Guns of the Canyonlands Read online

  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.”

  Chapter 4

  Fowler’s food, rough and ready as it was, had given Tyree strength. When the man left, Chance unbuttoned his bloodstained shirt and carefully examined his gunshot wound. He had no way of knowing how the one in his back looked, but when he removed the prickly pear plug the entrance wound showed no sign of infection, though it was an angry red and sore to the touch.

  As far as he could tell, the bullet had gone through clean and hadn’t hit any vital organs. But how long would it be before his strength returned?

  Tyree had no answer to that question, but to prove to himself that he was already on the mend, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He would scout the canyon and see how he held up.

  The moon was riding high in the sky, touching the rims of a few clouds with silver, when he came on the stone foundation of Fowler’s cabin. Judging by the charred beams that were left from the roof, the cabin had been built solid, skillfully crafted to last by a man who knew carpentry and liked to use his hands.

  Tyree was puzzled. Fowler had obviously planned to put down roots here, make a home for himself. Why throw it all away by murdering a well-respected preacher for his watch and the few dollars in his pockets?

  The killing didn’t make any sense, and Tyree decided that when Fowler came down from the mesa come sunup he’d ask him for the whole story.

  He stood in the moonlight and looked around him. The cattle had stirred, got to their feet and were now grazing, all of them Quirt Laytham’s.

  Fowler said the rancher had lied about his role in the preacher’s murder. Did someone else kill John Kent, maybe a nameless saddle tramp passing through the canyon country? It could be that Kent’s death dropped like a plum into Laytham’s lap, a golden opportunity to pin the murder on Fowler and claim his land.

  Tyree’s eyes lifted to the top of the mesa rising a thousand feet above the valley floor. The moonlight touched the branches of a few juniper growing near the edge and bathed the mesa’s pink-and-red walls in a pale glow.

  Up there the wind would be blowing and would help Fowler keep alert. Tyree fervently hoped the man’s eyesight was better than his shooting skills. If Laytham and his men rode into the valley undetected, he and Fowler would be caught in a death trap.

  The canyon grass showed signs of overgrazing, in some places worn down to bare patches of mud. If Quirt Laytham wanted to expand his empire, he’d have to push constantly for more water and grass, both hard to come by in the barren canyon country.

  But there was another way—take away grass and water from those who already owned it. That had been done before in Texas and a lot of other places. From what he’d learned of Quirt Laytham, the man was ambitious enough to be capable of anything.

  Tyree allowed himself a wry smile. He’d thought to ride into the canyonlands to find peace and quiet, away from guns and gunfighting men. Instead, he’d kicked over a hornet’s nest, and it seemed like every man he’d come in contact with had his stinger out and was spoiling for trouble.

  Then so be it. He would give Laytham and the rest all the fight they could handle—and then some.

  After making a round of the canyon, Tyree returned to the camp under the rock overhang and studied the colored drawings on the wall. Fowler had said the Utes had occasionally used this place for shelter, and he found small scraps of the finely woven baskets in which they’d stored food. There were also fragments of water jugs, made with coiled ropes of tough yucca or bear grass lined with pine pitch.

  Related to the Comanche, the Utes had earned a reputation as mighty warriors with an implacable hatred of the white man. But now, like all the once mighty horse Indians, they were penned up in reservations and the passing of time was already fading the drawi
ngs they’d made. Soon those, like the Utes themselves, would be gone forever.

  Suddenly weary, the bullet wound in his side seeping blood, Tyree sought his blankets and lay on his back, staring at the moon-splashed sky. The stars looked so close, he felt like he could reach up and grab a handful and let them trickle, shining like silver dollars, through his fingers.

  He smiled at the thought; then, the soft cropping sound of the grazing cattle lulling him, he surrendered to sleep.

  “Wake up, Tyree! We got to get out of here!”

  As is the way of a man who has ridden dangerous trails, Tyree was awake instantly, every sense alert.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, settling his hat on his head. “Is it Laytham?”

  Fowler nodded, his dark eyes revealing his unease. “Probably Laytham. Big dust to the south, coming on fast. We have to move.”

  Tyree rose to his feet, swaying from weakness and fatigue. The night was dying around him, brightening into dawn, a burnished gold sky showing to the east banded by thin streaks of dark blue cloud. There was a slight chill in the air that would soon be gone, and a faint breeze fanned his cheek.

  Fowler was already tightening the cinch on the buckskin when Tyree stepped beside him. “Where are we headed?” he asked.

  “North,” Fowler answered, “toward Dead Horse Point. Three, maybe four miles this side of the point, there’s a slot canyon that branches off to the east off the wash. We’ll be safe there”—a faint smile touched Fowler’s lips—“at least for a while.”

  Fowler hurriedly threw what remained of his food into a sack then swung into the saddle. Tyree slipped a foot into the stirrup and climbed up behind him. He bit back a groan as the wound in his side reopened, suddenly staining his shirt with fresh blood.

  “The Arapaho Kid could track a minnow through a Louisiana swamp,” Fowler said. “He’ll find us eventually and we’ll have to move again—unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” Tyree asked.

  “I just had a thought. But I need time to study on it some. I’ll let you know later what I decide.”

  They left the canyon at a fast trot then looped north along the wash, walls of red rock rising sheer on either side of them. After ten minutes Fowler glanced over his shoulder. “They’re riding after us, Tyree. Laytham must have sent that damned Arapaho breed to check the canyon and discovered that we’d lit a shuck. Now he knows we’re right in front of him.”

  Tyree turned and studied their back trail. A dust cloud was rising into the air about a quarter of a mile behind them, and judging by the way it moved, Laytham’s riders were coming on at a fast gallop.

  At first the buckskin stretched out, setting a good pace. But, carrying a double load and worn out from yesterday’s long ride, the horse began to falter, its steady gait slowing.

  They’d soon be caught and out here in the open they wouldn’t stand a chance.

  He looked over Fowler’s shoulder to the trail ahead. Like the prow of a great ship, the wall of a dome-topped butte jutted into the wash. At its base were heaps of talus, sandstone rocks that had tumbled down from higher up the slope. The wash rounded the wall then turned sharply to its right, so that what lay beyond was hidden from Tyree’s sight.

  If they had to make a stand, that was as good a place as any.

  “Fowler!” Tyree yelled. “Rein up this side of the butte.”

  “Why? Man, they’re almost on top of us. They’ll shoot us all to pieces.”

  “Don’t argue,” Tyree snapped. “Damn it, Owen, just do it.”

  Fowler pulled the buckskin to a ragged halt at the base of the butte, and Tyree clambered awkwardly off the horse’s rump. He reached out a hand to Fowler. “Give me the Henry and your canteen.”

  “But you’re in no shape to—”

  “The Henry!” Tyree snapped. “And the canteen. Now!”

  Fowler looked down at the younger man and read something in his green eyes that chilled him. Without another word he slid the rifle from the boot under his knee and passed it, with the canteen, to Tyree.

  “This is my kind of game, Fowler,” Tyree said, his drawn, tight face suddenly softened by a smile. “And, unlike you, I shoot pretty good.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Fowler asked. “I can’t leave you here to face Laytham and his men alone.”

  “Get round the other side of the butte,” Tyree said. “When I come a-running, be ready to fog it on out of here.”

  Fowler’s eyes lifted beyond Tyree to the rising plume of dust bearing down on them. He seemed to realize that the younger man’s skill as a gunfighter was the only thing that stood between them and death, and he gathered up the reins of the buckskin.

  “Tyree,” he said, “buena suerte, mi amigo.”

  Tyree’s smile grew wider. “Thanks. Something tells me I’m going to need all the luck I can get.”

  Tyree took up a position among the jumble of talus, his front and sides protected by slabs of sandstone rock, the steep slope of the butte behind him. He looked down the wash, his far-seeing eyes probing the distance.

  The dust was much closer now, maybe only a few minutes away. Tyree levered a round into the brass chamber of the Henry and studied the land around him.

  Laytham had no way to flank his position. He and his men would have to come at him along the bank of the wash. Apart from a few scattered cottonwoods, to his right there was no cover. Tyree would place his trust in the rapid fire of the Henry to break up their charge.

  The sun had just begun its climb into the sky, but the morning coolness was gone and the day was already hot. Tyree felt weak and light-headed, and sweat prickled the grazed skin of his neck. He took off his hat and laid the back of his head on the slope of the butte, his burning, red-rimmed eyes closing. It would be so easy to drift into sleep. . . .

  The drum of hammering hooves on the bank of the wash jolted Tyree back to wakefulness. A dozen men were riding toward him at a breakneck gallop, a big, handsome man in a black broadcloth suit and flowered vest in the lead.

  Now was not the time for carefully aimed fire. Tyree had to shoot fast to break up Laytham’s charge and turn back his oncoming riders.

  Rising to his feet, he threw the Henry to his shoulder and cranked off four quick rounds. The results of his firing were devastating.

  Hit hard, a man yelled, threw up his arms and toppled backward off his horse. A big sorrel in the lead went down, throwing its rider. Coming on fast, another horse crashed into the fallen animal’s flailing hooves and it too tumbled, cartwheeling headfirst into the ground. Its rider, a man in a black hat and black-and-white cowhide vest, screamed as he fell under the horse and the saddle horn crashed into his chest.

  Tyree fired at the man in the broadcloth suit, guessing he was Laytham. A miss. Now their trailing dust cloud had caught up with the riders, shrouding them in a shifting, swirling yellow fog.

  “Back!” somebody, probably Laytham, yelled. “Damn it, get back!”

  His blood up, Tyree fired rapidly into the dust, at the wild tangle of bucking horses and cursing men. He thought he saw another man jerk from the impact of a bullet, then Laytham’s riders were heading back the way they’d come, the thick dust that roiled around them making further shooting useless.

  Tyree lowered the rifle and a grim smile touched his lips. Quirt Laytham had thought this was going to be easy, twelve against two—one of them wounded and maybe dying, the other a man who couldn’t shoot. Instead he’d sure enough grabbed a cougar by the tail.

  At least three of his men were dead or wounded, and a third, the man in the cowhide vest, was pinned under his horse, gasping out his life, his face ashen.

  As the dust settled, Tyree saw that Laytham and the others had drawn out of rifle range. They were milling around, as though uncertain of what to do next. They’d been badly burned and didn’t seem overly anxious to mount another charge.

  Tyree turned as Fowler stepped beside him. The man’s eyes scanned the destruction Tyree had wrought and he w
histled between his teeth. “You sure played hob,” he said.

  “They’ll be back,” Tyree said, a sudden weariness in him. “And next time they’ll be more careful. From what I’ve been told about Laytham, he’s not a man to quit so easily.”

  Fowler dug into the pocket of his threadbare coat and gave Tyree a handful of .44 shells. He watched as the younger man fed them into the Henry, then asked, “You think maybe this is a good time for us to make tracks?”

  Tyree shook his head. “They’d only take out after us, and if they catch us in the open without cover, we’re dead.” He smiled and lightly tapped the Henry. “When Laytham makes up his mind to come this way again, I aim to discourage him for good. I want to make damn sure that old dog is done hunting before we fog it on out of here.”

  “He won’t charge us next time,” Fowler said, so low and soft it was like he was talking only to himself. “He’ll maybe send the Arapaho Kid. That breed can move like a ghost.” He turned to Tyree. “You look like hell, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Tyree said. “And I feel worse than I look. I reckon I’d have to be three days dead before I’d start to feel better.”

  “You want me to stay close?” Fowler asked.

  Tyree shook his head. “No, go back to the horse. Like I told you before, if I come running, just be ready to hightail it out of here.”

  “Suit yourself,” Fowler said. He dug into a pocket again and passed Tyree a chunk of antelope jerky. “It isn’t tasty, but it will keep you going.”

  After Fowler was gone, Tyree chewed on the tough jerky and studied the open ground in front of him. Laytham and his men had drawn off about a half-mile along the wash, taking refuge behind a jutting outcrop of sandstone rock. Judging by all the shouting that was going on, they were arguing among themselves about their next course of action.

  Most of these men were the same stamp as Len Dawson and Clem Daley, riders hired for their gun skills, their loyalty stretching only as far as next pay-day. They’d been badly shot up by a skilled rifleman and no longer seemed eager for the fight.