Laramie had a grand funeral for Sheriff Ken Wheaton, killed by the unknown outlaw with all that money in his saddlebags who had been also killed by Ken Wheaton’s two posse men westward on the Laramie Plains.
The other dead man of that encounter was brought to town under a soiled old canvas in the back of Johnny Fleharty’s buckboard. His name, according to the one letter found upon him, was Frank Travis. Beyond that, there was nothing among his effects to tell the people of Laramie who he was—except that $9,000 in gold in his saddlebags—and that was shy $3,000 of the amount stolen from the Laramie Express Company the day Sheriff Wheaton and his posse had ridden northward seeking the bandit who had robbed the express office in broad daylight.
There was considerable speculation over what this outlaw Travis could have done with the missing $3,000. According to the men of Wheaton’s posse, they had encountered Travis six miles out. He was, they related, riding along as though he hadn’t a worry in the world, and he’d been quite alone.
“If he didn’t pass it to a pardner,” Johnny Fleharty asked across his bar at the Great Northern Saloon, “what
“Buried it most likely,” replied Ace McElhaney, gazing moodily into his partially empty beer glass. “Don’t ask me why he buried it, though.”
“So he’d have a nest egg,” spoke up Charles Swindin of the Lincoln Ranch, east of town. “They do that sometimes, I’ve heard. Cache loot here an’ there so’s, when they’re broke, they got something to dig up an’ use as a stake.”
Johnny Fleharty turned this over in his mind for a moment, drew two more glasses of beer, set one each in front of Charley and Ace, then nodded tacit agreement. “Had to be something like that. He sure didn’t throw it away or we’d have found it out there.”
Ace looked around at Swindin. “Say, how’s that blood bay comin’ along?”
“Comin’ along fine. It was a bad sprain, but he’ll be good as new in another month or two.”
Ace returned to considering his beer. “I’d have bet money that leg was broke. The critter looked like he was done for, too. How’s his wind?”
“It’s sound,” said Charley. “All that big horse needs is lots of rest and he’s goin’ to get it.” Charley lifted his glass, drained it, and put it down in its little pool of stickiness again. “Lew swears that horse is a thoroughbred.”
“Lew knows horses,” stated Fleharty, then brightened. “Lew’s in town today. Did you fellers know that?”
Both Swindin and McElhaney shook their heads.
“He’s after the town council to appoint Hubbell Wheaton to his brother’s job as sheriff.”
This brought no immediate response from either of his listeners, but after a while Ace said: “Hub’s a good man. He’d do all right.”
Swindin agreed indifferently with this. “Yeah, anyway I don’t expect any other robber’ll be anxious to come bustin’ in here after what happened to Travis.”
“Nobody ever told me,” said Fleharty, looking from Swindin to McElhaney. “Just which one of you fired the shot that got him, out there?”
Ace straightened up off the bar. He was a big man with a coarse face, heavy shoulders, and a slash of a mouth. He ran pale eyes over the quiet room where card players whiled away the afternoon hours content to do anything that kept them in out of the sun, and he said: “Who knows, Johnny? He took two slugs. Doc Spence says either of ’em would have killed him.”
Lank Charley nodded over this, pushed his empty glass away, ran a sleeve across chapped lips, and mightily yawned. “I got the blood bay,” he said. “I figure I got well paid.”
Big Ace put his heavy-lidded look around. “You’ll likely be the only feller who’ll benefit from all that damned ridin’ too, Charley, because there don’t seem to be no Wanted poster out for that Travis.”
Fleharty said: “You’ll get your regular pay for bein’ a posse man, Ace.”
“Yeah. A lousy dollar, an’ I liked to rode my horse to death. Hell, Johnny, it was a hundred and twenty out there in that sunshine.” McElhaney drew upright. “I’ll give you fifty bucks for the blood bay horse, Charley,” he said.
Swindin shook his head. “I got plans for that animal. When he’s sound again, I’m goin’ to find out just how fast he can run. Then I’ll maybe take him ’round to the fairs and make a killin’ with him.”
“He can run all right,” stated Ace. “I’ll be damned if he can’t. You recollect how he left us all behind like we was tied to trees when Travis first broke away? Well, you let me know when you’re goin’ to run him…I want to be there an’ see that.”
Charley Swindin smiled, dabbed at sweat with a crusted bandanna, and moved off. “See you fellers later,” he said, crossed to the spindle doors, and passed beyond sight out into the sun-blasted roadway.
“I ought to be goin’ along, too,” McElhaney said, looking out into the bitter-bright roadway. “Damn but it’s hot.”
“Have another beer.”
“Naw, makes a feller sweat too much in weather like this. Besides, I get kind o’ drowsy when I drink in hot weather.” McElhaney, though, made no move away from the coolness of the bar; in fact, he hooked both elbows over it and leaned there, his broad back to Johnny Fleharty, his hat far back, and rumpled hair low across his forehead.
Everyone in that room was drained of energy. Even the card players seemed motivated by an inertia that went deeply into each man. Their reflexes were slow, their words slurred, and every face in the saloon was stolidly heavy and stupidappearing.
“Johnny,” said McElhaney without turning, “I keep wonderin’ about that three thousand dollars. He didn’t throw it away an’ he didn’t drop it. It wasn’t in the saddlebags when the money was counted…so where is it?”
Fleharty swiped the bar top with a smelly cloth. “He hid it like Charley said. He had to hide it, otherwise it’d have showed up by now. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Nothin’.”
McElhaney turned. He stared at Fleharty. “Come on, out with it,” he said. “If we could find it, there’d be fifteen hundred apiece.”
“Well, I was just thinkin’ that, after Travis was killed, maybe somebody took three thousand outen his saddlebags. Or maybe he was carryin’ that much in his pockets.”
Ace continued his staring. “Johnny,” he said softly, “you know damned well who was there when Travis was shot. Me ’n’ Charley Swindin. Wheaton was dead, an’ the others hadn’t come up yet. Now what you’re sayin’ is that…”
“No. No, I’m not sayin’ any such a thing, Ace. It wouldn’t have had to be either you or Charley, anyway. The others came up, too.”
“Not for a half hour,” muttered McElhaney. “An’ even after they did, there wasn’t a chance…too many fellers standin’ around there.”
“Well, didn’t someone search Travis?”
“Sure. Lew Morgan did, an’ Hub Wheaton was kneelin’ right beside him. That’s when they found all that gold in the saddlebags. But, hell, by then no one could’ve…”
“You mean you an’ Charley didn’t even look in the saddlebags, Ace?”
“No. Why should we? We had no idea there’d be gold in there, Johnny. It was hotter than the hubs of hell. We was both about played out, and there was Travis, lyin’ all sprawled out in front of us. Who’d think to search a man or look into his saddlebags at a time like that?”
Johnny finished with the sour bar rag. He faintly smiled with his bright blue eyes. “I would,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen dead men before. They don’t bother me a bit. Besides, whatever they got, they’re not goin’ to take with ’em. That’s how I look at it, Ace.”
McElhaney kept staring at Fleharty. He seemed annoyed. “It’s done now an’ over with,” he growled. “Charley got the blood bay horse. The rest of us that was in the damned posse’ll get our dollar a day from Wheaton’s cash
