Guns of the Canyonlands

Chapter 13

Tyree decided there was nothing to be gained by remaining in Crooked Creek where every man’s hand was turned against him and he was friend to none. It was time to head back to Boyd’s ranch—and Lorena.

Laytham had until the end of the week, three more days, to leave the territory. Of course he wouldn’t, that much was clear. But what then?

Tyree had no plan of action, not even a vague idea sketched out in his mind. He only knew that when the time came he would act.

After picking up his saddlebags from the hotel, Tyree walked to the livery stable, on the way passing the firehouse volunteers who were busy removing the dead horse from the street, dragging it with chains behind a mule-drawn pump wagon.

The loss of his horse tugging at him, he saddled the steeldust and was walking him toward the barn door when his toe accidentally hit an upturned iron bucket and sent it clanking across the floor.

Immediately an angry voice bellowed from the hayloft. “Hey, you!”

Tyree looked up and saw bloodshot eyes in an annoyed, freckled face, glaring at him. “Do you need to make all that damned noise?” It was a girl’s voice and when he looked closer, Tyree saw a pert, upturned nose and a tangled mass of corn yellow hair. “Ooh,” the girl groaned. “I shouldn’t have hollered like that.” She clutched her head and rocked back and forth, obviously in the throes of a massive hangover.

“Sorry.” Tyree grinned. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Well, see you are. First there was all that shooting. Then you start kicking buckets around.” The girl shook her head. “Ah, the hell with it. I’ll never get back to sleep now. I need a whiskey. Do you have any?”

“What you need,” Tyree said, “is a gallon of coffee and some bacon and eggs.”

“Mister, I asked you if you had whiskey. Do you?”

“No.”

“Then why the hell am I wasting my time talking to you?”

Tyree’s grin widened. “I don’t know. I kinda figured you liked my company.”

“Yeah, that will be the day.”

Tyree waved to the girl. “Well, since you don’t care for my company, I guess I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait!”

The girl’s feet thudded on the boards of the loft then Tyree watched her climb down the ladder. At the bottom she stood for a few moments, her hand on a rung, and clutched her head, groaning. “What kind of who-hit-John rotgut,” she asked herself, “did that damned bartender at Bradley’s serve me last night?”

She was dressed in striped pants three sizes too large for her, tucked into down-at-heel, rough-out boots. She wore a man’s canvas coat, and under that a blue gingham shirt open at the neck. Despite her baggy clothes, her taut, well-curved figure was very obvious, and her eyes were brown, shot through with tiny flecks of gold. Her hair, tangled with wisps of straw, fell in loose curls from under a battered black hat and her lips were full, pale pink and inviting.

“What you looking at, mister?” she asked. “Ain’t you never seen a woman before?”

“Not one that just fell out of a hayloft.” Tyree smiled. “Besides, you’re a girl, not a woman.”

“The hell I’m not. I turned nineteen in the spring.”

“You’re sixteen, maybe seventeen,” Tyree said. “And that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

The girl opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, then said finally, “Look, mister, I need a drink real bad. Could you loan me a dollar?”

Tyree shook his head. “The last thing you need is more whiskey. Tell you what. I was going to be on my way, but I’ll take the time to buy you breakfast.”

Whatever the girl was about to reply died on her lips. Her eyes, widening in surprise, slid over Tyree’s shoulder to the door of the barn.

Tyree turned. A man stood straddle-legged in the doorway, a black flat-brimmed hat with a low crown pulled low over his eyes. He wore an ivory-handled Remington on each side of his chest in ornately carved shoulder holsters. The morning was already hot and he wore no coat, just a frilled white shirt, string tie, brocaded red vest and black pants tucked into expensive boots of the same color. His cold blue eyes slanted slightly and his skin had a yellowish tinge, giving him the look of an ancient Mongol conqueror who expected lesser men to grovel at his feet.

The man’s chin jutted arrogantly toward Tyree. “You the one they call Chance Tyree?”

“Who wants to know?”

The man ignored the question, his icy eyes searching Tyree’s face, measuring him. “Nick Tobin told me you have a message for Quirt Laytham. You want to give it to me?”

“Like I asked you already,” Tyree answered, suddenly tense and ready, “who are you?”

“Name’s Luther Darcy. If the name don’t mean anything to you, it should.” Beside him, Tyree heard the girl shriek, not a cry of fear but one of raw anger.

“You son of a bitch, that name means something to me,” she screamed. The girl turned and ran back to a stall where a paint pony was penned. A saddle with a booted Winchester hung over the stall partition and she grabbed the rifle and racked a round into the chamber, striding toward Darcy, her eyes blazing.

Using a movement too fast to follow, the gunman crossed his arms and drew his Remingtons, the big revolvers coming level in a single, flashing instant.

“No!” Tyree yelled. He quickly stepped in front of the girl and wrenched the rifle from her hands. “You little fool, he’ll kill you!”

For a few seconds, the girl fought him like a tiger; then she gave up, realizing the futility of her struggles.

“Darcy,” she yelled, jumping to look over Tyree’s shoulder, “remember this—I’m coming after you and I’m going to kill you one day.”

The gunman’s lips stretched in a grin under his sweeping black mustache. “Now that really scares me. Hell, I could gun both of you right now, then go eat breakfast.”

One arm holding the girl back, Tyree turned on Darcy. “Then why don’t you try?”

The man waved a negligent hand. “Now is not the time.” His eyes again wandered over Tyree from boots to hat, summing him up in his own mind. “Heard about you, Tyree,” he said. “Heard some wild stuff about when you were running with Wes Hardin and them, and later. They say you’re good with a gun, mighty slick and sudden. Don’t know if that’s the truth or not. But anyhow, I’m letting you live, at least for the time being. Call it”—he thought for a few moments—“call it professional courtesy.”

“Darcy, did you kill my horse?” Tyree asked, his voice level and cold.

The gunman shook his head. “Tut, tut and tut, Tyree. You ought to know that’s not my style. Clem Daley shot your horse. Him and a couple of others.”

“I know what your style is, you damned murderer,” the girl snapped. “Shooting down poor cowboys in the street.”

“Now what cowboys would that be?” Darcy asked, his voice a soft, menacing hiss. “There have been so many.”

“My brother for one,” the girl said. “His name was Tom Brennan and you killed him in Cheyenne a year ago. He was all I had in the world and you murdered him.”

Darcy nodded. “Ah, yes, I remember now, a towhead, wasn’t he? Had freckles all over his face like you, like he’d swallowed a dollar and broke out in pennies. In my capacity as range detective, I caught him riding a horse that wasn’t his and he went for his gun. Now, all things considered, that was very foolish of him, wasn’t it?”

“Tom had a bill of sale for that horse, and you know it!” the girl yelled.

Darcy shook his head. “This grows tiresome. What’s one damn saddle tramp more or less?” He spun his guns and they thudded solidly back into their holsters.

“Hear this, both of you. I want you out of town and out of the territory—today. Tyree, if I see you in Crooked Creek tomorrow, or anyplace else for that matter, I’ll forget all about professional courtesies and gun you.” He smiled, his teeth very white, the long canines prominent and wet, like fangs. “This I promise.”

Anger flared in Tyree. “You want to try it right now, Darcy?”

“No, not right now. If I gunned you now, it would set just fine with Mr. Laytham, but there is someone else who would take it hard. And for that reason, I was told to give you only a sternly delivered warning.” Darcy smiled. “For this day at least.”

“Well, you’ve told me. Now let me tell you something. I won’t leave this territory until my business with Laytham is over.”

Darcy nodded. “Of course, I knew you’d say that. So, from this moment on, Tyree, consider yourself a walking dead man.” The gunman smiled again, touched his hat to the girl, and was gone.

The girl rounded on Tyree, her face dark with anger. “Why the hell didn’t you draw down on him?”

“Because”—Tyree grinned—“it would have spoiled my appetite for breakfast.”

“You’re scared of him, aren’t you? You’re a scaredy cat.”

Tyree shook his head. “No, I’m not scared of him, but maybe I should be.”

“How come?”

“Because he’s good. I think maybe the best with a gun I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen plenty.”

The girl stuck out her tongue. “Scaredy cat.”

Tyree grinned. “Say, what’s your name anyway?”

“Sally. Sally Brennan.”

“Well, Sally Brennan, now I’m taking you to breakfast.”

Despite her hangover, the girl ate hungrily, demolishing two plates of flapjacks and bacon before she sighed and slumped back in her chair.

“When did you last eat?” Tyree asked, an amused smile touching his lips.

Sally shrugged. “I don’t recollect. It was a spell back.”

She watched Tyree build a smoke and asked, “Will you make me one of those?”

Tyree shook his head. “No. Tobacco will stunt your growth.”

“Didn’t do that to you.”

“Maybe I was lucky.”

Since the morning was well advanced, there were no other diners in the restaurant. Tyree leaned closer to the girl. “How long have you been hunting Luther Darcy?”

“A year, maybe a little more.”

“How did it happen? With your brother, I mean.”

Sally dipped the tip of her middle finger into a small puddle of molasses syrup on her plate and licked the finger clean. “My folks had a hardscrabble ranch just south of the Platte in the Wyoming Territory, but when I was six years old they were both took by the cholera. My brother, Tom, was barely twelve at the time, but he kept the place going and he raised me—well, him and an old hired hand who passed on a couple of years ago.”

The girl leaned forward in her chair. “Mister, you sure you want to hear all this? It ain’t like we’re kin or anything.”

Tyree smiled. “The name’s Chance, and, yes, I want to hear about it. It seems to me we share a common enemy, and that’s kin enough.”

“Well, Chance, about eighteen months ago there was a sight of rustling along the Platte and the local cattleman’s association hired Darcy as a range detective—just a fancy name for a hired killer.

“About then, Tom rode into Cheyenne trying to get a bank loan to tide us over until we sold our herd. Tom had just bought a paint pony from the Rocking J ranch, off a man called Bill Hardesty, a mighty important member of the association. Darcy saw Tom in the street and accused him of stealing the horse and pushed him into going for his gun. Tom hadn’t even cleared leather when Darcy shot him.” Small tears reddened Sally’s eyes. “I was told my brother died a few minutes later, cursing Darcy and all he stood for.”

“And you’ve been tracking Darcy ever since?”

“Uh-huh. I sold the ranch for what I could get, and that was little enough, then tracked Darcy all over the territory but never got close enough to get a shot at him. Then I heard he’d moved south to Salt Lake City. I followed him there but lost him again. Finally a couple of punchers in Moab told me a gun-slinger by the name of Darcy was working for a big rancher near Crooked Creek.

“I followed him here, got in yesterday. And you know the rest.”

Tyree crushed out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and refilled Sally’s coffee cup. “How come you tied one on last night?”

“I was hurting and it eased the pain.”

“Of your brother’s death?”

Sally shook her head. Suddenly her eyes were old and her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “No, that pain I’ll have always. This is another pain, sharper and a lot more agonizing, a pain I’ve had spiking at me for a twelvemonth because I want to kill Luther Darcy so bad. I plan to look into his eyes as he dies and laugh and see the fear in them. I hate him and I want revenge and that’s a festering sore no doctor can heal. With all the hatred that’s inside me, my life has become a hell. For every hour I hate, I lose sixty minutes of happiness, but there’s no going back from it.” The girl tried to smile. “With Tom gone, there’s only me, so I have it to do.”

Sally picked up her coffee cup with both hands and held it close to her lips. “And what about you, Chance Tyree. Who is this Quirt Laytham? And do you have a pain inside you?”

“I never thought about it in those terms,” Tyree answered, his face troubled. “But, yes, I guess I do.”

Tyree told Sally about being hanged and shot, then about Owen Fowler and finally Luke Boyd and Lorena.

When he finished speaking, the girl leaned back in her chair and smiled. “We’re a pair then, aren’t we? We live with hate and it’s eating away at us like a cancer. How about this girl, Lorena Boyd? Is she beautiful?”

“Very.”

“Do you love her?”

Tyree hesitated for just a moment, surprised at the girl’s question. But, with a woman’s perception, Sally read his face. “You’re unsure, aren’t you?”

“Yes, maybe I am. Quirt Laytham stands between us.”

“And when you kill him?”

“Then his ghost will stand between us.”

Sally rose. “I’d say that’s a no-win situation, Chance Tyree. Well, it’s been nice talking with you, but I have to be going.”

“Where?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Around I guess.”

“You’d better come back with me to Luke Boyd’s place. I’m sure you’ll be made welcome.”

Sally hesitated, uncertain, and Tyree said: “I can’t leave you here with Luther Darcy in town. Now he knows you’re after him he’ll be on his guard and he’ll kill you any way he can.”

“Darcy doesn’t want to kill me,” the girl said. “At least not right away. I saw that much in his eyes back at the livery stable. He wants something else. Maybe he nurses a sick fantasy about ravishing the sister of a man he murdered. I don’t know.”

“That settles it then, Sally,” Tyree said. “We’ll get your horse. You’re coming with me.”

The girl nodded. “I’ll go along with that at least for now. But just so you know, Chance—if I come with you you’ll be borrowing my trouble. Big trouble.”

Tyree smiled. “I guess I can handle it.”

“Just so you know,” Sally said.