Guns of the Canyonlands (18 page)

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.”

A week drifted slowly by. During that time Sally found water farther into the canyon and shot a deer, bringing in armloads of firewood to cook the meat. She harvested prickly pear fruit, passed the pods through the open flame of the fire to burn off the spines, then cut them open to get at the sweet, juicy pulp. She foraged for wild onions to use in thick broths with deer meat and dandelion root, assuring Tyree the soup would give him strength.

But Tyree was not growing stronger. The very opposite was happening—his strength was waning fast. He tried a few faltering steps, but always ended up falling flat on his face, his legs suddenly giving way from under him. The pain in his back grew worse, though the wound itself seemed to be healing well.

All this Sally watched with growing concern. At the end of the first week she told Tyree to strip off his shirt and carefully examined his back.

After a few minutes of painful probing, she finally said, “I think there is a piece of metal in there, and it’s digging right into your spine. Chance, I need to get you medical help.”

“Medical help?” Tyree echoed. “There’s a doctor at Crooked Creek, but if you’re right about Tobin accusing me of murder, the doc could tell him and lead a posse right to us.”

“There’s another doctor—the old man who helped bring you here.”

“The watcher is a qualified physician?” Tyree asked, surprised.

“No, not really, but he was a mule doctor during the War Between the States. Maybe he can get that chunk of steel out of your back.”

“Or paralyze me permanently,” Tyree said.

“I know, but that’s a chance we’re going to have to take. You can’t ride, and we can’t stay here much longer.”

“Can you trust that old man?”

Sally thought for a few moments. “I’ve trusted him this far.” Then she seemed to make up her mind about something and shook her head. “No, I really don’t know if I can completely trust him. But trust or not, right now he’s our only hope.”