The Plains of Laramie

The councilmen looked at one another. They looked over at Lew Morgan. But it was Albigence Spence who spoke up. He was peering about over his spectacles, his ancient, rheumy, shrewd old eyes bright and bold. “You could do a heap worse.”

He chuckled. “You’re always worrying about saving money…that ought to make your minds up for you, if nothing else can.”

Todhunter cleared his throat. “All right, Mister Travis. You’re sheriff of the county until Hub is back on his feet again.”

“Then,” said Parker, “Mister Fleharty here is my first arrest.” Johnny put an anguished look roundabout. His lips lay slackly and his face was gray. He looked at Hub Wheaton and looked swiftly away. Parker put forth a hand, let it lightly lie upon Fleharty’s shoulder. “Tell them, Johnny. Tell them what you told me down at your saloon.”

Six sets of inquiring eyes swung to bear. Johnny hesitated, and Parker’s gentle hold upon his shoulder tightened, tightened until Fleharty squirmed under it.

“Tell them, Johnny.”

“Let go,” Fleharty gasped. “Please let go.”

Parker removed his hand. He was standing behind his prisoner, looming large behind the lesser man. Across the room Amy was staring at Parker. Then Fleharty spoke up.

“It was Charley robbed the express office.”

Fleharty paused after saying that. There was a congealed hush broken only by the sharp intake of Lew Morgan’s breath.

“He got the twelve thousand dollars. He had it planned so’s he wouldn’t make a run for it at all. Then Ken Wheaton got up that posse and went racin’ out, lookin’ for lone horsemen on the plains, and that feller, Frank Travis, took it from there. You all know what happened after that. Young Travis an’ Ken got killed, an’ everyone figured young Travis was the robber…except for that three thousand dollars. Then along come this other Travis, an’ everyone got all upset over again. Charley said, if he’d tried, he couldn’t have planned it any better’n that.”

Amy spoke up: “He said…explain what you mean by that. Did Swindin tell you that?”

“Yes’m, he told me that.”

“Then you were in on it?”

Johnny put an imploring look around. “No’m. Not at first, I wasn’t. Not until last night. Charley hid the money here in town.”

“Ahhh,” said Lew Morgan, “I’m beginning to understand something now. That’s why Charley wouldn’t leave the country. He had to get his cache first. Is that it, Fleharty?”

“Yes, sir, that’s it. Last night he come to my saloon.” Johnny’s voice turned bitter and accusing now. “He was riding that damned blood bay horse. Hell, everyone knew that cussed animal. It was a foolish thing he done, an’ I told him so. He said it wasn’t foolish, said he wanted the fastest horse in the country under him after he killed the other Travis, got his money, and left the country.”

“It was Swindin who shot Hub?” exclaimed Amy.

Parker nodded over at her from behind Fleharty.

Johnny said: “Yes’m, it was your foreman. I told him it was crazy. I told him to forget Travis and get out of the country while he could.”

“That,” said Councilman Pierson dryly, “was real solicitous of you, Johnny, wantin’ to save a man’s life like that. Only you wanted to save the wrong life, didn’t you?”

“Listen, Mister Pierson,” whined Fleharty, “I was scairt stiff. I didn’t want no…”

“Never mind that,” growled Lew Morgan, his gaze deadly and his powerful shoulders hunched forward as though to spring. “Why didn’t you go find Hub and Travis and warn them?”

“Mister Morgan, I didn’t dare. I was scairt an’ confused. Charley was out there in the night with his Winchester. I know him, Mister Morgan. He’d as soon shoot me as Travis here, if I tried anything.”

From behind him Parker said mildly: “Come on now, Johnny. Tell it the way it really happened. Tell it the way you told it to me with my cocked gun on you.”

Fleharty put out a hand to the back of a chair. He steadied himself this way. “Charley promised me five thousand in gold if I’d help him.”

From the bed a weak, unsteady voice said: “How did Charley manage to join my brother’s posse so soon after he robbed the express office?”

Every head turned; every person in that room looked down at Hub. He was drilling a hole in Johnny Fleharty with his bitter stare. There was perspiration on his upper lip. Doc Spence put a hand upon Hub saying softly: “Easy now, Hub. No excitement for you. Just listen, boy, just listen.”

Parker jabbed a rigid thumb in Fleharty’s back. It must have felt like a six-gun barrel because Johnny jumped and gushed words, running them all together.

“He knew Ken would make up a posse. He had his horse tied in back of my saloon just like last night. When the express clerk run out into the roadway hollering that they’d been robbed, Swindin was all set. Just like he figured, Ken called for a posse…Charley mounted up and joined it.”

Amy was staring hard at Fleharty. She quietly said: “You know where he hid that money, don’t you, Mister Fleharty? You told us just now that he had his horse behind your saloon. You indicated that he ran to his horse immediately after the hold-up. He hid that money somewhere in the vicinity of your saloon, didn’t he?”

Johnny stepped to the chair he’d been using as a support and oozed down on to it. He bobbed his head up and down at Amy, saying nothing.

“Well,” exclaimed Lew harshly, “do you know or don’t you know where he hid it?”

“I know, Mister Morgan.”

Before anyone else spoke after this revelation, though, Parker said, with a quick, slashing look at Lew and the others: “You’re overlooking something, gentlemen. When Charley Swindin ran my brother down, he knew he was going to commit murder. He did that deliberately and cold-bloodedly. He didn’t know my brother had nine thousand in gold on him, but he did know that, if he killed Frank, the folks hereabouts would be satisfied that my brother was the express office bandit…because dead men tell no tales. That was premeditated murder, deliberately thought out and deliberately executed.”

When Parker stopped speaking, the room was totally silent. After a while Hub whispered to Doc Spence. The medical man twisted to a chair with Wheaton’s clothing on it, caught up the blood-stiff shift there, unpinned Hub’s badge, and took it gravely over and handed it to Parker.

Hub said throatily: “Go get him, Park. He’s your second arrest. Get him any way you want to…dead or alive.”

Parker looked long at Hub before pinning on the nickel star. When he finished doing this, he looked at Hub again. Wheaton made a weak smile and dropped one eyelid. “Dead,” he whispered. “Get him dead, Park. There’s no one else in this room who understands why Swindin should die as well as you do…and as I do.”

Doc Spence pursed his lips and made a little sound at Wheaton. “No more talk now,” he muttered. “You need rest, boy, and complete silence.”

Parker caught Johnny Fleharty by the shoulder, lifted him bodily from his chair, and swung him around as a dog might swing a rat.

“The money!” exclaimed Councilman Todhunter. “Johnny, where did Swindin hide the money?”

“That’ll keep,” Parker said, speaking ahead of Fleharty. “If he tells you, I’ll have half this greedy damned town in the way.”

Amy glided out ahead of the others. “In the way of what?” she breathlessly asked, perceiving ahead of the others that Parker had a definite plan in mind. “Parker, what is it?”

“It’s Swindin, Amy. He’s still in Laramie.”

Todhunter, Pierson, and Lew Morgan looked surprised at this. Albigence Spence said dryly: “If that’s so, Swindin is a bigger fool than I thought he was.”

Lew Morgan agreed with this. It was Amy who struck at the point of Parker’s statement. She said simply: “Are you sure of that?”

Parker nodded his head at Johnny Fleharty. “Tell them,” he directed. “Tell them what you told me.”

Johnny rolled his eyes; they came to rest upon Travis. Johnny looked like a man who had failed himself and could not bring himself to accept this, like a man who was making excuses to himself about himself. His voice was