The Plains of Laramie (8 page)

It was not often that winds scoured the Laramie Plains in midsummer. During wintertime this was not so; the plains were notorious for their fiercely cold winter blows. Many a rider had sworn that regardless of how much clothing a man wore in wintertime, those frigid blasts knifed through them to freeze the flesh and chill the marrow.

Usually when a midsummer blow arrived upon the plains, it was a sign that one of those infrequent but awesome summer thunderstorms was approaching. This time, however, the sky was cloudless, brassypale, and the wind itself was hot. It curled leaves and wilted grass; it stung the flesh with abrasive dust and it burned the eyes with its dry heat. It was a very poor welcome for a stranger in the land such as Parker Travis, because it left him with a forming opinion that was half resentment and half dislike.

Parker Travis rode a long-legged seal-brown horse with sloping shoulders, a long barrel, and powerful rear quarters. He rode lightly for a big man, proving himself to be a horseman instead of a rider, the kind of man who never for a moment forgot the animal under him, its welfare, and its changing moods. He passed along with his collar turned up, with a bandanna tied across the lower portion of his face to shield him from that stinging dust, and with an ivory-butted six-gun lashed low along his right thigh. He was taller than his brother Frank had
been and he looked to be possibly five years older, although now, with a day’s growth of red-glinting whiskers over his face, he seemed much older than he actually was.

His eyes showed weariness down to their bluest depths and his shoulders also showed it, lying slackly beneath the jumper with its turned-up collar. He had strong cheekbones and long lips that came definitely together.

There was, too, deliberateness about Parker Travis; it plainly said that he took his time about all things. He was doing that now as he watched ahead for breaks in the swirling dust, was riding along as though he wished to forget nothing he saw, as though he thought it likely those yonder buildings, that old buffalo wallow there on his left, that quick lift of forested headland back beyond the ranch buildings, might offer him shelter or protection one day.

He measured distances, too, as he passed along. He noted brands, the quality of animals, their condition—shiny-coated or rough-coated. Very little got past him; he was observant and he had an excellent memory. It was these things which, several miles on, beyond that set of prosperous-looking ranch buildings, brought him up short, staring into a fenced pasture on his right where a blood bay horse stood head down and tail flattened, facing away from the wind.

For a little while the wind died in its gusty way, clearing the air between rider and blood bay horse. During this unpredictable interlude Parker Travis got down, walked over to the pasture fence, and stood there, fifty feet from the blood bay, gazing at him.

Behind Parker his seal-brown gelding keened the roiled air for a scent that was familiar to him, and nickered. The blood bay threw up its head, stared at man and horse, then moved tentatively toward both.

Parker’s eyes shone with gradual warmth. He stepped aside so that his gelding could move up, could rub nozzles with the horse across the fence, and he said: “Well, boys, it’s been a long trail, a hot and a hard one…but you two didn’t forget, did you? I guess brothers always remember.” He stepped up quietly, put forth a hand, and gently scratched the blood bay’s neck. “You’ve looked better,” he said. “Red, I’d give a lot of money if for just ten minutes you could talk.” He dropped his hand and stepped back to run an assessing look over the blood bay. “Looks like you’re recovering from a limp, Red. Maybe you fell. Maybe you stepped in a hole. And maybe a bullet nicked you.” He looked out over the plain, slowly swinging his gaze so that it blocked in big chunks of range as a stockman does in a strange land, tracing out fence lines to determine limits and ownerships.

“It’s the big ranch we just passed that claims you now, isn’t it?” he idly said to the blood bay horse, then he pulled his gelding away from the fence, stepped up, and reined away. The blood bay softly nickered at them from beyond the fence. Parker looked back.

“Rest easy, Red. We’ve found you now an’ we’ll be back. Don’t you fret any about that…we’ll be back.”

For a little while, for as long as the pasture fence ran unobstructed, the blood bay gelding walked along it, keeping pace with the horse and rider upon
the other far side of the fence. Where it cornered and an intersecting row of posts hung with wire ran northward, the blood bay had to stop. He lifted his head, gravely watched the rider move away. He softly nickered again.

Southward, on his left, Parker eventually made out the hot reflection of sunlight off windowpanes, off tin roofs, off scarcely turning windmills. This, he knew, would be his destination, the village of Laramie. He angled a little toward it, not certain yet in his mind what he meant to do.

Thus far he had spoken his name to no one. He had avoided the road, the ranches, even the occasional other riders he’d seen. Perhaps these precautions were pointless, but he reasoned that, when a man is riding toward probable trouble in a new land, prudence is his best recourse.

All Parker knew of his brother’s passing was what he’d read in a Colorado newspaper brought south upon an Overland stagecoach. The only detail given in that account that had never left his thoughts since he’d seen that paper was the statement that Frank was an outlaw, that he’d robbed an express office at Laramie of $12,000—and that he had been afterward run down and shot to death by a posse. The same article said that a sheriff named Kenneth Wheaton had also died in that battle.

A man doesn’t raise a brother as Parker Travis had raised Frank without knowing him. Frank had always been a cheerful, pleasant person, generous to a fault, loyal and faultlessly honest. If there had ever been anything about Frank that hadn’t rung true, Parker would have known it. There never had been, so now he was approaching Laramie to learn more concerning his brother’s killing.

But Parker Travis was not a fierce or savage man. He was not a killer nor was he riding any vengeance trail. He wanted to know the facts, and, if afterward someone was definitely at fault, he would do what he had to do. But, being close to thirty years old, Parker Travis rushed into nothing. That was why he now employed the caution that put him upon the outskirts of Laramie on this gusty, raw-hot day, riding his seal-brown thoroughbred horse—the brother to the blood bay back at Lincoln Ranch.

He removed his jumper, tied it aft of the cantle atop his bedroll, eased down into town from the north where the stage road also entered, went along to the livery barn, and dismounted to stand, stamping dust off until a hostler came to take his horse.

The hostler, a man with an eye for horseflesh, stood back a moment gazing upon the seal-brown. “We don’t get many animals like him in here,” he said to Parker, approving of the thoroughbred’s appearance beneath layered dust. “You come a long way, mister, yet he’s fresh as when he started out.” The hostler reached for Travis’s reins. “It sort of makes my day when a feller brings in a horse he’s favored on the trail.”

“Rub down,” said Parker, turning away from the horse with saddlebags and bedroll over his shoulder, “grain, green hay, and clean water. All right?”

“Yes, sir.” The liveryman beamed. “Tie stall or box stall?”

Parker looked at his horse. “Box stall,” he said.

“Confidentially I’d have put him in one anyway.” The hostler smiled. “The boss ain’t in town today an’ this kind o’ quality deserves the best whether his owner can pay for it or not.”

Parker’s solemn regard softened toward this man
who also had a soft spot for horseflesh. He wordlessly dug out two silver dollars and passed them over. “One for you,” he said. “One on the bill until I settle up.” He hitched at the load upon his shoulder, turned, and walked out into the brassy daylight. Around him Laramie was sweeping dust away from doorways and profanely wiping it from eyes.

He entered the Antlers Hotel, wrote the name “Bill Jones” in the register, paid for a room and a bath, and hiked upstairs, located his allotted quarters by a number upon the door, and entered. Across the roadway and downward from Parker’s room, easily visible through the window, was the express office. He cast a glance over there and saw two men standing in shade, speaking together. One was a gray-haired burly man expensively dressed and very dark from exposure. His companion was tall and tough-looking with a long jaw and a thoughtful look to him. This second man held Parker Travis’s attention particularly because of the little nickel badge upon his shirt front.

Later, Parker had his bath, re-dressed himself in fresh clothing, and went out on to the plank walk to take the measure of Laramie. By then it was blisteringly hot and breathless out. By then, too, the wind was entirely gone.

He looked for the gray-headed man and the sheriff again, failed to see either, and strolled once down and once back, considering the town. Laramie was a thriving village and it was also a talkative one. When he entered the Great Northern Saloon where an even dozen men were indifferently loafing, crossed to the bar and asked for cold ale, Johnny Fleharty served it himself. He also smiled disarmingly and mentioned the chief topic of local conversation—the weather.

“Hot again today,” he said cheerfully, as a man might speak who not only does not have to go out into the heat himself, but also as a man who benefits from the thirsts of those who do have to be out in it. “An’ that damned wind didn’t help any, did it?”

Parker shook his head. He took up the glass, studied Johnny over the rim, and drained it empty, set it down, and put a big palm over it, indicating he did not wish for a refill. “Not usual for a wind like that to blow this time of year,” he said, watching Johnny.

“Sure isn’t.” Johnny drew another ale, shot the glass southward along the bar to a hulking, drowsy man who was leaning there with his hat back, with oily hair low across his brow, and a bristly chin cupped in one hand while he solemnly considered the reclining nude behind Fleharty’s bar. The cowboy caught the mug and held it still.

“Usually a thunderstorm comes with those summer winds,” Johnny said, appraising Parker Travis with his bright glance. “This time…just more heat.”

“A man’d have to have a good reason for riding in weather like this,” commented Parker. “Like runnin’ from the law or trying to find water.”

Fleharty nodded. Parker saw a conversational germ take root in Johnny’s mind. “Water’s no problem on the Laramie Plains. We got plenty of water. But runnin’ from the law, now that’s something else again. I expect you saw in the papers where our express office was robbed a few weeks back.”

Parker started to murmur something, but Johnny, who was quite a talker, pushed right on over this little fading sound.

“I was out with that posse, mister. It was at least
a hundred and fifty in the shade.” Johnny grinned. “An’ no shade.”

“Hundred and twenty,” mumbled the drowsy big man down the bar, correcting Fleharty.

“All right, Ace, a hundred and twenty.” Fleharty looked at Parker Travis. “I always say hot is hot. It can be a hundred and twenty or it can be a hundred and fifty…a feller suffers just as much from one as the other.”

The loafing big man down the bar muttered again. “An’ you weren’t with the posse, either. You come later with your buckboard.”

This time Johnny had to work at keeping up his smile. He considered Ace McElhaney for a silent moment, then lifted his shoulders, dropped them, and swung away. “What I was getting at, mister,” he said to Parker. “That feller who robbed the express office run from the law, and, like you said, that’s the only kind of a man who’d ride in weather like this.”

“Seems to me,” Parker drawled, as though making an effort to recall something half forgotten, “you boys got that man.”

Johnny vigorously bobbed his head at this. “Yes, sir. But don’t you know that outlaw was mounted on a thoroughbred horse and he led the posse for darn’ near…How long was it, Ace, before you an’ Charley caught up with him?”

From down the bar that gruff voice came back slurred. “’Bout four hours, I’d say.”

Johnny looked triumphant. “Four hours. How do you like that for ridin’ hard under this damned sun?”

Parker removed his palm from the empty glass and considered the wet ring in his hand. “Put up
quite a fight, I heard,” he mumbled without looking at Johnny.

“Like a lion,” agreed Fleharty. “His horse fell in a ’dog hole an’ hurt his leg or maybe the feller’d have got away.”

“Like hell he would have,” growled McElhaney.

Johnny bridled at this. “Anyway, this Travis feller…that was his name…yanked off his saddle and forted up behind it.” Johnny considered the empty glass. “Care for a refill?”

Parker nodded. “And a refill for the big feller down the bar, too,” he said.

Johnny got the beer, placed the glasses in front of McElhaney and Parker Travis, swiped once at the bar automatically with a rag, then said: “He killed Ken Wheaton, our sheriff. Plugged him comin’ in neat as a…”

“He was on the ground, not comin’ in,” contradicted McElhaney again. He drew wearily up off the bar, half turned, and leaned sideways again. “Damn it, Johnny, after all you saw and all you heard, you still can’t get the straight of it. Ken was pressin’ Travis from the north. He’d jump up, run in, drop down to an’ Injun-crawl. That’s what he was doin’ when Travis got up on to one knee, caught Ken plumb in his sights, an’ let him have it.”

Parker turned from a long look at his untouched glass to put a very dry, very steady gaze upon McElhaney. What he saw made no very good impression. Ace had been drinking beer and ale all day, from the loose, oily appearance of his face. His rider’s butternut shirt was salt-stiff and great crescents of sweat darkened each armpit and for halfway down each side. He hadn’t shaved in several days, either, as he returned Parker’s regard.

“You talk like a man who was there,” Parker said.

“I was there. Only three of us was within sight o’ Travis when that big blood bay horse o’ his stepped in the ’dog hole and went down. Ken Wheaton, Charley Swindin, and me.”