“Tobin, Laytham told you a damned lie. His cattle are on Fowler’s grass all right, but Laytham put them there.”
The following silence stretched into several minutes as Tobin and Laytham, heads together, discussed matters between them. Finally the sheriff kneed his horse a few steps forward and yelled, “Tyree, we have a proposition for you.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“It’s Owen Fowler we want, not you. I could arrest you for murdering members of my legally appointed posse. But I won’t, not if you come out of them rocks. I’ll give you back your horse and guns and you can ride out of the territory free as you please. That’s a mighty generous deal Mr. Laytham and me are offering you, Tyree, and I advise you to take it.”
Tyree smiled. He knew if he accepted Tobin’s offer he’d be playing with a cold deck. The sheriff and Laytham would never let him leave the canyon country alive.
“Forget it, Tobin,” Tyree yelled. “I’m not going to bite at that worm.” He hesitated a few moments, then yelled, “Laytham, now it’s your turn to listen to what I have to say. Acting on your orders, Tobin’s deputies hung me for no other reason than I was a stranger passing through. Owen Fowler saved my life and I plan on standing by him.”
“Damn you, Tyree!” Laytham yelled. “Damn you and your kind to hell.”
The rancher made a move to swing his horse away, but Tyree’s shout stopped him. “Laytham, I could shoot you out of the saddle right now. But that would be too easy. I plan on destroying you. You walk a wide path, but I aim to strip you of everything you own. I’ll ruin you, Laytham.”
Tyree lowered the rifle from his shoulder. “There’s a reckoning to come between us. Depend on it.”
His face black with rage, Laytham stood in the stirrups and roared, “You talk of reckonings, Tyree, and you’re right—there’s one to come. But it will end with you and Fowler kicking from the same gallows. You have my word on that.”
“Your word means nothing to me, Laytham,” Tyree yelled. “Now hightail it out of here before I lose sight of that surrender flag and start shooting.”
An anger beyond anger hurtling him into the ragged edge of insanity, Laytham bellowed like a wounded animal and ripped the white rag from his rifle. He threw the Winchester to his shoulder, but Tobin quickly raised his hand and grabbed the barrel. Tyree couldn’t hear what the sheriff was saying, but judging by the frantic manner the man was gesticulating, he was pleading with Laytham to let it go and wait for another day.
Tyree rose to his feet and shouldered his own rifle. If Laytham came at him, he’d be forced to drop the man, spoiling the plans he was making for him.
But it seemed that Tobin’s frenzied words had gotten through to the rancher. Laytham abruptly turned his horse and galloped back toward his waiting men.
For a few moments the fat sheriff sat his mount, staring in Tyree’s direction, the flaming evening sky reflecting bloodred in the lenses of his glasses.
“Tyree,” the man yelled, “this was ill done. Mr. Laytham means what he said. He’ll see you hang.”
“Pick up your dead, Tobin,” Tyree called back, suddenly tired, all his talking now done. “Bury them decent for God’s sake.”
The sheriff made no reply. He turned his mustang and trotted after Laytham, his back stiff. When the lawman was gone, Tyree left his place in the rocks and rounded the butte where Fowler stood beside his buckskin.
“Heard all that,” he said. “You’ve made my enemies your enemies and it seems to me that neither of us stands a chance against them.”
Tyree managed a grim smile. “I was a stranger passing through. They had no call to do what they did to me. Count on it, there will be a reckoning.”
Fowler shook his head. “Chance, we were lucky today. You killed a few of Laytham’s men, but they weren’t the best of them. He still has a score of riders left, the Arapaho Kid and Luther Darcy among them.” The man stepped closer to Tyree and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Take my horse. Ride north out of here and don’t stop until you clear the Utah Territory. This is my fight, not yours.”
“No, Owen,” Tyree said. “When they hung me, shot me and left me for dead, it also became my fight.”
Exasperation showed on Fowler’s narrow, lined face, its gray jailhouse pallor not yet burned away by the sun. “But Quirt Laytham is too big and getting bigger by the day. One man can’t declare war on an empire.”
Without a trace of false pride or brag in his voice, Tyree looked Fowler in the eye. “This one can.”
Fowler, in turn, looked into Tyree’s eyes and saw a terrible green fire. He realized with a dawning certainty that hell was coming to the canyonlands.
Chapter 6
Both of them again up on the buckskin, Tyree and Fowler followed Hatch Wash north for several miles as the day faded into evening. Out among the canyons the talking coyotes were filling the night with their sound and a hunting cougar roared once in the distance, then fell silent.
Fowler swung west and splashed across the creek, entering a narrow draw with steep, high walls. Struggling spruce and juniper were just visible in the failing light, clinging to narrow outcroppings of rock high above them. The bottom of the draw was sandy and clumps of mesquite grew here and there, brushing against the legs of the riders with a dry, rasping hiss.
“We’re headed due west, toward the Colorado,” Fowler said over his shoulder. “But in an hour or so we’ll cut north toward where Hatch Wash meets the river. Where we’re going we’ll be pretty much near level with the peaks of the La Sal Mountains to the east.”
“You mean the slot canyon?” Tyree asked.
“Thought it through and changed my mind about that,” Fowler said. “You need plenty of bed rest and good grub. We’re going to pay a visit on an old friend of mine, a man called Luke Boyd. He’ll see us all right.”
Now the sun was gone, the night air was turning cool, and Tyree, having lost so much blood, shivered.
Fowler, a perceptive and caring man, turned in the saddle. “Reach behind the cantle, Chance. I’ve got me a mackinaw inside my bedroll.”
Tyree found the coat and quickly shrugged into it, grateful for the warmth of the wool, thin and threadbare though it was.
After thirty minutes the draw widened out into a patch of open, flatter country, less hemmed in by the surrounding bastions of rock. Mesquite and clumps of rabbit bush covered the ground, and the night air smelled of cedar and juniper.
As they cleared the confining walls of the draw, Tyree looked up and saw a sky full of stars. The moon was not yet visible, but already its diffused glow was painting the land around them the color of tarnished silver.
Weak as he was, Tyree nodded in the saddle, lulled by the rocking motion of the buckskin and the sound of its soft footfalls on the sand.
Fowler’s voice woke him. “Almost there, Chance, but from now on we ride real careful. Ol’ Luke Boyd has a Sharps fifty-seventy ranged at a hundred yards and he’s never been bashful about using it.”
“Must be a real good friend of yours, huh?” Tyree asked, the smile in his voice evident.
“He was, before I was sent to prison. I guess he still is, but in the dark a Sharps sometimes can’t tell the difference between friend and foe, so I plan on making sure he knows it’s me that’s a-coming at him.”
“What’s he do, this Luke Boyd with the Sharps ranged at a hundred yards?”
“He runs a one-loop spread a couple of miles east of the Colorado. He also does some gold prospecting around here from time to time. Between one thing and another, he’s always gotten by. Has himself a right lovely daughter called Lorena. I guess she must be about twenty-five by now. Luke says she was the child of his old age.” An edge of bitterness crept into Fowler’s voice. “Quirt Laytham is sweet on her. He says he wants to marry her, and last I heard, Lorena hasn’t said yes, but she hasn’t said no.”