Laramie Holds the Range

by Frank H. Spearman

"I won out against the bunch. I couldn't have done it without playing straight. It's too late for me to switch my game now. I'd hate to see more grief heaped on Kate. And Van Horn doesn't deserve any show. But if his hands go up—though I never expect to see Harry Van Horn's hands over his head—I can't do it, Doctor, that's all there is to it—he'll come in alive as far as anything I have to do with it."

Carpy laughed cynically: "Jim," he exclaimed with an affectionate string of abuse, "you're the biggest fool in all creation. It's all right." The doctor opened the door of the little room as Laramie rose. "Go 'long," he said roughly, "but bring back your legs on their own power."

Laramie passed around from behind the prescription case where the clerk was filling an order, and, busily thinking, walked rapidly toward the open front door. A little girl waiting at the rear counter piped at him. "How d' do, Mr. Laramie!" It was Mamie McAlpin. He stopped to pinch her cheek. "I don't know you any more, Mamie. You're getting such a big girl." Passing her, he stepped into the afternoon sunshine that flooded the open doorway.

The threshold of the door was elevated, country-store fashion, six or seven inches above the sidewalk. Laramie glanced up street and down—as he habitually did—and started to step down to the walk. It was only when he looked directly across to the opposite side of the street, lying in the afternoon shadow, that he saw, standing in a narrow open space between two one-story wooden store buildings, a man covering him with a revolver.

At the very instant that Laramie saw him, the man fired. Laramie was stepping down when the bullet struck him. Whirled by the blow, he staggered against the drugstore window. Instinctively he reached for his revolver. It hung at his left hip. But struggling to right himself he found that his left arm refused to obey. When he tried to get his hand to the grip of his revolver he could not, and the man, seeing him helpless, darted from his hiding place out on the sidewalk and throwing his gun into balance, fired again.

It was Van Horn. Before the second shot echoed along the street a dozen men were out. Not one of them could see at that moment a chance for Laramie's life; they only knew he was a man to die hard, and dying—dangerous. In catching him at the moment he was stepping down, Van Horn's bullet, meant for his heart, had smashed the collar bone above it and Laramie's gun arm hung useless.

Realizing his desperate plight, he flung his smashed shoulder toward his enemy. As the second bullet ripped through the loose collar of his shirt, he swung his right arm with incredible dexterity behind him, snatched his revolver from its holster, and started straight across the street at Van Horn.

It looked like certain death. Main Street, irregular, is at that point barely sixty feet wide. Perfectly collected, Van Horn trying to fell his reckless antagonist, fired again. But Laramie with deadly purpose ran straight at him. By the time Van Horn could swing again, Laramie had reached the middle of the street and stood within the coveted shadow that protected Van Horn. In that instant, halting, he whipped his revolver suddenly up in his right hand, covered his enemy and fired a single shot.

Van Horn's head jerked back convulsively. He almost sprang into the air. His arms shot out. His revolver flew from his hand. He reeled, and falling heavily across the board walk, turned, shuddering, on his face. The bullet striking him between the eyes had killed him instantly.

Twenty men were running up. They left a careful lane between the man now standing motionless in the middle of the street and his prone antagonist. But Laramie knew too well the marks of an agony such as that—the clenching, the loosing of the hands, the last turn, the relaxing quiver. He had seen too many stricken animals die.