The Plains of Laramie

by Lauran Paine

  “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.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Doc Spence was with Hub Wheaton. Lew and Amy Morgan were still there. Two men, who Parker did not know, were standing silently glum and awkward at the bedside, too. The little room seemed crowded. It seemed funereal because none of those people was talking or moving when Parker opened the door, pushed Johnny Fleharty in ahead of him, then closed the door.

  Morgan said: “Where were you? I looked…”

  “I was in Fleharty’s bar,” replied Parker. He gave Johnny another shove, harder this time so that Fleharty stumbled onward and kept himself from falling only by nimble footwork.

  “I was having a heart-to-heart talk with Mister Fleharty.”

  Lew’s brows drew inward and downward. He looked in a puzzled way from Parker to Johnny and back again. “I don’t understand,” he murmured.

  “You will, Morgan. You will.” Parker looked at the other men over by the bed. “Who are they?” he asked.

  “One is Mike Pierson, the other one is Les Todhunter. They’re members of the town council.”

  Both councilmen nodded. Parker ignored that. He stood there in the center of the room considering both Pierson and Todhunter. Finally he said: “You need a temporary replacement for Sheriff Wheaton.” He made a statement of it.

  The two men nodded again, still without speaking.

  “I’ll take the job without pay,” said Parker. “All right?”

  The councilmen looked at one another. They looked over at Lew Morgan. But it was Albigence Spence who spoke up. He was peering about over his spectacles, his ancient, rheumy, shrewd old eyes bright and bold. “You could do a heap worse.”

  He chuckled. “You’re always worrying about saving money…that ought to make your minds up for you, if nothing else can.”

  Todhunter cleared his throat. “All right, Mister Travis. You’re sheriff of the county until Hub is back on his feet again.”

  “Then,” said Parker, “Mister Fleharty here is my first arrest.” Johnny put an anguished look roundabout. His lips lay slackly and his face was gray. He looked at Hub Wheaton and looked swiftly away. Parker put forth a hand, let it lightly lie upon Fleharty’s shoulder. “Tell them, Johnny. Tell them what you told me down at your saloon.”

  Six sets of inquiring eyes swung to bear. Johnny hesitated, and Parker’s gentle hold upon his shoulder tightened, tightened until Fleharty squirmed under it.

  “Tell them, Johnny.”

  “Let go,” Fleharty gasped. “Please let go.”

  Parker removed his hand. He was standing behind his prisoner, looming large behind the lesser man. Across the room Amy was staring at Parker. Then Fleharty spoke up.

  “It was Charley robbed the express office.”

  Fleharty paused after saying that. There was a congealed hush broken only by the sharp intake of Lew Morgan’s breath.

  “He got the twelve thousand dollars. He had it planned so’s he wouldn’t make a run for it at all. Then Ken Wheaton got up that posse and went racin’ out, lookin’ for lone horsemen on the plains, and that feller, Frank Travis, took it from there. You all know what happened after that. Young Travis an’ Ken got killed, an’ everyone figured
young Travis was the robber…except for that three thousand dollars. Then along come this other Travis, an’ everyone got all upset over again. Charley said, if he’d tried, he couldn’t have planned it any better’n that.”

  Amy spoke up: “He said…explain what you mean by that. Did Swindin tell you that?”

  “Yes’m, he told me that.”

  “Then you were in on it?”

  Johnny put an imploring look around. “No’m. Not at first, I wasn’t. Not until last night. Charley hid the money here in town.”

  “Ahhh,” said Lew Morgan, “I’m beginning to understand something now. That’s why Charley wouldn’t leave the country. He had to get his cache first. Is that it, Fleharty?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s it. Last night he come to my saloon.” Johnny’s voice turned bitter and accusing now. “He was riding that damned blood bay horse. Hell, everyone knew that cussed animal. It was a foolish thing he done, an’ I told him so. He said it wasn’t foolish, said he wanted the fastest horse in the country under him after he killed the other Travis, got his money, and left the country.”

  “It was Swindin who shot Hub?” exclaimed Amy.

  Parker nodded over at her from behind Fleharty.

  Johnny said: “Yes’m, it was your foreman. I told him it was crazy. I told him to forget Travis and get out of the country while he could.”

  “That,” said Councilman Pierson dryly, “was real solicitous of you, Johnny, wantin’ to save a man’s life like that. Only you wanted to save the wrong life, didn’t you?”

  “Listen, Mister Pierson,” whined Fleharty, “I was scairt stiff. I didn’t want no…”

  “Never mind that,” growled Lew Morgan, his gaze deadly and his powerful shoulders hunched forward as though to spring. “Why didn’t you go find Hub and Travis and warn them?”

  “Mister Morgan, I didn’t dare. I was scairt an’ confused. Charley was out there in the night with his Winchester. I know him, Mister Morgan. He’d as soon shoot me as Travis here, if I tried anything.”

  From behind him Parker said mildly: “Come on now, Johnny. Tell it the way it really happened. Tell it the way you told it to me with my cocked gun on you.”

  Fleharty put out a hand to the back of a chair. He steadied himself this way. “Charley promised me five thousand in gold if I’d help him.”

  From the bed a weak, unsteady voice said: “How did Charley manage to join my brother’s posse so soon after he robbed the express office?”

  Every head turned; every person in that room looked down at Hub. He was drilling a hole in Johnny Fleharty with his bitter stare. There was perspiration on his upper lip. Doc Spence put a hand upon Hub saying softly: “Easy now, Hub. No excitement for you. Just listen, boy, just listen.”

  Parker jabbed a rigid thumb in Fleharty’s back. It must have felt like a six-gun barrel because Johnny jumped and gushed words, running them all together.

  “He knew Ken would make up a posse. He had his horse tied in back of my saloon just like last night. When the express clerk run out into the roadway hollering that they’d been robbed, Swindin was all set. Just like he figured, Ken called for a posse…Charley mounted up and joined it.”

  Amy was staring hard at Fleharty. She quietly said: “You know where he hid that money, don’t you, Mister Fleharty? You told us just now that he had his horse behind your saloon. You indicated that he ran to his horse immediately after the hold-up. He hid that money somewhere in the vicinity of your saloon, didn’t he?”

  Johnny stepped to the chair he’d been using as a support and oozed down on to it. He bobbed his head up and down at Amy, saying nothing.

  “Well,” exclaimed Lew harshly, “do you know or don’t you know where he hid it?”

  “I know, Mister Morgan.”

  Before anyone else spoke after this revelation, though, Parker said, with a quick, slashing look at Lew and the others: “You’re overlooking something, gentlemen. When Charley Swindin ran my brother down, he knew he was going to commit murder. He did that deliberately and cold-bloodedly. He didn’t know my brother had nine thousand in gold on him, but he did know that, if he killed Frank, the folks hereabouts would be satisfied that my brother was the express office bandit…because dead men tell no tales. That was premeditated murder, deliberately thought out and deliberately executed.”

  When Parker stopped speaking, the room was totally silent. After a while Hub whispered to Doc Spence. The medical man twisted to a chair with Wheaton’s clothing on it, caught up the blood-stiff shift there, unpinned Hub’s badge, and took it gravely over and handed it to Parker.

  Hub said throatily: “Go get him, Park. He’s your second arrest. Get him any way you want to…dead or alive.”

  Parker looked long at Hub before pinning on the nickel star. When he finished doing this, he looked at Hub again. Wheaton made a weak smile and dropped one eyelid. “Dead,” he whispered. “Get him dead, Park. There’s no one else in this room who understands why Swindin should die as well as you do…and as I do.”

  Doc Spence pursed his lips and made a little sound at Wheaton. “No more talk now,” he muttered. “You need rest, boy, and complete silence.”

  Parker caught Johnny Fleharty by the shoulder, lifted him bodily from his chair, and swung him around as a dog might swing a rat.

  “The money!” exclaimed Councilman Todhunter. “Johnny, where did Swindin hide the money?”

  “That’ll keep,” Parker said, speaking ahead of Fleharty. “If he tells you, I’ll have half this greedy damned town in the way.”

  Amy glided out ahead of the others. “In the way of what?” she breathlessly asked, perceiving ahead of the others that Parker had a definite plan in mind. “Parker, what is it?”

  “It’s Swindin, Amy. He’s still in Laramie.”

  Todhunter, Pierson, and Lew Morgan looked surprised at this. Albigence Spence said dryly: “If that’s so, Swindin is a bigger fool than I thought he was.”

  Lew Morgan agreed with this. It was Amy who struck at the point of Parker’s statement. She said simply: “Are you sure of that?”

  Parker nodded his head at Johnny Fleharty. “Tell them,” he directed. “Tell them what you told me.”

  Johnny rolled his eyes; they came to rest upon Travis. Johnny looked like a man who had failed himself and could not bring himself to accept this, like a man who was making excuses to himself about himself. His voice was vibrant with self-pity.

  “Charley’s in town. He’s aimin’ to lie over until nightfall. He won’t risk running for it with Laramie all stirred up over the Wheaton shooting. He told me that. He said, if it was just him, he’d chance it…on the thoroughbred horse…because there’d be only one other horse around that might be able to catch him, an’ he’d like to have it that way. He said he wants one more crack at Travis. But, mainly, he’s afraid the weight of that gold bullion will slow him down. In this heat his weight an’ the weight of all that gold might make it easy for riders to get him. He’s goin’ to wait until dark, then ride out.”

  “And in the meantime…,” Amy asked. “Where is he?”

  Johnny began to look genuinely worried. “That I don’t know. Mister Travis asked me that, too, but I don’t know where he is.” Johnny looked imploringly at all those closed, grim faces. “I’ve told you everything. All of it. I’d tell you where he was if I knew.”

  “Would you?” asked Les Todhunter, looking very doubtful. “Believe me, I would,” Fleharty said with force. “What would I hold out for? I’ve already told you enough to get me killed. A little more wouldn’t make any difference, an’, if I knew where Charley was hidin’ in town, I’d sure tell you now…because, if you don’t get him, he’ll find out what I’ve done an’ he’ll get me.”

  There was the same ring of truthfulness in this as when Fleharty had said the same thing to Parker Travis in his saloon. Parker believed him; the others read this much in his face. They exchanged glances, looking baffled now more than doubting.

  “The bullion,” spoke
up Parker, “was cached under the rear stoop of Fleharty’s saloon. Fleharty told me that and I looked under there before coming up here. It was there, all right, but it’s not there now.”

  Pierson began to scowl. “I thought Fleharty said he knew where the money was!” he exclaimed.

  Parker nodded, placing his big paw upon Johnny’s shoulder again. “That’s exactly right. He knew where it was. Not where it now is.” He gave Johnny a little tug. The two of them went toward the door. None of the others moved until Parker had the door open. Then Amy stepped away from her uncle, crossed over, and said in reply to Parker’s questioning look: “I’ll walk over to the jailhouse with you.” She closed the door gently, leaving her uncle, the doctor, and the town councilmen behind in Hub Wheaton’s room.

  Downstairs, in the hotel lobby, people who had obviously been furtively speaking before these three came down among them turned quiet. They watched Parker herd the saloon owner out into the furious morning heat. Afterward, they slipped to the door and watched Amy, Parker, and Johnny Fleharty step out into the roadway, heading toward Sheriff Wheaton’s sturdy building with the barred windows.

  “That’s Travis,” said a bearded cowman. “Damned if he ain’t wearin’ Hub Wheaton’s star.”

  Another man added to this by saying: “That rumor must have been true. The one about Fleharty being mixed up in Hub’s shooting. I heard it early this morning. I was told by a feller, who seen ’em, that Charley Swindin an’ Fleharty were talkin’ together out behind the saloon last night only a little while before Hub got shot.”

  The bearded cowman growled malevolently: “I know how to take care of fellers like that an’ I don’t need no courtroom, either…just a sixty-foot lariat and a stout tree limb.”

  A thoughtful-looking elderly man said: “You try that, Clint, and you’ll likely wind up stiffer’n a plank. That Travis’s got the look to him of a man who’d be hell on wheels if he got really stirred up.”

  A woman among the onlookers, watching Fleharty being driven along, made a little sniffing sound. “’Pears to me,” she said acidly, “that Amy Morgan’s making a spectacle of herself, walking out there with that man in plain sight and all…like a hussy.”