as though to go cautiously out and around Parker, but when he’d fired, he’d been in the westward roadway. That horseman had not been a mirage after all.
Parker turned his horse, keeping the beast in front of him so that the assassin could not at that distance determine whether Parker was shot down or not. He estimated the course of this unknown enemy, gauged the distance before the man would come into Winchester range, then sank down upon the ground to wait.
Through that long waiting period Parker speculated upon the assassin’s identity. It seemed a fortuitous thing to him that his foeman had known where to find him, had appeared so soon after he’d left Amy Morgan. His thoughts turned upon the beautiful girl with no kindness at all. He was not angry, not in the way another man might have been, not with outrage and cold wrath. But he was getting that way as time passed. The uncomfortable hotness rose against him from out of the ground, and that extremely careful killer kept on riding slowly, cautiously, coming inward a little at a time.
Sweat ran into his eyes. He furtively flicked it away. He wanted that rider out there to believe he was dead or nearly so. He made no noticeable move while he was prone in the blasting heat, except to follow that man’s progress down his gun barrel.
The unknown horseman stopped finally, sat his saddle, straining to see up where Parker lay. He was holding his bared saddle gun balanced upon one hip. The sun was well above him, making a minimal shadow. Parker estimated the distance. It was by his reckoning still a little too far. He swore to himself, suffering upon the oven-like ground.
The assassin made his decision, turned northward, and came on with no further delay. Parker watched him pass into range and did nothing. He let the man get within 1,000 yards of him, then he fired.
At first it was impossible to tell how badly he’d hit his enemy because his horse shied violently at the gunshot, nearly jerking free. Parker held tightly so that one split rein was jerked half around, and, when he looked back, the assassin’s animal had also shied, had whipped completely out from under his rider, and was fleeing back toward Laramie now, head up and tail flying.
The stranger himself lay sprawled. His carbine was thirty feet away, glistening in the evil light. He was lying upon his back, staring straight up at the sun. From this and the fact that he did not move, Parker thought he must be dead. He was.
Parker got up to him. The man’s face was serene beneath its dust-sweat coating, beneath its several days’ growth of rusty whiskers. He had been downed by a slug directly through his heart. He had never known what had struck him.
Thirst came to torment Parker. He got the dead man behind his cantle, tied him there, mounted up, and resumed his onward journey. Under his leg in its boot rode his own gun; across his lap was the carbine of the dead man.
This was how he rode into Laramie. This is how people saw him who were sitting, idle and drained of energy, when he passed along to the sheriff’s office, stiffly got down, tied his laden horse, and pushed on into Hubbell Wheaton’s office to say thinly to the sad-faced man sitting at a desk there: “My name is Travis, which I’m sure you know, and, if you’ve the time, I’d like a few words with you.” He did not mention the dead man outside. Wheaton motioned toward a chair and studied Travis with close interest.
“I was looking for you earlier this morning,” said Hub, “but the livery barn hostler told me you rode out before sunup.”
“You won’t have to look any more, Sheriff. Neither will the others who’re interested in my being here in your town.”
“The others, Travis?”
Parker made a rueful little head wag. “You don’t have to put on an act for my benefit, Sheriff. Charley Swindin was one of the men who murdered my brother. Lew Morgan was involved in it, also. So were you. I know each of you now, by name.”
“We weren’t the only ones, Travis. There were a lot of men in that posse. In fact, you didn’t name one of the men who was actually up there when your brother died.”
“I don’t have to name that one,” said Travis.
“No?”
“No. You see, he’s paid his debt in full. He’s outside, Sheriff, tied behind my saddle…dead.”
Hub’s gaze slowly widened. “Ace?” he said. “Ace McElhaney?”
Parker nodded. “I was coming back to town this morning. A Cheyenne coach passed me. Ahead of it was a horseman. At first I thought he might be a mirage in the heat.” Parker paused slowly to wag his head. “He was no mirage. He took a long shot at me, missed, and I let him get up closer, then I killed him.”
Hub got out of his chair, crossed to the door, flung it back, and stood in the opening, gazing out where Travis’s thoroughbred stood patiently with his grisly burden. From behind him Parker said: “This is his carbine. You can see that it’s been fired.”
Hub turned, made no move to take the Winchester, and continued the study of Travis. Finally, still ignoring the carbine, he walked heavily back and dropped down into his chair again.
“Anyone see this fight?” he asked.
“No one.”
Hub looked over where Parker had leaned the Winchester upon a wall. “I reckon, if a feller was dead set on makin’ another man’s killing look plumb legal when there were no witnesses, it wouldn’t be hard for him to shoot the dead feller’s gun once or twice after he’d killed him.”
“It wouldn’t be hard at all,” agreed Parker, rising to stand there in the little breathless room. “It’ll be a damned sight harder to prove that’s how it was, though.”
“Where are you going, Travis?”
“To toss McElhaney off my horse, put the animal up, then go drink a gallon of water. Why?”
“There’s cold water in that bucket yonder. I’d like to talk to you. It shouldn’t take long.”
Parker paused in the doorway. A hot little wind was passing southward. Where he stood, it struck him, drying the sweat and making him feel cool. “Talk,” he ordered.
“I don’t know how McElhaney died, but I can guess, since you knew he was one of the men who shot your brother, that you weren’t sorry to shoot him.”
“You’re partly right, Sheriff. I meant to look him up sooner or later…but not particularly to kill him. That would’ve been up to him. I just wanted him to tell me why he and Swindin and all the rest of you for that matter… didn’t give my brother a chance to surrender.”
Hub Wheaton offered no explanation. He only said: “Travis, what about Charley Swindin? You know who he is, don’t you?”
“I know. He is the other one.”
“Well…?”
“That’ll be up to him, too, Sheriff.” Parker started to pass on outside. He checked himself briefly and added: “That goes for every one of you who were involved in the murder.”
“We didn’t think it was murder.”
Parker teetered there. Something Amy had said came back to him. He stepped back inside, drew forth a piece of paper, unfolded it, tossed it to Wheaton. “Read that,” he said.
Wheaton bent to frown over the paper. He read it through once, took it in his hand, walked over to a little window, and reread it. From there he gazed across somberly at Parker Travis. He pushed out his hand with the paper in it.
“Here,” he said. “Take it. Go get your drink of water.”
Parker left the office and did exactly what he’d said he meant to do. Under the staring eyes of a large number of townsmen who had drifted up to look at the limp body of Ace McElhaney, he untied the corpse, stepped aside to let it slide down into roadway dust, stepped over it without once looking down, and walked northward up the road, leading his horse toward the livery barn. Behind him, Sheriff Hub Wheaton and not less than twenty-five totally still and silent men watched him go.
Not always the most fragrant place in frontier towns, but certainly one of the coolest in summertime and also one of the most popular loafing places, the livery barn in Laramie was rarely vacant. When Parker walked in leading his thoroughbred, a number of idlers in the shade there, some whittling, some just sitting, put their unblinking gazes on him. These men had seen him ride into town; they had seen what he’d left lying in the naked sunlight down at
