Guns of the Canyonlands

Chapter 15

Tyree was still a mile from the cabin when he met Luke Boyd on the trail alongside the creek. The old rancher rode up to him and his eyes searched the younger man’s face, a question forming on his lips.

“Yes, Luke,” Tyree said, beating him to it, “I ran into Roy Will.”

“He dead?”

Tyree nodded. “Back in a canyon. He didn’t give me any choice.”

“Heard guns. Noise travels far in these canyons. I was on my way to help.” He looked Tyree over. “You hurt any?”

“Shallow bullet burn across the back of my leg is all.” Tyree smiled. “Nothing to speak about.”

“You look all used up, boy. Tell you what. Why don’t you come back to the cabin and let’s you and me share a jug?”

“Best offer I’ve had all day, Luke.” Tyree grinned.

The day was hot, and Lorena and Sally were sitting in chairs outside, under the shade of a spruce growing near the cabin. Despite the heat, both women looked cool and lovely, and Tyree’s breath caught in his throat, like a man who’d unexpectedly come across a pair of blooming prairie roses in the desert.

“Chance,” Lorena said, jumping to her feet as Tyree swung out of the saddle, “we heard shooting. We’ve been so worried.”

Tyree held the reins of the steeldust and nodded. “It was Roy Will. He bushwhacked me, or at least he tried to.”

“Is he . . . ?”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

Sally, looking crisp and pretty in another of Lorena’s dresses, took the reins from Tyree’s hand. “Chance, you look exhausted. Best you sit for a while and I’ll see to your horse.”

“Sally, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to.” The girl smiled. “But I want to.”

Later, Boyd brought out his jug. He and Tyree passed it back and forth, and Tyree was pleased when Sally refused a drink. Maybe her heavy drinking had been a onetime thing and it was over.

Rustler or no, the killing of Roy Will seemed to cast a pall over everybody, and even Sally didn’t talk much. Lorena seemed oddly withdrawn, as though she was busy with her own thoughts. As to what those thoughts might be, Tyree could not hazard a guess.

As the long day shaded into a warm, starlit evening, Boyd brought a couple of lanterns outside and set them up, their flickering flames casting dancing circles of orange light on the hard-packed dirt of the yard. A few moments later he produced a fiddle and said, “We’re all of us sitting with long faces and I reckon it’s time I livened things up around here.”

Grinning wide, he tucked the fiddle under his chin and played. It was immediately clear that Boyd was a fine musician and he performed an excellent rendition of “Ducks in the Pond,” followed by a lively version of “Old Joe Clark.”

“Let’s have some dancing,” Boyd yelled, the music and the whiskey taking ahold of him. “Here, Chance, let’s see you and Sally step it out.”

Taking his cue from Boyd and caught up in the moment himself, Tyree grinned, walked to where Sally was sitting and bowed. “May I have the honor of this dance, Miss Brennan?”

“Why, of course, Mr. Tyree.” Sally beamed, extending her hand.

Tyree was a fair dancer, as was Sally, and together they made an attractive couple as they went through the complex circles, promenades and allemandes of the “Virginia Reel” and then “Money in Both Pockets.”

Lorena joined in the fun, her dancing both enthusiastic and elegant. For a few hours she, Sally and Tyree forgot their troubles and the dark shadows that lay between them, letting the music lift them to a different, happier place.

It was well after midnight when Tyree sought his bunk. He lay on his back, smiling into the darkness, and conceded that he had just spent one of the most pleasant nights of his life.

But that mood vanished come the dawn, when he rose and went down to the creek to wash . . . and Luke Boyd told him that Sally was gone.

“She laid the two dresses I gave her out on her bed and left me a little thank-you note,” Lorena said, as Tyree and Boyd drank coffee in the cabin.

“Anything else?” Tyree asked. “Did she say where she was headed?”

“No,” Lorena answered. “Just a thank-you and nothing more.”

Tyree gazed into his coffee cup, feeling a knot of emotion in his belly. He had grown to like Sally, and now he feared for her. She would try to track down Luther Darcy and kill him. But she was no match for the gunman, either in skill or in cunning.

Lorena broke into Tyree’s thoughts. “Women don’t keep secrets from each other for long, Chance,” she said. “I know why Sally came to the canyonlands.”

Tyree’s head jerked up in surprise. “She told you?”

“Yes, she told me about her brother’s death and her hunt for Luther Darcy.”

Tyree was not anxious to reopen unhealed wounds, but what had to be said had to be said. “Did Sally tell you that Darcy works for Quirt Laytham?”

Lorena’s chin lifted defiantly. “Yes, yes, she did, and that’s why I’m going to talk to Quirt today. I’m going to demand that he give Darcy his time and send him packing.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Lorena shook her head. “That won’t happen. Quirt wants to marry me and he’ll do anything I ask.”

“Lorena has a point, Chance,” Boyd said. “Ol’ Quirt sure is sweet on her. It isn’t likely he’ll refuse her anything.”

Tyree rose to his feet. “You do as you please, Lorena. But in the meantime I’m going to look for Sally and try to keep her away from Darcy.”

“Chance, I’m also going to do something else. I’ll ask Quirt to talk to you and see if we can get rid of the bad blood between you two.”

A small sadness in him, Tyree looked at the girl, her beauty so dazzling it caused him a sweet pain. “Don’t waste your efforts, Lorena,” he said. “I’ll deal with Laytham in my own way and my own time.”

Anger flared in the girl. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, then why don’t you just leave? You’ve caused nothing but trouble since Owen Fowler brought you here.”

“Lorena,” Boyd said mildly, his eyes lifting to his daughter, “Chance is my guest. I’ll be the one to tell him to leave, not you.”

Slowly the angry red stain drained from Lorena’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Pa. It’s just that some people around here are so . . . so pigheaded.” She grabbed her hat and riding crop from the rack. “I’m going to talk to Quirt. At least he will listen to reason.”

The girl stormed outside, and a few moments later Tyree heard the hammer of her horse’s galloping hooves recede into the distance.

Tyree’s mood of last night had now totally gone, the memory of it extinguished, and cold gray ashes of regret were all that remained. He turned to Boyd. “Luke, you think Lorena really loves Laytham?”

The old rancher shrugged, his face unreadable. “Son, I don’t know who Lorena really loves.”

The way Tyree figured it, Sally Brennan could be in one of two places—Crooked Creek, or staking out Quirt Laytham’s ranch. At either location she had a good chance of running into Luther Darcy.

He made a decision and headed the steeldust toward Crooked Creek. By what he’d heard from others, Darcy was work shy, a trait shared by most hired guns, and by all accounts spent more time in Bradley’s saloon than he did at the Rafter-L.

Laytham’s cows were spread out along both sides of Hatch Wash, even farther north than before, and all were in excellent shape. On a whim, Tyree turned into Owen Fowler’s canyon, and saw more of Laytham’s Herefords.

It seemed like the man was moving herds into the entire country and Tyree wondered how long it would be before small ranchers like Luke Boyd and Steve Lassiter were pushed out as Laytham expanded all the way north to Moab, and maybe beyond. Grass and water were at a premium in this magnificent but barren country. Laytham needed grass—and both Boyd and Lassiter were sitting on a lot of it.

Crooked Creek lay drowsing in the afternoon heat when Tyree rode to the livery stable. An old-timer in denim overalls and a straw hat was sitting on a bench outside the stable and Tyree reined up close to him.

“Howdy,” Tyree said. “You new here?”

The man lifted faded brown eyes to the young rider then spat a string of tobacco juice. “Right back at ya, howdy your ownself. And, no, I’m not new here. I been laid up for a few weeks with the rheumatism, is all. Couldn’t leave my cabin, an’ that was surely hard on me on account of I’m what you might call a watching man.”

“Well, watching man, I’m looking for a girl, maybe seventeen years old, yellow hair, stands a couple of inches over five feet.”

“Hell, mister, ain’t we all,” the old man said.

Tyree smiled. “She might be sleeping in your hayloft.”

The old-timer shook his head. “Ain’t nobody like that up there. Trust me, I’d know if a gal like the one you’re asking about was sleeping here.”

“You seen Luther Darcy in town?” Tyree asked, taking a different tack.

“No, I haven’t seen him and I don’t want to see him either,” the old man answered. “That one is pure pizen.”

Tyree touched fingers to his hat and swung the steeldust away. “Obliged to you.”

“Stop by anytime,” the oldster said. “I don’t get much comp’ny around here, yellow-haired females or otherwise.”

There were a couple of cow ponies outside Bradley’s, both with Rafter-L brands, and Tyree slipped the thong off his Colt before he stepped inside.

At first the bartender, the man Tobin had called Benny, seemed surprised to see him, but then his face screwed into an ugly scowl. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. “Luther Darcy told you to stay away.”

Tyree ignored the man and studied the two Laytham riders who were propping up the bar. Both were young, and had a wild, reckless look about them, their guns worn low on the thigh, handy to get at and not for show. Both were dressed in worn range clothes. The taller of the two wore a long, canvas duster.

Satisfied that the men presented no immediate threat, Tyree turned to the bartender again. “I’m looking for a girl who was in here drinking a few nights ago. Blond gal, name’s Sally Brennan.”

“Haven’t seen her since,” the bartender said. “Whores like that come and go.”

Tyree smiled. He was still smiling when he reached across the bar, grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and backhanded him hard across the face.

“Mister,” Tyree said, his voice level, without a trace of anger, “I don’t know where you come from, but out here we don’t talk about womenfolk like that.”

A trickle of blood ran from the bartender’s nose and his eyes were blazing. He reached up and grabbed Tyree’s wrist in a huge right hand, squeezing hard, trying to loosen Tyree’s grip.

For a few moments, the two men wrestled in silence. Benny, a strong, powerful man, was using his right against Tyree’s left, but he could not budge the younger man’s fist clenched in his shirt, feeling the steel in him.

The bartender’s face slowly changed, the color draining from his cheeks as he realized he was badly overmatched. Finally he dropped his hand, and Tyree pushed the man away from him, sending Benny sprawling backward into the bar, glasses and bottles crashing to the floor.

The two Laytham men had watched the whole thing with a growing interest, but neither made an attempt to intervene. The one in the duster grinned and said to the bartender, “How’s it feel to come off second best, huh, Benny boy?”

“You shut your trap,” Benny said, his face surly.

“If you see Miss Brennan, tell her I’m looking for her,” Tyree said. He smiled. “Benny boy.”

He turned and walked to the door. He’d only taken a couple of steps when a gun blasted and a bullet crashed into his back. Tyree spun on his heel, drawing at the same time, and saw Benny standing behind the bar, a smoking Colt held at eye-level in his right hand.

Both men fired at the same instant and Tyree felt a bullet burn across the side of his head. Tyree’s shot smashed Benny against the bar. He fired again, his second bullet following the first, dead center in the bartender’s chest. Tyree watched the man fall. Then, all the strength suddenly gone from his legs, he was falling himself, plunging headlong into darkness. . . .

He should be dead, but he wasn’t, and that puzzled him.

Tyree opened his eyes and saw a sky full of stars. But were they really stars, or holes in a tin roof? He reached up and tried to grab them, but the stars stayed well away from him. He let his hand drop, disappointed.

He’d been dreaming. In his restless sleep he’d wandered through a shifting gray fog of gunsmoke, streaked scarlet by the flare of guns. He had seen men die, men he’d known, men he’d killed, men with their mouths wide open in screams, angry at the manner and the timing of their deaths. Wes Hardin had come to him in the night, berating him for a pilgrim, telling him he’d forgotten everything he’d ever learned, and a lot more besides. Only a damn hick would turn his back on armed men and allow himself to get shot by a bartender. Then Luther Darcy had stepped beside Wes and they’d looked down at him and laughed, pointing, telling each other that Chance Tyree was an object of pity, a poor, hunted thing who couldn’t even get a woman to love him.

He remembered his dream, and awareness slowly returned to him. He’d been shot in the back, then grazed by another of the bartender’s bullets at Bradley’s. Yet he found himself able to sit up and take stock of his wounds.

He shrugged his shoulders, feeling a sharp pain in the center of his back. Reaching around with his right hand, he probed for the wound. His fingers touched jagged metal. It was the steel ring that held his suspenders together, and it felt like it was digging into the muscle of his back near the spine.

When he looked at his hand, his fingers were covered in blood.

It was dark where he was, and cold. Tyree quickly undid his suspenders. He reached into his pocket, found a match and thumbed it into flame. By the guttering orange light he examined the damaged ring. Benny’s bullet had hit the ring and had been deflected. But the lead had burst the metal apart, and it looked like a fair-sized chunk of the ring was missing.

Was that piece still in his back?

Still, he counted himself lucky. An inch to either side, and Benny’s bullet would have killed him. His hand strayed to the wound at the side of his head. He had only been creased, but the bullet had hit hard enough to draw blood and knock him unconscious.

Tyree looked around him. Where was he? And how had he gotten here?

He tried to get to his feet, but his legs felt like rubber and went out from under him. He sat down hard, his breaths coming in short, agonized gasps.

Was the missing chunk of the metal ring wedged very close to his spine? Had it done something to his legs?

A panic rising in him, Tyree found another match and flamed the red tip. He held the match high and looked around. The pale light shone on rock walls on either side of him, so close he could have reached out and touched them.

Who had brought him here? Was it someone who had thought him dead and dumped him in a slot canyon?

The match flared and burned out. Tyree was again plunged into darkness.

He reached down and massaged his legs, but they were numb and he couldn’t get them to move. He tried desperately to get to his feet, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead—but it was no good. He was paralyzed from the hips down.

Bit by bit, weak from pain and loss of blood, he dragged himself closer to the canyon wall and fetched his back up against the rock.

Only then did he feel for his gun, and to his surprise it was thonged down in the holster. Maybe somebody with the poetry of the Auld Country in his soul had decided to lay him to rest with his weapons. If that was the case, he owed that man a favor.

Tyree closed his eyes, suddenly angry at his own weakness. In his present state he could die in this canyon. How long did it take a man to die of thirst? He couldn’t remember exactly. But it was a matter of days, and from all he’d heard, it was a slow, agonizing death.

He had to find water. A few of the canyons had trickles along their sandy bottoms and sometimes water was trapped in rock tanks in the walls. Come first light he’d make a search, even if he had to crawl along on his belly.

Tyree drifted off into an uneasy sleep, waking now and then only to shiver from the night cold. He woke again when the dawn touched the canyon with pale light, his entire body raw with pain.

He heard footsteps.

Someone was walking through the canyon toward him, taking short, fast steps as though in a great hurry. Tyree slid his gun from the holster and thumbed back the hammer. He waited, his mouth dry, his red-rimmed eyes burning like fire.

The footsteps came closer and peering through the uncertain light, Tyree saw a small, slight man in an oversized hat coming toward him, a rifle in his hands.

“Stop right there or I’ll drop you,” Tyree croaked.

“Don’t shoot, Chance,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s me. It’s Sally Brennan.”

“Sally?” Tyree couldn’t believe his ears. “But how? I mean—”

“It’s a long story,” Sally interrupted. “How do you feel?”

“Like hell.”

“I’d say feeling like hell is still pretty good for a dead man.”

Sally kneeled beside him, her face concerned. “And for a while there I did think you were dead.”

She put a canteen to Tyree’s mouth and he drank deep. “Hungry?” she asked.

Tyree nodded and the girl reached into her pocket. “It’s only antelope jerky, but right now it’s all I’ve got.”

Tyree took a bite of the jerky and chewed. “It’s good,” he lied. He drank again, then shifted his position against the canyon wall. “Did you bring me here?”

“I had help,” Sally said. “Don’t go looking in your pocket for money—you don’t have any. Good help doesn’t come cheap.”

“What happened, Sally?” Tyree asked. “Tell me from the beginning.”

“You recollect getting shot?”

Tyree nodded. “A man tends to remember when that happens to him.”

“Well, that was the beginning.” Sally looked tired, dark shadows under her eyes, and Tyree’s heart went out to her. “I rode into town about an hour after you killed that bartender at Bradley’s.”

“Benny.”

“Yes, him. Sheriff Tobin told me Benny had also done for you. He said both of you were over to J. J. Ransom’s funeral parlor and if I wanted to pay my last respects I should head on over there.” Sally managed a small smile. “Hard to tell what he thinks behind those dark glasses, but Tobin didn’t seem in the least bit put out that you were dead.”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Tyree said. “Then what happened?”

“Then I went over to Ransom’s and you were laid out as nice as you please alongside Benny.” The girl touched the back of Tyree’s hand with the tips of her fingers. “Chance, I have to tell you this—you made a much more handsome corpse than he did.”

Despite his pain, Tyree grinned. “Thanks. That makes me feel a whole heap better.”

“Well, I shed a tear or two—”

“For me or Benny?”

“For you, silly. And I was about to leave when I thought I saw your eyelids flutter. I leaned over you and put my hand on your chest, and sure enough, I felt you breathing. I don’t know what happened after you were shot, but it might be you were paralyzed from the bullet and Tobin thought you were dead.”

Sally let Tyree drink again, then said, “I couldn’t tell Tobin you were still alive because he would have shot you again for sure. Anyway, I knew I had no choice—I had to get you out of there.”

“And you got help from somewhere?”

“Yes, first I took all the money in your pockets—”

“Thirty-seven dollars and change.”

“Right. Do you always keep close track of your money like that?”

“Only when I’m down to my last few bucks.”

“Well, I asked an old man who works around the livery stable to help me.”

“I met him,” Tyree said. “He’s a watcher.”

“Is that what he is?” Sally asked, puzzled. “Well, anyway, he agreed to help for the money, though it really didn’t seem to interest him that much. We waited until dark and he helped me get you out of the funeral parlor and onto your horse. Got your gun, too. J. J. Ransom had it in his desk drawer. The old man rode out with me and the two of us carried you into this canyon.”

Sally shrugged apologetically. “I couldn’t stay with you for fear we might have been followed, so I stood guard at the canyon mouth all night.”

“Thank you, Sally,” Tyree said. “You saved my life. Tobin would have had J. J. Ransom bury me alive.” He looked around him. “Where are we?”

“Across the Colorado, about fifty miles east of the Henry Mountains. I knew Tobin would search for you, so the old man and me crossed the river at the head of Glen Canyon and brought you here.”

Sally put her hand on Tyree’s shoulder and pulled him away from the wall. “Do you have a bullet in you?”

“No,” Tyree answered. He showed her the mangled ring on his suspenders. “Benny’s bullet was deflected by this, but I think a piece of the ring was driven into my back close to my spine. I reckon it’s still in there and that’s why I can’t move my legs. Maybe my whole body was paralyzed after I was shot and that’s why Tobin thought I was dead.”

This was bad news and Sally did not try to hide her feelings. “Chance, you can’t ride?”

Tyree shook his head. “I can’t even stand on my own two feet.”

The girl was silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then she said, “We’ll just have to stay put until you can walk again. I’m guessing that Tobin has already accused you of murdering the Bradley’s bartender and the alarm is out. The way you are now, try to leave and you’d be a sitting duck for Laytham or Luther Darcy or anybody else who wants to take a shot at you.”

“We can’t stay here,” Tyree protested. “We have no food and maybe no water.”

“Yes, we can,” Sally said, her little chin set in a determined way. “We’ll find a way.”