over to him.
“It’s filling up faster than we thought. Must be up past his knees by now.”
Parker started to swing his head; something beyond sight of Morgan and the others caught his attention, turning him suddenly stiff, poised, and utterly still.
Across the room those watchers stared. The only movement among them was from the old man. He continued rhythmically to work on his pouched cud of tobacco.
The trapdoor was beginning to rise. It did this with perceptible slowness. For almost a full minute Parker had no view of the hand or shoulder or head that were raising it. Then he did; a man’s straining big fingers showed. Afterward the wrist also showed. Then the top of a hat. Parker stood, leaning upon the bar’s far curving, his legs and lower body hidden from the vision of that stealthily climbing figure below in the cellar’s dark dankness.
There was a breathless silence in the saloon, but, outside, those protesting pumps clattered and men’s voices lifted and faded, coming on, then trailing off. Parker tilted his six-gun barrel the slightest bit. He could have shot at the top of that hat, but instead he waited. It was in his mind to let Swindin see and recognize him, to let the ex-foreman of Lincoln Ranch feel some of that terrible finality that men know when they realize there is no way out of a situation but death. His brother had known that feeling; he meant for Swindin also to know it.
The trapdoor continued to rise. Swindin’s forearm was visible. He seemed emboldened, acted as though he thought perhaps no one knew of this other way out of the cellar. His shoulder showed. His other hand appeared, holding a cocked .44. Very slowly, inch by inch, his head came into view, around it his big shoulders all hunched with tightness.
He saw Parker, standing there. For a lengthening second those two men stared at one another, neither breathing, neither blinking. Swindin wrenched violently, bringing his gun hand up and around. He fired and above him glass broke into myriad pieces. He fired a second time, still frantically swinging that gun to bear.
Parker’s whole attention was forward and downward. He was cold; no excitement was in him, and even that consuming fire for vengeance was blanked out as he methodically began drawing his trigger finger tight. Then, at the very last fraction of a second he did something he’d not intended doing. Just before his gun went off, he deliberately dropped the muzzle slightly. He shot, thumbed back, and shot again. Swindin gave out an explosive grunt, whipped backward from impact, let go of the trapdoor and the ladder he was standing on, fell into the water below, and, as the door slammed down, he was lost to sight.
Parker stepped forward, heaved the door up again, let it fall beside him, peered downward for a moment, and afterward got up and turned away, walking out around the bar into the barroom’s center. He said nothing to any of those dozen men standing statue-like at the doorway. He ejected those two spent casings, plugged in two replacements from his shell belt, holstered the weapon, and shouldered through to the reddening roadway where afternoon sun glare was putting its dying day mellowness over Laramie.
Men drifted from the saloon. They looked but they did not speak. Not even Lew Morgan, one of the last to walk out. Lew was soaked; so were three men with him. Lew told one of them to go around back, tell the men back there to stop pumping. He also said to another man: “Fetch Doc Spence.” Then he stood back in the fiery shade under Fleharty’s overhang and silently began squeezing water out of his clothing. Ahead of him, leaning on an upright post, Parker Travis stood looking straight out over the Laramie Plains.
Silence came; the grimy men began coming around into Laramie’s roadway. Some of them trooped into the saloon to look upon the man lying there with pink water around him. Some showed more interest in the heavy, soaked leather saddlebags lying beside Charley Swindin. Lew had put a man to guarding those gold-filled saddlebags with a rifle, but no one was guarding Charley Swindin. No one had to; he wasn’t moving; his eyes were closed, and only the faintest flutter of a sodden shirt front showed that he was even alive.
Parker moved, finally, turned southward, and went tiredly along toward the hotel. Men everywhere ahead had spread the news. As he went along, people showed him admiring faces. He ignored them; he was asking himself the same question over and over again:
At the hotel he turned in, paused at the bottom of the stairs, looking upward, thinking how Hub would look his reproach at what Parker would tell him—that he hadn’t killed Swindin, after all, that he didn’t know why he hadn’t—he just hadn’t.
He climbed those stairs like an old, weary man. Behind him the hotel lobby filled with people gazing after him. At the landing he turned, ran a hand along the banister, and went heavily to the door of Wheaton’s room. It opened before he raised his hand. Amy was there, white down around the mouth but darkly liquid in her steady regard of him. She put out a hand, drew him in, and closed the door. She leaned upon it, watching Parker and Hub exchange their masculine stare.
“All over?” asked Hub.
“Yes.”
“You got him?”
Parker nodded.
“He’s dead?”
“No, not dead.”
Hub’s eyes puckered a little. They held to Parker’s face for a long time without moving. The silence drew out to its maximum limit.
Hub gently nodded. “Yeah,” he softly said. “Yeah, Park, I know.”
Parker turned, saw Amy watching him, too, and said: “I don’t know what made me do it. I held low at the last minute. I put two slugs into him…one in each shoulder. I was holding on his eyes before that…right between them.” He looked and acted disappointed in himself; the memory of his murdered brother reproached him for that poorly done job. All the sustaining drive was gone out of him. There was no sense of triumph, no sense of satisfaction at all. “I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t.”
“I’ve been there,” murmured Hub. “It’s like an invisible hand comes at the last second and pushes the barrel down. Park, let me tell you something. No man ever lived to regret not killing another man when he had the chance, but the West’s full of men who live constantly with regrets about killing other men. Listen to me. You did just right. You did what a
Amy put her hand upon Parker’s arm. “Hub’s right. Ever since I left you and returned to this room, we’ve been talking. He’s right, Parker. You’ll know that’s so when you’re yourself again.” Her fingers tightened on his arm, holding him. “I wanted you to come back. I didn’t even care how you got Swindin. I just wanted you back again.” Her fingers loosened, fell away; her smoky eyes were tenderly on him. “I was being a woman, thinking like that, a
Parker’s eyes flickered when the door opened behind him. Lew Morgan strode in, still wet and disheveled. He looked at those solemn faces and had the good sense to keep quiet.
Parker stepped past Lew. He walked out of the room, left the door ajar, and passed on down the hall. Amy straightened up off the wall, turning toward the door.
“Close it,” Hub said to Lew. Morgan, not immediately comprehending, did not move until Amy was part way along. Then, with sudden understanding, he caught her, drew her back inside, and pushed at the door.
Hub said: “Amy, let him go. He’s got to find the answer.”
“Will he come back, Hub?”
“He’ll come back. They always come back. Some take longer than others, but they always return. It’s not easy…after the last gunshot echo has died…to live with yourself. But with him it’s maybe even harder. He didn’t kill when he thought he should have. He’s going out by his brother’s grave, I think, to ask himself over and over…‘Why, why did I fire low?’” Hub paused to breathe shallowly, then he said: “If there’s an answer anywhere for him, it’ll be out there. Have patience, Amy. He’ll come back to you.”
Outside, where that lowering hot sun was staining the Laramie Plains blood-red, there was a residual sound of diminishing excitement in town. It rose up to Hub Wheaton’s roadside window and for a long while was the only sound in that room.
