The lawman picked up a stub of a pencil and began turning it over and over in his blunt fingers. "My deputy told me about the shootin'," he said coldly. "Accident. Too bad it happened, but that's the way it goes when you mess with things that's none of your business. Anyway…" He made a motion with one hand, waving the subject away. "Anyway, that ain't the thing we're concerned with right now. You just brought me a dead man." His eyes narrowed. "Did you kill him?"
Gault breathed as deeply as he could against the tight bandaging. "Yes."
The sheriff blinked owlishly. "Why?"
The question was not as simple as it might first appear, and Gault was aware of it. "For one thing, he was about to kill me."
"Why would Colly Fay want to kill you?"
"He thought I wanted to trick him—and Colly couldn't stand the notion of somebody trying to make him look foolish. Anyway, he had orders to see that I returned to the Territory. When I came back across the river, that's when he tried to kill me."
The big sheriff shot him a bleak look. "I don't guess there was any witnesses that could testify it was an accident?"
"No. But there was this." Gault dug the flannel-wrapped parcel from the pocket of his windbreaker. He put it on the table. "When it was over, I went lookin' for Colly's horse. This is what I found in the saddle pocket."
Olsen looked at the package but did not touch it. Gault went on. "I'm not such a fool that I didn't realize it would be a dangerous proposition, me comin' back to New Boston with a dead posseman across his saddle. Common sense told me to roll him in a gully and pile rocks on top of him and put him out of my mind. That package he was carryin' made the difference. It's the reason I brought him back."
Olsen touched the parcel as he might have touched the clothing of a cholera patient. With thumb and forefinger he unfolded the flannel envelope. For some time he sat gazing at the gold watch and the string of milky pearls. His attention returned to the watch and he sat gazing bleakly at the curious inscription on the face cover.
At last the sheriff opened the buckskin pouch and emptied the contents on the table. He nudged the earrings with their glittering little diamonds over toward the pearls. The gold coins he counted and stacked neatly beside the greenbacks. When he had thoroughly memorized every detail of every article, he picked up the watch and studied it some more. "Is this all?"
"Except for this." Gault showed him the small band of gold. "I didn't think you'd mind if I kept it. It belonged to my wife."
The sheriff's mouth came open, but for the moment he did not speak. He slowly digested the meaning of the ring as a silent wall of hostility built up between them.
Doc Doolie appeared in the doorway, and the sheriff asked, "Did you look at Colly?"
"I looked at him. Been dead about a day, best I could tell. Skull busted in—looks like a horse kicked him." The little doc came into the room, took a kitchen chair and sat at the end of the sheriff's table. Gault stared at him so steadily and so hard that Doolie began to frown.
For a moment Gault had been startled to see the doc standing there. A small, slightly stooped figure. There was a shadow of such a figure still lodged in a back chamber of his mind. For the best part of three days he had been wondering about the man who had come to the Garnett farm with the sheriff on the night of the storm. That man had been Dr. Marvin Doolie.
The doc was beginning to be irritated by Gault's unblinking staring. "If you got somethin' in your craw, mister," he snapped, "spit it out."
"I was wonderin'," Gault said bluntly, "what you and the sheriff was doin' at the Garnett place in the middle of the night." Gault had to count back in his mind. How long had it been? "Three nights ago."
Doolie came stiffly erect and glanced at Olsen. But the sheriff folded his hands placidly and said, "Mr. Gault has got a suspicious mind, Doc. And I guess we can't blame him too much. For nearly a year he's been runnin' in hard luck, and then, to set things off, he went and got hisself shot by Shorty Pike. Accident, of course."
Doolie nodded. "Shorty told us about that. Misunderstandin' about some Garnett cows, wasn't it? Hard luck—but that's the kind of thing that happens when you stray on the other fellow's range."
"Maybe," Gault said dryly. "Whatever the reason, I did get myself shot. Now I'm wonderin' why you didn't bother to come and have a look at me, long as you was on the place anyway. You are a doc, ain't you?"
Doolie flushed pink and glanced at the sheriff for guidance. "And a first-class doc at that," Olsen said blandly. If you'd needed lookin' at, he would of looked at you. But Miss Esther said you was doin' fine and there wasn't no use botherin' you."
Gault smiled at them. "I see. But you still haven't said what you were doin' on the prairie in the middle of the night, in a thunderstorm."
Doolie smiled as though the effort pained him. "Maybe that's because it's none of your business, Mr. Gault. However…" He glanced at the sheriff, and Olsen nodded ever so slightly. "However, I don't mind tellin' you. A hand over at Circle-R headquarters got hisself busted up when a horse fell on him, and I was tendin' him. On the way back to town there was the thunderstorm, so we stopped by the Garnett place to dry out."
Gault looked at them. The little doc had, more or less, explained his own movements. Sheriff Grady Olsen, apparently, did not feel obligated to explain his movements to anyone. In a tone that was bland to the point of indifference, the lawman asked, "Doc, what do you make out of this?"
Doolie leaned forward and stared at the articles on the table. He picked up the gold watch and inspected it minutely. After a long silence he turned his attention to the pearls. "One of the passengers on the Fort Belknap stage that was held up—didn't she report losin' a string of beads like this?"
The sheriff's head dropped in a heavy nod. "I figgered the same thing when I seen it. I'll get a letter off to that express agent. What was his name?"
"Sewell," Gault said without thinking. "Wirt Sewell."
Something happened behind the sheriff's eyes. "I didn't know you and Sewell was acquainted."
Now it was Gault's turn to act mysterious, and he took a grim pleasure in watching the lines of concern form around Olsen's eyes. "We met," he said shortly. He leaned forward and suddenly his voice came out harsh and angry. "You've worn a badge a long time, Sheriff. Long enough to know what this means." He pointed to the articles on the table. "These things tie Colly Fay to a stage robbery. And Shorty Pike ties to Colly, and both of them tie to your deputy who put them on his payroll. In one way or another, that connects the sheriff's office with Wolf Garnett… and the death of my wife."
Olsen made a rumbling sound in his throat. He kicked back his chair and stood up. "I know how you feel about your wife, but that don't give you any right to lay the blame on this office. I'm warnin' you, don't dip your horns in my business."
Gault pushed his own chair back and stood up. "This makes it my business," he said, showing the small gold ring. When he got to the doorway he turned for a moment and asked, "How about that .45 of mine?"
"I'll ask my deputy where he put it. When I see him."
Gault entered the Day and Night Bar with his Winchester cradled in the crook of his right arm. He paid for a schooner of sour beer and said, "I want to talk to Harry Wompler."
The barkeep, a fat, sleepy-eyed ex-muleskinner, looked him over carefully. Gault had learned early that Wompler was not an easy man to locate. For more than an hour he had been passed from saloon to saloon, and now he was at the end of the line, in the dirt-floored Day and Night.
"Take a beer for yourself," Gault said blandly. "And draw one for Harry." He put some silver on the bar.
"You a pal of Harry's?"