as county sheriff looking cool and lovely. Lew, who had got in after midnight and was a little tired still, looked up at her as she swept forward toward the table, and smiled. Amy did not smile back. She sat down, unfolded her napkin, and waited for the cook to bring food. Lew’s smile faded; he studied her expressionless face and grew uneasy. Lew Morgan was virile enough at fifty-five to respond to Amy’s compelling allure, and at the same time old enough to be concerned with her thoughts and her opinions.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked.
The cook came bearing their breakfast and Amy said nothing until he had retreated back into the kitchen. Then her head-on glance went to Lew and remained there as she spoke.
“I talked to Charley when he brought the mail last night. He told me about Hubbell Wheaton’s appointment.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
Amy called her uncle by his first name. That was his wish. The first time they’d met and she’d called him “Uncle Lew,” it had stopped Lew Morgan cold. He’d been working so hard for thirty years that he’d lost track of time and that “Uncle Lew” had cruelly brought him up short, face to face with an inexorable march of time that left him breathless and stunned. Ever since then it had been just plain Lew and just plain Amy.
She said his name now, then also bluntly spoke her mind. “Lew, Ken Wheaton is dead. One death in that family is enough.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I told you that the very fact that Travis did not have the full twelve thousand dollars which was stolen from the express company safe, although he was overtaken…and killed…before he could have spent, or even hidden any of it, meant that Travis was very possibly not the robber at all.”
“All right, Amy,” said Lew. “You told me that. What’s it got to do with Ken and Hub Wheaton?”
“This, Lew. Charley told me about the letter found on young Travis.”
Lew’s cheeks darkened with color. He was becoming annoyed. His voice showed it, too, when he roughly said: “Quit beating around the bush, Amy. Young Travis had a letter on him. Dammit, what are you getting at?”
“Someone had to write that letter, Lew. Someone was close to Travis down in Arizona. Someone, probably the man who wrote that letter, will be coming to Laramie over Travis’s killing.” Amy paused to watch the gradual spread of understanding on her uncle’s face. “If Frank Travis was not the express company robber…if he owned that nine thousand dollars in gold and the person who comes here knows that…then that person is also going to hear how Travis was shot to death without a chance by Sheriff Wheaton’s posse and to go just a little further, Lew… someone will very likely try to kill Charley and Ace McElhaney, the slayers of Travis, and probably Hub Wheaton as well.”
Lew Morgan sat still for a half minute arranging all this in orderly sequence in his masculine mind—and came up with the identical sum total Amy had just given him in forceful words.
“I was in that posse, too,” he ultimately said. “So was Ken. So was…”
“Half the men in Laramie were in it according to Charley. And another thing, Lew…that blood bay horse. What right did Charley have to bring it here to the ranch? What right does he have keeping it at all?”
Lew had no answer, so he shrugged bull-like shoulders and reached for his coffee. “No one else wanted it. Everyone thought it had a broken leg.” Lew sipped, put the cup down, and scowled. “If Charley left the critter out there, it would have died.”
“I’m sure,” said Amy dryly, “that’s the only thought which motivated Charley…pity for an injured animal.”
Lew squirmed. Amy had never approved of Charley Swindin, which was sometimes an issue between them. “Never mind the horse,” he muttered, “and never mind Charley.” He stood up. “I reckon I’ll ride into town.”
“For the letter?”
“Partly. To see it, anyway. Maybe the sender put a name on it. Otherwise, to talk this over with Hub. Hell, Amy, the only thought I had when I went before the town council for Hub was that he’d make a good sheriff, and it seemed right he should have the chance to finish Ken’s term.”
Amy’s steely gaze softened toward her uncle. “I know,” she said to him. “I understand, Lew, and I’m sorry if I poured cold water over your good deed. It’s simply that, if trouble comes, Hub will be in the middle of it.”
“You left something unsaid, Amy. You’re thinking I put him there.”
Amy answered this candidly, honestly, and quietly: “Yes.” She stood up.
“Finish your breakfast,” said Lew, turning away. “I’ll be back directly.” He took five steps, then swung around. “Maybe I’ll bring Hub back for supper with me.”
Those two exchanged a long look. Here was another issue between them—Amy’s spinsterhood. Although Lew Morgan found the notion of marriage for himself anathema, he conversely thought Amy’s singleness was some kind of a reflection upon the Morgan name.
“If you wish,” said Amy in that chilly tone she used whenever she saw through her uncle and didn’t approve. “I think I’ll have a headache tonight and retire early, though.”
Lincoln Ranch—so named because the original patent had been signed by President Abraham Lincoln— consisted of 17,000 acres of range, timber, water, and lush meadow. It lay southeast of Laramie and the Laramie- Cheyenne stage road crossed it for nearly six miles. A goodly portion of it lay upon the Laramie Plains, but not all of it. There were the places like Amy’s little private dell up in the fragrant forest, where summertime heat lay, but where summertime sun never quite touched the spongy earth with its ancient carpeting of pine and fir needles. This was the place she frequently visited during hot days when there was nothing to hold her at the ranch. She rode to it an hour after her uncle left Lincoln Ranch for town, not particularly to escape the heat this time because as yet the day was young, the heat had not yet reached its zenith, but because she was troubled—had been troubled for several days now.
It was Amy’s very strong suspicion that the tormenting heat, the rawness of summer-frayed tempers had led her uncle and those other men deliberately to kill an innocent man. She had listened to all that had been said about Frank Travis, had found most of it built upon the shifting sands of suspicion rather than upon the hard stone of logic, and now, riding to her private place, Amy was worried.
When she left her horse to go stand upon the bank of a little hurrying white-water creek that passed across her dell, to watch trout minnows scatter frantically at sight of her shadow upon the water, she had a premonition. It was very strong. It told her unmistakably that the passing of Frank Travis was not the ending but the beginning of events that were to touch the lives of everyone concerned with that killing.
It was not often that winds scoured the Laramie Plains in midsummer. During wintertime this was not so; the plains were notorious for their fiercely cold winter blows. Many a rider had sworn that regardless of how much clothing a man wore in wintertime, those frigid blasts knifed through them to freeze the flesh and chill the marrow.
Usually when a midsummer blow arrived upon the plains, it was a sign that one of those infrequent but awesome summer thunderstorms was approaching. This time, however, the sky was cloudless, brassypale, and the wind itself was hot. It curled leaves and wilted grass; it stung the flesh with abrasive dust and it burned the eyes with its dry heat. It was a very poor welcome for a stranger in the land such as Parker Travis, because it left him with a forming opinion that was half resentment and half dislike.
Parker Travis rode a long-legged seal-brown horse with sloping shoulders, a long barrel, and powerful rear quarters. He rode lightly for a big man, proving himself to be a horseman instead of a rider, the kind of man who never for a moment forgot the animal under him, its welfare, and its changing moods. He passed along with his collar turned up, with a bandanna tied across the lower portion of his face to shield him from that stinging dust, and with an ivory-butted six-gun lashed low along his right thigh. He was taller than his brother Frank had been and he
