The Plains of Laramie (12 page)

Two hours later Parker Travis was still sitting at his upstairs window, watching the lamp-lighted town below. Riders came and went, off work for the night and bent on the powerful releases range men need at the end of the day. The last coach departed northward to make its eventual easterly swoop toward Cheyenne

A knock on the door brought Parker back to the present with a jolt. He stood up, stepped away from backgrounding light, and called: “Come in!”

It was Sheriff Wheaton. He stood a moment, peering ahead beyond the opened door into the room’s deep gloom. As though he believed Parker had doused the light for fighting purposes, Hub said: “Stand easy, Travis. I come in peace.”

“Then come in and close the door.”

Wheaton did this. He said: “You worryin’ about another bushwhacker, sittin’ in the dark up here?”

“Not exactly.” Parker resumed his seat by the window. “Pull up a chair if you wish.”

Wheaton did that. As he sank down upon it, he mightily sighed. “Hot tonight. Thirty degrees cooler than daytime, but still damned hot.”

Parker sat looking down upon Laramie, saying nothing or looking around at the sheriff.

Wheaton turned loosely where he sat. He, too, ran a solemn look out over his town. Then he suddenly said: “You weren’t the only one who lost, Travis.”

Parker still said nothing or moved.

“I talked to Amy before she an’ Lew left town. I’d like to tell you something. It’s personal, and therefore I’ve never spoken much about it. My brother who was the former sheriff…the man your brother shot and killed…he was twelve years older than I was. My mother died in an epidemic. My pa was shot to death tooling a stage from here to Cheyenne. But the outlaw who robbed that coach and shot Pa was never found. That happened when I was a kid, Travis. After that, it was just my brother an’ me. He left school and went to work for a liveryman. He got three dollars a week and Saturdays off so he could go huntin’. We lived on brush rabbits, sage hens, an occasional antelope, and deer meat. Sometimes in wintertime he’d get a chance to go with freighters to the Tetons. When that happened, he usually came home with plenty of bear meat.” Hub stopped speaking for a moment, put his feet upon the windowsill, ruefully wagged his head, and chuckled. “You ever eat antelope and bear meat, Travis? Well, antelope stinks when you’re cleanin’ it, and, when it’s cooked, it tastes like an old billy goat smells. Now bear meat…there’s something. It’s like eatin’ rancid hog fat with the entrails left in. When I was real little, I’d bawl like a bay steer, but later, after I was old enough to understand how much Ken was sacrificin’ to get those carcasses, I’d choke…but I’d eat the stuff.”

Parker spoke finally. He looked steadily at Wheaton, saying: “I get the point, Sheriff.”

But Hub wasn’t ready to stop yet. “Sure you get it,” he conceded, “but let me tell you a little more. We didn’t have very good clothes, you see…oh, sure, the townsfolk helped when they could, but
they had kids of their own…so when I went to school, the other kids used to pick on me. I reckon I got beat up more’n any kid in our school until I got big enough to do a little beatin’ of my own. Now, mind you, Travis, Ken was only eighteen or nineteen at the time, but he was big as a man and tough as catgut. Still, when I’d come home bawlin’, he’d refuse to go with me an’ waylay those big kids. You know what he told me, Travis? He said…‘Hub, you can’t lean on folks. You’ve got to learn to fight back.’ It used to make me hate him. I didn’t understand why a big tough kid like Ken wouldn’t defend his little brother. Then one day he did, but that wasn’t with school kids. A drunk cowboy roped me in the roadway and was draggin’ me behind his horse. Ken was in the livery barn and saw that.” Wheaton chuckled. “He came across the damned road like he’d been shot out of a cannon. He hit that cowboy on the fly, knocked him off his horse, and dang’ near beat him to death. I think he would’ve killed him if some fellers hadn’t dragged him off.”

“And you learned a lesson there,” said Parker quietly. “You learned that he’d always be around if something too big to handle came up.”

“Yeah,” mused Wheaton. He was quiet for a little time, sitting there in night shadow beside Parker. “Yeah, I learned a lot from Ken. Now he’s dead.”

“Killed by my brother…is that what you mean, Wheaton?”

“Yes.”

“And what d’you want to do about it?”

Wheaton did not answer this question. Instead he said: “You know, Travis, when I first knew who you were, I wanted very much to run you down, call you out, and kill you. You weren’t responsible for
Ken’s death, but you were the brother of the man who killed him.”

“And now, Wheaton?”

“Nothing. I’m sitting here in the dark with you, feeling no hatred for you, no hatred for your brother. Just sadness that a good man died.” Wheaton twisted on his chair. “You told Amy Morgan she couldn’t know how you felt. She told me you said that. That’s why I came up here tonight. Travis, maybe Amy doesn’t know, maybe Lew and Ace and Charley don’t know…but
I
know how you feel.”

The Mexican cigar Parker had been smoking had gone out. He put it aside. “I reckon you do, at that,” he murmured to Hub Wheaton. “I’ve been sittin’ here for hours wrestling with myself. It’s like trying to swallow something that won’t go down. The difference between us is that your brother was older…he stood in my shoes, in relation to my brother.”

“I know.”

Parker folded both hands in his lap. “I’m sorry about your brother, Wheaton.”

“I know that, too. You’re a fair man, Travis. Would you like to tell me about young Frank?”

“No. No, Frank is dead.”

“I took his money from the express office and put it in my jailhouse safe. Any time you want it, it’s yours.”

“Thanks. But it’s not the damned money. That’s what got him in the notion to run in the first place. I wish he hadn’t had the damned money at all.”

“What was he going to do with it?”

“Well, when he left me the last time, he said he thought he’d come up into this country and look around. He’d heard there was good cattle country up in here for sale, cheap.”

“He should have left the money with you down in Arizona.”

Parker smiled for the first time. “Sure he should have, but Frank was independent. I raised him to be that way. He wanted it with him and I didn’t argue about it.”

Hub leaned forward, pushed up off the chair, and stood, tall and grave, in the faint light. “You know how I looked at my brother’s killing, Travis? I’ll tell you…your brother shot and killed him when he was doing his legal duty as a sheriff…” Hub paused, saw Parker’s face lift toward him, and said: “Wait a minute, hear me out. Ken didn’t shoot your brother. He was trying to, yes, but he didn’t get it done…instead, your brother killed him. As things turned out, Ken was being too hasty and your brother was also being too quick to jump to conclusions. But at first what blinded me was grief…and the knowledge that your brother killed Ken when he was legally trying to apprehend him.” Once more Hub paused. This time he looked out the window before concluding what he had to say. “I wanted to shoot you, Travis. I wanted to kill anyone connected with the man who shot my brother. I told Lew Morgan that. He argued with me like a Dutch uncle. He said his talkin’ the town council into appointin’ me to fill out Ken’s term as sheriff was based on the belief in me that I wouldn’t react like that. Even after we discovered who you were, Lew argued against me on that.” Wheaton faced back around. “He was right, of course. I know that now. Your brother died senselessly and so did mine. Do you know what that proves, Travis? It proves that no matter how fair and honest men are, the snap judgments of the best of us aren’t worth a damn.”

Parker also stood up. He gazed down where people were moving in and out of those puddles of lamplight. “What’s your first name, Wheaton?”

“Hub. Why?”

“Hub, you’re a pretty good man,” said Parker, turning, pushing out his hand. “I’m glad we talked.”

They shook, standing together in the dry, hot night. Wheaton said: “Take a little walk with me. I’d like to show you something.”

Parker caught up his hat, crossed to the door, and held it for the sheriff to pass through. Together they descended to the lobby, passed on out into the night, and strolled along without speaking to the first eastward intersection. There, Hub paced along until the last residence had been passed. One hundred yards farther along they came to a white picket fence with a high gate. Here, Hub led out beyond that gate.

They were in a moonlighted cemetery.

“There,” said the sheriff. “That’s my brother’s grave. That other one…”

“I know,” said Parker softly. “The first night I was in Laramie I came out here. That’s Frank’s burial place.”

“They don’t look much different, do they?”

They didn’t, but Parker said nothing. There was, in fact, nothing to say. After a while the sheriff made a cigarette, lit it, and blew out a pale small cloud. Beside him Parker Travis murmured. “That first night…I went first to boothill. Frank wasn’t there. It took me near an hour an’ a box of matches to find that out. Why, Hub, why did they put him here instead of boothill?”

Wheaton shrugged. “He was too young, some
said, to be much of an outlaw. That was when everyone thought that’s what he was. But even then there were a few who weren’t convinced.” Hub inhaled; he exhaled. “I’ll tell you honestly I didn’t want him here…not in the same ground with my brother.” Hub dropped the smoke, ground it underfoot, and concluded: “You see, Travis, you see how lousy snap judgments are? I’m glad he’s here now, and, if he was out at boothill, I’d move him myself now. I’d bring him here.”

“It’s a hell of a price to pay to learn a little lesson, though, isn’t it?”

Hub turned this over in his mind. “I don’t figure it was a little lesson, Travis. If only you and me an’ no one else has learned from this to think first and jump second, then it won’t be such a small lesson. That’s what Ken would’ve said.”

Parker turned away. He slowly made his way back to the picket gate. There he turned, put a steady look back, and said: “You win, Hub, you win. How about a drink?”

They left that quiet place, strolling along, two large, thoughtful men, stepping on through silvery light saying nothing back and forth, coming closer to the boisterous part of town, and leaving behind for a little while their agony and their memories.

“Which saloon?” asked Parker.

“The Great Northern, I reckon,” stated Hub, and made a dour smile. “Johnny Fleharty carries good liquor even if he is a troublesome little weasel.”

They turned north moving toward those puddles of lamplight that fell outward across the plank walk, outward into the dusty roadway.

They paused near Fleharty’s quivering doors to let two struggling cowboys pass through with a
limp one between them, his head lolling, hatless, vacant-eyed, and rag-like.

At sight of Hub’s badge, one of the struggling men nervously smiled and said: “We’re takin’ him on home, Sheriff. Just took on a mite too much o’ Fleharty’s Taos lightning.”

The riders staggered past with their burden. Hub and Parker exchanged a look, and that was when the gunshot came, blowing the night apart with its thunderous
crash
, its whipping lash of violent flame.

Hub Wheaton didn’t make a sound; he went down without even a grunt.

Those staggering cowboys dropped their passed-out companion in the roadway beside the hitch rack, threw themselves flat, and wiggled into shadows.

Parker was stunned and did not react for several seconds. Hub lay softly flat at his feet, half on, half off the plank walk. Men squawked out where they were exposed in the roadway, upon the opposite plank walk, their feet beating a loud tattoo as they also fled for cover.

Parker wheeled around, facing southward, the direction of that assassin’s shot. There was nothing to be seen down there in the overhanging shadows. He stepped over the sheriff, planted both legs wide, and swung his palmed six-gun. No second shot came; no sound of any kind came from down there.

Men boiled out of the saloon behind him. They piled up with their called questions, their grunts, and their sucked-back profanity at sight of Sheriff Wheaton, lying there in the roiled dust.

A squeaky voice cried out insistently: “Go fetch Doc Spence, someone! Hurry up, too. Here, couple o’ you fellers take hold. Let’s get him inside.”

Parker turned back finally, snarling at those bigeyed men. “Leave him alone. Don’t move him until the doctor’s seen him an’ said it’s safe to do that.”

“Who done it?” a shocked man asked.

Parker holstered his weapon without answering.

Whoever fired that shot had struck Hub Wheaton high in the back and near the right side of his body, the side that had been closer to Parker Travis. That was what stuck in Parker’s mind as he kept his vigil beside the unconscious lawman in Wheaton’s upstairs hotel room.

“He’s a lawman,” the wispy, dour, and meticulous little old doctor said. “Those are the chances you take.”

“No,” said Parker, turning from the window to look over where the medical man was working with a basin of pink water beside him. “No. That bullet was meant for me…not him.”

The doctor peered over his spectacles at this statement. He looked knowing. “In that case,” he said, showing no surprise, “your bushwhacker wasn’t too good a shot.”

“It was pretty dark…there were a lot of shadows, a lot of moving men in front of Fleharty’s place when he fired.” Parker strolled over to stand opposite the doctor, watching him work.

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough to keep him down for a spell.” The doctor, whose name was Albigence Spence, was an old man. When he had come to manhood, guns were called muskets and bullets were called musket balls. He had never bothered to keep abreast of changes like this, so now he said: “Musket balls do
strange things, sometimes. Now you take this one. By rights, when it struck Hubbell, it should have gone straight through, because it was flying straight when it hit him. If it’d done that, you see, it’d have exited through his right lung, busted one, maybe two ribs, and gone on.”

“Didn’t it?”

“No, sir. It got deflected by the gristle underneath Hub’s shoulder blade and went skitterin’ off on a right angle and busted out five inches below the armpit. It tore through a section of the lung, but a small section, and, what’s most unusual, it passed out between two ribs without breaking either of them.” Spence straightened up, dipped both hands into the pink water, wiped them, and put a critical gaze downward at his handiwork. “He’s hemorrhaging in the lungs…you can hear it in his breathing and the shock will keep him unconscious a while longer, but, unless he catches cold…damned unlikely this time of year…or gets jostled around, he’ll probably make it. Anyway, I’ve done all for him I can do for now.” The old man rolled both sleeves down, took up his shapeless coat, and shrugged into it. “I’ll look in on him from time to time.” He considered Parker. “You going to sit with him?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. When he comes around, if he wants water, let him have it. But he’s not to move. Not so much as his little finger, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“See you later.”

Parker drew a chair up, sank down on it, looked at the flushed, slack face of Hub Wheaton, then turned to watch dawn come over the land.

Later, he called downstairs for coffee and resumed his quiet vigil. He wasn’t particularly tired but he felt drained by the night’s ordeals, bowed down in spirit, troubled in thought, depressed. When the coffee came, he drank two cups of it, felt better, and had a smoke. When restlessness came, he found the sheriff’s razor and shaved. Afterward, still restless, he also shaved Hubbell Wheaton. By then that creeping yellow brilliance was coming over the land, the air was turning breathless again, and suddenly Hub reached up, pushing at the blankets over him. But it was an instinctive thing; he was still out of his head.

Parker stripped all but the sheet off Wheaton. He wiped perspiration off him, and, when he seemed especially feverish, he kept wet, cool rags on him.

It was nearly ten o’clock when Lew and Amy Morgan came into the room. Parker looked over where they halted in the doorway. Amy crossed to the bedside and gazed down. Her steely eyes were dark with feeling as she gazed upon Wheaton.

“Have you any idea who did it?” Lew asked.

Parker had an idea, had had it for several hours now. He looked unblinkingly at Lew. “Who told you?” he asked.

Amy, speaking ahead of her uncle, seemed to be probing Parker for what he really thought. “One of the men…he heard it in town.”

Parker looked down. “It’s too bad he’s still out. I’m sure he’d like to know you rode in.”

“That’s not the only reason we came,” said Amy, still staring at Travis. “We were coming anyway. To warn you.”

“Warn me…against what?”

“Charley Swindin.”

“Yes,” spoke up Lew. “He hasn’t gone. At least, I don’t believe he has.”

“You have him at the ranch still?”

“No. You were right last night. I told Charley to run for it. Only he evidently didn’t run far.”

“What d’you mean?”

“The thoroughbred horse is gone. So is Charley’s saddle and most of his outfit. But he didn’t take his bedroll or razor.”

Parker, conscious of Amy’s stare, muttered: “I see.” He looked at the lovely girl, then back to her uncle again. “I had a hunch it was Swindin. Wheaton hasn’t been sheriff long enough to make that kind of an enemy. But even if he had…that bullet wasn’t meant for him…it was meant for me.” Parker walked to the window, looked downward into the busy roadway, stood that way a while, then twisted to say: “You two stay with Wheaton for a while.” He took up his hat and started toward the door. “I’ll be back after a while.”

Amy said: “Parker…” She had never before used his first name. “Parker…let my uncle and some of the townsmen go along.”

From the door Parker shook his head. “Swindin’s only one man, too,” he said, and passed out of the room. He didn’t hear Lew say softly: “I’m not so sure of that.”

Amy looked quickly at her uncle. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Charley has friends. There are those six riders from west of town, for example. They are hard men. They’re the kind that likes trouble. Their own trouble or anyone else’s trouble.”

“Then go with him. Please, Lew.”

Morgan’s head came slowly around. He put a
widening glance at his niece. He said nothing, but he stood there running a brand new idea through his mind. Then he put his hat on firmly and cast a final look at Hub Wheaton.

“You sure you can care for him?” he asked Amy without looking at her.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Morgan frowned downward, but obviously he was not thinking of Wheaton now. “Amy…,” he murmured, but did not finish it. They looked long at one another; something came out of her and passed over to him. He barely nodded as he turned and went across the room. At the door, with the knob in one hand, he looked back. “Are you sure?” he asked as though they had discussed what was in his mind. “Plumb sure, Amy?”

“I’m certain, Lew. I was certain after I first met him up in the mountains.” Her eyes darkened with this admission, turned misty, and something very close to sadness came out of her in a warm wave. “Please don’t let anything happen to him.”

“Sure not,” muttered Morgan, and left the room.

Outside, the heat was piling up, but there was something different in the air, too, something Johnny Fleharty didn’t understand, and therefore didn’t like. He wasn’t sure what this was, but for one thing Laramie wasn’t as noisy as it usually was each early day.

He put the glass aside, fished in the oily water for another glass, and scowled fiercely. Sure it was too early for most men, but this time almost every day, since he’d opened the Great Northern, there’d been four or five town loafers drifting in for ale, a beer, or a slug of raw rye whiskey.

Johnny could think of only one reason why he was being avoided this morning, and that was the one thing he wanted to keep as his own dark secret. He finished the second glass, turned to place it face down upon the backbar, and over his shoulder he saw in the backbar mirror a tall, sun-blackened man move in out of the hurting heat, and Johnny froze like that, not turning around at all until that big man flicked him a look, then walked across to the bar, hooked both elbows there, and waited. Then Johnny turned. “Ale?” he weakly said.

Parker shook his head, saying nothing and staring.

“Another scorcher,” said Johnny, feeling in the bucket for a glass. “Sometimes it rains, though, in midsummer.”

Parker’s gaze never wavered, neither did he move or speak. “Too bad about Hub, isn’t it?” Parker finally said.

Johnny polished the glass and inspected it very closely. “Sure is,” he replied huskily.

“I sat up with him all night.”

“How is he?”

“I sat up with him all night…thinking.”

Johnny stopped polishing the glass. He forced himself to look at Travis.

“Something sort of like a riddle kept bothering me, Fleharty. You see, Lew Morgan told me he’d warned Swindin to leave the country. Now, that was yesterday, so Swindin had lots of time to put fifty miles under his horse. By this morning, on that thoroughbred of my brother’s, maybe seventy-five miles.”

“He was quite a horse,” murmured Johnny. “Not many real blood bays around.”

Parker went on again as though Johnny hadn’t spoken. “What kept bothering me last night was why Swindin didn’t do that, why he didn’t leave the Laramie Plains country.”

“Didn’t he?” asked Johnny, and walked right into Parker’s little trap.

“Why, no, he didn’t. Instead, he took a shot at me from the darkness last night, missed me, an’ downed Hub Wheaton. And, Fleharty, you knew he was going to try that.”

The polished glass slipped, struck the floor, and flew into a many slivers. Johnny didn’t even look down at it. “Me? I knew it? How did I know it? I haven’t seen Charley since…”

“I’ll tell you, Fleharty. I just came from the livery barn. Swindin didn’t put my brother’s thoroughbred up, over there, last night.”

“Well, hell, cowboys don’t very often…”

“The horse wasn’t at any of the hitch racks, either. I know that, because I hand-raised that horse down in Arizona. If he’d been tied anywhere along the road, I’d have noticed him last night when Hub and I were walking up this way. Fleharty, we walked the full length of the road, we saw every animal…the thoroughbred wasn’t among them.”

“That don’t mean I knew anything, Mister Travis.”

Parker was briefly silent while he and Johnny exchanged a long look. Ultimately he said: “Lew and Amy Morgan are up with Hub. I talked with them before I went out to do a little checkin’ around town. They told me Swindin wasn’t at Lincoln Ranch, but that he hadn’t left the country, either.”

“What does that prove?”

“Like I said, I’ve been doing a little checkin’ around. Fleharty, do you know what Swindin did?
He knew that blood bay would be recognized by half the men in Laramie. That’s why he didn’t tie him along the road or leave him over at the barn. He tied him out back of your saloon.”

Johnny’s jaw muscles quivered. He seemed close to fainting dead away.

“Four different townsmen told me this morning they saw him tied back there.”

“Yes, but lots of fellers tie horses back there, Mister Travis. If a feller’s ridin’ a stud horse and dassn’t hitch him where there are other horses…”

“Sure,” interrupted Parker quietly. “Sure, but my brother’s blood bay isn’t a stallion.”

“I know that. But I didn’t…”

“Let me finish, Fleharty. Two of those four men who saw Swindin and the blood bay saw something else. Would you like me to tell you what that was?”

Johnny was near the absolute limit of his endurance in this. He formed words and moved his lips but no sound came out. “They saw you and Charley Swindin standing in the dark out there, talking.”

“That’s not true,” Johnny whispered.

Parker pushed up off the bar. He said quietly: “You’re a damned liar.”

Johnny put his hands on the bar top and hung there. He saw death in another man’s face; it was aimed at him. He made an animal sound in his throat.

“Fleharty, you’re going to tell me where Swindin is.”

“I don’t know. I peeked out last night after he shot Hub by mistake. His horse was gone an’ so was he.”

“Where would he go?”

“Hones’ to God, I don’t know. Maybe he run out. I don’t know.”

Parker shook his head. “No, Swindin didn’t run. He had a much better chance to run yesterday. He didn’t do it then. I don’t think he’s doing it now.”

“Mister Travis, as God’s my witness…”

“Fleharty, you know why he wouldn’t leave the Laramie Plains. You talked to him last night. Now I want you to tell me why he hasn’t left the country.”

Johnny’s knuckles were white upon the bar top. He was terribly afraid, yet he found a sliver of courage. It was born of desperation. He eased one hand off the bar and put it down out of sight where a sawed-off shotgun lay.

Parker’s hand dipped and lifted. The cocking mechanism of a six-gun made its sharp, lethal little sound in the hush. Fleharty brought his hidden hand up and placed it beside the other hand again, in plain sight. He stared as though hypnotized at the black gun barrel, at the tightening finger upon the trigger.

“I’ll tell you,” he whispered. “I’ll tell you all of it.”