The Plains of Laramie by Lauran Paine Read Free Book Online

and the Kid saddled up, mounted, flipped a piece of change to the whiskeywrecked old sot who had gotten his horse, and rode out of the barn. He turned down the hot roadway with its tiny, whirling dust devils that jerked to life under his big black gelding’s freshly shod hoofs, and out of Holbrook, heading north, toward the vast D-Back-To-Back, the Dodge Ranch. The blearyeyed hostler looked from the coin in his hand to the disappearing rider and his filmy eyes were incredulous. He held a $20 gold piece in his hand—more money than he’d had since he’d been a top rider for the 101, nearly fifteen years before. Twenty golden dollars to hide in his filthy rags until it burned a livid hole in his pocket that’d match the searing ache in his ravished body for whiskey.
    As the Kid rode toward the tremendous Dodge holdings, his mind went bitterly, fleetingly to the ten little words that had hurt worse than anything that’d been said to, or about, him since he’d carved his own violent, mysterious arc across the firmament of the frontier. He more than suspected that his intended offer would be bluntly, savagely refused byToma Dodge. Still, he wanted to make it—perhaps so she’d hurt him again. He wasn’t sure why, but he fully intended to make the offer anyway.
    As the Kid rode leisurely toward his destiny, back in Holbrook there was an explosive and profane council going on in Sheriff Dugan’s office. Emmett Dugan was gray and grizzled, hard and indifferent to everything except his job as sheriff of Concho County. He was a brooding bachelor, fiery of tongue and rough in appearance. The man opposite him was articulate, dark, and handsome in an oily, unprepossessing way.
    “I don’t know when he come in, Sheriff. This mornin’, when I got down to the barn, Bob had put him in a stall and doctored him. He’s down there now, if you want to see him.”
    Dugan got up slowly. “Well, let’s go look. Don’t see how the dang’ critter can be alive, though, if he’s shot like you say.”
    Side-by-side the big forbidding-looking sheriff and his smaller, immaculate-looking companion walked down the protesting plank sidewalk to the livery barn. The dark man led up to a gloomy stall where a powerful bay horse stood forlornly in a shadowy corner, head down, lower lip hanging, breathing with bubbling, rasping sounds. The marks of a recently removed saddle were still outlined on the beast’s back. Dugan opened the stall door and went up to the wounded horse. Les Tallant, the livery barn owner, went in with him and pointed to a ragged, swollen, and purplish hole.
    “Right through the chest.” His voice was unconsciously lowered. The horse didn’t look up. Dugan walked around the horse, studying the wounds. The animal had been struck a little forward ofthe left front shoulder. Already a bloody scab had formed over the torn, swollen flesh. Dugan walked softly over the straw bedding around to the other side, shaking his head. He looked thoughtfully at the hole in the wounded saddle animal for a second time, then turned and went out of the stall. Tallant followed him out, latching the door behind him.
    “It’s Buff Dodge’s big bay, all right. I’d know that horse anywhere. He prob’ly ambled into town an’ come to your barn because he remembered that’s where Buff used to leave him when he come to town. Damn.” The sheriff shook his head wearily, sadly. “Ol’ Buff was one o’ my best friends.” That was as close as Emmett Dugan ever came to showing emotion.
    Les Tallant wagged his head back and forth a little and the opaque black eyes were impassive. “’Course, Dodge carried money on him, usually more than was wise…but, dammit all, it’s hard to think of anyone who’d kill him to get it.”
    “Oh, I don’t know, Tallant. They’s two kinds of owlhooters. They’s the kind that’ll hold a man up fer his dinero , an’ then there’s the kind that’ll kill to rob. Mostly these latter kind know the man