Guns of the Canyonlands

Chapter 11

Crooked Creek was a sprawling collection of shacks, saloons and houses scattered along the base of a high yellow mesa. The town had a raw frontier look to it, yet, like a penniless but genteel dowager, it had pretensions to grandeur. White-painted gingerbread houses huddled together on the outskirts of town and the place boasted a church, school and fire station.

It was not yet noon when Tyree, his hat pulled low over his face, rode along the main street and tied up his horse outside Bradley’s Saloon.

He stepped onto the boardwalk, but instead of entering the saloon walked to his right and stopped at a restaurant with a weather-beaten sign outside that said simply: EATS.

He was hungry and, at least for now, the Arapaho Kid could wait.

Tyree stepped inside, grateful for the coolness of the place, and found a table facing the door. At this time of the day, the restaurant was quiet. A couple of men who looked like bank clerks sat at another table, lingering long over their coffee.

The two had studied Tyree closely when he entered, taking in his gun and the hard glint in his eyes, then had turned quickly away, wanting no part of him.

A young, pretty waitress took his order for steak and eggs and filled his coffee cup. He ate with an appetite, ordered more coffee and built a smoke. More people came into the restaurant, mostly the town’s respectable businessmen and their wives, then a couple of grinning young punchers in dusty range clothes who talked pretties to the waitress and made her giggle.

Tyree paid his bill and stepped to the door, his chiming spurs attracting the attention of the punchers. “Hey, Tex, you lookin’ for a ridin’ job?” one of them called out to him.

Tyree turned and shook his head. “Just passing through.”

“Too bad,” the man said. “We could use an extry hand or three.”

It was hot outside and a dust devil danced in the street before collapsing in a puff of yellow near the Overland Stage depot where passengers made small talk and tried not to think about the hours of jolting, sweating misery that lay ahead for them. Outside the firehouse, a man in suspenders and collarless shirt was polishing the brass of a red steam engine, arcs of dark sweat under his arms.

Including his steeldust, six horses now stood at the saloon hitching rail. Tyree stepped along the boardwalk and checked the brands. The five ponies bore Laytham’s Rafter-L on their shoulders. It was an easy brand to alter with a running iron, Tyree decided, but by now rustlers had probably learned to ride wide around the big rancher’s herds.

The horses’ necks were lathered where the reins had rubbed, so Tyree knew they had just arrived. Was the Arapaho Kid among them?

There was only one way to find out, and Tyree figured it was high time he did what he’d come to do. He stepped inside the saloon, letting the doors swing shut behind him.

Five men stood at the long, mahogany bar, one of them the huge Clem Daley, wearing Tyree’s buckskin coat. A smaller man stood at the deputy’s side, a smoking black cigar clenched in his teeth. This man was grinning as he held aloft a shining new double eagle. “The drinks are on me, boys,” he said. “We’re celebrating today and there’s more gold where this one came from.”

Laughter and cheers went up from Daley and the others, and a few men who were sitting around the saloon at tables joined in with enthusiasm.

The bartender, a thick-shouldered man with a broken nose, set up drinks, then stepped to where Tyree stood at the bar. “What will it be, stranger?” he asked. “You heard the man. He’s buying.”

“Rye,” Tyree said. “But I buy my own drinks.”

“Now that ain’t real neighborly of you—” the bartender began. But Daley’s booming roar cut him off in midsentence.

“What in the blue blazes are you doing in town, Tyree?” he yelled. “You must be hell-bent on committing suicide because you must know you ain’t leaving Crooked Creek alive.”

Tyree ignored the question. “Your time will come, Daley,” he said, “but not today. Right now I’m looking for a yellow-bellied snake who goes by the name of the Arapaho Kid.”

The man who’d been smoking the cigar took a puff, laid the stogie carefully in the ashtray in front of him then stepped away from the bar. “They call me the Arapaho Kid,” he said, his hands hanging loose and ready at his side. “You hunting trouble with me?”

The Kid was not much above medium height, black hair hanging loose and greasy over his shoulders under a low-crowned hat with a flat brim. He had the wide, heavy cheekbones of an Indian, but his eyes were blue, the heritage of his mixed blood. He looked confident and poised and eager to kill.

“You murdered a friend of mine yesterday, Kid,” Tyree said. “I’m here to do right by him.”

“You mean that back-shooting scum Owen Fowler.” The Kid smiled. “He was heeled.”

“He was carrying a broken rifle that couldn’t shoot,” Tyree said. He stepped closer to the Kid and saw the man’s eyes widen in alarm. Sharing a trait common to all gunmen, the Kid liked distance between himself and his victim. Too close, and even a dying, badly frightened sodbuster might get off a lucky shot.

From off to his left, Tyree heard the bartender say, “Mister, you best let it be. You don’t want to mess with the Kid. He’ll kill you for sure.”

Tyree ignored the man. “Kid, Owen Fowler was a kind, decent man, a better man than you’ll ever be. But you gunned him down like a dog in the street. For that there has to be a reckoning.”

“Reckoning my ass,” Daley said, a grin stretching his cruel, thick lips. “You want to take him, Kid, or will I do it?”

“I told you, Daley,” Tyree said. “This is not your day. But if you want to take a hand in this, shuck off my coat. I don’t want your blood all over it.”

“Damn you, Tyree. I’ll—”

“Leave it be, Clem,” the Kid said, his smile razor thin. He reached out, retrieved his cigar and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. His right hand, slender and well manicured as a woman’s, hovered near his belt buckle. “This one’s all mine. I enjoy killing a man for breakfast.”

The Arapaho Kid grabbed for the Colt in his cross-draw holster—but Tyree, expecting the move, did the last thing the gunman expected. He made no attempt to draw.

Shifting position fast, he stepped into the Kid and pinned the man’s gun hand with his left as it closed on the butt of his gun. His right fist crashed into the Kid’s face and Tyree felt the man’s nose smash under his knuckles. The Kid dropped his gun and let out a bubbling scream, but Tyree was merciless. He backhanded the gunman across the face then held him upright to take a hard left. The Kid’s lips pulped against his teeth, and his knees buckled. Tyree took a half step back and as the man fell he slammed a powerful uppercut to the Kid’s chin. The gunman staggered back, then crashed to the floor. He lay on his back, his left leg twitching, and did not get up.

For a few moments the other men at the bar froze, trying to make sense of what they’d just witnessed. Then Daley hurled a wild curse at Tyree and went for his gun. He still hadn’t cleared leather when he found himself looking into the muzzle of Tyree’s Colt.

“That’s it. I’m done!” Daley screamed, his eyes popping out of his head. He let his gun drop and it thudded onto the floor.

The three others at the bar, bad actors all, had the wild, reckless look of men who were thinking about auditioning for parts in the play.

But Tyree’s cold command stopped them. “Call off your dogs, Daley, or I’ll gut shoot you right where you stand.”

“You heard the man. Back off!” Daley shrieked. The big deputy was almost frantic with fear, knowing how close he stood to a bullet in the belly.

The others reluctantly lifted their hands clear of their guns, and one of them, a lantern-jawed man in a butternut shirt, asked, “Clem, you sure this is how you want it?”

“Yes, damn it,” Daley yelped. “Step away from it.”

“Daley,” Tyree said, no give in him, “take off my coat and lay it on the bar.”

The deputy hesitated and Tyree yelled, “Do it now!”

His face gray, Daley quickly peeled off the coat and did as he was told.

“Take me a month to get your stink out of that,” Tyree said. He leaned down and grabbed the Kid by the back of his shirt collar; then his eyes lifted to Daley again. “Where’s my dun?” he asked. “And my Colt.”

“They ain’t here, honest,” Daley said. “I took your hoss and the guns to the Rafter-L.”

“Daley, I plan on staying in town tonight,” Tyree said. “Come first light tomorrow morning I want to see that dun standing outside the hotel. I want my gun and belt hanging from the saddle horn. You got that?”

The big deputy touched his tongue to dry lips. He was badly frightened. With the Arapaho Kid out of it, no longer there to back his play, he felt naked and alone.

“Sure, anything you say,” Daley said.

“Now you and the others get on your ponies and ride out of here,” Tyree said. “I don’t want to have to be always watching my back.”

Tyree strolled outside the saloon door until Daley and the other Laytham riders mounted up and left town, the big deputy in the lead, slapping his horse with the reins until it stretched its neck and its legs blurred into a flat-out run.

When Tyree stepped back inside, the bartender asked, nodding toward the still unconscious Arapaho Kid, “What about him?”

“He killed a friend of mine,” Tyree said. “But I reckon his days as a shooter of unarmed men are about to come to a permanent close.”

“You gonna kill the Kid?” the bartender asked, his face shocked.

Tyree nodded. “Something like that.”

“Mister,” the bartender protested, “there ain’t nothing like that.”

“Maybe so,” Tyree said. “But there’s worse.”

He hauled the Kid outside and, as a curious crowd gathered, dragged him by the collar of his shirt to the horse trough near the hitching rail. Tyree repeatedly dunked the gunman’s head into the water, each time leaving it there until the man began to frantically kick and struggle and bubbles rose to the surface.

Finally Tyree forced the Kid to his knees. Then he bent and looked into his face, their noses only inches apart. “You awake now, Kid?” he asked through gritted teeth. “I want you to know exactly what’s happening to you, every last part of it.”

Blood ran in watery fingers from the gunman’s nose over his mouth and chin, but his face was dark and ugly with anger. “I’ll kill you for this, Tyree,” he snarled. “By God, I’ll gun you first chance I get.”

Tyree smiled and shook his head. “Kid, your killing days ended when you murdered Owen Fowler.” Tyree pulled the gunman to his feet and spun him around. He shoved his hand into the Kid’s pocket and found what he’d been looking for—four shiny new double eagles.

Tyree turned the man again and shoved the coins under the Kid’s smashed nose. “Four of these in your pocket and one on the bar in the saloon,” he said, his eyes hard, each breath short and harsh. “Is that what Laytham considered Owen Fowler’s life was worth, huh? A lousy hundred dollars?”

“You go to hell!” the Kid snapped.

Tyree viciously backhanded the gunman across the face. “Was it?” he yelled. “Was Owen worth only a hundred dollars?”

The Kid’s face was a bloody mess and he was struggling to breathe. “A bonus,” he gasped. “It was a bonus.”

“For murdering Owen Fowler?”

“Yeah, yeah, for Fowler.”

The Arapaho Kid’s right hand dropped for the gun on his hip. But Tyree saw it coming and slapped the hand aside. He yanked the Kid’s Colt from the holster and shoved it into his own waistband.

“You’re a sorry piece of low-life trash, Kid,” Tyree said, his voice suddenly level and chillingly calm. “Now I’m going to make sure you never kill another unarmed man.”

Judged by the standards of a later era, what followed next was brutal, savage and merciless. But it is wise for a man to hesitate to judge the conduct of Western men lest he fall into the common error of condemning what he does not understand. Chance Tyree lived at a violent time in a violent land and justice as he understood it was swift, certain and tailored to fit the crime.

Tyree dragged the kicking, yelling Arapaho Kid to the hitching rail and laid the gunman’s manicured, pampered right hand on the rough pine of the cross post. He pulled the Kid’s Colt from his waistband, held it by the barrel and, with the butt, smashed the hand into a pulp of blood, gristle and splintered bone.

Ignoring the Kid’s screams and the cries of the crowd for Sheriff Tobin, he did the same thing with the Kid’s left. And when it was over, he stepped back and looked down with cold eyes at the whimpering gunman, who was bent over on his knees, his ruined hands held close to his belly, rocking back and forth.

No backup in him, and no compassion either, Tyree said, “You’d best find yourself another line of work, Kid. I’d say your days as a hired gun are over.”

He grabbed the Kid by the back of his collar and pushed him toward his horse. “Now ride, and if I ever see you in the canyon country again, I’ll kill you.”

The Kid staggered to his horse, his pain-filled face ashen and scared. He wanted to get away from here, as far away as possible from the tall, relentless man with eyes the color of cold green death.

After several attempts, the Kid finally swung into the saddle and he kneed his horse forward. The big bartender from Bradley’s stood on the boardwalk. He threw Tyree a look of hatred, and called out to the Kid, “Hey, Kid, you want my shotgun?”

The Arapaho Kid gave the bartender a sidelong glance and gasped, “You go to hell.”

He kicked his horse into a lope and headed out of town. Tyree watched him leave until horse and rider were swallowed up by dust and distance.

“What’s going on here?”

Tyree turned and watched as Sheriff Tobin, pulling a suspender over the shoulder of his dirty red vest, bellied his way through the crowd.

“Can’t a man get any sleep around here?” he demanded, his eyes hidden behind his round, dark glasses. The hair that showed under the lawman’s hat was pure white and his face was pasty, like the skin on the belly of a dead fish.

“Sheriff, this man just done for the Kid,” someone in the crowd yelled. “Smashed both his hands to pulp.”

Then it seemed everybody was talking at once, trying to get in their two cents’ worth about what they’d just witnessed. Many voices were raised, but Tyree heard none that were friendly.

“Where is the Kid now?” Tobin asked, his uplifted hands quieting the crowd.

“He’s gone, Sheriff,” Tyree said. “And he won’t be coming back.”

He looked into Tobin’s face but could not read the man’s eyes, hidden as they were behind their circles of darkness.

Tobin turned and saw the bartender on the boardwalk. “Benny, what happened?”

The bartender stepped off the walk and pointed to Tyree. “This man braced the Kid in the saloon. Then he dragged him out here and smashed up both his hands, just like you was told, Sheriff.” The man called Benny turned and extended his arms to the crowd. “I think it’s a crying shame that an honest citizen can’t enjoy a little celebration in the saloon without being attacked and manhandled.”

A murmur of agreement ran through the crowd. A few were the respectable townspeople of Crooked Creek, but most were drifters and the assorted riffraff of the frontier, anxious for any kind of excitement, especially a possible lynching.

Tyree was an outsider here, and all the town’s sympathies were with the Arapaho Kid.

“Honest citizen, huh?” Tyree asked Tobin. He stepped closer to the big lawman. “Hold out your hand, Tobin.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Tobin extended his powerful white paw and Tyree dropped the four double eagles into his palm. “You’ll find another one on the bar in the saloon. The Kid told me Quirt Laytham gave him these—a bonus for murdering Owen Fowler.”

Some of the respectable element in the crowd exchanged puzzled looks, wondering about what Tyree had just said, trying to gauge the truth or falsity of it.

Tobin felt, rather than saw, the shift in attitude and stepped quickly into the breach. “Maybe that’s what the Kid said, Tyree, and maybe it wasn’t. But in any case I wouldn’t take the word of a damn breed on anything.”

A tall, thin man who looked like a merchant in a broadcloth suit and a high celluloid collar, said, “Hear, hear.” Tobin pressed home his advantage.

“You people break it up now,” he said. “Be about your business.” He turned to Tyree. “You come with me. I want to talk to you.”

“You arresting me, Sheriff?” Tyree asked, his voice hard-edged.

“No, though I could for what you did back at the wash. Cost us some good men.”

“They were coming at me shooting,” Tyree said. “I was defending myself.”

Tobin rubbed a hand across his unshaven cheeks then glanced at the blazing sun. “I don’t care to stand here in the street and talk. I burn up real easy. Come with me to my office.”

“What do you want to talk about, Tobin?” Tyree asked.

The big lawman stepped closer, so close Tyree could smell him, and his voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “I’ve got another proposition for you, and this one you’d be well-advised to take.”