fund like always…and the sheriff’s coolin’ out under six feet of sod.”
Fleharty cocked his head at McElhaney. “What about the three thousand?” he asked.
McElhaney leaned farther over the bar. He cupped his bristly chin in one big hand and stared thoughtfully at the painting of a voluptuous reclining nude woman hanging over Fleharty’s backbar.
“He didn’t spend it. He didn’t drop it. He didn’t have it on him, at least as far as I know he didn’t. So…it’s got to be out there somewhere, an’ that’s all there is to it.”
McElhaney drew upright again. He scowled at Fleharty. “But where? Dammit, the Laramie Plains are bigger’n kingdom come.”
“No rocks,” murmured Johnny. “No caves or trees or mine-shafts out there.”
Ace said irritably: “I know what there
Johnny slyly smiled. “Three thousand dollars,” he crooned. “Three thousand gold dollars hidden somewhere, sure as God made green apples.”
Ace said a harsh word in powerful disgust, turned, and walked out of the saloon. He halted under Fleharty’s wooden roadside awning and puckered his eyes against sun smash. Across the road burly Lewis Morgan and lanky, youthful, and tough-looking Hubbell Wheaton were in deep conversation. McElhaney watched them. Morgan was speaking with, for him, unaccustomed vehemence. He was even occasionally gesturing with his hands, something Ace had never before known him to do.
Lew Morgan owned the Lincoln Ranch of which Charley Swindin was foreman. Lew, at fifty-five, was in better physical shape than many men half his age. He had iron-gray hair above a sun-darkened face. He was wealthy and powerful and bull-like.
Hubbell Wheaton, the dead sheriff’s younger brother, was in appearance at least the opposite of Lew Morgan. Hub was well over six feet in height; he was that leaned-down sinewy type of man whose endurance was nearly limitless. Like the dead lawman, Hubbell’s face was long and, viewed one way, gloomy. His eyes were very pale blue and his hair was like bleached straw. His general appearance was uncompromising and dour, but this was not entirely true because Hub Wheaton, while not a talkative man, was easy to know and in fact he had a quiet, forthright, even humorous disposition. But if little of this showed now, so soon after his brother’s killing, it was understandable.
Ace McElhaney, who had worked with Hubbell Wheaton as a rider for the big cow outfits, felt envy at the way Lew Morgan was obviously treating Hub as his equal now. Ace was that kind of a man. He had his share of envy, and he also had a meanness of spirit that those who knew him well were also aware of. Particularly the riders who had been paired up with McElhaney on the roundups, for where two men eat, sleep, and work side-by-side for weeks at a time, all the little defects come out.
It made Ace antagonistic now, seeing rich Lew Morgan standing over there talking to Hub Wheaton like that, as though he wished for Wheaton’s approval of something, as though he were pleading with Hub.
Ace stepped out into the roadway. As he walked forward, dust spurted underfoot and that malevolent afternoon sunlight bore down upon him. When he was close enough to be readily heard by those two conversing men, he brought up a hard, faint smile and called forward.
“You two figured where that other three thousand is yet?”
Morgan turned, hesitating in mid-sentence. Hubbell Wheaton’s pale eyes lifted, ran over to McElhaney, and stayed there. Ace stopped at the plank walk’s edge. He got the sudden feeling that his casual remark had struck like iron against flint with those two; they kept looking at him, making no effort to resume their conversation. Then Lew Morgan said rather briskly—“Well, think it over, Hub. I’ll see you again.”—and walked away.
Ace looked after Morgan; a faint blush of color came into his face Morgan had not even nodded to him; he had simply turned and walked off.
Hubbell Wheaton saw that look and also the swift rise of a fiery antagonism in McElhaney’s gaze. He said: “You could’ve said just about anything but what you did say, Ace. Morgan’s about half believing what his niece said the day we brought Ken and Travis in.”
Ace switched his smoky gaze to Hub. “Amy? What did she say?”
“That there was no three thousand dollars. That Travis only had nine thousand…and that it didn’t come from the express office at all.”
McElhaney got off a curse. “You believe that?” he demanded. “Dammit all, you come up after it was all over, Hub. You know how Travis put up a fight. Before that you saw how he tried like hell to escape from the posse.”
“Amy’s notion is that, when he saw thirty armed men bust out after him, he just naturally took fright and ran.”
“Amy,” snarled Ace. “What the hell would a woman know? Listen, how many common cowpunchers are ridin’ around the Laramie Plains with nine thousand gold dollars in their saddlebags?”
Wheaton, seeing the wrath in McElhaney’s face, said: “Simmer down, Ace. I didn’t say Travis wasn’t the thief.”
McElhaney teetered upon the plank walk’s edge, saying fiercely: “Amy! Amy! That dog-goned spinster…why don’t she just stick to her danged knittin’.”
Hubbell fished in a pocket, brought forth a little badge, and held it in his palm. He used this to change the conversation. Ace glowered at the badge, his eyes still yeasty.
“I heard over at Johnny’s place there was talk of givin’ you Ken’s job,” he said, his voice losing some of its roughness. “I told ’em you’d make a good sheriff.”
Hub considered the badge gravely and said: “Thanks, Ace. I aim to do my best.” He pocketed the badge, looked across the road, and said: “Care for a drink?”
McElhaney lost some more of his indignation. “Why not?” he said, reversed himself, and went with Hubbell Wheaton back across the road.
Down by the livery barn Lew Morgan saw those two hike out into the fierce sunlight where he was talking to Charley Swindin. He paused to watch their progress for a time, then he turned back to Charley again.
“Tell Amy I’ll be late,” he said. “I’ve got a little more business in town. And, Charley, pick up the mail before you head for the ranch.”
Amy Morgan was unmarried at twenty-four, which was almost unheard of on the frontier where men far outnumbered women. What made this even more incredible was that Amy Morgan was beautiful. She was slim and straight. Beneath heavy brows was the inquiring line of steel-gray eyes. She had skin the color of fresh butter and a long mouth that was composed. Her hair was red-auburn, the color of a winter sunset; it caught hot sunlight and threw it back in a coppery way. Her profile was cameo-like and head-on Amy had that indefinable, illusive quality that drew men to her in spite of themselves.
But Amy had not only a temper and a will of her own; she also had a mind to match. She’d had many suitors, but as she possessed that magnetic force that attracted men, she also had the very logical, skeptical, and analytical mind that could reduce them to nothing in conversation. Beautiful Amy Morgan was that bane of alluring women, a highly intelligent female in a man’s world. That, in a breath, was why at twenty-four she was unmarried.
Amy was Lew Morgan’s niece. Amy’s dead father had been Lew’s only brother. Amy’s father had died four years earlier and she had come at Lew’s invitation to live with him at Lincoln Ranch.
It was a good relationship between those two; Lew was a lifelong bachelor—he’d never had much use for women. Amy, the crispy efficient, seemingly cold-blooded but very beautiful woman, ran Lew’s household and sometimes even ran Lincoln Ranch when Lew was absent. She never made a mistake and to Lew’s astonishment— and delight—she reasoned like a man, so Lew treated her as an equal—something he’d never before done with a woman in his life.
Amy came down to breakfast the day following Hub Wheaton’s appointment to fill out his dead brother’s term
