The Plains of Laramie

by Lauran Paine

  He had a feeling of safety in here. Partly this came from solid knowledge. On the way in he’d watched the trail, no one had preceded him, no one had branched off to circle around and perhaps lay an ambush. But it was the great depth of silence, of unchanging serenity that went down deeply into him, giving full reassurance as he sat there, Winchester across his knees, hat back and muscles loose, studying this land, getting the hang of it out of habit, remembering distances, landmarks, lifts and rises.

  It was so totally quiet that when the blue jay broke out down-country, angrily denouncing some trespasser, Parker’s heart momentarily thudded. He sat like stone listening to the bird, by its course tracing out the route of whatever was entering this quiet world.

  He did not readily accept the notion that whoever had summoned him to this meeting was coming, for the simple reason that it was too early in the day yet. Then he heard a horse clear its nostrils, and after that he heard a shod hoof strike stone. He rose up, glided onward to an overlooking rib of land, faded out in shadows there, and waited. Below him the trail passed across that unobstructed fern patch.

  The camp robber came winging; it flashed iridescent blue, settled upon a low limb and scratchily kept up its loud scolding. Horse and rider appeared crossing the fern patch. Parker, lightly dappled, half shadowed, half not, unmoving, waited until he had a good sighting. He let off a soft sigh. It was a girl and he recognized her, the girl who had been in the hotel dining room.

  He remained where he was. She passed beyond sight into a little shallow gully, then he heard her horse working upward again, coming straight along the path that lay only 100 feet off on his right. He did not move. Suddenly the beast heaved up over its last obstacle, moving along head down, reins swinging, obviously using a trail with which it was entirely familiar. The girl was riding easily in her saddle; she was wearing a rusty-colored split skirt and a lighter tan shade of blouse. Her deep colored hair was caught at the back of her head and held in place by a little green ribbon. She swung her head, looked straight at Parker, and passed by without any break in expression at all. She had not seen him.

  Chapter Seven

  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 nodd
ed 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.

  Chapter Eight

  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 peri
od 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.