Guns of the Canyonlands (16 page)

Tyree turned and looked into Boyd’s eyes. “Owen Fowler was a forgiving man, but it didn’t do him much good. He was still shot down in the street like a dog. I won’t repeat that same mistake.”

Boyd sat in silence for a while, then said, “Tomorrow, you be careful. Don’t make yourself a target for Roy Will. He’s a bad one.”

Tyree grinned. “Luke, I reckon I’m already a target for Roy Will.”

As the two men sat and smoked, the darkness gathered around them and the night sky became bright with stars. A cooling breeze had picked up from the north, rippling the surface of the creek, stirring the branches of the cottonwoods to a restless rustling.

Good smells wafted from the cabin—the tantalizing odors of frying beef and coffee—and Tyree felt his stomach rumble.

“Come and get it, you two,” Lorena said, her head popping out of the open doorway.

Tyree and Boyd stepped inside and Lorena bade them sit at the table. “Now,” she said, “I want both of you to close your eyes. Don’t peek.”

Boyd turned to Tyree, a long-suffering look on his face. “Best do as she says, Chance, or we’ll never get to eat.”

Tyree closed his eyes. Then, after a few moments, Lorena called out, “Ta-da!”

When Tyree opened his eyes again, Sally stood at the end of the table in a blue gingham dress with a lacy white front. She had washed her hair and it cascaded over her shoulders in loose, shining curls.

“Lorena gave me this,” she said. “I’ve never had a dress this pretty before in my whole life.” She smiled at Tyree. “It’s good to feel like a girl again.”

Sally had none of Lorena’s classic beauty, but to Tyree she looked fresh and lovely with a childlike innocence. It was hard to believe this was the same girl, smelling of horses and cheap whiskey, he’d met in the barn at Crooked Creek.

It was even harder to believe that she’d tracked a man all the way from Wyoming for the sole purpose of watching him die.

Tyree rose and gallantly pulled out Sally’s chair for her, while Boyd did the same for Lorena. “Why, thank you, Mr. Tyree,” the girl said as she sat.

“You are quite welcome, Miss Brennan,” Tyree said.

And they laughed, all four of them.

 

Tyree left the Boyd place before the sun was up, while the sleepless coyotes were still talking. He rode east along the creek, casually eyeing the darkened canyons as he passed. He saw no sign of Boyd’s elusive bull, but that didn’t really matter because it was not the reason he was here.

He knew Roy Will would come back to try and make good on his vow to kill him, and Tyree wanted the man well away from the cabin, where there was no chance a stray bullet might hit Lorena or Sally.

Just as the darkness was giving way to the dawn, Tyree stopped in a wide dry wash beside the creek and lit a fire. He built the fire big, with plenty of smoke, a beacon that would attract Will to this place.

Tyree filled his coffeepot at the creek, threw in a handful of Arbuckle’s Best and placed the pot on the coals to boil. Like smoke, coffee could be smelled for a long distance and would be further bait for the rustler.

When the coffee boiled, Tyree poured himself a cup, then rolled a cigarette. Around him the new day was brightening into morning. The light was chasing the shadows from the canyons, adding color to the surrounding mesas and rocky crags, painting them in muted hues of pink, tan and dusty yellow. Green splashes of spruce and juniper were becoming visible and along the creek trout jumped at the first flies.

Tyree hitched up his gun belt, slipped the thong off the hammer of his Colt and waited, every sense alert, knowing what must inevitably come—the gun violence that was probably even now headed his way.

There seemed to be no end to his years of living by the Colt, years of watchfulness, the constant keen awareness of everything and everyone around him. He had spent most of his life looking into the eyes of other men, measuring them, wondering if this was a man he’d have to kill—or would this be the one, faster, surer, that killed him.

For a while now, he’d been thinking of finding a place right here among the canyons, where the name Chance Tyree and what it stood for might be forgotten. He had thought to hang his gun from a nail on the wall and live without trouble.

But that dream seemed more remote than ever.

If he survived his encounter with Roy Will, there would still be Quirt Laytham—and Tyree’s desire for revenge on Laytham was a living thing that ate at him and gave him no peace. It was an open wound that his hate kept festering, a wound that otherwise would have healed and done well.

But that was the hard way of the gunfighter, the only way Chance Tyree knew, and perhaps he had no chance of ever stepping back from it.

It was a gloomy thought, not one to bring much comfort to a man.

The morning wore on, and by the time Tyree had drained the coffeepot to the grounds, the sun had climbed high into the sky above the canyons, scorching the hot, dusty land into drowsy silence.

Tyree threw another branch on the fire and watched a foot-long leopard lizard panting on a rock close to him. From nearby he heard the stealthy slither of a snake through the long grass. He rose, stretched, then froze into immobility as a pair of startled ravens burst from the branches of a juniper growing close to the sandy base of a mesa opposite him, near the dark entrance to a canyon.

An animal instinct taking over, he immediately hurled himself to the ground, drawing his gun as he hit flat on his belly behind a low hummock of sand and sagebrush. The flat statement of a rifle shot echoed through the canyons and a bullet
spaaanged!
viciously off the rock where the lizard had been basking. A second kicked up a startled exclamation point of dirt close to Tyree’s head.

A drift of smoke rose from a jumble of talus rock to the right of the juniper, and Tyree thumbed off a couple of fast shots in that direction. He had seen no target, but he hoped to keep the hidden rifleman’s head down.

Tyree turned onto his back, punched out the empty shells from his Colt, then, thumbing cartridges from his belt, filled all six chambers. He rolled on his belly again and lifted his head, trying to see better. Immediately a bullet kicked a stinging spurt of sand into his face.

He was pinned down where he was and it was only a matter of time before the rifleman found the range and nailed him. Somehow or other he had to outflank the man and get a clear shot at him.

Tyree hammered a fast, offhand shot at the rifleman and heard his bullet clip a rock, whining wickedly. A couple of rifle shots probed for him, one thudding into the roots of the bunchgrass an inch from his head.

He couldn’t stay where he was.

Slowly Tyree inched his way back from the hummock and regained the comparative shelter of the dry wash. Crouching low, he followed the wash to the creek and dived into the shelter of thick brush growing around the roots of a stand of cottonwoods. A bullet rattled through the branches above him, then another.

Tyree worked his way to the creek and rolled off the bank into the water, a drop of several feet. Here he was shielded from the rifleman by a high dirt embankment crowned with tall grass and scattered white and pink wildflowers. His boots slipping and sliding on the rocky bottom, he followed the creek east for twenty yards, the embankment slowly diminishing in height until he had to bend over to stay hidden.

Now and then a bullet split the air near him, but mostly the rifleman’s probing shots went well wide, behind and in front of him.

Ahead of Tyree the creek took a sharp bend to the left, around a high, jutting sandbank crested by coarse bunchgrass and a stunted willow that trailed drooping branches into the water. Between Tyree and the tree lay thirty yards of open ground where the creekbank was broken down and trampled flat by the hooves of cattle. Before he reached the cover of the willow, he’d be exposed to the rifleman’s fire for four or five seconds. The risk was great, but it was a chance he’d have to take. He couldn’t stay where he was. To go back would mean taking up a position behind the high embankment. He’d be out of danger but would have no hope of getting a clear shot at his bushwhacker. If the man left his position and came at him he wouldn’t see him until the last moment and by then it could be too late.

Tyree made up his mind.

He straightened, then made a dash for the willow. Immediately he heard the crash of the rifle and felt a bullet tug at the back of his shirt. He ran on . . . twenty yards to go. Running flat out, awkward in spurs and high-heeled boots, he covered another few yards, then his foot rolled on a loose rock and he stumbled and fell flat on his face in the water. A bullet spurted a small fountain near his head, then a second burned across the back of his right thigh. Tyree got to his feet and ran, thumbing off wild shots toward the rocks where the rifleman was hidden.

The sandbank was very close now and he dived for its shelter as bullets whapped into the water or creased the air around him. Tyree splashed into the creek, throwing up a cascade of water, rolled, and came up against the bank, a four foot high ledge of soft yellow sand tangled with willow roots.

For a few moments, he leaned against the bank, breathing hard, his chest heaving. Then he took off his hat, filled it with creek water and poured the water over his head, enjoying its welcome coolness.

It was time to move again.

After several attempts, his boots slipping on the loose sand, Tyree managed to get a toehold on a thick root and clambered up the bank. Heavy clumps of Indian grass grew around the base of the willow, and he worked his way through those until he had a clear view of the rocks where the rifleman was hidden.

There had been no time to grab his own rifle, and Tyree was keenly aware of the uncertainty of his Colt at this distance. Between him and the bushwhacker lay fifty yards of open ground, too far for accurate revolver work.

But he couldn’t get any closer without exposing himself to the hidden marksman’s rifle, so for better or worse, here he had to stay.

There was no movement among the rocks, and Tyree took the time to reload his gun. The day’s heat was building and the sun was hot on his damp back, steaming off the creek water.

He waited, scanning the rocks with eyes that missed nothing.

There it was, a movement, just a flash of blue cloth against the drab dun of the rocks!

Tyree pushed the Colt straight out in front of him, holding the handle of the gun with both hands. He thumbed back the hammer, the metallic triple click loud in the quiet, and sighted on the rocks.

A few slow minutes inched by as beads of sweat gathered on Tyree’s forehead and his mouth ran dry. Around him the rugged land lay still, silent and unchanging, except in the far distance where the buttes, crags and mesas were already shimmering, shifting shape in the growing heat.

Another fleeting glimpse of blue. And another. More of it that time.

Slowly, looking around him like a wild thing, a man emerged from the rocks, a rifle slanted across his chest. Tyree recognized the yellow hair under the man’s hat and the bloodstained bandage on his shoulder. It was Roy Will. As he’d expected, the outlaw had wasted no time on making good his promise to avenge his brother’s death.

Will took a few steps toward the creek, then stopped, his head turning, checking the land around him. Warily, he angled toward the spot where Tyree was hidden, advanced three or four yards, then stopped again, his eyes speculatively scanning the willow.

Tyree laid the front sight of his Colt on Will’s chest and his forefinger took up the sixteenth of an inch of slack on the trigger. He held his breath, gripped the gun rock steady—and fired.

Will jerked as the bullet burned across his left arm. He threw the rifle to his damaged shoulder and hammered off three fast shots in Tyree’s direction, all of them crashing into the branches of the willow well above his head.

The man was close enough that Tyree saw him wince as the recoiling rifle pounded against his broken shoulder.

Tyree fired again. A clean miss. But it was enough. It seemed Will was an outlaw who clearly understood his limitations and he had decided this was not his day. The man ran back to the shelter of the rocks and a few moments later Tyree heard the echoing clatter of a horse’s hooves in the canyon.

Quickly Tyree sprang to his feet and ran to the dry wash where the steeldust was grazing. He caught up the reins and swung into the saddle, then galloped toward the canyon mouth.

He had no intention of letting Will escape to bush-whack him another day when his shooting shoulder was better healed and his aim surer.

Ahead of Tyree the canyon entrance yawned open, a clean-cut cleft in the rock not a whole lot wider than a slot, its sheer sides climbing six or seven hundred feet to the flat top of the mesa. Will was obviously gambling that the canyon had an outlet on the other side of the mesa, an uncertain thing since so many of them were boxes, ending in an impassible barrier of rock.

Tyree reined in the steeldust and entered the canyon at a walk, his Winchester ready to hand across the saddle horn. There was a thin trickle of water along the canyon bottom and a few deer and cattle tracks. The light was thin, picking up an amber tint from the walls, and the sandy bottom was broken in places by clumps of prickly pear and ocotillo. The canyon smelled of cows and the dust kicked up by Will’s horse.

Down here it was very quiet, the only sound the creak of Tyree’s saddle leather and the soft thud of the steeldust’s hooves on the sand. His stirrups scraping against the walls, Tyree rode around a tight bend and then entered a rock passageway about fifty yards wide with smooth, curved walls. Here the water had pooled in a long, shallow tank but was only a couple of inches deep.

Ahead of him, its top hidden from sight by an outcropping of rock, a shallow trough rose from the canyon floor and slanted upward, following an unexpected, gradual slope in the wall. The basin had been gouged out in ancient times by the fall of heavy boulders, and later by rain erosion. Tyree guessed it went clear to the top of the mesa.