The Plains of Laramie

“Uhn-huh,” murmured Parker. “Now, Miss Morgan, you didn’t call me up here because you want to give me back my brother’s horse. I don’t even believe you called me up here to warn me against Swindin.”

Amy’s gaze turned liquid-dark. “Why did I ask you to meet me here, Mister Travis?”

“Because someone down at Lincoln Ranch was involved in Frank’s killing.”

Amy nodded gravely. “Go on.”

“You want to head off violence. Whoever he is at Lincoln Ranch, you don’t want him killed.”

“My uncle, Mister Travis,” said Amy, and explained.

Parker listened. Near the end of Amy’s recitation, he lit a Mexican cigar and quietly smoked. When she had finished speaking, he still silently smoked Finally, looking at cigar ash, he spoke. Each word fell like steel upon glass. “They could’ve hailed my brother, ma’am. They could have given him a chance after his horse went down.” He shot her a challenging look. She met it but not in the same temper. “They could’ve made him give up. You said that posse had thirty men in it. No single man, no matter how good he is with guns, would in his right mind try to fight thirty men.”

“But only McElhaney and Swindin were up there, Mister Travis. The others didn’t come along until later.”

“My brother was afoot, ma’am. He couldn’t have gone anywhere. All McElhaney and Swindin had to do was wait. That’s all. Just sit there and wait until the others came up. Frank, no matter what he believed, would not have died for that nine thousand dollars.”

“What do you mean…no matter what he believed?”

“Miss Morgan, I don’t know your uncle or those other men, but I did know my brother. If he had believed they were posse men, he never would have tried to outrun them. Never.”

Amy watched him. She was still now and totally silent, with her lips lying closed in gentle fullness. Her eyes were very dark and he could not read expression in them.

“Why are you here, Mister Travis, to kill them?”

She was round-shaped in his sight; the pull of her was urgent. He fought against it, forcing his mind to that other thing between them.

“If need be, Miss Morgan. If need be.”

“You are the judge?”

“I am the judge.”

She said in a small, soft tone. “What will it solve…your way?”

“Perhaps nothing, ma’am. Perhaps a lot. You have no brother, no children?”

She dropped her eyes to her lap briefly, then raised them. “I have never been married.”

“Then you wouldn’t know how it is with me, because you see, ma’am, Frank was both, and he was needlessly killed.”

“Yes,” she breathed, seeing him draw together, hardening against her, and wanting this least of all. “Yes, I understand how it is with you. I knew it when you didn’t ask what became of the money. You weren’t interested in that…only in your brother.”

“You’re on the other side,” he said, making it almost a query. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Why should you be?”

He was temporarily stopped cold by her directness, yet he could see that this was how she was. He hung fire over his answer, though, and replied belatedly and slowly: “It doesn’t matter right now.”

She waited for more to come. It never did, so she changed the subject. “The nine thousand dollars is at the express company. It’s in the safe there.”

He said indifferently: “That’ll keep. What I want to know is what are the plans of your uncle and those other men…McElhaney and Swindin.”

“I can’t answer for any of them, not even my uncle. But I would like you to talk to him…first.”

He did not miss that pause before her final word. “I’m not swollen with hate or anxious to kill, Miss Morgan,” he stated. “I want justice, though, and I aim to see that it’s served. If, as you’ve told me, Sheriff Wheaton is the brother of the former sheriff, then I may not get justice.” He turned away from her. “But I hope that’s not the case.”

“These aren’t bad men, Mister Travis. They made a terrible mistake. They aren’t fully aware yet just how awful a mistake they made. But once they know who you are, they’ll find out, because I know my uncle and I know Hubbell Wheaton…they’ll come to you, they’ll ask questions. That piece of paper you’re carrying…”

“Yes?”

“As I said, I know those men. They’ll be sick when they know what they’ve actually done.”

“Sicker,” said Parker Travis, “much sicker than you know, ma’am, if they think talk will right the wrong.”

Parker stood up. He turned and gazed down at Amy. She sat there watching him. He looked at her eyes, saw something that had not been in their dark depths before, something glowing, something mysterious, and he did a bold thing. He said roughly: “Meeting like this, here today, belongs to other things than what we’ve spoken of. I wish it could have been different.”

He went out to his horse, tugged up the rigging, mounted, and started on out of the glen. Amy stood up and watched him pass. When he was near the forest’s fringe, she called to him.

“The only man who profits from killing is the man without a conscience.”

He drew rein to look back at her briefly. He made no comment on what she’d said. “I’ll see you again,” he said, and rode on.

Beyond their meeting place the forest was turning warm, turning humid. He was conscious of this but not in a direct way; he was considering the things she’d said.

By the time he was back at the little shallow waterway beyond the turn-off to that secret place, he’d decided to see Lew Morgan and Hubbell Wheaton, but not their way if he could avoid it—not at any disadvantage—but his way, which would be separately and alone.

He halted in the last of the forest shade. Ahead lay the open country again, shimmering in layers of heat. Where the sun rode, near its meridian, was a blinding-yellow molten ball. Around it the heavens were seared white; farther out they were a brassy, faded color. He was not anxious to push on, but he did, and at once his horse had almost to lean into the gelatin waves that ran at him. It was well over 115 degrees out on the Laramie Plains.

He endured this withering heat by closing his mind to it, by allowing his horse to pick its own walking gait, and by riding easily in the saddle. In this manner he struck the stage road and kept to it until, only a little distance from Laramie, a coach rattled by, its driver up high on his seat burned brown, its horses sweating, trotting loosely, their eyes red-rimmed. He gave way, riding off the road. When the driver threw him a wave, Parker waved back.

Afterward, he followed, first the dust, then the hot, acrid smell of that dust, for another mile. As distance widened between them, heat waves made it appear that the coach was not upon the road at all, but was floating in air several feet above the road. He considered the phenomenon through narrowed eyes. Because everything onward was blurry in his sight, he thought he also saw another horseman far ahead who left the road to let the coach pass by. He considered this an illusion, though, a mirage, and paid it no attention.

The coach faded out. Only the smell of its passing remained. There was no further sign of that ghostly rider, and Parker’s mind turned inward again, reviewing all the things Amy had said to him, reviewing Amy herself. He was riding like that, utterly loose, entirely apart from the seared world he was passing through, when the gunshot came, its unmistakable muzzle blast flat, lethargic in the thick heat.

Chapter Eight

Ordinarily a man cannot move fast in that kind of heat, but Parker Travis was an Arizonan. Heat was a way of life to him. He was to a considerable extent inured to it.

He left his saddle, rolled once and stood up again, holding one split rein. His horse was surprised but not particularly startled. It stood peering around as Parker drew forth his Winchester.

The man who had fired that solitary shot was far out in the shimmering glow. He was riding southward now