hoped it meant that Olsen was running low on rifle ammunition.
At last he reached the overhang and lay for a moment breathing shallowly. Then he slipped around the slate roof and began easing himself down the clay bank to the water. Progress was much faster now. With a bend in the creek between himself and Olsen, the need for caution was not so great. He slipped into the cold water and found the rock bottom at thigh depth and started toward the far bank.
Intuition must have prompted Esther to cause some minor disturbance up ahead. Olsen's rifle blazed again as Gault reached midstream. Then, somehow, he was on the bank, caught in a tangle of cedar roots. He parted the roots and made his way to the top of the bank and lay there until he was breathing normally.
The rifle cracked again, sounding muffled and relatively harmless, now that Gault was behind it instead of in front of it. He began moving toward the sound, picking up a stick as he went. It was not much of a weapon—a rotting gnarled end of tree root—but it was better than nothing.
Now he could see the side of the creek that he had just left. The wall of wide, green mullein leaves stood motionless. At least, Gault thought, Sumpter was keeping Timmy quiet. He slanted closer to the water and cautiously parted a tangle of wild grapevines—and it was then that he saw Olsen.
The sheriff was lying on the edge of the bank, patiently watching the other side over the barrel of his rifle. Directly below the sheriff Gault could see the shallow water shimmering like glass over a bed of mud. He eased his way through the maze of vines and lay in the weeds, about twenty yards behind the sheriff.
He lay there for several minutes, wondering how long it would take him to cover that twenty yards, and how much noise he would make doing it. Too long, he decided. And too much noise. The sheriff had only to flip over on his side and redirect the rifle and fire. A younger, quicker man could do it all in one second. It might take Olsen two. It was still too fast.
Gault held his silence and waited for something to happen on the opposite bank. Something that would seize and hold the sheriff's attention for slightly longer than two seconds. The silence became oppressive. Gault became aware of the hissing of his own breathing, and he tried to stop it. Then, quite suddenly, a cluster of mullein on the far bank bent with an unfelt breeze. Or a flipped pebble.
Olsen saw it and fired immediately.
Gault was on his feet and running. Grasping his inadequate club, he threw himself the last short distance, just as the sheriff, snarling, was beginning to turn. Gault flailed with the stick. With almost no effort, the sheriff knocked it aside with the stock of his rifle. Gault lunged, driving his shoulder into Olsen's chest as both men grappled for the rifle. Then they were falling.
Slowly at first, in the impossible way of dreams, they went off the edge of the bank, still fighting for the rifle. The Winchester flew off toward the far bank, hung for a moment in the still air, then fell to the water and disappeared. Gault and Olsen, snarling like prairie wolves, splashed onto the shimmering bed of mud.
His face curiously distorted, the sheriff was grabbing for his .45. But Gault lunged at him, and that weapon also flew out of his wet hand and struck the water and disappeared. Both men forgot their hand to hand struggle for the moment and threw themselves at the spreading circles of water where the revolver had disappeared. It was then that they realized that they had not fallen onto an ordinary mudflat—they were already waist-deep in quicksand.
Gault froze. Standing as still as possible, he searched for a root, a vine, anything to hold to until help came from the far bank. There was nothing. The slick water gathered at his hips. He could feel himself going down, inch by inch, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Not ten yards away Olsen was thrashing about in a fury. When he stopped at last, panting for breath, he was almost chest-deep in the sucking mud. Esther Garnett appeared on the far bank and looked down at them coldly, unconcernedly. Gault started to speak, but knew instinctively that his voice would be shrill with panic. He made himself pause and take a deep breath, and then he said quietly, "The rock crossing upstream from the shelf is solid. You can cross there with no trouble. When you get on this side, look for a tree with grapevines in it." He pointed. "Over there. It'll take a little time, but we can still get out of here. With the help of those vines."
She looked down at them and didn't move. A chill went up Gault's spine. He made himself stay calm and move as little as possible. "Ma'am," he said hoarsely, "without help we're not goin' to last much longer. What do you want me to do, beg?"
"That wouldn't do no good," Olsen said quietly. "That no-account brother of hers is dead—she don't give a damn about anything now."
She looked at Olsen with an icy smile. "I had it in mind to get Wolf buried just as soon as I could. But I think I'll stay here a while and watch you sink in that mud."
Olsen threw his head back and shouted a word that made her blanch. But she quickly took control of herself. "You said the army doc would fix Wolf up," she accused him. "It was a lie. You just wanted the gold. Well, you won't get the gold now, Grady. Nor the bounty money that you put in for, for killin' that drifter. Go on and sink in the mud; you got it comin' to you!"
Dr. Sumpter appeared beside Esther and stared at them with wide eyes. "What is it?"
"Quicksand," Gault told him quickly. "We're goin' to need your help gettin' out of here."
"What can I do?"
"Take the rock crossing just upstream from the shelf. When you get to this bank, pull down some of those grapevines, just behind us, where we went off the bank."
"What can I do about Timmy?"
Gault felt himself sink another inch. "Bring him with you. The crossin's safe."
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
The doctor disappeared, and Gault turned to the sheriff, sinking a little deeper. "We're done for," Olsen grinned savagely. "Both of us. It'll take that doc till sundown to figger out a way of gettin' them grapevines out of the tree. If he don't turn gutless and decide to forget the whole thing." He looked up at Esther Garnett. The mud was less than three inches from his chin. "It's a shame," he said ruefully, "that things had to work out the way they did."
She looked at him coldly. Suddenly she spat.
The sheriff grinned crookedly, then seemed to lose interest in her. The shallow, slick water was touching his jutting chin. "Don't stir about any more'n you have to," Gault told him. "But keep your hands free. For grabbin' the vine when Sumpter comes."
Olsen turned his head and looked at Gault with a weary grin. "You don't understand me, Gault. I was finished the minute I decided to throw in with the Garnetts. I guess I knowed it at the time…" He sank another inch. "But a man gets tired tryin' to live on a sheriff's pay. He wants somethin' better. A pretty woman. And, for once in his life, all the money he can spend." The water had reached his mouth. He tilted his head back to keep from swallowing it. "There was a time when I seen myself as a lucky man. Boss of the county. Lots of folks that looked up to me—or maybe they was just scared of me. I don't know now. But I do know that it was the cowmen—the men with money—that everybody respected. Well, sir…" He spat some water out of his mouth. "Well, sir, one day it come over me like a fever. It seemed like I couldn't live another day scrimpin' along on a lawman's pay." He laughed, then ended by coughing on the muddy water. "Anyway," he went on, "you come a long way and waited a long time to find out some things, and it seems like you ought to know. One day Esther came to me with a proposition. I was to get a share of the gold, and her as well, if I'd help her get Wolf to a proper doctor and then out of the country. Funny, ain't it… ?"
Several minutes later, when Sumpter appeared on the bank with a length of tough green grapevine in his hand, Gault's head was the only one in sight.
It was two hours later that Gault made himself stop shaking. He scraped off the mud, then rinsed himself off at the rock crossing. He dried himself beside a fire on the creekbank. And finally he was able to think about Olsen without having his insides go cold, and he knew that the worst was over.
The doctor looked at him in a professional way. "You've been through a lot, Mr. Gault. But after a good sleep you'll be a different man."
"I'm a different man already," Gault said to himself, "from the one that landed in New Boston that day not so long ago." He picked up his mud-stained hat and brushed it on his sleeve and put it on his head. "The sleep will have to wait, Doc. I've got another patient for you; stock detective by the name of Torgason. I think maybe he'd appreciate it if we got to him before the sun went down."