Guns of the Canyonlands

Chapter 3

The dawn brightened into morning and the cobalt blue sky was banded by streaks of red and jade. Tyree finished his coffee and built a smoke with unsteady hands. Beyond the hills, toward Crooked Creek, the last shadows had been washed from the brush flats and the wakening jays were already quarreling among the branches of the cottonwoods.

After a while Tyree tried to get to his feet, but the effort drained him and he slumped back to the ground, his head reeling.

Owen Fowler tightened the cinch on his buckskin then stepped beside the wounded man. “We have to ride,” he said. “I got the feeling Len Dawson and Clem Daley will come back to check on their handiwork. We don’t want them to find us here. Not if we want to keep on breathing, we don’t.”

A flicker of doubt crossed Fowler’s face. “Think you can stay on a horse?”

Tyree nodded. He knew he was very weak and the pain of the bullet wound in his side was a living thing that gnawed at him. His head pounded and his mouth was dry, his torn throat on fire.

“Which way are we headed?” he asked.

Fowler gestured vaguely to the northeast. “That way. Across the brush flats then into the canyonlands. My place, such as it is, is off Hatch Wash, and that’s a fair piece away.” The man hesitated, then added, “Had me a cabin once, but that’s gone. I’ve been sleeping under the stars since I got back.”

Something in Fowler’s face told Tyree this wasn’t going to be an easy trip. He had heard enough about the canyon country to know he was facing a harsh, unforgiving wilderness of rawboned rock ridges and high-walled mesas, the gorges so deep the rivers were lost below steep cliffs that hid the daylight. Even the Indians had steered clear of the place, visiting it only out of necessity, and seldom at that.

As though reading Tyree’s mind, Fowler kneeled beside him. “Where we’re headed the country is wild and mighty lonely. The land is broken and raw, all tumbled together, like God grew bored with it and left it unfinished.” He smiled. “It’s no bargain but considering the alternative, I’d say we’ve got little choice in the matter.”

“I’ll ride,” Tyree said. He struggled to his feet and the ground suddenly rocked so violently under him that Fowler had to quickly reach out and support him. Blood loss had left Tyree as helpless as a baby, and he cursed himself for his own weakness. He was a proud man who had never in his life asked help or a favor of anyone, and now he was totally dependent for his survival on a man he hardly knew.

“Can you make it?” Fowler asked, concern shading his dark brown eyes.

“I’ll make it,” Tyree answered. “Let’s hit the trail.” He looked at Fowler and saw the doubt in the man’s homely features. “I told you, I’ll make it,” he said, a sudden, stubborn anger in him.

Fowler nodded. “Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.” A slight smile tugged at his lips. “Right now, Tyree, I’d say your chances of reaching my place are slim to none, and slim is already saddling up to leave town.”

Tyree disentangled from Fowler’s supporting arm. “Let’s ride,” he said, his face stiff. “Believe me, I can get there.”

Fowler swung into the saddle of the buckskin, then kicked the stirrup loose for Tyree. It took the wounded man several attempts before he summoned the strength to finally get up on the buckskin and settle himself behind the high cantle of Fowler’s saddle.

“Ready?” Fowler asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Tyree answered.

“Then let’s get it done.”

When he thought about it later, Tyree could recall little of that ride.

The sun was already hot when they crossed the brush flats then entered the canyon country, but in the gorges between the cliffs and mesas the heat was almost unbearable.

Around them spread an immense, rough-hewn wilderness of sculptured rocks, needles, arches and narrow slot canyons that seemed to stretch away forever in all directions. Stunted spruce grew on the flat tops of immense mesas, desperately struggling for life in an uncaring environment, and the air smelled dry, like the dust of ancient Indian dead.

Only occasionally, mostly along the banks of the creeks, would there be islands of green with trees and grass where fat, white-faced cattle grazed.

“Quirt Laytham’s cows,” Fowler said, talking over his shoulder as they rode under spreading cottonwoods. “See his Rafter-L brand? Looks like he’s pushing his herds into the whole damn country.”

Tyree heard but did not answer. The pain in his side hammered at him and the skin of his face and neck felt thin and chafed. His hands were stiff and hard to close.

He knew he needed rest, lots of it, to regain his strength. His revenge on Laytham and the deputies who worked for him would have to wait. For the present, they could enjoy their victory. The reckoning would come later.

It was not in Tyree’s nature to back away from what he believed was right. He had been abused, victimized on the orders of a man who didn’t even know him, a man who made judgments only in the light of his own greed for wealth and power.

An enduring, sometimes stubborn man, there was in Chance Tyree a fierce determination to live, to fight back and win. He knew of no other way.

He and Fowler rode on. Despite its double load, the man’s rawboned buckskin made light of the trail. For miles they traveled in silence, the only sound the soft footfalls of the horse and the high lonesome creak of saddle leather.

The sun climbed in the sky and the day grew hotter. Riding among the canyons was like traveling through a gigantic brick oven. Above them, the sky had been scorched to a pale lemon and the dry dust kicked up by the horse rose around them in veils of swirling tan and yellow.

Tyree dozed, wakening only now and then when Fowler quickly reached back and stopped him from toppling off the horse.

As the daylight began to fall, the cry of a hunting peregrine falcon woke Tyree for the last time. “Hatch Wash just ahead,” Fowler said, feeling the younger man stir. “We’re almost home. And, as I said before, it sure ain’t much.”

Tyree blinked his eyes into focus and looked over Fowler’s shoulder. They were riding through a narrow gulch that gradually opened up ahead of them, revealing two narrow bands of green on either side of a shallow creek that wound between high canyon walls. Beyond the walls, towering cliffs, mesas, sandstone domes and spires of rock seemed to stretch away forever, here and there rincons, ancient streambeds, showing as yellow streaks high on their steep pink, yellow and red sides.

“The wash runs for twelve miles,” Fowler said. “Runs pretty much north and then west. But I guess you’ll be glad to hear we’re not going that far.”

The man kicked his buckskin into an easy lope, and Tyree found himself passing through thick stands of fragrant piñon and juniper. As the trail edged closer to the east bank of the wash, the trees changed to cottonwoods and willow, and cattle lifted their dripping muzzles from the water to watch them as they rode past.

“More of Laytham’s cows,” Fowler said, his face like stone.

Fowler swung his horse away from the creek, heading for what looked like a break in the canyon wall. The grass played out and the ground they crossed was sandier, covered in a profusion of desert shrubs, mostly sagebrush, greasewood and black-brush, with tall leaves of yucca spiking among them.

From the trail, the break had looked narrow, but as he got closer Tyree saw that it was maybe two hundred yards wide, carved out of the flat side of a mesa. Fowler entered the break, then rode up a gradual incline onto a flat, open bench. He crossed that bench, then another, the buckskin blowing a little, before riding into a wide, hanging valley shaped like a great, open amphitheater, the thousand-foot walls of the mesa hemming it in on three sides.

“We’re here,” Fowler said. “This is where I call home.” He glanced over his shoulder and grinned without humor. “At least I did, nine years ago.”

Tyree glanced around him. The valley was at least nine hundred acres in extent, and had probably been formed when the mesa split and part of it collapsed during some ancient earth shake.

The grass was green and rich, watered by a stream Tyree heard bubble near the far wall. Close to a hundred cows were in the valley, grazing or hunkered down under scattered spruce trees. All of them were sleek Herefords branded with Laytham’s Rafter-L.

Fowler kicked the buckskin toward the far parapet of the canyon and stopped at a wide rock overhang. The sheer wall behind the jutting slab of sandstone was covered in ancient paintings of tall, angular, human figures surrounded by zigzag patterns of red, yellow and blue.

“That’s Ute work,” Fowler told Tyree. “Sometimes they used this valley as a hunting camp.” He swung out of the saddle, and Tyree, not wishful of being helped from the horse, slid off the buckskin’s rump. His feet hit the ground and immediately his knees buckled and he fell flat on his back.

“Need some help?” Fowler said, a smile tugging at his mouth as he looked down at the younger man. “Seems to me like you do.”

Tyree grimaced. “I can stand on my own feet.”

He willed himself to rise, but when he did the canyon bucked wildly around him. His head spun and he staggered against the side of the buckskin.

Fowler nodded. “Heard about the gunfighter’s pride—jail talk,” he said. “Never seen it in practice until now.”

But this time there was no argument from Tyree.

He allowed the man to grab him by the waist and help him into the shelter of the overhang where Fowler made him sit, propping his back against the wall.

“Guess I’m weaker than I thought,” Tyree said, lifting his eyes to Fowler, his smile weak and forced. “I’m glad you were here.”

It was an apology of sorts and Fowler accepted it as such. “You just sit there tight and I’ll rustle us up some grub.” He hesitated, his hands on his hips, then said, “Sorry about the accommodation. My cabin”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“was over there. It was a nice one, too. But Quirt Laytham and his boys burned me out.”

Fowler shook his head. “All they left me was ashes and a few memories.”

Easing his back against the hard stone of the wall, Tyree’s eyes lifted to the older man. “Fowler, you don’t look to me like a man who would shoot another man in the back. Someday you have to tell me what happened between you and that preacher.”

“Sure,” Fowler answered, the bleakness in his face suddenly making him look old, “someday.” He nodded, his eyes distant. “Yup, maybe someday.”

The man walked away and Tyree wondered at him. Fowler didn’t look like a killer, more like a dreamer than a doer, and he had a gentle, easy way about him, both with people and horses. Had he really put a bullet into a preacher’s back and then robbed him? It seemed hard to believe. And what of all that talk he’d heard from Clem Daley about him being a rustler? Certainly all the cows in this canyon bore a Rafter-L brand, but Fowler said Laytham had put them there and that rang true.

Tyree shook his head. He had much to learn about Owen Fowler. The question was—did he have anything to fear?

It was full dark, the sky spangled with stars, when Fowler started a fire and boiled up coffee. From his meager supplies he sliced salt pork into a pan, cooked it to a golden brown, then fried thick slices of sourdough bread in the smoking grease.

“This isn’t exactly invalid food,” he said, handing Tyree a huge sandwich and a cup of coffee. “But right now it’s all I’ve got.”

“It’ll do,” Tyree answered, suddenly realizing he was ravenously hungry. “My last meal wasn’t much, and I been missing the six before that one.”

“After prison grub, everything tastes good,” Fowler said around a mouthful of food. “They fed us pickled beef that was left over from the War Between the States and biscuit from the war before that.” The man shrugged. “The trick with a biscuit is to hammer it on the table so most of the weevils fall out. Then it isn’t too bad, if a man has teeth. Army biscuit can be as hard as a chunk of bois d’arc wood. Tastes like it, too.”

When they’d eaten, Fowler took up his Henry rifle and nodded toward the entrance to the valley. “Years back, I discovered a game trail on the southern cliff that leads to the top of the mesa. I’ll spend the night up there. I don’t expect Laytham and his boys to come looking for us in the dark, but you never know. If he does, I want to see him coming.” He hesitated a few moments, then added, “At first light I’ll come down and change the dressings on your side.”

“Thanks,” Tyree said. “You really think he’ll come?”

Fowler nodded. “He’ll come all right. I’d say by this time he knows you wasn’t hung all the way. Now he has to kill us both. Me, so he can get clear claim to this valley, and you to shut you up about what happened and what’s going to happen in the future. You can bet the Arapaho Kid has picked up our tracks already.”

“Fowler,” Tyree said urgently, “I need a gun. I mean, I need a gun in the worst way.”

“I know you do,” the older man said. “But Len Dawson has your guns, so all we got is this here Henry—and about now I’m the only one of us well enough to use it.”

“You shoot real good?” Tyree asked, a vague hope rising in him.

“Me?” Fowler answered, grinning. “Hell, no. I shoot real bad.”