town down. I don’t think your townsmen would care for that.”
Les Todhunter turned as men began arriving with coiled lengths of miners’ hose. On the far side of the saloon other men also came up. These were under the vociferous direction of a short, burly miner who flagged peremptorily with his arms and called brisk orders.
A third group of townsmen came along from southward, down the alleyway. These men cut through debris to the pump behind the adjoining building, which was a general store, and set to work laying hose toward Fleharty’s saloon and affixing an end to the nearby pump.
Parker, noting the numbers of men coming back from Laramie’s front roadway, was agreeably surprised. There were many more willing to work the pumps than there had been out in the roadway with guns when he’d earlier brought those two tough cowboys away from in front of this same saloon.
Lew Morgan, moving aside as men shouldered up to the pump, read Travis’s expression correctly. He smiled and said: “Guns are one thing, drowning out a rat is another.”
He and Parker joined Todhunter and Pierson back out of the way. Pierson was scowling. “They’re making enough noise to wake the dead. Swindin’ll hear ’em sure.”
After seeing the work completed at the pumps, the mobs of men standing ready, Parker said: “Pierson, you and Todhunter know which of your men are the best shots. Have them watch that cellar door like hawks. It’s going to occur to Swindin that, if he can get a gun barrel poked out of there, he can shoot a pumper or two and discourage the others.”
Pierson and Todhunter departed at once to pass this warning along and also to detail riflemen as sentinels. Parker looked around. The only thing now to be done was go forward and push those hoses into the cellar. He twisted, saw Morgan watching him, pointed without speaking to the southward hose, which cautious townsmen had carried within fifty feet of the door, and Lew Morgan moved off without speaking.
Parker made a wide circuit, coming down on the northward crowd of suddenly silent men who had also gone as far with their hose laying as prudence permitted. He picked up the hose end, said—“Pay it out as I go forward.”—and moved unerringly toward that innocent-looking, weather-checked door. Across from him Lew Morgan, hatless now, his shock of gray hair nearly white in the burning sun, was also moving up. The third hose had been taken over by Todhunter and Pierson. All around those three rear pumps men stood like stone, guns ready, faces strained, scarcely breathing. The overhead sun was a little off center, making a thin, weak length of shadow along the back wall of Fleharty’s saloon. Otherwise, everyone in that rear area was pitilessly exposed, particularly Parker Travis, Lew Morgan, and those two furiously sweating town councilmen.
The cellar door lay flush with the rear of Fleharty’s saloon. The part that was against the building was slightly raised, which was customary, so that winter snows and springtime rains would not fill the cellar with water.
The door itself was in two halves, both hinged upon the outer edge. Oftentimes in the Laramie Plains country, where winds were powerful enough to level shacks, people placed iron weights or large stones upon these doors, at least during storm seasons. There were no such weights upon Fleharty’s cellar doors, for which Parker was very thankful as he got down on hands and knees to crawl the final fifteen feet. Opposite him Morgan was also crawling. On his left Mike Pierson and Les Todhunter were slightly farther away. But they were steadily moving, dragging their hose, too.
Parker got to the door first. He tugged for more slack, pushed his hose up to the very confines of the door, and held it ready. Morgan got up, too, then both of them waited. When Todhunter inched forward the last five feet, his face was white, dappled with perspiration, and his breathing seemed loud. Parker readied his hose for the thrust that would put it under the door and downward into Fleharty’s cellar. He did this with one hand; he drew and cocked his six-gun with the other hand. At a nod from Lew Morgan, all three hoses were given a powerful push under the door, line was played out, the hoses were pushed steadily inward and downward, then those sweat- drenched crawlers turned and got away swiftly. It proved an unnecessary thing, this rapid withdrawal; no sound came from behind the doors. No gunshot, no sound of boot steps, no noise of any kind.
Later, when those four hose carriers met over by the northern pump, Todhunter said: “If he’s down there, he’s sure keeping it a secret.”
“And,” muttered Morgan, “you can thank your lucky stars for that, too. Otherwise, we’d be taking turns picking lead out of each other’s hides.”
Parker took no part in this discussion. He looked around, raised his arm, held it briefly poised, then slashed downward with it. Immediately three sets of working crews began furiously to pump large streams of water into the cellar under the Great Northern Saloon.
For a long time the only sound was of metal pump parts rattling, the hissing of air past pump washers, and some time later the sloshing of water upon water under Fleharty’s saloon.
Men tired and were replaced. Those curved steel handles never ceased rising and falling, rising and falling. In Parker’s eyes this was a bizarre picture, those sweating men working in grim silence. Others staggered into back wall shade to sink down, exhausted from their work. The bitter sunlight burned downward and men by the dozens stood ready at the pumps or knelt with Winchesters at the ready, all focusing their whole attention on those doors where the increasing slosh of water could plainly be heard.
He stood a while considering all this, then he abruptly walked away. Lew Morgan looked after him but said nothing. People were so interested in the unique plan being executed behind the saloon that only a few heeded Parker’s route out of the alleyway to the yonder roadway, then on into Fleharty’s building from the roadside.
There were men inside, too, at least ten of them. When Parker entered, although he knew none of these men, they seemed to know him. Several nodded and that old tobacco-chewing mossback with the long-barreled rifle was standing at the south end of the bar, skinny old arms hooked around his bigbore musket, placidly chewing and watching with a faded and unwavering set of eyes that backbar trap door.
When Parker strode up, the old man interrupted his vigil long enough to say: “I can hear ’er fillin’ up down there. I figured that ground’d be more porous than that.”
“You hear anything else?” asked Parker.
“Yup,” responded the oldster. “I heard a man cuss a blue streak.”
Parker let off a long sigh. The old man turned at this close sound, put an understanding glance upon Travis, and said: “Know exactly how ye feel. I been in situations like this m’self, years back. It’s hard on a man thinkin’ he’s right but bein’ unable to make sure. Well, mister, you guessed right enough…he’s down there, even if he is tryin’ to make out like he ain’t.” The old man spat, considered the trapdoor, and said in a pensive way: “What’s botherin’ me is what’ll happen when he comes out.”
Parker had no chance to reply to this, even if he’d intended to. From behind the building a gunshot sounded, then another explosion, and several more. A townsman stepped into the saloon, saw all those alert faces, and said: “He’s down there. He tried pushin’ the hoses out. The fellers opened up on him through the door.”
“The hoses?” asked Parker.
“Still in place, Mister Travis. Them slugs busted hell out of Fleharty’s door. They drove Swindin back.” The townsman smiled expansively. “Everything’s workin’ fine.”
At Parker’s side the old man said: “That only leaves him one way out, sonny. He knows now he dassn’t try it through the cellar door. That leaves this here trap door.”
Parker silently agreed with this. He listened to that deepening water for a while, then said: “Old-timer, you and these other men move back. Go over by the front door. That man down there belongs to me, but, if I miss when he comes up out of there, you fellers can have him when he tries rennin’ for it.”
Everyone who heard this obediently drifted clear of the bar. The old man was the last to shuffle away. For a moment he gazed calculatingly at Parker, then he, too, moved off.
There were no more shots from around back, but Lew Morgan came shouldering inside from the roadway. He stopped when a man detained him by a hand upon his arm. Lew watched Parker, standing alone at the bar’s southern ending, his six-gun in one fist, cocked and ready, his body slouched and his gaze downward. Lew called
