Guns of the Canyonlands (12 page)

Behind him, a man was hanging facedown over the saddle of the buckskin, his falling hair moving with the motion of the horse.

Then both Tyree and Lorena heard the old rancher clearly.

“Owen is dead!” Boyd cried. “Shot down like a dog in the street!”

When he rode up to the cabin, Boyd reined up his horse and dropped the buckskin’s trailing reins. He rang his bell and called out again, “Owen Fowler is dead. . . . Owen Fowler is dead. . . .”

Tyree reached up and gently held Boyd’s arm, the bell clinking into silence. Boyd looked down at him with wounded eyes. “I bought this in town after Owen was killed. I rang it all the way here. I wanted everyone to hear me and know what had happened.”

As Lorena ran to help her father from the saddle, Tyree eased Fowler from the buckskin and laid him on his back on the ground. The front of the man’s shirt was covered in blood, but the two bullet holes in the center of his chest were easy to see.

Tyree looked up from the dead man. “Luke,” he asked, “who did this?”

“The Arapaho Kid,” Boyd answered. He stood close to Lorena, as though needing her strength and support. “He gunned Owen down in the street like a—”

“How did it happen?” Tyree interrupted, an ice-cold, killing rage building in him.

Boyd rubbed his hand across his face as though to erase a painful memory. “We couldn’t find Sheriff Tobin, so I dragged that no-good rustler into Bradley’s saloon to ask around for him. I told Owen to stay close, but he said he was crossing the street to talk to the gunsmith about repairing his rifle. Then somebody ran into the saloon and said the Arapaho Kid was outside, bracing Owen Fowler.

“I left the saloon to see what was happening, just in time to hear the Kid call Owen a back-shooting lowlife. Then the Kid said to Owen, ‘You’ve got a rifle. Use it.’ Owen tried to show the Kid that his Henry was damaged, but as soon as he done that, the Kid drew and fired.”

The old rancher shook his head. “I couldn’t stop it, Chance. I think the Kid would have killed me too. As Owen lay there dying, the Kid stood over him and grinned. He said now there was one less preacher killer in the territory.”

“Where was Tobin?” Tyree asked.

“He showed up later. Three men swore Owen had tried to level his rifle at the Kid and that the killing was self-defense. I told Tobin otherwise, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He said too many reliable witnesses stated that Owen Fowler tried to kill the Kid.” Boyd shrugged, his face haunted. “And that’s how it stands.” His baleful eyes sought Tyree’s. “Tobin locked up my prisoner and he says he plans to hang him directly.”

“Was Laytham there during all this?”

“No,” Boyd said. “I didn’t see him.”

“Quirt would have nothing to do with a cold-blooded murder,” Lorena snapped, sudden tears filling her eyes.

“The Arapaho Kid works for him, doesn’t he?” Tyree asked.

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “But if he does, Quirt will send him packing, I can promise you that.”

“Who were the three witnesses, Luke?” Tyree asked.

“Tobin’s deputies, Len Dawson and Clem Daley. The third was a gunfighter out of Missouri, dresses like a preacher his ownself. Calls himself . . .” Boyd shook his head. “Everything was happening so fast I don’t recollect his name.”

“Luther Darcy?” Tyree prompted.

“Yes. That was it. Luther Darcy. How did you know?”

“Owen told me about him,” Tyree said. His eye slanted to Lorena. “He said Darcy draws gun wages from Quirt Laytham.”

Tyree saw confusion in the girl’s face, but she made no attempt to defend Laytham again. Instead she kneeled by Fowler’s body and tenderly lifted a strand of hair off his forehead. “Poor Owen,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You were a mild-mannered man, never cut out to live in the West. You should have gone back home to Boston and worked in a bank.” Her tearstained eyes lifted to her father. “Pa, we have a burying to do.”

“Not here,” Tyree said. “We’ll bury him in his own ground, at his canyon. He loved that place and that’s where he’d want to rest.”

Neither Lorena nor her father voiced an objection, understanding that Tyree had the right of the thing.

“Chance, let’s lay Owen in the barn for the night,” Boyd said. “We’ll move out at sunup.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” Lorena snapped, her eyes flaring. “Bring him inside and let me wash his poor body. I won’t send Owen to his Maker looking the way he does.”

For the first time, Tyree was aware of the steel in Lorena Boyd, the metal tempered by the hard men among whom she’d lived and by the land itself. She was no shallow, bustled belle reluctant to touch a bloody corpse. She was a woman of the frontier—she’d swallow her revulsion and do what had to be done without complaint.

“So be it, Lorena,” Tyree said. “And you’re right. A man should be buried decent.”

 

There were just three mourners at Owen Fowler’s funeral when they laid him to rest in his canyon amid the first of the morning light, but in the end, it was enough for any man.

Lorena wet the black earth with her tears and Boyd said the words from the Book. When they were done, Tyree whispered his last farewell and walked quickly toward his horse.

“Chance, where are you going?” Boyd asked, closing his Bible.

Tyree stopped beside the steeldust and turned. “You know where I’m going, Luke. Where can I find him?”

The rancher looked into Tyree’s green eyes and shivered, as though their coldness had reached out to him. This was not the time for argument, he knew. Owen Fowler had saved Tyree’s life and now he would do right by him. Revenge was a harsh, unforgiving code, but men like Chance Tyree lived by it, and he would not be turned aside.

“The Kid works for Laytham,” Boyd said, “but he’s never used a rope or handled a branding iron in his life. He says he has to keep his hands soft for gun work. You’ll find him in Crooked Creek, most likely holdin’ court at Bradley’s.”

“No, Chance,” Lorena said, stepping toward him, her agitation evident by the way she waved her hands at him. “I’ve heard about the Arapaho Kid, and he’s a killer. He’s shot down a dozen men, and maybe more. You’re no match for him.”

Tyree swung into the saddle. “Look around you, Lorena,” he said. “There’s nobody else. Your pa isn’t a gunfighter, so I’ve got it to do.”

“Owen wouldn’t want this, Chance,” the girl said. “He wouldn’t demand blood for blood.”

The girl’s eyes were wet with tears, but for him or Fowler, Tyree couldn’t guess.

“Maybe so,” he said. “But Owen had his way and I have mine. Maybe I was wrong when we spoke of ranches and Percherons at the lake. It seems no matter how he tries, a man can’t turn his back on what he is.”

Tyree swung his horse toward the mouth of the canyon, but Boyd’s voice stopped him. “Chance, the Kid carries a gun on his hip and another in a cross-draw rig on his belt. He favors the crossdraw.”

“A thing to remember,” Tyree said. He touched his hat brim to Lorena and spurred the steeldust out of the canyon, swinging south along the bank of Hatch Wash.

He didn’t look back.

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.