as it usually was each early day.
He put the glass aside, fished in the oily water for another glass, and scowled fiercely. Sure it was too early for most men, but this time almost every day, since he’d opened the Great Northern, there’d been four or five town loafers drifting in for ale, a beer, or a slug of raw rye whiskey.
Johnny could think of only one reason why he was being avoided this morning, and that was the one thing he wanted to keep as his own dark secret. He finished the second glass, turned to place it face down upon the backbar, and over his shoulder he saw in the backbar mirror a tall, sun-blackened man move in out of the hurting heat, and Johnny froze like that, not turning around at all until that big man flicked him a look, then walked across to the bar, hooked both elbows there, and waited. Then Johnny turned. “Ale?” he weakly said.
Parker shook his head, saying nothing and staring.
“Another scorcher,” said Johnny, feeling in the bucket for a glass. “Sometimes it rains, though, in midsummer.”
Parker’s gaze never wavered, neither did he move or speak. “Too bad about Hub, isn’t it?” Parker finally said.
Johnny polished the glass and inspected it very closely. “Sure is,” he replied huskily.
“I sat up with him all night.”
“How is he?”
“I sat up with him all night…thinking.”
Johnny stopped polishing the glass. He forced himself to look at Travis.
“Something sort of like a riddle kept bothering me, Fleharty. You see, Lew Morgan told me he’d warned Swindin to leave the country. Now, that was yesterday, so Swindin had lots of time to put fifty miles under his horse. By this morning, on that thoroughbred of my brother’s, maybe seventy-five miles.”
“He was quite a horse,” murmured Johnny. “Not many real blood bays around.”
Parker went on again as though Johnny hadn’t spoken. “What kept bothering me last night was why Swindin didn’t do that, why he didn’t leave the Laramie Plains country.”
“Didn’t he?” asked Johnny, and walked right into Parker’s little trap.
“Why, no, he didn’t. Instead, he took a shot at me from the darkness last night, missed me, an’ downed Hub Wheaton. And, Fleharty, you knew he was going to try that.”
The polished glass slipped, struck the floor, and flew into a many slivers. Johnny didn’t even look down at it. “Me? I knew it? How did I know it? I haven’t seen Charley since…”
“I’ll tell you, Fleharty. I just came from the livery barn. Swindin didn’t put my brother’s thoroughbred up, over there, last night.”
“Well, hell, cowboys don’t very often…”
“The horse wasn’t at any of the hitch racks, either. I know that, because I hand-raised that horse down in Arizona. If he’d been tied anywhere along the road, I’d have noticed him last night when Hub and I were walking up this way. Fleharty, we walked the full length of the road, we saw every animal…the thoroughbred wasn’t among them.”
“That don’t mean I knew anything, Mister Travis.”
Parker was briefly silent while he and Johnny exchanged a long look. Ultimately he said: “Lew and Amy Morgan are up with Hub. I talked with them before I went out to do a little checkin’ around town. They told me Swindin wasn’t at Lincoln Ranch, but that he hadn’t left the country, either.”
“What does that prove?”
“Like I said, I’ve been doing a little checkin’ around. Fleharty, do you know what Swindin did? He knew that blood bay would be recognized by half the men in Laramie. That’s why he didn’t tie him along the road or leave him over at the barn. He tied him out back of your saloon.”
Johnny’s jaw muscles quivered. He seemed close to fainting dead away.
“Four different townsmen told me this morning they saw him tied back there.”
“Yes, but lots of fellers tie horses back there, Mister Travis. If a feller’s ridin’ a stud horse and dassn’t hitch him where there are other horses…”
“Sure,” interrupted Parker quietly. “Sure, but my brother’s blood bay isn’t a stallion.”
“I know that. But I didn’t…”
“Let me finish, Fleharty. Two of those four men who saw Swindin and the blood bay saw something else. Would you like me to tell you what that was?”
Johnny was near the absolute limit of his endurance in this. He formed words and moved his lips but no sound came out. “They saw you and Charley Swindin standing in the dark out there, talking.”
“That’s not true,” Johnny whispered.
Parker pushed up off the bar. He said quietly: “You’re a damned liar.”
Johnny put his hands on the bar top and hung there. He saw death in another man’s face; it was aimed at him. He made an animal sound in his throat.
“Fleharty, you’re going to tell me where Swindin is.”
“I don’t know. I peeked out last night after he shot Hub by mistake. His horse was gone an’ so was he.”
“Where would he go?”
“Hones’ to God, I don’t know. Maybe he run out. I don’t know.”
Parker shook his head. “No, Swindin didn’t run. He had a much better chance to run yesterday. He didn’t do it then. I don’t think he’s doing it now.”
“Mister Travis, as God’s my witness…”
“Fleharty, you know why he wouldn’t leave the Laramie Plains. You talked to him last night. Now I want you to tell me why he hasn’t left the country.”
Johnny’s knuckles were white upon the bar top. He was terribly afraid, yet he found a sliver of courage. It was born of desperation. He eased one hand off the bar and put it down out of sight where a sawed-off shotgun lay.
Parker’s hand dipped and lifted. The cocking mechanism of a six-gun made its sharp, lethal little sound in the hush. Fleharty brought his hidden hand up and placed it beside the other hand again, in plain sight. He stared as though hypnotized at the black gun barrel, at the tightening finger upon the trigger.
“I’ll tell you,” he whispered. “I’ll tell you all of it.”
Doc Spence was with Hub Wheaton. Lew and Amy Morgan were still there. Two men, who Parker did not know, were standing silently glum and awkward at the bedside, too. The little room seemed crowded. It seemed funereal because none of those people was talking or moving when Parker opened the door, pushed Johnny Fleharty in ahead of him, then closed the door.
Morgan said: “Where were you? I looked…”
“I was in Fleharty’s bar,” replied Parker. He gave Johnny another shove, harder this time so that Fleharty stumbled onward and kept himself from falling only by nimble footwork.
“I was having a heart-to-heart talk with Mister Fleharty.”
Lew’s brows drew inward and downward. He looked in a puzzled way from Parker to Johnny and back again. “I don’t understand,” he murmured.
“You will, Morgan. You will.” Parker looked at the other men over by the bed. “Who are they?” he asked.
“One is Mike Pierson, the other one is Les Todhunter. They’re members of the town council.”
Both councilmen nodded. Parker ignored that. He stood there in the center of the room considering both Pierson and Todhunter. Finally he said: “You need a temporary replacement for Sheriff Wheaton.” He made a statement of it.
The two men nodded again, still without speaking.
“I’ll take the job without pay,” said Parker. “All right?”
