The Plains of Laramie by Lauran Paine Page B

choice.”
    “You’re wrong, Sheriff”—the voice was very gentle now—“I got a pretty good choice.”
    Dugan almost sighed. The Kid saw his eyes widen a fraction of an inch. That was all he needed. Two explosions rocked the still, lazy atmosphere of Holbrook. There was a second of awful suspense, then twice more the coughing roar of a .45 blasted the silence. Dugan was cursing in a low, deadly monotone and sagged against the front of his office, holding a scarlet rag of torn shirt over his ribs and Jeff Beale, outgunned from scratch, was writhing in the dust of the roadway, a bullet through the hip. The Vermilion Kid was untouched and crouched low with his lips pressed back flat over his teeth.
    Holbrook’s citizens were prudent folk. They loved to revel in the recounting of gunfights, but they reasoned, logically enough, that in order to pass on the stories, it was a necessary requisite that one stay alive. In order to accomplish this, they stayed out of sight until the fight was over. Thus it was that the Vermilion Kid strolled away from the scene of carnage, retrieved his horse from the suddenly sobered hostler at the livery barn, and rode easily out of town in a long, mile-eating lope.
    That night the Kid sat on a juniper-studded knoll that overlooked the D-Back-To-Back ranch house. The watery, faint light of the clear, cold stars andthe weak moon, made shadows of the coming and going riders below. He knew that Toma Dodge had heard, by now, of his shooting scrape. He wondered what she thought of him, in light of his recent blunder. The Kid thoughtfully chewed a straw as the night hours drifted by. Finally, when the last lights had died out over the ranch, he carefully removed his spurs and made a cautious, laborious descent to the gloomy buildings of the ranch. The Kid got to the house without much trouble. The riders were sawing wood after the day’s excitement. The Kid forced a window with determined effort, slid through the opening, only to feel the cold, menacing barrel of a six-gun in his belly. He exhaled slowly and tried to pierce the gloom.
    “Don’t move.” It was Toma’s voice.
    The Kid froze but felt a surge of relief at the same time. At any rate, it wasn’t Dugan or Beale. “Miss Dodge…?”
    “Be quiet. I should’ve known better than to trust you. I…”
    “Doggone it, hold on a minute, will you? I didn’t have a chance…”
    The voice of the girl was as firm as the gun barrel. “No, of course you didn’t. Oh, what a fool I was to believe in you. Jeff Beale suspected you from the start, and, when he found the bullet in Dad’s horse, he and Sheriff Dugan stole one of your bullets and they matched. I ought to kill you right now. You’re nothing but a cold-blooded murderer.”
    All the time she was talking, the Kid was trying to piece something together. He listened to her angry voice drone into the darkness without hearing much of what she said, then it came to him in a flash. He started to move and the gun barrel, momentarily forgotten, pressed deeper. He pulled backward instinctively and interrupted the flood of vituperation.
    “Wait a minute, will you? Hold it a second.” Her voice died away gradually, begrudgingly, and the Kid tried to see the violet eyes, but he couldn’t. “Did you say Beale found a bullet in your paw’s horse?”
    “Yes. He dug it out this afternoon, after you shot him.” Her voice held a full measure of sarcastic triumph in it. “He wasn’t so badly shot up that Doc Carter didn’t patch him up enough to go on digging up facts to hang you with.”
    The Kid’s funny bone had been rubbed. He nodded soberly, lugubriously. “Yeah, I’m sure of it, ma’am, especially since I didn’t shoot to kill…but just hold off pullin’ that trigger for one second, will you?”
    “Well?”
    “Look, Toma…”
    “Miss Dodge!”
    “Uh, yeah, Toma…uh, Miss Dodge, honey. Your dad’s horse was shot through the chest sort of between the shoulders an’ the