Tyree kicked the steeldust into motion and left the stable at a lope. Off to his left a man in a vest decorated with bright silver conchas threw a rifle to his shoulder and took aim. Tyree’s Colt blasted and the man sprawled on the ground.
At a fast gallop, Tyree rounded the side of the livery barn and headed for the open brush flats. Behind him guns hammered, and a bullet split the air close to his head. A few moments later, he reached the flats and the moon-streaked darkness swallowed him.
The galloping steeldust kicked up a thick cloud of yellow dust that could be seen from a long distance, but Tyree did not slacken his pace. Once he reached the wild, broken country of the canyons he could lose himself among the high rock ridges and sheltering arroyos.
When Tyree glanced over his shoulder he saw a rising billow of dust coming on fast behind him. Tobin had managed to mount a posse. Every now and then a gun flared, but the riders were shooting wild at shadows.
Tyree grinned to himself. The men following him were full of whiskey bravery, the smell of scented women still on them, and maybe they’d discourage easy. He reined in his horse, yanked the Winchester from the boot under his knee and threw the rifle to his shoulder.
He cranked off three fast rounds into the following dust cloud, and immediately the posse split apart, the cloud breaking into a dozen separate whirling dust devils.
Tyree fired a couple more shots. In the dark he had no chance of hitting anything, but he figured his bullets would serve to keep his pursuers honest.
The devil of mischief riding him, his grin widened as he swung the steeldust toward the milling horsemen, firing rapidly from the shoulder at a fast gallop.
He saw a man go down with his horse, then roll free from under its kicking hooves. Another was hit and reeled in the saddle, a revolver spinning from his hand.
Now Tyree was almost among them. He shoved the rifle back into the boot and pulled the Colt from his waistband. He rode through the cursing, angry horsemen, many of them fighting frightened, plunging horses. A man swung into Tyree’s view, his gun coming up fast. Tyree fired and the rider went backward out of the saddle. He had no time to see the man fall, because now he was through the riders, emptying his Colt as he went.
Behind him, the members of Tobin’s posse were sobering up fast. They had thought this would be a lark, a dozen of them running down one man and either shooting him to doll rags or dragging him back to be hanged. But they had seriously underestimated Tyree and his gun skills, a mistake those who survived would be wary of making ever again.
As Tyree galloped toward town, then looped back toward the canyonlands, no one was following him. Tobin and his men had obviously decided they’d had enough for one night.
The events of the past few minutes had lifted Tyree to recklessness and it felt good to have fought back and won. As he slowed the steeldust to a steady lope, he threw back his head and laughed, all the tension that had been in him draining away as he rode into the moonlit canyons and became one with the night.
Over the next several days, Tyree watched from vantage points on top of mesas and high rock ridges as posses hunted for him. Once he saw Tobin and Luther Darcy together, but no sign of Quirt Laytham.
Where was the man? Tyree wondered if he had lost interest, leaving it to Tobin and Darcy to hunt him down. Or was he spending his time at his ranch in sweet dalliance with Lorena, the woman’s stunning beauty making him forget, at least for now, all his soaring ambitions?
As long as he was alive, Tyree knew he was a thorn in Laytham’s side. Surely the big rancher would soon take a hand in hunting him. Or would he do that only if Tobin and Darcy failed?
Time would answer that question, but for now, a more immediate concern was Sally. Somehow Tyree had to get the girl out of the clutches of Luther Darcy. But that meant riding into Crooked Creek, a risky course of action he did not relish. Still, since there was no other way, he would do it.
First he would have to find food. The strips of beef jerky that Zeb had thoughtfully stuffed into his saddlebags were gone and with posses hunting him Tyree could not risk a rifle shot at a deer. He was hungry and getting hungrier, and the only place he could find something to eat was at Luke Boyd’s cabin.
But did he dare risk getting Luke involved with Tobin and Luther Darcy? Not if he waited until nightfall when the chances of him being seen were slight. He’d be risking Luke’s Spencer, but that was a chance he’d have to take.
Tyree spent the remainder of an oppressively hot day in a slot canyon north of the Abajo Mountains, dozing off and on until the light changed and darkness began to gather around him.
He led the steeldust from the canyon, then swung into the saddle and headed north toward Luke’s ranch. If all went well, he could eat, then make a night ride for Crooked Creek. It would still be dark when he reached town and, if luck was on his side, he could get Sally out of the hotel. He had no doubt the girl was guarded, but he would deal with that when the time came.
The sky was scattered with stars and the night air was soft and warm as Tyree headed up Hatch Wash then swung in the direction of Luke’s cabin.
After an hour he rode west along the creek leading to the Boyd place, passing cattle grazing on both banks, relieved that all of them bore the old rancher’s brand. As he got closer, a slight breeze stirred, rustling the slender reeds by the creekbank, carrying the smell of sage and juniper . . . and something else. The sharp, tangy odor of wood smoke.
Worry nagging at him, Tyree kneed his horse into a lope. The moon was up and riding high. The coyotes were yammering among the shadowed canyons and the night birds were calling out to each other.
The glow of the cabin lamps should have been in sight as Tyree rounded a bend in the creek, his eyes scanning the darkness ahead of him. But there were no lights, just the dark, looming bulk of the mesa behind the cabin and above that the vast purple arch of the starry sky.
Tyree reined in his horse, his instinct for danger clamoring at him. His eyes probed the gloom and gradually he made out the vague shape of the cabin. But the shape was all wrong, the contours of the building distorted. The roof was no longer there and the sturdy walls were broken down; in the moonlight, a spar of scorched timber was visible behind what was once a window frame.
His eyes moved beyond the cabin to the corral. A section of the fence was down, pulled over by a rope thrown around a post. It was an old trick that, and in the past he’d seen it done to many a nester and sheepherder.
Warily, Tyree rode to the front of the cabin. Most of the base of the porch and the wall behind still stood, but the door had been burned away and all the glass panes in the windows were shattered. The roof had collapsed, a few wisps of smoke drifting up from inside, and a feeble flame fluttered on the side of a fallen beam like a scarlet moth.
Tyree swung out of the saddle and walked around to the rear of the cabin—and found Luke Boyd.
The old rancher was lying on his back, his body from the waist down buried under a pile of charred, fallen timbers. His voice was weak, but Boyd managed a smile when he saw Tyree emerge from the darkness. “How you doing, boy? Good to see you again.”
“Luke,” Tyree said, kneeling beside the old rancher, the odor of scorched flesh in his nostrils, “what happened?”
Boyd’s face looked like it had been chipped from marble. “They hit me late this afternoon. I was over to the barn when they rode in and I made a run for my Spencer. Then this feller, one of them fancy two-gun shootists we hear about all the time, cut loose at me and I fell right here. After they set the cabin on fire, the wall came right down on top of me. Been lying here since. Mighty thirsty though.”