Ralph Compton - Guns of the Canyonlands

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 scouted 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.