Read The Last Days of Wolf Garnett for Free Online Page B

"He's probably right. I'm not doing myself any good, carryin' on this way. It won't bring Martha back. And you can't go on hating a dead man all your life. If he is dead. And the experts claim he is. So it doesn't really make any difference whether or not you talk to Wolf Garnett's sister…"
    But when he looked at the smug arrogance in the deputy's face, he said "Tell your gunhands to get out of my way. I aim to talk to Miss Garnett—unless you're willin' to go as far as to shoot me."
    "I'll go as far as I need to," Dub Finley said, and Gault had no doubt that he meant it.
    Even now the young deputy was quietly taking his measure. Gault could see it in those remote eyes. He was making up his mind whether he ought to kill him here and now, stopping all argument and saving himself a lot of trouble. Gault, in spite of the thing that drove him, was chilled at what he saw in Deputy Finley's eyes.
    Colly Fay was gazing at Gault and grinning vacantly. Shorty Pike sat like a square stump, apparently waiting for some signal from Finley. Gault discovered that his mouth was suddenly dry. His tongue felt thick and furry. No one had bothered to remove his rifle from its saddle boot— they were confident that the weapon was useless and that he was helpless. The only problem of the moment seemed to be whether or not he was worth shooting.
    A fine bead of sweat began to form on Gault's forehead. Somehow he had never expected things to go this far. But then, he reminded himself, a man used to living within the law is always surprised at the prospect of murder. It had surprised him once before.
    He forced himself to sit quietly and tried not to stare at Colly Fay's saddle gun. Dub Finley looked at him with a cool little smile and shrugged his shoulders. The gesture said louder than words, "There's nothing for it, Gault. If I let you go, you'd only come back and cause trouble later. I might as well get it over with now."
    Gault suddenly stared at an invisible point just beyond Colly Fay's shoulder. He stared with all the surprise and fascination that he could muster. Colly blinked, as Gault had hoped he would. The simple-minded rifleman scowled and half-turned in his saddle to see what it was behind him that was so completely fascinating. For an instant the muzzle of the rifle was pulled off line with Gault's chest. Gault struck at it savagely. The weapon fell from Colly's surprised hands, and Gault heard it thud quietly to the soft turf.
    By that time Gault had jerked the startled buckskin around and was spurring toward the covering timber along the river. Even while he was doing it he was thinking, there's no use. Finley's already made up his mind and he will never let me get as far as the river.
    He was right. Almost immediately a second rifle, this one belonging to Shorty Pike, spoke bitingly in the clean morning air. Gault felt the bee sting on his left side. Almost instantly the bee sting was a rapidly spreading numbness— and, in dizzying sequence, the numbness became a dazzling center of pain.
    He thought angrily to himself: It's nothing. No more than a glancing hit at worse. Maybe a cracked rib. Nothing more than that.
    But already he was falling. There was no more shooting. That was a bad sign, for it meant that Shorty himself must be convinced that he was done for. Gault grabbed for the saddle horn and missed. He continued to fall with nightmarish slowness. He remembered trying, without success, to shake his foot free of the stirrup. Then the ground loomed up and struck him with hammerlike force. The buckskin dragged him for another hundred yards before his foot came free—but Gault did not remember that.
     
     
     
    After what seemed a very long time but could not have been more than a few minutes, Gault became aware of an almost endless expanse of startlingly blue sky. He lay on his back against a stone outcrop that had eventually stopped his rolling and tumbling. There was fire in his side and no air in his lungs. Fighting