The Plains of Laramie (14 page)

He was not entirely sure what he had, but he’d thought, when first those two range riders had walked their mounts past the jailhouse, that they were not just ordinary hands, and that they hadn’t just happened to ride into Laramie this particular day and this particular time.

Behind him on both sides of the plank walk, as he stepped with his prisoners into the hot shade in front of the jailhouse, men were easing quietly out of stores, armed and silent and solemn-faced. Two of those other cowboys turned abruptly and went toward a saloon. The other two then did the same thing, acting indifferent, acting completely unconcerned.

Amy wasn’t still in Wheaton’s office when Parker entered, but Lew Morgan was there. He was taking a riot gun off the wall with his back to the door when Parker entered with his prisoners. Lew turned, looked at the prisoners, finished bringing down the shotgun, then walked across the room.

“Who are they?” he asked, indicating the man with the broken wrist and his swarthy companion.

Instead of a direct reply, Parker leaned on the closed door, holstered his weapon, and said: “When Fleharty told me Swindin offered him five thousand dollars for helping, it occurred to me that your foreman would make the same offer elsewhere. That’s why I left Wheaton’s room with Johnny when I did. It didn’t seem likely Swindin could recruit gun hands among Laramie’s townsmen, so he’d have to do it among the cowboys. I wanted to be over here where I could see any riders coming into town.” Parker jutted his chin at his prisoners. “These two rode past a little while ago. They tied up outside Fleharty’s saloon. I wasn’t sure about them, but they looked capable of murder for five thousand dollars. Then the dark one there, when I mentioned your foreman’s name, showed by his expression that he knew Swindin, that he and his pardner hadn’t just happened into Laramie this morning.” Parker looked wryly at Morgan. “I almost made a fatal mistake, though. There are six of them, not two. Just now out in the
roadway four more showed up. If it hadn’t been for Todhunter, they’d probably have nailed my hide to a wall.”

Lew pushed his hat far back, turned, and viewed the sullen prisoners. “I’ve seen them before. I think they’re itinerant cowhands like Ace McElhaney was.”

“Well,” said Parker, “the tough one there needs a doctor. Would you find him and fetch him down here while I’m watching them?”

“Sure, be glad to.”

“And, Mister Morgan…leave the shotgun here. Those other four don’t know you’re in this, too. The shotgun might convince ’em otherwise.”

Lew obediently put aside the scatter-gun, stepped around Parker, and walked out of the office.

The raffish cowboy went to the bucket, took a long drink, ignored his partner, and said to Parker: “You got this all wrong, Sheriff. All wrong. We didn’t know them four fellers out in the roadway.”

Parker shot this man a withering look, motioned the injured man to a chair, watched him obey, then removed his hat, tossed it aside, and said: “The only talk I want out of you, mister, is the place where Swindin is holed up.”

“Who is Swindin?” asked his prisoner, looking falsely innocent. “Do you know anyone named Swindin, Buck?”

But the other cowboy, the one addressed as Buck, was too engrossed with his pain to answer this. Instead he sat there looking extremely uncomfortable, saying nothing and getting steadily paler down around the mouth.

“How did Swindin get word to you boys to come help him?” asked Parker.

The raffish man said again: “Who’s Swindin?”

“How much did he offer you?”

“What? Sheriff, you’re way off on…”

Parker could move extremely fast for a large man. He caught that swarthy man by the shirt front, carrying him violently back until they crashed together into the office wall. Impact made the shorter man’s breath burst out of him; his sly, poised expression slipped badly to be replaced by a look of pure astonishment and consternation. He braced himself against the solid weight of Parker Travis.

“Let me tell you something, mister,” said Parker in a voice both low and lethal. “This isn’t a game we’re playing. Swindin killed my brother. I want him for that. You keep on playing games with me and I’ll start the killing by breaking your dirty neck!”

From his chair the other cowboy said thinly, “I wish I had use of both my hands, damn you, Travis. Any killin’…I’d do.” But he made no move to arise, to go to the aid of his friend.

Parker loosened his hold on the dark man. He turned and said to the man with the broken wrist: “You knew me, didn’t you? That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”

The gaunt man ignored this; his hanging wrist was enormously swollen now and turning purple. Dried blood lay caked where the flesh was lacerated. His eyes were glazed with intense suffering.

Parker swung back to the shorter man. His grip tightened, making breathing difficult. “Talk,” he ordered. “Talk or I’ll break both your wrists, too!”

The raffish man was gasping. He shifted and writhed, seeking freedom from that powerful grip. It got even tighter and his breathing nearly stopped.
His eyes popped; he tried to say something. Parker let go and stepped back. The prisoner rattled along the wall southward, gasping for air and fighting to remain upright.

“Talk, damn you!”

“All right. All right, I’ll talk. Lemme catch my…air.”

From the chair the man called Buck looked daggers, but he said nothing. He wasn’t certain Travis wouldn’t turn on him next, and he wasn’t up to absorbing additional punishment. When the swarthy man began to speak, though, he kept glaring over at him. The dark man either ignored this or wasn’t conscious of it. He spoke anyway.

“I was in town last night. I was drinkin’ in there when Swindin took that shot at you and hit the sheriff by mistake. Johnny said afterward Swindin would give Buck an’ me, an’ some other fellers we run with, two thousand in gold, each of us, if we’d meet Swindin in town this mornin’ and help him kill you…then get out of Laramie.” The dark man put a thick hand to his gullet, massaging it. He looked over at Buck, saw the fire points in his partner’s stare, and said imploringly to him: “It’s no use, Buck. At least this way we’ll come out with a whole skin. We’ll never get the two thousand dollars now anyway. You seen them townsmen come out of their lousy stores with guns. Hell, there must’ve been fifty of ’em.” Those two exchanged a long look at one another, neither of them speaking. Finally the gaunt man dropped his head, scowled at the floor, and spoke through gritted teeth.

“All the same it goes against the grain, turnin’ tail like this.” The sullen way he spoke these words was equivalent to agreeing with the swarthy man.
Then he said: “All right, just get us out of this, Texas. My arm’s killin’ me.”

Parker let them complete this exchange but kept looking at the swarthy cowboy. The dark man read that silence correctly; he also read the compressed lips correctly. He moved off the wall, went along to a bench, and sank down there. He was beginning to speak when the roadside door opened, Lew Morgan and Doc Spence walked in, and for a while Parker ignored the uninjured member of his captive pair.

Old Doc Spence cocked an astringent eye at Parker. “Wherever you are, someone’s hurt.” He went toward the wounded cowboy muttering: “It’d pay Laramie to take a collection and buy you a stage ticket to Idaho maybe…or Alaska.” He looked at the broken wrist, reached for it, and its rough-looking owner pulled it quickly away. “Look here,” said the medical man severely, “if you’re that big a coward, you’ve got no right to wear that gun.”

The injured man gave him a hating look, put his arm out gingerly, and locked his jaws.

Spence went to work, mumbling under his breath. Lew Morgan flung perspiration off his chin. As he did this, Parker told him what the dark man called Texas had said thus far.

Morgan nodded, seemingly unperturbed by this. “Les Todhunter, Mike Pierson, and some of the townsmen have already spoken to those other four cowboys.”

Parker looked blank. “Spoken to them…?”

“Well, maybe a little more than just spoken to them, Parker. They brought them all together at Pierson’s store, took their guns away, sent for their horses, gave ’em a choice, then escorted them out of town.”

“What kind of a choice?”

“Well, Todhunter’s quite a joker. He offered to let them keep their guns an’ rake the roadway from the north end of town to the south end, with fifty armed men bossing the job, or mounting up and riding clean out of the country.”

Morgan grinned crookedly and started over to the water bucket. Over his shoulder he said: “Like I told you, Todhunter has quite a sense of humor.”

Parker saw the swarthy prisoner watching him, so he turned toward him. “I guess that breaks up your party. It’s just you and your friend, Buck, now.”

The dark man glumly nodded. He watched Doc Spence working on his companion for a moment, then said: “Well, hell, you don’t really miss two thousand dollars you never had, anyway.” He slumped back against the office wall with sweat darkening his shirt.

Lew finished drinking, went over to watch the doctor. Parker remained by the desk and asked the only question he still had no answer to.

“Where were you six men supposed to meet Swindin?”

Texas didn’t look away from watching Spence. “Only me ’n’ Buck were to meet him. Them friends of ours were supposed to loaf out along the roadway to make certain you nor anyone else got in Swindin’s way.”

Parker frowned a little. “All I want is the location of Swindin’s hiding place. That other stuff will keep.”

Now the dark man raised his eyes. There was a long second of total silence; every eye in the room was upon him.

“He’s hidin’ in Johnny Fleharty’s cellar under the saloon.”

Lew Morgan got red and his neck swelled. “What!” he bellowed. “Are you telling us Fleharty hid him…Fleharty knew where he was all this time?”

“Yes, sir,” responded the swarthy cowboy, cringing back against the wall from Morgan’s violent wrath. “Yes, sir, he knew. He
had
to know…otherwise he couldn’t have told me last night where to meet Swindin when we rode into town today.”

Morgan swung around, but Parker, already in motion, beat him to the cell-block door by inches. “Hold it,” he ordered. “Morgan, calm down.”

“Calm down!” raged the wrathful cattleman. “Dammit, Travis, do you realize Fleharty knew all the time where Swindin was? Don’t you realize he made fools of all of us, getting even you to believe him up in Hub’s room? Why, I believe he was trying to get you killed. By God, that miserable little…!”

“He’ll talk,” said Parker, opening the door behind him. “He’ll talk plenty when the time comes, Morgan.”

“When the time comes? Dammit, the time’s right now!”

“No, it isn’t. Fleharty’s not going any place. Neither are these other two. We’ll get all the facts out of them later. Right now the important thing isn’t Fleharty…it’s Charley Swindin.”

Parker turned away to beckon the swarthy man over. Next he said: “Doc, you’ve set the thing as well as you can for now. You can have another crack at it when some of the swelling’s gone down. Now move back.” Spence obeyed. Parker jerked his head at the wounded man. “You, too, come over here.”

He herded the two men into the room where
Sheriff Wheaton’s cells were, ignored Johnny Fleharty completely, gave both prisoners an ungentle shove into the same cage, clanged the door closed, locked it, and turned away. Lew Morgan, standing back by the door, was glaring at Fleharty, who was in turn looking in a bewildered way at the massively bandaged hand of Buck, at Buck’s dark companion, then to Parker. None of them said a single word.

At the door Parker gave Morgan a little rough push back into the office, barred the cell-block’s intervening door, and walked thoughtfully over to hang Hub Wheaton’s ring of keys back on its peg.

“Thanks,” he said to Doc Spence. “Don’t leave town for a while. Maybe you’ll have some more business.”

Spence closed his black bag, made a sniffing sound, glowered, then strode out of the office.

“You coming along?” Travis asked Morgan, and the cowman vigorously nodded, scooped up the riot gun, and was ready. “How do you want to work it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how you get into Fleharty’s cellar.”

“I know where the outside door is,” retorted Morgan. “I’ve never been down there, but you can’t spend your life in a town no larger than this one is and not notice just about everything around worth noticing.”

“What’s worth noticing about a cellar door, Morgan?”

“It’s easy to see you’re not a native of Wyoming, Travis. In a cloudburst, a blizzard, or a Laramie Plains twister, a cellar door can be the difference between surviving and dying.”

Parker smiled. “Excuse me. Down in Arizona we
welcome cloudbursts and we don’t have twisters. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

They left the sheriff’s office for the corrugated heat waves that were moving in gentle waves in the yonder roadway. Walking side-by-side through this writhing heat, Lew Morgan said: “I hope to hell there’s no roadside window to that cellar. Swindin’ll see us coming if there is.”

They’d walked 100 feet when Morgan said this. Parker, squinting ahead through sun blast, was unconcerned. “There isn’t,” he said. “If there had been, he’d have shot me two hours ago. I gave him every chance then.”

Fleharty’s Great Northern Saloon was an old building; old-timers on the Laramie Plains recalled it as having been a log fort, a trading post, and later a military stockade. There was the barroom, which was long, and two smaller rooms off the bar-room, one at each end of the bar itself. Johnny had used the northernmost of these rooms as a combination storeroom and office. The southerly room had a bed and dresser in it; sometimes Fleharty stayed in that room, and, being a bachelor, it was sufficient for his needs.

The cellar beneath the Great Northern had originally been excavated by troopers when the Indian troubles were at their height upon the plains, and several regiments had been billeted at old Fort Laramie. Neither Parker Travis nor Lew Morgan knew the size of that cellar.

When they came to the saloon, they paused outside, looking along the easterly wall. Large old fir logs lay close to the ground here. There was no cement foundation under Fleharty’s saloon, or for that matter under any other building in Laramie that had been erected at the same time as the saloon.

After studying this condition for a while, Parker said: “If there’s a hole under this building, it was dug long after the saloon was put up.”

Morgan said that this was so; he said other cellars
under other old structures in Laramie had been dug the same way.

They moved carefully along that east wall. Behind Fleharty’s place was a refuse-laden alleyway running north and south, from the upper beginning of town to the southward limits. Morgan touched Parker’s arm and pointed over where a slanting, weathered door lay low against the ground.

“That’s it,” he murmured. “All we have to do is walk over, throw back that door, and…” Morgan looked up sardonically. “All hell will bust loose.”

A man appeared up the alley northward. He stepped out, stared, then stepped back beyond sight again. Parker saw the man and looked inquiringly around. Morgan, who had also seen him, said indifferently, his gaze going back to that cellar door: “Mike Pierson. There’s bound to be others. In fact, I rather imagine every man who backed you against those four cowboys will be around here somewhere.”

Parker nodded. “With guns,” he dryly said, also returning his gaze to the door. “Tell me something, Morgan. Just how good is Swindin with guns?”

“He’s good. There are faster men, but he’s accurate.” Morgan shrugged. “He’ll probably have a Winchester down there with him. We can hope he doesn’t have a shotgun. If he has, and if he gets a chance to use it, no two men alive could go into the cellar and come out walkin’ upright.”

Parker started onward. When Morgan came up even, he said: “If that damned door is our only way in, we’ve got a real problem.”

“There’s another way down. Inside the saloon behind the bar is a trapdoor. But it goes down a ladder, I’ve heard, and you know what that means. The
second anyone opens that trapdoor and pokes his shanks downward, Swindin blows them to kingdom come.”

They made a quiet circuit of the saloon and ended up back where they’d originally stood, looking at the door. Morgan wagged his head. “Rush him,” he growled. “Rush him or starve him out. That’s all I can see to do.”

Parker made no comment. He walked over a little closer to the building, leaned on Fleharty’s water pump there, and furrowed his brow. Behind him, back where Lew Morgan stood, several townsmen silently drifted up. Parker could hear them speaking in a hushed manner to Lew. The entire atmosphere around Fleharty’s saloon was quiet. It reminded him how men acted down in Arizona when they were stalking a rattlesnake den. They tiptoed to avoid alerting the rattlers by footfall reverberations. They spoke in whispers. They looked constantly about them on the ground.

Unexpectedly, out of this very similarity, came the answer to Parker’s riddle. Rattlesnakes in Arizona, especially during the fierce summers, had a habit of slithering into towns, into cool garden patches, under houses and sheds and woodpiles, seeking relief from the murderous heat. Arizonans, for generations accepting the summertime invasion of these deadly reptiles, had long since learned the folly of poking around with sticks, of trying patiently to wait out snakes that could slumber for days on end when they had a stomach full of baby birds or mice. Trial and error had long since provided them with a never failing method of getting the snakes out where they could be killed.

This method occurred to Parker now, as he stood
there, considering Swindin’s dark, cool den under Fleharty’s building. He twisted, beckoned to Lew and the townsmen standing back there with him. Morgan and the others walked softly forward.

Lew searched Parker’s face. “You’ve got it, haven’t you?” he asked, when he halted beside the pump.

“Maybe. I hope so.” Parker ran his gaze over the half dozen heavily armed inert behind Morgan. “You fellers mind sweating a little?” he asked. The silent townsmen, understanding none of this, nevertheless shook their heads. One of them, an older man, short and squatty and wearing a miner’s flat-heeled boots and suspenders, looked suddenly pleased, as though he’d perceived Parker’s attention.

“Dig him out,” this man said triumphantly.

Parker shook his head. He considered those solemn, waiting faces. “We’ll need more men, though, maybe twenty, thirty more. This won’t be hard work with that many. They can spell one another off.”

Lew Morgan said: “What won’t be hard work?”

Parker laid a big hand upon the handle of Fleharty’s pump. He partially lifted that handle and pushed it down. A trickle of well water ran over the spout and fell upon the hard earth. Lew looked at that water; the others also looked at it. Some seemed more mystified than ever, but not Lew Morgan.

“I’ll be damned,” he croaked, then at once began to scowl. “Like you said, though, it’ll take a lot of work.”

Parker nodded. To those mystified men he said: “Drown him out. Push a hose down under that door and flood him out. Pump in relays.”

An old man with a long-barreled rifle turned this over in his mind as he stood there calmly chewing
a cud of tobacco. He looked at the cellar door, spat, and said: “Mister, that there the cellar’s six feet deep an’ near twenty feet long. It’ll take a heap o’ pumpin’ to flood it.”

Another man agreed with this, but he also said: “How else do we get him out o’ there? Danged if I got much stomach for rushin’ over there, flingin’ that door back, and chargin’ down in there.”

A third man said: “Are you boys plumb certain Swindin’s really down in there?”

Parker nodded at this man. “He’s down there, all right. Unless I miss my guess, your express company’s twelve thousand dollars in gold is down there with him, too.”

“Well,” exclaimed a big, hard-eyed bearded man, “what we standin’ around here for? Let’s go fetch some hoses and get to pumpin’.”

“Bring more than one hose,” Lew Morgan directed. “As soon as that water starts gushing in there, Swindin’ll figure what we’re trying to do. He’ll plug the hoses if he can, or cut them off. He’ll do whatever he can, you can bet money on that.”

The short, burly miner spoke up now, warming to the plan. “He’s only one man, ain’t he? All right, we’ll fix a hose to the pump next door, too. There’s another pump south o’ us behind the general store. Relays o’ men workin’ each of those pumps, and extra hoses, so as fast as Swindin plugs one hose, we can shove another one into the cellar, and…” The old miner made a gold-toothed, triumphant smile and said no more, but beamed upon his crowding-up companions. Everyone understood. Some of the men started away. Parker called to them to bring back more men. He then turned and looked at Lew Morgan, waiting.

Morgan pursed his lips. He swiped sweat off his face with a shirt sleeve. He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “It might work. I never saw it done before, but it might work. One thing. Charley’s going to be the coolest of the lot of us, down there.”

“Yeah, especially when the water gets up around his ears.”

“That’ll take all night.”

“Which is better…working all night and being alive in the morning, or trying to rush him down there?”

Morgan sighed, saying: “Yeah.” He would have said more but Todhunter and Pierson came swinging up. They asked if what they’d heard about drowning Swindin out was true. Parker said that it was. Mike Pierson made a thin smile.

“It’s probably better than my idea to make a dynamite bomb an’ blow him out of there.”

“It is,” Parker stated. “Your town is tinder dry. A bomb would fire the saloon and probably burn your whole town down. I don’t think your townsmen would care for that.”

Les Todhunter turned as men began arriving with coiled lengths of miners’ hose. On the far side of the saloon other men also came up. These were under the vociferous direction of a short, burly miner who flagged peremptorily with his arms and called brisk orders.

A third group of townsmen came along from southward, down the alleyway. These men cut through debris to the pump behind the adjoining building, which was a general store, and set to work laying hose toward Fleharty’s saloon and affixing an end to the nearby pump.

Parker, noting the numbers of men coming back
from Laramie’s front roadway, was agreeably surprised. There were many more willing to work the pumps than there had been out in the roadway with guns when he’d earlier brought those two tough cowboys away from in front of this same saloon.

Lew Morgan, moving aside as men shouldered up to the pump, read Travis’s expression correctly. He smiled and said: “Guns are one thing, drowning out a rat is another.”

He and Parker joined Todhunter and Pierson back out of the way. Pierson was scowling. “They’re making enough noise to wake the dead. Swindin’ll hear ’em sure.”

After seeing the work completed at the pumps, the mobs of men standing ready, Parker said: “Pierson, you and Todhunter know which of your men are the best shots. Have them watch that cellar door like hawks. It’s going to occur to Swindin that, if he can get a gun barrel poked out of there, he can shoot a pumper or two and discourage the others.”

Pierson and Todhunter departed at once to pass this warning along and also to detail riflemen as sentinels. Parker looked around. The only thing now to be done was go forward and push those hoses into the cellar. He twisted, saw Morgan watching him, pointed without speaking to the southward hose, which cautious townsmen had carried within fifty feet of the door, and Lew Morgan moved off without speaking.

Parker made a wide circuit, coming down on the northward crowd of suddenly silent men who had also gone as far with their hose laying as prudence permitted. He picked up the hose end, said—“Pay it out as I go forward.”—and moved unerringly toward that innocent-looking, weather-checked door.
Across from him Lew Morgan, hatless now, his shock of gray hair nearly white in the burning sun, was also moving up. The third hose had been taken over by Todhunter and Pierson. All around those three rear pumps men stood like stone, guns ready, faces strained, scarcely breathing. The overhead sun was a little off center, making a thin, weak length of shadow along the back wall of Fleharty’s saloon. Otherwise, everyone in that rear area was pitilessly exposed, particularly Parker Travis, Lew Morgan, and those two furiously sweating town councilmen.