Guns of the Canyonlands (15 page)

Darcy nodded. “Ah, yes, I remember now, a towhead, wasn’t he? Had freckles all over his face like you, like he’d swallowed a dollar and broke out in pennies. In my capacity as range detective, I caught him riding a horse that wasn’t his and he went for his gun. Now, all things considered, that was very foolish of him, wasn’t it?”

“Tom had a bill of sale for that horse, and you know it!” the girl yelled.

Darcy shook his head. “This grows tiresome. What’s one damn saddle tramp more or less?” He spun his guns and they thudded solidly back into their holsters.

“Hear this, both of you. I want you out of town and out of the territory—today. Tyree, if I see you in Crooked Creek tomorrow, or anyplace else for that matter, I’ll forget all about professional courtesies and gun you.” He smiled, his teeth very white, the long canines prominent and wet, like fangs. “This I promise.”

Anger flared in Tyree. “You want to try it right now, Darcy?”

“No, not right now. If I gunned you now, it would set just fine with Mr. Laytham, but there is someone else who would take it hard. And for that reason, I was told to give you only a sternly delivered warning.” Darcy smiled. “For this day at least.”

“Well, you’ve told me. Now let me tell you something. I won’t leave this territory until my business with Laytham is over.”

Darcy nodded. “Of course, I knew you’d say that. So, from this moment on, Tyree, consider yourself a walking dead man.” The gunman smiled again, touched his hat to the girl, and was gone.

The girl rounded on Tyree, her face dark with anger. “Why the hell didn’t you draw down on him?”

“Because”—Tyree grinned—“it would have spoiled my appetite for breakfast.”

“You’re scared of him, aren’t you? You’re a scaredy cat.”

Tyree shook his head. “No, I’m not scared of him, but maybe I should be.”

“How come?”

“Because he’s good. I think maybe the best with a gun I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen plenty.”

The girl stuck out her tongue. “Scaredy cat.”

Tyree grinned. “Say, what’s your name anyway?”

“Sally. Sally Brennan.”

“Well, Sally Brennan, now I’m taking you to breakfast.”

 

Despite her hangover, the girl ate hungrily, demolishing two plates of flapjacks and bacon before she sighed and slumped back in her chair.

“When did you last eat?” Tyree asked, an amused smile touching his lips.

Sally shrugged. “I don’t recollect. It was a spell back.”

She watched Tyree build a smoke and asked, “Will you make me one of those?”

Tyree shook his head. “No. Tobacco will stunt your growth.”

“Didn’t do that to you.”

“Maybe I was lucky.”

Since the morning was well advanced, there were no other diners in the restaurant. Tyree leaned closer to the girl. “How long have you been hunting Luther Darcy?”

“A year, maybe a little more.”

“How did it happen? With your brother, I mean.”

Sally dipped the tip of her middle finger into a small puddle of molasses syrup on her plate and licked the finger clean. “My folks had a hardscrabble ranch just south of the Platte in the Wyoming Territory, but when I was six years old they were both took by the cholera. My brother, Tom, was barely twelve at the time, but he kept the place going and he raised me—well, him and an old hired hand who passed on a couple of years ago.”

The girl leaned forward in her chair. “Mister, you sure you want to hear all this? It ain’t like we’re kin or anything.”

Tyree smiled. “The name’s Chance, and, yes, I want to hear about it. It seems to me we share a common enemy, and that’s kin enough.”

“Well, Chance, about eighteen months ago there was a sight of rustling along the Platte and the local cattleman’s association hired Darcy as a range detective—just a fancy name for a hired killer.

“About then, Tom rode into Cheyenne trying to get a bank loan to tide us over until we sold our herd. Tom had just bought a paint pony from the Rocking J ranch, off a man called Bill Hardesty, a mighty important member of the association. Darcy saw Tom in the street and accused him of stealing the horse and pushed him into going for his gun. Tom hadn’t even cleared leather when Darcy shot him.” Small tears reddened Sally’s eyes. “I was told my brother died a few minutes later, cursing Darcy and all he stood for.”

“And you’ve been tracking Darcy ever since?”

“Uh-huh. I sold the ranch for what I could get, and that was little enough, then tracked Darcy all over the territory but never got close enough to get a shot at him. Then I heard he’d moved south to Salt Lake City. I followed him there but lost him again. Finally a couple of punchers in Moab told me a gun-slinger by the name of Darcy was working for a big rancher near Crooked Creek.

“I followed him here, got in yesterday. And you know the rest.”

Tyree crushed out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and refilled Sally’s coffee cup. “How come you tied one on last night?”

“I was hurting and it eased the pain.”

“Of your brother’s death?”

Sally shook her head. Suddenly her eyes were old and her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “No, that pain I’ll have always. This is another pain, sharper and a lot more agonizing, a pain I’ve had spiking at me for a twelvemonth because I want to kill Luther Darcy so bad. I plan to look into his eyes as he dies and laugh and see the fear in them. I hate him and I want revenge and that’s a festering sore no doctor can heal. With all the hatred that’s inside me, my life has become a hell. For every hour I hate, I lose sixty minutes of happiness, but there’s no going back from it.” The girl tried to smile. “With Tom gone, there’s only me, so I have it to do.”

Sally picked up her coffee cup with both hands and held it close to her lips. “And what about you, Chance Tyree. Who is this Quirt Laytham? And do you have a pain inside you?”

“I never thought about it in those terms,” Tyree answered, his face troubled. “But, yes, I guess I do.”

Tyree told Sally about being hanged and shot, then about Owen Fowler and finally Luke Boyd and Lorena.

When he finished speaking, the girl leaned back in her chair and smiled. “We’re a pair then, aren’t we? We live with hate and it’s eating away at us like a cancer. How about this girl, Lorena Boyd? Is she beautiful?”

“Very.”

“Do you love her?”

Tyree hesitated for just a moment, surprised at the girl’s question. But, with a woman’s perception, Sally read his face. “You’re unsure, aren’t you?”

“Yes, maybe I am. Quirt Laytham stands between us.”

“And when you kill him?”

“Then his ghost will stand between us.”

Sally rose. “I’d say that’s a no-win situation, Chance Tyree. Well, it’s been nice talking with you, but I have to be going.”

“Where?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Around I guess.”

“You’d better come back with me to Luke Boyd’s place. I’m sure you’ll be made welcome.”

Sally hesitated, uncertain, and Tyree said: “I can’t leave you here with Luther Darcy in town. Now he knows you’re after him he’ll be on his guard and he’ll kill you any way he can.”

“Darcy doesn’t want to kill me,” the girl said. “At least not right away. I saw that much in his eyes back at the livery stable. He wants something else. Maybe he nurses a sick fantasy about ravishing the sister of a man he murdered. I don’t know.”

“That settles it then, Sally,” Tyree said. “We’ll get your horse. You’re coming with me.”

The girl nodded. “I’ll go along with that at least for now. But just so you know, Chance—if I come with you you’ll be borrowing my trouble. Big trouble.”

Tyree smiled. “I guess I can handle it.”

“Just so you know,” Sally said.

The day was shading into evening when Tyree rode up to Boyd’s cabin. The old rancher immediately burst through the door and seemed genuinely pleased to see him. He looked at Sally, taking in her shabby clothes and the rifle under her knee. “And who might this young lady be?”

Tyree smiled. “Just a maverick passing through. Her name’s Sally Brennan. She’s flat broke and needs a place to stay and I thought about you.”

“Of course she can stay!”

Lorena stepped out of the cabin and gave the girl a dazzling smile. “You can stay here as long as you like, Sally. It’s been ages since I had another woman to talk to.”

Sally smiled in return and swung out of the saddle. “Thank you. I could sure use a bath and somewhere soft to sleep. I’ve been lying on rocks or straw for months.”

For a brief moment Lorena’s eyes caught and held Tyree’s, both of them aware of the uneasy truce that lay between them. She had not asked him how he’d met the girl, but he knew that would come later.

Lorena fussed over Sally and led her into the cabin. When they were gone, a grinning Boyd studied Tyree, his left eyebrow rising in a question.

“It’s not what you think, Luke. Like I said, she’s passing through and needed help.”

Boyd nodded, but seemed unconvinced. “Whatever you say, Chance.” The grin died on his lips and his face became somber. “You catch up with the Arapaho Kid?”

“Yes, I did.”

Tyree swung off the steeldust and Boyd said, “Well?”

A few moments passed before Tyree answered, the old rancher’s question dangling in the air. Finally he said, “The Kid won’t be murdering anyone else.”

Boyd grinned. “You kill him?”

“No,” Tyree answered. “I smashed up his hands. As long as he lives he’ll never be able to shuck a gun again.”

“You . . . you broke his hands?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I did. Killing him would have been too easy. I wanted him to pay for what he did to Owen—pay for it every single day of his life.”

Tyree saw Boyd struggling to come to terms with what had he’d told him. Killing a man he understood, but maiming him and then letting him go was beyond his comprehension.

“Luke, I made the punishment to fit the crime,” Tyree said. “It was a reckoning. And in the end, the Kid knew it and the memory of what happened will stay with him.”

Boyd opened his mouth to speak again, but Tyree turned, gathering up the reins of his horse and doing the same to Sally’s pony. He was about to walk the animals to the barn, when a man’s voice called out from across the creek. “Hello the cabin!”

Boyd’s eyes screwed up against the falling darkness as he scanned the far bank. “Hell, that’s Steve Lassiter. He’s got a spread north of here. Now, what does he want?” Boyd cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Come on in, Steve.”

Steve Lassiter was a solemn, long-faced man with the eyes of a bereaved bloodhound. He sat round-shouldered and ungainly in the saddle of his bay mustang.

“Light and set a while, Steve,” Boyd said. “Take a load off yourself.”

The rancher shook his head. “I’m obliged, but I can’t stay, Luke. Jean will have supper on the table and she gets a mite testy if’n I’m late for meals.” Lassiter groaned softly and eased his position in the saddle. “Got news, Luke. Big news.”

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“I was in Crooked Creek buying pipe tobacco and some pins for Jean at the general store.” Lassiter shrugged his skinny shoulders. “I’m forever running out of tobacco. Then I heard shots being fired and all kinds of commotion going on in the street outside.”

Lassiter, a dour, taciturn man by nature, nodded. “Yup, that’s what I heard all right. Darnedest thing.”

“And?” Boyd prompted, a hint of irritation in his eyes.

“Well, it seems that rustler you caught . . . what’s his name—”

“Roy Will.”

“Yeah, him. Well, anyhoo, he escaped. Got himself a gun and a good pony from somewheres and skedaddled.”

“Tobin, that fat useless . . .” Boyd began angrily.

“The sheriff took a few shots at him,” Lassiter interrupted, “but there are them who say he was holding his gun mighty high, like he was shooting at the moon.”

Lassiter sat in silence for a few moments, then said, “Just thought you’d like to know, Luke. Best you keep that prize bull of your’n right close until Will is caught again or kilt.”

The rancher’s hound dog eyes slid to Tyree, widening in surprise. “By them that described you in town, I’d say you must be Chance Tyree. Heard about you this morning, you and the Arapaho Kid.” Lassiter shrugged. “Can’t say as I approve of what you done. Best just to kill a man like that and be finished with it. Don’t see much point in taking a man’s soul besides.” He touched his hat to Boyd. “Well, I’ll be on my way now, Luke. We’re having fried chicken for supper.”

After Lassiter had gone, Tyree tended to the horses, then rejoined Boyd who was sitting on the cabin stoop, thoughtfully smoking his pipe.

“Come first light tomorrow, I’ll go haze the bull back toward the cabin,” Tyree said. “Just in case.”

“You think Will plans on coming after you, Chance?”

“Certain of it. I believe that’s why Tobin let him escape. He figures Will can do Laytham’s dirty work for him.”

“You sure Laytham is behind it?”

“If I was a gambling man, I’d bet the farm on it.”

“Why does Laytham want you out of the way so bad?”

“Because I’m a thorn in his side. He knows Clem Daley and Len Dawson told me they were acting on his orders when they hung me. And he’s learned by this time that I found out about the Arapaho Kid getting paid a hundred dollar bonus for killing Owen.” Tyree shrugged. “Add to that the fact that I warned him through Tobin to leave the territory, taking only what he can carry on a horse, and he’s got reason enough to want me dead. Plenty of men have been killed for a lot less.”

Boyd smiled. “Leave the territory. Hell, I doubt ol’ Quirt will do that.”

“He has a couple more days. And if he doesn’t leave, I’ll go after him.”

The old rancher shook his head. “You’re not a forgiving man, are you, Chance?”