From the chair the man called Buck looked daggers, but he said nothing. He wasn’t certain Travis wouldn’t turn on him next, and he wasn’t up to absorbing additional punishment. When the swarthy man began to speak, though, he kept glaring over at him. The dark man either ignored this or wasn’t conscious of it. He spoke anyway.
“I was in town last night. I was drinkin’ in there when Swindin took that shot at you and hit the sheriff by mistake. Johnny said afterward Swindin would give Buck an’ me, an’ some other fellers we run with, two thousand in gold, each of us, if we’d meet Swindin in town this mornin’ and help him kill you…then get out of Laramie.” The dark man put a thick hand to his gullet, massaging it. He looked over at Buck, saw the fire points in his partner’s stare, and said imploringly to him: “It’s no use, Buck. At least this way we’ll come out with a whole skin. We’ll never get the two thousand dollars now anyway. You seen them townsmen come out of their lousy stores with guns. Hell, there must’ve been fifty of ’em.” Those two exchanged a long look at one another, neither of them speaking. Finally the gaunt man dropped his head, scowled at the floor, and spoke through gritted teeth.
“All the same it goes against the grain, turnin’ tail like this.” The sullen way he spoke these words was equivalent to agreeing with the swarthy man. Then he said: “All right, just get us out of this, Texas. My arm’s killin’ me.”
Parker let them complete this exchange but kept looking at the swarthy cowboy. The dark man read that silence correctly; he also read the compressed lips correctly. He moved off the wall, went along to a bench, and sank down there. He was beginning to speak when the roadside door opened, Lew Morgan and Doc Spence walked in, and for a while Parker ignored the uninjured member of his captive pair.
Old Doc Spence cocked an astringent eye at Parker. “Wherever you are, someone’s hurt.” He went toward the wounded cowboy muttering: “It’d pay Laramie to take a collection and buy you a stage ticket to Idaho maybe… or Alaska.” He looked at the broken wrist, reached for it, and its rough-looking owner pulled it quickly away. “Look here,” said the medical man severely, “if you’re that big a coward, you’ve got no right to wear that gun.”
The injured man gave him a hating look, put his arm out gingerly, and locked his jaws.
Spence went to work, mumbling under his breath. Lew Morgan flung perspiration off his chin. As he did this, Parker told him what the dark man called Texas had said thus far.
Morgan nodded, seemingly unperturbed by this. “Les Todhunter, Mike Pierson, and some of the townsmen have already spoken to those other four cowboys.”
Parker looked blank. “Spoken to them…?”
“Well, maybe a little more than just spoken to them, Parker. They brought them all together at Pierson’s store, took their guns away, sent for their horses, gave ’em a choice, then escorted them out of town.”
“What kind of a choice?”
“Well, Todhunter’s quite a joker. He offered to let them keep their guns an’ rake the roadway from the north end of town to the south end, with fifty armed men bossing the job, or mounting up and riding clean out of the country.”
Morgan grinned crookedly and started over to the water bucket. Over his shoulder he said: “Like I told you, Todhunter has quite a sense of humor.”
Parker saw the swarthy prisoner watching him, so he turned toward him. “I guess that breaks up your party. It’s just you and your friend, Buck, now.”
The dark man glumly nodded. He watched Doc Spence working on his companion for a moment, then said: “Well, hell, you don’t really miss two thousand dollars you never had, anyway.” He slumped back against the office wall with sweat darkening his shirt.
Lew finished drinking, went over to watch the doctor. Parker remained by the desk and asked the only question he still had no answer to.
“Where were you six men supposed to meet Swindin?”
Texas didn’t look away from watching Spence. “Only me ’n’ Buck were to meet him. Them friends of ours were supposed to loaf out along the roadway to make certain you nor anyone else got in Swindin’s way.”
Parker frowned a little. “All I want is the location of Swindin’s hiding place. That other stuff will keep.”
Now the dark man raised his eyes. There was a long second of total silence; every eye in the room was upon him.
“He’s hidin’ in Johnny Fleharty’s cellar under the saloon.”
Lew Morgan got red and his neck swelled. “What!” he bellowed. “Are you telling us Fleharty hid him…Fleharty knew where he was all this time?”
“Yes, sir,” responded the swarthy cowboy, cringing back against the wall from Morgan’s violent wrath. “Yes, sir, he knew. He
Morgan swung around, but Parker, already in motion, beat him to the cell-block door by inches. “Hold it,” he ordered. “Morgan, calm down.”
“Calm down!” raged the wrathful cattleman. “Dammit, Travis, do you realize Fleharty knew all the time where Swindin was? Don’t you realize he made fools of all of us, getting even you to believe him up in Hub’s room? Why, I believe he was trying to get you killed. By God, that miserable little…!”
“He’ll talk,” said Parker, opening the door behind him. “He’ll talk plenty when the time comes, Morgan.”
“When the time comes? Dammit, the time’s right now!”
“No, it isn’t. Fleharty’s not going any place. Neither are these other two. We’ll get all the facts out of them later. Right now the important thing isn’t Fleharty…it’s Charley Swindin.”
Parker turned away to beckon the swarthy man over. Next he said: “Doc, you’ve set the thing as well as you can for now. You can have another crack at it when some of the swelling’s gone down. Now move back.” Spence obeyed. Parker jerked his head at the wounded man. “You, too, come over here.”
He herded the two men into the room where Sheriff Wheaton’s cells were, ignored Johnny Fleharty completely, gave both prisoners an ungentle shove into the same cage, clanged the door closed, locked it, and turned away. Lew Morgan, standing back by the door, was glaring at Fleharty, who was in turn looking in a bewildered way at the massively bandaged hand of Buck, at Buck’s dark companion, then to Parker. None of them said a single word.
At the door Parker gave Morgan a little rough push back into the office, barred the cell-block’s intervening door, and walked thoughtfully over to hang Hub Wheaton’s ring of keys back on its peg.
“Thanks,” he said to Doc Spence. “Don’t leave town for a while. Maybe you’ll have some more business.”
Spence closed his black bag, made a sniffing sound, glowered, then strode out of the office.
“You coming along?” Travis asked Morgan, and the cowman vigorously nodded, scooped up the riot gun, and was ready. “How do you want to work it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how you get into Fleharty’s cellar.”
“I know where the outside door is,” retorted Morgan. “I’ve never been down there, but you can’t spend your life in a town no larger than this one is and not notice just about everything around worth noticing.”
“What’s worth noticing about a cellar door, Morgan?”
“It’s easy to see you’re not a native of Wyoming, Travis. In a cloudburst, a blizzard, or a Laramie Plains twister, a cellar door can be the difference between surviving and dying.”
Parker smiled. “Excuse me. Down in Arizona we welcome cloudbursts and we don’t have twisters. Come on, let’s get this over with.”
They left the sheriff’s office for the corrugated heat waves that were moving in gentle waves in the yonder roadway. Walking side-by-side through this writhing heat, Lew Morgan said: “I hope to hell there’s no roadside window to that cellar. Swindin’ll see us coming if there is.”
They’d walked 100 feet when Morgan said this. Parker, squinting ahead through sun blast, was unconcerned. “There isn’t,” he said. “If there had been, he’d have shot me two hours ago. I gave him every chance then.”
