Guns of the Canyonlands

by Ralph Compton

  “His play, not mine,” one of the other riders said quickly as Tyree swung his smoking Colt on him. The rider turned to the man beside him. “Ain’t that right, Lloyd?”

  The man nodded, his face stiff. “Chet called it.”

  “Then load him on his horse and get him out of here,” Tyree said, anger riding him. “And tell Tobin if he wants to arrest me for murder, come himself next time.”

  “Mister,” Lloyd said, “next time we come there will be a lot more of us, and we’ll come a-shooting.”

  “So be it,” Tyree said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Sally Brennan returned to the cabin as the day was shading into evening. She looked tired, as though Jean Lassiter’s grief had used her up and drained her vitality.

  “How is she?” Boyd asked the girl.

  Sally’s face was pale, strain etched deep in her eyes. “Jean Lassiter grieves for her husband, and without him, she no longer wants to live,” she said. “She refuses to eat, she won’t sleep and very soon she’ll die. Whoever pulled the trigger on Steve Lassiter murdered two people.”

  Boyd looked like he’d been struck. “There’s been so much death,” he said. “Too much dying.” He took a step toward Sally, shaking his head. “We had another killing here today.”

  “What happened?” the girl asked, her eyes slanting to Tyree, knowing he would be the one to answer her question.

  “Tobin made three of Laytham’s men deputies,” Tyree said. “They came looking for me and one of them went for his gun.”

  Sally looked at Boyd, then back to Tyree. “I have to be on my way,” she said. “Things are moving so fast and I’ve still got to do what I came here to do.”

  “Stay here, Sally,” Boyd said. “Lorena left out the dresses you liked. She said you’d come back for them. You can have Lorena’s room.”

  Sally shook her head, blond curls bouncing around her face. “Thank you, Luke. Maybe there will be a time for pretty dresses after I kill Luther Darcy. Or I’ll be dead and will have no need for dresses.”

  Tyree made up his mind. “I’m coming with you, Sally.” He turned to Boyd. “Luke, I can’t stay here any longer. If I do, I’ll only bring Tobin and his men down on you.”

  The old rancher opened his mouth to object, then came a dawning awareness of the logic of Tyree’s statement. “I’ll sack you up some grub,” he said. He glanced at Sally, who was dressed in her shabby men’s clothes and looked very young and vulnerable. “Girl, you wouldn’t care to step away from this Luther Darcy thing? Just let it go.”

  “No,” Sally said. “I can’t step away from it. If I did, the fact of my brother being dead and his killer still walking the earth would haunt me like a gray ghost for the rest of my life.”

  A sadness shaded Boyd’s eyes. “Both of you are obsessed with revenge. In the end you might destroy those you hate, but in the process you could destroy yourselves.” The old rancher stepped to his desk and took a wooden box from a shelf. He opened it and showed the contents to Tyree and Sally. “There’s almost two hundred dollars in there—money I was saving for Lorena. Take it and ride east into Colorado. Get away from here. Leave your hate behind before it devours both of you and strips you clean to the bone.”

  Sally leaned over and kissed Boyd on his hairy cheek. “Thanks for the offer, Luke. I know it was kindly meant, but I have to be riding now.”

  “I guess that goes for me too,” Tyree said. He stuck out his hand. “You’re a fine man, Luke Boyd.”

  The old rancher took Tyree’s hand and searched the younger man’s eyes. “I don’t know how this will all play out,” he said, “but I hope I never have to choose my side.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Tyree said, again feeling a hurt in him. He smiled.

  “Buena suerte, mi amigo.”

  “Good luck to you, too,” Boyd said. He hesitated a fraction of a second, then added, “My friend.”

  Under a wide starlit sky, Sally and Tyree rode east toward the La Sal Mountains, then swung south along the west bank of Hatch Wash. There was no possibility that they were being followed, yet both turned often and checked their back trail, the night falling behind them full of phantoms.

  The darkness crowding around them, they made camp among tumbled rocks in a stand of cottonwoods and built a fire that was barely big enough to boil their coffee and fry some of the bacon and sourdough bread Boyd had packed for them. When they’d eaten, Tyree threw the last of the coffee on the coals. It was unlikely Tobin and his deputies would ride at night, but now was not the time to take chances.

  At first light they saddled up and rode out. They angled away from the wash and headed into the wild broken country of the canyons, leaving little trail.

  After an hour the two riders followed a game and cattle trail into some scattered juniper and sage, the land around them patchy desert and high sandrock. They emerged at the base of a vast tableland that rose in gradual steps to a height of well over a thousand feet. Tyree leading the way, they climbed, taking a steep, switchback route up the slope.

  As the sun climbed directly overhead, Sally and Tyree stopped on a high, flat plateau of pink rock scattered with huge boulders and stunted spruce where they could overlook miles of country.

  Less than thirty minutes later, they saw punchers driving a herd north along the wash, followed a few minutes after that by a group of ten riders heading in the same direction. The posse, if that’s what it was, kicked up so much dust it was impossible to pick out individual riders. But Tyree had no doubt that Tobin was among them, and likely Laytham and Luther Darcy.

  Tyree turned to Sally, a smile on his lips. “Well, as of right now it, looks like I’m still being hunted, so where do we go from here?”

  “Do you think Darcy is down there among those riders?” Sally asked.

  “It’s likely. After I told Laytham he had to get out of the territory or be destroyed, he wants me dead real bad. Darcy is his man, his finger looking for a trigger.”

  Sally was silent for a few moments, deep in thought. Then she said, “Chance, when they don’t find you they’ll probably go back to Crooked Creek and head for the saloon. That’s where Darcy will be, and that’s where I’m going.”

  Tyree was aware of the dangers that awaited him in Crooked Creek, but he could not step back and allow Sally to go there by herself.

  Now he put his thoughts into words. “Then I’m going with you,” he said. “You could get your damn fool little head blown off if I’m not around to help.”

  Sally’s temper flared. “You think I’m a child, don’t you?”

  Before Tyree could answer, she stood on tiptoe, threw her arms around him and her mouth reached hungrily for his. They melted into each other, Tyree surprised at the depth and sudden, white-hot heat of his passion.

  But Sally pulled away from him, panting, her high, firm breasts rising and falling under her gingham shirt. “Did that feel like a child’s kiss?”

  Utterly lost, trying desperately to stem that dam of desire that had broken inside him, Tyree said, “No . . .” His voice was husky, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “No, it wasn’t,” he managed. “It was a grown woman’s kiss.”

  Sally tossed her head, her curls bobbing. “Then stop treating me like a child.”

  “I won’t,” Tyree said sincerely. “I won’t ever again.”

  He reached for the girl, but she stepped beyond his outstretched arms. “Later, Chance, when all this is over. I can’t give myself to you or any other man until then.”

  Tyree fought himself, fought to douse the fire in his belly, and when the flames finally flickered and died, the woman smell of the girl no longer making his head swim, he managed a weak grin. “But grown woman’s kiss or no, I’m not letting you ride into Crooked Creek alone.”

  “I never for a single moment thought you would,” Sally said.

  Chapter 18

  Crooked Creek slumbered in the drowsy afternoon heat as Sally and Tyree rode across the brush flats, then scout
ed the town from near the livery stable.

  There were no horses at the hitching rail outside Bradley’s, and few people on the street. A mule-drawn wagon was being loaded with supplies at A. K. Dunn’s general store, a couple of miners throwing bags of flour, salt and dried fruit into the bed. There was no placer mining in the canyonlands, but a few hardy prospectors panned for gold in the creeks, most of them making grub money and little else besides.

  Over at the church building, a woman in a faded blue dress was polishing a brass doorknob and a bald man in a broadcloth suit stepped out of the bank, glanced up at the sun, checked his watch, then went back inside again.

  A stray breeze lifted a thin veil of dust, throwing it against the legs of Tyree’s horse as he and Sally swung out of their saddles at the door to the livery stable, nodding to Zeb Pettigrew, who was sitting on the bench outside, smoking a reeking pipe.

  The old man ran his eyes over Tyree, then, more appreciatively over Sally, and said, “Glad to see you’re on your feet, Tyree. I never did get a chance to ride back to the canyon but anyhow you healed up all on your own.”

  “Like I told you, Zeb, I’m beholden to you,” Tyree said, “if you ever need a favor.”

  The man nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind.” A smile touched his lips under his beard. “I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you two ain’t exactly welcome hereabouts. Nick Tobin swears he’s going to hang you for gunning the town’s best bartender, that is, if Luther Darcy doesn’t shoot you down first.”

  “Where is Tobin?” Tyree asked.

  Pettigrew waved a negligent hand. “Out there somewheres, hunting, you I suppose.”

  Tyree and Sally led their horses into the stable, stripped off the saddles and fed them a scoop of oats. Tyree threw hay into the stalls then brushed stray straws from his jeans. “How do you plan to play this, Sally?” he asked, knowing what the answer would be and dreading it. The girl’s immediate reply didn’t disappoint him.

  “Wait until Darcy gets here. Then brace him in the saloon.”

  Tyree shook his head. “Sally, Darcy is fast with a gun. You won’t stand a chance against him.”

  “Would you?” the girl asked.

  Tyree shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I have a feeling I’d have to take my hits and somehow keep standing.”

  “I thought about bushwhacking him,” Sally said, her voice matter-of-fact. “It wouldn’t bother me in the least. But then I thought he might die and never know who had killed him. I want him to know it was me, and why he’s dying.”

  For a few moments, Tyree stood silent, thinking things through. He would back up Sally when the time came, but against a skilled gunman like Darcy the outcome would be a mighty uncertain thing. Was there any other way? Tyree racked his brains, but couldn’t find a solution. Sally was dead set on bracing Darcy and she’d do it with or without his help, today, tomorrow or at some other time. No matter when, the danger would be just as great.

  The girl’s kiss had roused something in Tyree, an all-consuming passion he’d never felt before. But in his heart of hearts did he consider Sally merely a pale substitute for Lorena, a woman he wanted but could never have? A vehement denial did not immediately spring into Tyree’s mind, and that troubled him.

  “You two can stay here if’n you like,” Zeb Pettigrew said, walking back to where Sally and Tyree were standing. “Best you stay off the street. You can see all you want to see from here.” He cocked his head to one side like a hairy, intelligent bird. “And what do you want to see?”

  “Luther Darcy,” Sally said without hesitation. “I plan on killing him today.”

  Pettigrew scratched his great belly. “Luther Darcy and his kind don’t kill easy, little lady. I’d do some reconsidering on that score.”

  “I’ve considered it,” Sally said. “In fact it’s all I’ve thought about for the past year since he murdered my brother. I’ve considered it time and time again, and all that reflecting has convinced me of just one thing—I have to rid the earth of Luther Darcy’s shadow.”

  The old man grinned. “Well, I reckon your mind’s made up and you’ll do what you have to do. Tell you this, one good thing about getting to my age is that a man can sit in the shade, light his pipe and watch it all happen. It ain’t near as dangerous thataway.”

  Tobin’s posse rode into Crooked Creek at sun-down. Luther Darcy was with them, but there was no sign of Quirt Laytham.

  Tobin went directly to his office, but Darcy and the others barged through the swinging doors of Bradley’s. Tyree thought they looked like a tired, dispirited bunch.

  Beside him, Sally tensed. She went back to the stall, got her Winchester and levered a round into the chamber. The girl’s face was ghostly pale, her lips white, but there was a hard, determined glint in her eyes and Tyree realized there would be no turning her away from what was to come.

  “Wait, Sally,” he said. He drew his Colt, fed a round into the empty chamber under the hammer and reholstered the gun.

  “Ready?” the girl asked, the word coming strained and thin from a tight throat.

  Tyree attempted a smile. “As I’ll ever be.”

  As they stepped past Pettigrew, the man was lighting his pipe. Talking around the stem through a cloud of rank smoke, he said, “Well, good luck, you two.” He smiled, shaking out a match. “I’ll be watching.”

  Sally and Tyree walked along the town’s main street, a few people on the boardwalks stopping to look at them curiously as they passed, a tall young man who wore his gun like it was part of him and a pretty, sunburned girl in men’s clothing, holding a Winchester, hammer back, in her right hand.

  Above them, the darkening sky was banded by streaks of white cloud, their edges trimmed with burnished gold, and the air smelled of dust, pine resin from the planking of the buildings, and the sage and rabbit bush of the brush flats.

  They stopped outside Bradley’s, taking stock of what awaited them. Inside someone was playing the saloon’s battered piano, picking out the notes of Chopin’s beautiful Nocturne no. 2 in G Major. It was an incongruous sound against the roars of whiskey-drinking men and the hard laughter of the girls who had come down from the line behind the courthouse to welcome home the posse, aware that most of them were Quirt Laytham’s highly paid, free-spending riders.

  Tyree adjusted the position of his gun and turned his head to look at Sally. The girl had a determined set to her chin and the knuckles of the hand that clutched her rifle were white.

  She looked very young and pretty, the kind of girl who should be married, happily busy in her kitchen baking apple turnovers, not standing in a dusty street with a rifle in her hands about to confront a deadly gunman.

  Suddenly Sally stepped toward the boardwalk. “Let’s go do it,” she said.

  Tyree followed Sally into the saloon, and at first no one noticed them, every man present concentrating on his whiskey or a woman. But gradually eyes were drawn to the pair standing silent and significant at the saloon door. The chatter slowly died, laughter fleeing the painted lips of the saloon girls, the piano faltering note by note into silence.

  “Luther Darcy!” Sally called out in the sudden hush. “Show yourself.”

  The girl’s voice opened up the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea, men and women stepping back until Darcy could be seen standing alone at the bar, a glass half-raised to his lips.

  Sally held the Winchester level, pointed at the gunman’s belly. “I told you I’d kill you someday, Darcy,” she said. “Now turn around and look into my eyes as you die.”

  For a few moments Darcy didn’t move, then he slowly placed his glass on the bar, staring at it all the way as though it had become a thing of consuming interest to him.

  The saloon’s railroad clock ticked loud in the silence, like a racing heartbeat, and Tyree could hear the short, nervous breaths of a woman standing close to him.

  Without turning, Darcy said, “Tyree, I guess you’re taking a hand in this play?”

  Tyree
nodded. “You called it.”

  “Damn you, Darcy!” Sally yelled. “Face me like a man instead of cowering there like a mangy yellow dog.”

  The gunman slowly turned and smiled at the girl. Then he moved.

  Darcy dived for the floor, rolled, then came up on one knee, his guns out and spitting flame. Sally’s shot splintered the wood of the bar where Darcy had been standing. But the girl was hit immediately, the Winchester spinning out of her hands. Tyree drew and fired. His bullet thudded into the pine boards of the floor. A miss. Lithe as a cat, Darcy had rolled a second time. The gunman slammed hard against the red-slippered feet of a saloon girl. The girl screamed and tried to step away, but she stumbled on high heels and fell on top of Darcy. Tyree hesitated a split second, momentarily uncertain of his target. Then something hard crashed into the back of his skull and he sank to his knees, the room spinning around him.

  He tried to raise his gun, but suddenly it felt too heavy for him. He was roughly dragged to his feet, then, from out of nowhere it seemed, he saw Nick Tobin. The big lawman pulled back his fist and crashed it hard into Tyree’s chin. Then the men who had been holding him stepped away and let him fall.

  Chance Tyree woke with a pounding headache. He lay still until his surroundings swam into focus. He was lying on his back, and above him he saw a sagging timber ceiling, dusty gray triangles of spider-webs gathered in the corners. He shifted his position slightly and the iron springs of the bunk under him shrieked in protest.

  Tyree moved his head, looking around him. To his left was an iron door set into a redbrick wall with a barred opening less than a foot square. But, like the roof, the three remaining walls were constructed of heavy pine logs, and iron bars secured the small, narrow window high on the wall opposite his bunk.