Guns of the Canyonlands

Chapter 20

Tyree searched among the ruins of the cabin and found several cans of food. The labels were burned away and he had no idea what the cans contained. But he was lucky. There were beans in the first can he opened, peaches in the second, the contents of both scorched but edible.

He ate hastily, then swung into the saddle. His first task was to rescue Sally. No matter the odds, he was determined to free the girl and bring her back here—home to his ranch.

Tyree rode through the remainder of the night, chasing the dawn, and the morning sun was just beginning its climb into the sky when he rode into Crooked Creek and reined up outside the Regal Hotel. A few people were walking briskly along the boardwalks and several cow ponies stood three-legged at the hitching rail of the restaurant, but at this early hour the town was quiet.

Tyree stepped out of the saddle, yanked his Winchester from the scabbard and levered a round into the chamber. He jumped onto the boardwalk and slammed through the hotel door. The clerk at the desk—a small, round man wearing an eyeshade, muttonchop whiskers bookending a cherubic face—looked up from the ledger he’d been studying, his eyes alarmed.

Giving the man no chance to talk, Tyree snapped, “Sally Brennan’s room?”

“Top floor, number twenty-six,” the clerk answered. “But, hey, you’ve got no right to—”

Tyree didn’t wait to hear the rest. He was already taking the stairs two at a time.

At the end of the hallway, a couple of men with deputy’s stars pinned to their shirts, shotguns in their laps, were sitting on chairs outside the door. One was Len Dawson, the other a tall, sour looking man Tyree didn’t know. The two immediately sprang to their feet, and Dawson shouted, “Tyree! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Move back from the door, Dawson,” Tyree said, making his point with his waving rifle. “I’m here for Sally.”

“The hell you are!” the man with Dawson yelled. He swung the scattergun in Tyree’s direction. Tyree fired, levered the Winchester and fired again. Hit twice, the deputy slammed against the wall, then slid to the floor, a trail of blood smearing the flowered wallpaper behind him.

Dawson made no attempt to level his shotgun. But he was eyeing Tyree, a hard, angry scowl betraying the fact that he was thinking about making a play.

“Don’t even try it, Dawson,” Tyree said. “I’m all through talking. From now on I’ll let my guns do all the speechifying for me.”

Dawson was bucking a stacked deck and he knew it. He let the shotgun remain right where it was, the man sitting still as a marble statue. Tyree stepped up to the deputy, wrenched the gun from his hands, broke it open and removed the loads. “Inside,” he said. “And please, Dawson, give me an excuse to drill you.”

Wordlessly, his face suddenly gray, the deputy opened the door to Sally’s room and Tyree followed him inside. The girl was sitting up in bed, a bandage around her shoulder, her eyebrows raised in shocked surprise.

“Chance, I heard the shooting and—”

“Get dressed, Sally,” Tyree interrupted. “I’m taking you out of here.”

Sally needed no further encouragement. She was wearing a plain white shift that someone had given her, and she swung out of bed, showing a deal of shapely leg. “You two turn around until I get dressed,” she ordered.

“You heard what the lady said, Dawson. Turn around,” Tyree said.

The deputy did as he was told and when Sally was dressed she stepped beside Tyree and said, “I think my horse is at the livery.”

Tyree shook his head. “No time for that,” he said. “My shots will have attracted a crowd.” He extended an open palm to Dawson. “Key.”

Dawson dug in his pocket and came up with the room key. “You’ll never get out of Crooked Creek alive,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

It was an empty threat, the last resort of a vexed, angry man and Tyree did not answer. He stripped the deputy of his gun belt, then locked him inside the room. He removed Dawson’s Colt from its holster, filled his pockets with ammunition from the loops, and hung the belt on the door handle. “Take this,” he told Sally, handing her his Winchester. “If you have to, favor your shoulder and shoot from the hip.”

“Chance,” Sally said, a mild exasperation in her voice, “my left shoulder took Darcy’s bullet. I shoot off my right.”

Tyree grinned. “Shows you how observant I am.”

The girl followed Tyree downstairs to the lobby of the hotel and the frightened clerk cringed against the wall as Tyree turned and glared at him.

Tyree crooked a finger in the man’s direction. “You,” he said, “come over here.”

“Mister, I’ve got a wife and kids,” the clerk whined. “Don’t kill me.”

“Step out the door and take a look,” Tyree said. “Tell me what you see.”

“Sure, sure, mister, anything you say.”

The clerk opened the door, stuck his head outside and hesitated for a few moments. Then he threw the door open wide and ran into the street, hollering, “Murder! Murder!”

Tyree cursed under his breath and stepped through the door, a gun in each hand. But, as it happened, luck was with him.

A small crowd of curious townspeople had gathered on the boardwalk opposite the hotel, but neither Tobin nor the Laytham punchers were in sight.

Tyree smiled grimly to himself. Tobin, Darcy and the rest were probably still out hunting him, leaving Crooked Creek wide-open but for the inept Dawson.

He didn’t plan on staying around to push his luck, but there was time to get Sally’s pony. He stepped to his horse and swung into the saddle, then helped Sally get up in front of him. Tyree swung the steeldust around and loped toward the livery stable.

Zeb Pettigrew stepped out of the stable, leading the paint, grinning from ear to ear. “You know I’m a watching man, Tyree, so I saw you ride in to town. I guessed why you were here. Then I heard the shooting and knowed for sure why you were here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The young lady’s mare is saddled and ready to go.”

Tyree nodded his thanks and waited until Sally stepped into the saddle. “Once again, Zeb,” he said, smiling, “thanks for your help. And once again, I’m beholden to you.”

“No trouble, Tyree,” the old man said. “But it seems like everything I do to help you shortens the play.” He grinned. “But what the hell? It’s not the length of the performance that counts. It’s the excellence of the actors.” He shook his head. “And you two are excellent.”

“Then stick around for the last act,” Tyree said. “It’s coming soon.”

The old man lifted a hand. “Hell, I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

A cloud of dust roiled around the steeldust and the paint as they stretched their necks and hit the flats at a fast gallop. Behind him Tyree suddenly heard the sharp, spiteful bark of a wheel gun. He turned and saw the little hotel clerk standing in the middle of the street, a raging, arm-waving Dawson beside him. The clerk held a small pepperbox revolver at eye level in his right hand and he fired again and again, his shots flying wild.

Tyree grinned and shook his head at Sally. “For a married man, that hombre sure likes to live dangerously.”

Because of Tobin’s posses, Tyree and Sally again kept to the rugged canyonlands well away from Hatch Wash. As they rode, Tyree told the girl about Luke Boyd’s death.

“So Luther Darcy has another killing to answer for,” Sally said, tears springing into her eyes.

Tyree nodded, his face grim. “Darcy will answer to me for that one.”

Just as the sun was setting they rode over a saddleback ridge between the sloped bases of high, twin mesas and then down into a small meadow covered with wildflowers, long streaks of blue columbine, white wild orchids and scarlet monkeyflower.

“Let’s stop here for a while,” Sally said. “I want to gather some of those.”

Tyree helped the girl from the saddle and watched as she collected a bunch of the wildflowers, all of them fresh and blooming, watered by underground seeps from the mesas.

They mounted again and fetched up to Boyd’s ruined cabin as the darkness fell around them and the night birds began to peck at the first stars.

Sally walked to the old rancher’s grave and laid the flowers on top of the piled rocks, her cheeks wet with tears. After a while she returned to Tyree’s side and looked around her. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she said. “I keep expecting him to step out of the barn and wave and give me that big grin the way he always did.”

Tyree nodded. “He was a good man, a fine man, and I’ll miss him.”

He led the steeldust into the barn and forked the horse some hay, then gathered wood along the creek and built a fire. After that he again foraged in the cabin, finding a few more cans of food and the still intact whiskey jug.

As he and Sally sat by the fire, they shared a can of meat and some canned tomatoes, then each had a drink from the jug, the strong liquor helping to quiet some of the clamor inside them.

“How is the shoulder?” Tyree asked.

The girl shrugged. “Darcy’s bullet just grazed me, but it was enough to knock me off my feet. Well, it was that or shock maybe, because I sure enough fainted.” She lifted a corner of the bandage and looked at her injury in the firelight. “I’ll have a nice little scar there, but the wound itself is healing well.”

“I’ve got something to show you,” Tyree said.

The firelight bronzing his face, he took the deed to Boyd’s ranch from his shirt pocket and wordlessly passed it to Sally. The girl read what the old man had written and looked at Tyree in surprise.

Tyree shrugged. “Luke wanted me to have the place. By rights, it belongs to Lorena. If she cares to claim it, then I’ll hand it back to her.”

For a few moments, Sally sat in silence. Then she said, “Lorena may not want the place, but Quirt Laytham surely does. And when he and Lorena get married, he can claim it legally through his new wife.”

“It seems he doesn’t want to wait that long,” Tyree said. “That’s why he had Darcy kill Luke.”

Sally shook her head. “But, Chance, that just doesn’t make any sense. Why would Laytham murder the father of the woman he intends to wed?” The girl looked at Tyree, red flames dancing in her dark eyes. “Chance, I think someone else has taken cards in this game—the same person who killed Steve Lassiter and then ordered Darcy to murder Luke. There’s another player, a mystery man who wants all the same things Laytham does, especially wealth, and the power that goes with it.”

“Who?” Tyree asked, skepticism heavy in his voice.

Sally shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Luther Darcy?”

“Maybe. But Darcy isn’t the kind to settle in one place for long. Whoever killed Steve Lassiter and Luke Boyd wants to put down roots, dig them deep and found a dynasty.”

“Describes Quirt Laytham to a tee,” Tyree said. “Seems to me your mystery man is no mystery.”

“No, Chance, it’s not him. It’s someone else, someone who shares all of Laytham’s ambitions.”

“Do you have a single shred of proof for all this, Sally?” Tyree asked.

Again the girl shook her head. “No.” She hesitated a few moments, then added, “Just call it woman’s intuition.”

Tyree laughed. “Well, does your woman’s intuition tell you it’s time we were heading for our blankets?”

“You’re making fun of me again, aren’t you?” Sally asked, her cheeks reddening.

“No, no, I’m not.” Tyree smiled. “I’ll think about what you said. But I doubt it will change my mind about Laytham. He was behind the killing of Owen Fowler, and now Steve and Luke. There’s no mystery man, Sally. It’s still only Quirt Laytham.”

“Think what you want, Chance Tyree,” the girl said, her back stiffening. “But I know I am right.”

They bedded down in the barn that night, but Tyree stayed awake for a long time, listening to Sally’s gentle breathing beside him. Could she be right about another player? Was he perhaps Tobin’s mysterious “party of the third” who had offered him a thousand dollars to leave the territory?

In the darkness Tyree shook his head. All the signs pointed to Laytham, no one else. Come morning he planned to make his first move against the big rancher, to let him know the reckoning was about to start.

After a while Tyree closed his eyes, lulled to sleep by the echoing cries of the calling coyotes and the warm closeness of the woman lying beside him.

Tyree and Sally were awake at first light. They shared a can of tomatoes for breakfast, Tyree grieving over the fact of having neither coffee nor tobacco and being fervently wishful for both.

After they’d eaten, Tyree said, “I plan on moving Laytham’s cows out of Owen Fowler’s canyon this morning. Then I aim to check on Mrs. Lassiter.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sally said. “I want to see how she’s holding up.”

“It might be safer if you stay here, Sally,” Tyree said. “Luther Darcy did what he came to do when he shot Luke. I doubt he’ll be back anytime soon.”

An eyebrow arched high on the girl’s forehead and an amused smile played around her lips. “Chance, think about it. When was the last time you punched cows?”

Tyree thought the question through and admitted to himself that he’d forgotten just about all he’d ever learned about cowboying over the years. Those skills had left him a long time before, round about the time he’d bought his first Colt, and his knowledge of the ways of cattle was blunted.

Sally saw the doubt in the young man’s face and she smiled. “I’ve worked cattle all my life, Chance, and did it until recently. Believe me, you’ll need my help to get Laytham’s herd out of the canyon.”

Tyree saw the logic in Sally’s suggestion and he grinned. “You’re right. Maybe it’s best you come along.”

Before they left, Tyree fashioned a sign from scraps of pine board he found in the barn. There was some leftover white paint from one of Boyd’s projects and he hurriedly blocked out some words using a discarded brush he’d also discovered.

Satisfied with his efforts, he carried the sign to his horse, ready to ride.

He and Sally mounted up and they traveled east through the brightening light of the early morning. After the shrouding darkness of night, the silent wilderness of rock around them was again touched with color, the pink, red and yellow of the mesas and ridges and the occasional green of grass and trees. Once they saw a small herd of bighorn sheep mount the almost vertical slope of a mesa, and behind them a flash of molten gold as a hunting cougar bounded with fluid grace from rock to rock.

They reached Fowler’s canyon without incident, seeing no sign of Tobin’s posses. Tyree told Sally she was now the boss since she knew much more about hazing cows out of a canyon than he did.

Sally shook out a loop and for the next couple of hours she and Tyree moved cattle off Fowler’s grass to the east bank of the wash. Sally was an excellent puncher who made the hot, dusty work look effortless. Tyree helped by turning back the occasional stubborn maverick that didn’t want to leave, at first showing more enthusiasm than skill, until the remembered ways slowly came back to him.

“You know, Sally, a man could get used to this again.” He grinned as they stopped in the shade for a while and shared a canteen. “Especially if he was working his own cattle on his own place.”

In the end they moved more than two hundred head, and when it was over Tyree stuck his sign into the ground at the mouth of the canyon.

KEEP OUT

PRIVATE PROPERTY

Sally sat her paint and looked down in amusement at Tyree’s handiwork. “Of course, it could be argued that Laytham has as much right to the canyon as Fowler did,” she said. “I doubt this is deeded land.”

Tyree nodded. “That’s true, except that Owen was here first. As far as I’m concerned he staked his claim to the place.”

“Do you think that sign will keep Laytham from moving his cows back?”

“No,” Tyree answered. “But it will tell him that he’s been notified.”

Sally looked around her. “Well, where do we go from here?”

“We ride north,” Tyree said. “I want to check on Mrs. Lassiter. I don’t want the same thing to happen to her as happened to Luke.”

The Lassiter ranch lay five miles northwest of the La Sal Mountains, a scattering of buildings and corrals alongside a winding, narrow creek with plentiful grazing on both banks. Cattle lay in the shade of the cottonwoods lining the banks or stood belly high in the cool creek water. A red sandstone cliff, all of eight hundred feet high, was an impassible barrier to the north. To the east and west, beyond the creek, the land stretched away level, tufted with sparse grass, in the distance a few dark junipers and after those the sheer, towering walls of flat-topped mesas and rawboned ridges of craggy rock. The wind blew steadily here, coming off the high mountains, carrying with it the smell of sagebrush and pine.

Tyree reined up in the shade of a cottonwood, his eyes scanning the Lassiter ranch and the wild, broken land around him. Nothing moved but the wind that got tangled up in Sally’s hair, blowing shining curls across her cheeks.

Kicking the horse into motion, Tyree checked the brands on the cattle he passed. Most bore the Lassiter Lazy-S, but a few were marked with Quirt Laytham’s Rafter-L.

Tyree rode into the yard in front of the cabin. “Hello the house!” he yelled. His voice echoed away in the distance and the following dead silence mocked him. The cabin windows turned blank eyes to him and Sally, revealing nothing of what lay inside.

There was a feeling of death and danger in the air, an atmosphere so strong Tyree felt it reach out to him, unsettling him enough that he pulled his Colt from his waistband, grateful for its reassuring heft.

He waited a few moments, his restless eyes scanning the cabin and what he could see of the other buildings. The place was still, lifeless, and in the waning day shadows clung to walls and corrals, dark, mysterious and fraught with menace. Tyree swung out of the saddle. He let the reins of the steeldust trail then turned and looked up at the girl. “I’m going into the cabin.” He smiled, attempting to make light of what he was about to say. “Just be ready to hightail it out of here if anything real bad happens.”

The girl nodded, and gathered up the paint’s reins. She slid Tyree’s rifle out of the scabbard on his horse and laid it across the saddle horn. “I’ll be ready, Chance,” she said. “But I’m not hightailing it anywhere.”

Stepping to the door, Tyree knocked hard a few times. Nothing stirred inside. He pushed on the door and it swung open on oiled hinges. He stepped into the cabin, his gun up and ready.

After the bright sunlight, the place was dark. He walked into its different rooms and finally checked the bedroom. But the cabin was deserted. A coffeepot on the stove was still warm, though the fire had burned down to a few red coals, and the remains of breakfast were still on the table. Two people had sat there to eat, but hadn’t finished their food—scraps of salt pork and congealed, greasy eggs still lay on the plates.

Tyree searched further and found a metal box, like the one Boyd had kept at his cabin. The lock had been forced and the box was empty. Was this where Steve Lassiter had kept the deed to his ranch—or his money?

Stepping outside again, Tyree motioned Sally to follow. He walked around the back of the cabin, and found the first dead man. The puncher was sprawled facedown in the dirt, the back of his shirt covered in blood, fat blue flies already buzzing around his body.

Tyree turned the man over and recognized a face he’d seen in Bradley’s when Sally had braced Luther Darcy. He was one of Laytham’s riders and he’d apparently been shot in the back while trying to make a run for it.

The second Laytham puncher was in the barn. There were signs he’d tried to fight off his assailants, five .45 caliber shells scattered around him. He’d had time to reload his gun before he was killed. This man had been shredded by bullets, the last one between his eyes, the muzzle of the gun so close, black grains of unburned powder had been driven into his nose and forehead.

Where was Mrs. Lassiter?

Puzzled, Tyree scouted the area around the cabin. After a few minutes he found two graves dug side by side well away from the house, toward the cliff. One held the remains of Steve Lassiter, a rough wooden marker bearing only his name. The other was fresher and unmarked. It could only be Jean’s last resting place.

Short of opening the grave, there was no way of telling if the woman had died a violent death or had passed away from grief. The two Laytham punchers might have known, but they were beyond questioning.

Tyree was aware of Sally stepping beside him. The girl looked down at the grave, a sadness in her eyes. “She was a real nice lady,” Sally said. “She deserved better than this.”

Turning to Sally, Tyree asked, “Who would gun Laytham’s punchers? Something here doesn’t set right with me. As far as I know the man has no enemies but me.”

“It makes sense if there’s another party involved,” the girl said.

“The party of the third,” Tyree whispered, deep in thought.

“What was that?”

Tyree shook his head. “Oh, nothing. I’m just repeating something Nick Tobin said to me.”

“Maybe it was rustlers,” Sally offered. “Laytham said he was losing cattle and he blamed Owen Fowler. We know Owen wasn’t stealing his cows, so it had to be someone else.”

“No, Sally, not rustlers,” Tyree said. “Look around you. There are Lassiter and Laytham cows everywhere. If it had been rustlers the whole herd would be gone.”

“Then who?” the girl asked.

“I don’t know,” Tyree said. “But whoever he is, he took the deed to this land from a box in the cabin after he killed the punchers. I’d say he’s a dangerous man, with as much ambition as Laytham, and maybe more.” He took the girl’s arm and together they began to walk away from the grave.

Sally had been right all along: Someone else had taken cards in the game. But it didn’t change anything. As far as Tyree was concerned, Quirt Laytham was still the enemy.

The question was, how would Tyree get at him?