The Plains of Laramie (10 page)

Parker let Amy get well along before he stepped forth to pace after her to the dell’s outer limits. There, he stood back watching her, awaiting the reaction certain to come when she spied his horse grazing in the glen.

She received advance warning, though, for when her mount caught horse scent and flung up its head, Amy understood at once, halted, sat a second, then got down.

That was when Parker took two big steps and came up behind her. He had the map in his right hand, the Winchester in his left. He said quietly: “You’re a good topographer, ma’am. I had no trouble at all.”

She whipped around, startled by his close appearance. Her gray eyes darkened to almost black. He stood there, seeing her up close for the first time. He could not find a flaw.

Then she recovered, dropped her gaze to the map, considered it very briefly, turned away from him, and moved ahead with her horse into the quiet glen. He paced along behind her, also saying nothing. They stopped where she saw his horse, stood a while gazing steadily at it, then turned to care for her own. He did not intrude but moved over where a crumbling log lay, leaned his Winchester there, sat down, and kept watching her, kept waiting.

She turned, gazed across at him, and said with
a slight edge to her voice: “Are you always early, Mister Travis?”

He tossed his hat aside. Some of that outside heat was beginning to creep up into this place. “Didn’t you know,” he said dryly to her, ignoring her question, “that my name on the hotel register is Jones?”

She walked over to him, stood gazing down without any trace of self-consciousness. “It’s Travis, isn’t it?”

Parker nodded. “Parker Travis, ma’am. How did you know?”

“The horse, Mister Travis. Two thoroughbred horses showing up in Laramie within a month or six weeks of each other is unusual.”

“You know horses that well, ma’am?”

“No. My uncle does, though. He and Sheriff Wheaton and a liveryman in town.”

“I see. They pieced it together.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s not illegal to ride a thoroughbred horse on the Laramie Plains, is it?”

She didn’t answer that, instead, she moved to one side and sat down upon the same old log. “You haven’t asked me my name or why I sent you that map, Mister Travis.”

He twisted a little to look at her. He thought he’d never before encountered a woman like this one. She had the ability to draw him; she also had everything that aroused in men every male instinct. But there was more and he could not right then define it.

He said: “You’ll tell me in good time, when you explain why you sent for me, why you made the meeting this private.”

She looked around at him from beneath black lashes, her expression appraising, her eyes the slightest
bit sardonic. “It’s all right to be fatalistic,” she said. “But not when it can get you killed.”

“You’re misreading me, ma’am. It’s not fatalism. It’s patience. If it’d been fatalism, I wouldn’t have arrived here early to scout the country. I’d have taken my chances and ridden in here with no second thoughts.”

She continued to study him. After a little silent interval she said: “Perhaps I misjudged you, Mister Travis. But that’s not important right now.” She paused, looking at him, giving him a chance to speak. He kept still, kept quiet, looking at her.

She drew in a breath. “Mister Travis…will you honestly answer a question for me…a personal question?”

“I’ll try, ma’am.”

“Where did Frank Travis get nine thousand dollars in gold?”

Without any hesitation Parker said: “He got it from the sale of land he and I jointly owned. Nine thousand dollars was his share.” Parker drew forth his wallet, extracted a worn, folded paper, and offered it. “This will confirm it. This is a copy of the deed we granted the man who bought that land for cash.”

Amy looked at the folded paper in his hand, then up again. She made no move to take the paper. “Am I allowed one more question?”

Parker nodded.

“Was your brother ever in trouble with the law?”

“No, ma’am. My folks died when Frank was pretty young. I raised him. He’s never been in any serious trouble. A few barroom fights, a little illegal horse racing on Sunday. That’s all of it.” Parker put the paper and his wallet away. He raised his eyes to
Amy’s face, and the two of them exchanged a long look before he said: “Now I’d like some answers. I know who two of the men are who were out there the day my brother was shot to death. Ace McElhaney and Charley Swindin. Tell me something about those two.”

Amy looked at the hands in her lap. “Ace McElhaney is a cowboy. He works for the big outfits, but, when he gets a little money ahead, he hangs around town.”

“And Swindin?”

“Well,” said Amy, concentrating very hard upon her folded hands now. “He’s foreman of the Lincoln Ranch.”

“The Lincoln Ranch, ma’am?”

Amy explained where her uncle’s outfit was.

Parker nodded, his interest fully up now. “I see, ma’am,” he said. “I’m beginning to put some little pieces together.”

“What pieces?”

“Yesterday I saw my brother’s blood bay horse in a Lincoln Ranch pasture.”

“Yes, he’s there.”

“And you…you’re connected with Lincoln Ranch some way?”

“I’m Lew Morgan’s niece. Lew owns Lincoln Ranch.”

“Uhn-huh,” murmured Parker. “Now, Miss Morgan, you didn’t call me up here because you want to give me back my brother’s horse. I don’t even believe you called me up here to warn me against Swindin.”

Amy’s gaze turned liquid-dark. “Why did I ask you to meet me here, Mister Travis?”

“Because someone down at Lincoln Ranch was involved in Frank’s killing.”

Amy nodded gravely. “Go on.”

“You want to head off violence. Whoever he is at Lincoln Ranch, you don’t want him killed.”

“My uncle, Mister Travis,” said Amy, and explained.

Parker listened. Near the end of Amy’s recitation, he lit a Mexican cigar and quietly smoked. When she had finished speaking, he still silently smoked Finally, looking at cigar ash, he spoke. Each word fell like steel upon glass. “They could’ve hailed my brother, ma’am. They could have given him a chance after his horse went down.” He shot her a challenging look. She met it but not in the same temper. “They could’ve made him give up. You said that posse had thirty men in it. No single man, no matter how good he is with guns, would in his right mind try to fight thirty men.”

“But only McElhaney and Swindin were up there, Mister Travis. The others didn’t come along until later.”

“My brother was afoot, ma’am. He couldn’t have gone anywhere. All McElhaney and Swindin had to do was wait. That’s all. Just sit there and wait until the others came up. Frank, no matter what he believed, would not have died for that nine thousand dollars.”

“What do you mean…no matter what he believed?”

“Miss Morgan, I don’t know your uncle or those other men, but I
did
know my brother. If he had believed they were posse men, he never would have tried to outrun them. Never.”

Amy watched him. She was still now and totally silent, with her lips lying closed in gentle fullness. Her eyes were very dark and he could not read expression in them.

“Why are you here, Mister Travis, to kill them?”

She was round-shaped in his sight; the pull of her was urgent. He fought against it, forcing his mind to that other thing between them.

“If need be, Miss Morgan. If need be.”

“You are the judge?”

“I am the judge.”

She said in a small, soft tone. “What will it solve…your way?”

“Perhaps nothing, ma’am. Perhaps a lot. You have no brother, no children?”

She dropped her eyes to her lap briefly, then raised them. “I have never been married.”

“Then you wouldn’t know how it is with me, because you see, ma’am, Frank was both, and he was needlessly killed.”

“Yes,” she breathed, seeing him draw together, hardening against her, and wanting this least of all. “Yes, I understand how it is with you. I knew it when you didn’t ask what became of the money. You weren’t interested in that…only in your brother.”

“You’re on the other side,” he said, making it almost a query. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Why should you be?”

He was temporarily stopped cold by her directness, yet he could see that this was how she was. He hung fire over his answer, though, and replied belatedly and slowly: “It doesn’t matter right now.”

She waited for more to come. It never did, so she changed the subject. “The nine thousand dollars is at the express company. It’s in the safe there.”

He said indifferently: “That’ll keep. What I want to know is what are the plans of your uncle and those other men…McElhaney and Swindin.”

“I can’t answer for any of them, not even my uncle. But I would like you to talk to him…first.”

He did not miss that pause before her final word. “I’m not swollen with hate or anxious to kill, Miss Morgan,” he stated. “I want justice, though, and I aim to see that it’s served. If, as you’ve told me, Sheriff Wheaton is the brother of the former sheriff, then I may not get justice.” He turned away from her. “But I hope that’s not the case.”

“These aren’t bad men, Mister Travis. They made a terrible mistake. They aren’t fully aware yet just how awful a mistake they made. But once they know who you are, they’ll find out, because I know my uncle and I know Hubbell Wheaton…they’ll come to you, they’ll ask questions. That piece of paper you’re carrying…”

“Yes?”

“As I said, I know those men. They’ll be sick when they know what they’ve actually done.”

“Sicker,” said Parker Travis, “much sicker than you know, ma’am, if they think talk will right the wrong.”

Parker stood up. He turned and gazed down at Amy. She sat there watching him. He looked at her eyes, saw something that had not been in their dark depths before, something glowing, something mysterious, and he did a bold thing. He said roughly: “Meeting like this, here today, belongs to other things than what we’ve spoken of. I wish it could have been different.”

He went out to his horse, tugged up the rigging, mounted, and started on out of the glen. Amy stood up and watched him pass. When he was near the forest’s fringe, she called to him.

“The only man who profits from killing is the man without a conscience.”

He drew rein to look back at her briefly. He made no comment on what she’d said. “I’ll see you again,” he said, and rode on.

Beyond their meeting place the forest was turning warm, turning humid. He was conscious of this but not in a direct way; he was considering the things she’d said.

By the time he was back at the little shallow waterway beyond the turn-off to that secret place, he’d decided to see Lew Morgan and Hubbell Wheaton, but not their way if he could avoid it—not at any disadvantage—but
his
way, which would be separately and alone.

He halted in the last of the forest shade. Ahead lay the open country again, shimmering in layers of heat. Where the sun rode, near its meridian, was a blinding-yellow molten ball. Around it the heavens were seared white; farther out they were a brassy, faded color. He was not anxious to push on, but he did, and at once his horse had almost to lean into the gelatin waves that ran at him. It was well over 115 degrees out on the Laramie Plains.

He endured this withering heat by closing his mind to it, by allowing his horse to pick its own walking gait, and by riding easily in the saddle. In this manner he struck the stage road and kept to it until, only a little distance from Laramie, a coach rattled by, its driver up high on his seat burned brown, its horses sweating, trotting loosely, their eyes red-rimmed. He gave way, riding off the road. When the driver threw him a wave, Parker waved back.

Afterward, he followed, first the dust, then the hot, acrid smell of that dust, for another mile. As distance widened between them, heat waves made it appear that the coach was not upon the road at all,
but was floating in air several feet above the road. He considered the phenomenon through narrowed eyes. Because everything onward was blurry in his sight, he thought he also saw another horseman far ahead who left the road to let the coach pass by. He considered this an illusion, though, a mirage, and paid it no attention.

The coach faded out. Only the smell of its passing remained. There was no further sign of that ghostly rider, and Parker’s mind turned inward again, reviewing all the things Amy had said to him, reviewing Amy herself. He was riding like that, utterly loose, entirely apart from the seared world he was passing through, when the gunshot came, its unmistakable muzzle blast flat, lethargic in the thick heat.

Ordinarily a man cannot move fast in that kind of heat, but Parker Travis was an Arizonan. Heat was a way of life to him. He was to a considerable extent inured to it.

He left his saddle, rolled once and stood up again, holding one split rein. His horse was surprised but not particularly startled. It stood peering around as Parker drew forth his Winchester.

The man who had fired that solitary shot was far out in the shimmering glow. He was riding southward now as though to go cautiously out and around Parker, but when he’d fired, he’d been in the westward roadway. That horseman had not been a mirage after all.

Parker turned his horse, keeping the beast in front of him so that the assassin could not at that distance determine whether Parker was shot down or not. He estimated the course of this unknown enemy, gauged the distance before the man would come into Winchester range, then sank down upon the ground to wait.

Through that long waiting period Parker speculated upon the assassin’s identity. It seemed a fortuitous thing to him that his foeman had known where to find him, had appeared so soon after he’d left Amy Morgan. His thoughts turned upon the beautiful girl with no kindness at all. He was not angry, not in the way another man might have been,
not with outrage and cold wrath. But he was getting that way as time passed. The uncomfortable hotness rose against him from out of the ground, and that extremely careful killer kept on riding slowly, cautiously, coming inward a little at a time.

Sweat ran into his eyes. He furtively flicked it away. He wanted that rider out there to believe he was dead or nearly so. He made no noticeable move while he was prone in the blasting heat, except to follow that man’s progress down his gun barrel.

The unknown horseman stopped finally, sat his saddle, straining to see up where Parker lay. He was holding his bared saddle gun balanced upon one hip. The sun was well above him, making a minimal shadow. Parker estimated the distance. It was by his reckoning still a little too far. He swore to himself, suffering upon the oven-like ground.

The assassin made his decision, turned northward, and came on with no further delay. Parker watched him pass into range and did nothing. He let the man get within 1,000 yards of him, then he fired.

At first it was impossible to tell how badly he’d hit his enemy because his horse shied violently at the gunshot, nearly jerking free. Parker held tightly so that one split rein was jerked half around, and, when he looked back, the assassin’s animal had also shied, had whipped completely out from under his rider, and was fleeing back toward Laramie now, head up and tail flying.

The stranger himself lay sprawled. His carbine was thirty feet away, glistening in the evil light. He was lying upon his back, staring straight up at the sun. From this and the fact that he did not move, Parker thought he must be dead. He was.

Parker got up to him. The man’s face was serene beneath its dust-sweat coating, beneath its several days’ growth of rusty whiskers. He had been downed by a slug directly through his heart. He had never known what had struck him.

Thirst came to torment Parker. He got the dead man behind his cantle, tied him there, mounted up, and resumed his onward journey. Under his leg in its boot rode his own gun; across his lap was the carbine of the dead man.

This was how he rode into Laramie. This is how people saw him who were sitting, idle and drained of energy, when he passed along to the sheriff’s office, stiffly got down, tied his laden horse, and pushed on into Hubbell Wheaton’s office to say thinly to the sad-faced man sitting at a desk there: “My name is Travis, which I’m sure you know, and, if you’ve the time, I’d like a few words with you.” He did not mention the dead man outside. Wheaton motioned toward a chair and studied Travis with close interest.

“I was looking for you earlier this morning,” said Hub, “but the livery barn hostler told me you rode out before sunup.”

“You won’t have to look any more, Sheriff. Neither will the others who’re interested in my being here in your town.”

“The others, Travis?”

Parker made a rueful little head wag. “You don’t have to put on an act for my benefit, Sheriff. Charley Swindin was one of the men who murdered my brother. Lew Morgan was involved in it, also. So were you. I know each of you now, by name.”

“We weren’t the only ones, Travis. There were a lot of men in that posse. In fact, you didn’t name
one of the men who was actually up there when your brother died.”

“I don’t have to name that one,” said Travis.

“No?”

“No. You see, he’s paid his debt in full. He’s outside, Sheriff, tied behind my saddle…dead.”

Hub’s gaze slowly widened. “Ace?” he said. “Ace McElhaney?”

Parker nodded. “I was coming back to town this morning. A Cheyenne coach passed me. Ahead of it was a horseman. At first I thought he might be a mirage in the heat.” Parker paused slowly to wag his head. “He was no mirage. He took a long shot at me, missed, and I let him get up closer, then I killed him.”

Hub got out of his chair, crossed to the door, flung it back, and stood in the opening, gazing out where Travis’s thoroughbred stood patiently with his grisly burden. From behind him Parker said: “This is his carbine. You can see that it’s been fired.”

Hub turned, made no move to take the Winchester, and continued the study of Travis. Finally, still ignoring the carbine, he walked heavily back and dropped down into his chair again.

“Anyone see this fight?” he asked.

“No one.”

Hub looked over where Parker had leaned the Winchester upon a wall. “I reckon, if a feller was dead set on makin’ another man’s killing look plumb legal when there were no witnesses, it wouldn’t be hard for him to shoot the dead feller’s gun once or twice after he’d killed him.”

“It wouldn’t be hard at all,” agreed Parker, rising to stand there in the little breathless room. “It’ll be a damned sight harder to prove that’s how it was, though.”

“Where are you going, Travis?”

“To toss McElhaney off my horse, put the animal up, then go drink a gallon of water. Why?”

“There’s cold water in that bucket yonder. I’d like to talk to you. It shouldn’t take long.”

Parker paused in the doorway. A hot little wind was passing southward. Where he stood, it struck him, drying the sweat and making him feel cool. “Talk,” he ordered.

“I don’t know how McElhaney died, but I can guess, since you knew he was one of the men who shot your brother, that you weren’t sorry to shoot him.”

“You’re partly right, Sheriff. I meant to look him up sooner or later…but not particularly to kill him. That would’ve been up to him. I just wanted him to tell me why he and Swindin and all the rest of you for that matter…didn’t give my brother a chance to surrender.”

Hub Wheaton offered no explanation. He only said: “Travis, what about Charley Swindin? You know who he is, don’t you?”

“I know. He is the other one.”

“Well…?”

“That’ll be up to him, too, Sheriff.” Parker started to pass on outside. He checked himself briefly and added: “That goes for every one of you who were involved in the murder.”

“We didn’t think it was murder.”

Parker teetered there. Something Amy had said came back to him. He stepped back inside, drew forth a piece of paper, unfolded it, tossed it to Wheaton. “Read that,” he said.

Wheaton bent to frown over the paper. He read it through once, took it in his hand, walked over to
a little window, and reread it. From there he gazed across somberly at Parker Travis. He pushed out his hand with the paper in it.

“Here,” he said. “Take it. Go get your drink of water.”

Parker left the office and did exactly what he’d said he meant to do. Under the staring eyes of a large number of townsmen who had drifted up to look at the limp body of Ace McElhaney, he untied the corpse, stepped aside to let it slide down into roadway dust, stepped over it without once looking down, and walked northward up the road, leading his horse toward the livery barn. Behind him, Sheriff Hub Wheaton and not less than twenty-five totally still and silent men watched him go.

Not always the most fragrant place in frontier towns, but certainly one of the coolest in summertime and also one of the most popular loafing places, the livery barn in Laramie was rarely vacant. When Parker walked in leading his thoroughbred, a number of idlers in the shade there, some whittling, some just sitting, put their unblinking gazes on him. These men had seen him ride into town; they had seen what he’d left lying in the naked sunlight down at Wheaton’s jailhouse. They were very interested, but, also, they were very careful. Parker Travis had none of the look of a killer or a gunfighter, but mostly those loafers were not very young men, and therefore they had survived in a perilous land because they could make correct appraisals with their mouths closed. They did this now. They also saw at once how Toby, the hostler, flinched when he came up out of the dark runway to take Travis’s horse.

Parker held out his reins. He looked thoughtfully at
Toby, then he said: “The next time you send someone out after me, I’m going to come for you.”

He turned, walked out of the barn, through that deep silence, across the dusty roadway, and on into the hotel. There, he removed his shirt in the privacy of the upstairs room he’d rented, beat dust out of it, washed his entire upper body, dried off by standing at the window looking solemnly down where Ace McElhaney was being carted off by several men, got into the same shirt again, and went downstairs, on into the dining room, put his hat aside, and flagged a waiter. The man came with an alacrity he had not shown before when he’d served Travis.

He ordered a midday meal, a pitcher of water, then sat tanking up, waiting for the food. The first glass of water brought forth a veritable flood of perspiration. The second one winnowed away some of the rawness from his gullet, his mouth, and lips, and the third one soothed his spirit.

His table faced forward toward the outside door and the roadway beyond. He was idly looking out there when he saw a horseman go loping past northward. It was Sheriff Wheaton. He was riding too fast for this kind of weather. Parker inwardly smiled. It wouldn’t take Wheaton long at that gait to reach Lincoln Ranch. He wished he had known Wheaton was going to do this. He’d have asked him to be sure and tell Morgan’s niece her plot failed and that her assassin had himself been killed.

His lunch came. He began slowly to eat. From the edge of his vision he saw men pass quietly into the dining room and pass out again. Others, lacking this boldness, came only as far as the doorway to gaze at the man who had killed Ace McElhaney,
then they also moved on. One man only seemed as though he wished to speak. In the end, though, this man, too, faded beyond Parker’s sight. When the loitering waiter saw this man, he made a little gasp. Parker looked up at him, caught the waiter’s eye, and crooked a finger.

“Who was he?” he asked.

“Who was who, sir?”

Parker leaned back, pushed his plate away, and put a sardonic look upward. “I’m waiting,” he said very quietly. “Who was that man?”

“Uh…foreman for one of the ranches hereabouts, Mister Travis.”

“I see. He wouldn’t be foreman of Lincoln Ranch, would he, friend?”

The waiter’s face turned white. “Please don’t put me in this spot, Mister Travis.”

“What spot?”

“Everyone in town knows who you are, sir. Word travels fast after a shootin’.”

“I can see that it does. That was Charley Swindin, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter whispered, looking anguished. “Can I go now?”

Parker nodded. The waiter scuttled rapidly away, and those prying-eyed men disappeared from the doorways.