Guns of the Canyonlands

by Ralph Compton

  Tyree took off his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Still a lot of canyons and draws to search, Luke.” He settled his hat back on his head. “We’ll find him.”

  “I sure hope so,” Boyd said. “And I’ll rest a lot easier when we do. I set store by that bull. A time back I read that John Slaughter down in Texas had paid five thousand dollars for a prize Hereford bull. Well, a fool and his money are soon parted I guess, because I guarantee that I bought a better animal for less than half that price.”

  By eleven, after four hours of sweaty, grueling work in the growing heat of the day, Tyree and the others had counted over two hundred head. But there was as yet no sign of the bull and that rankled them all, especially Boyd.

  At noon, they camped in the shade of a cottonwood by the creek, boiled coffee and broiled slices of salt pork over the fire. Lorena had packed a round of yellow cornbread and a small pot of honey. They spread the corn pone thick with honey, then ate it with the pork.

  “Good vittles,” Fowler commented as he brushed crumbs from the front of his shirt. “Stick to a man’s ribs.”

  Tyree nodded, smiling. “You’re right about that. Salt pork does stay with a man and it keeps on repeating itself.”

  “And Lorena put a good scald on the corn pone—that’s fer sure,” Boyd said. He turned to Tyree. “How you holding up, boy?”

  “My side is punishing me some, but I reckon I’ll stick.”

  “Good, I’m glad you’re feeling spry, because next we start on the slot canyons. Maybe my bull is in one of them.”

  “How are we going to get the cows out of the slots, Luke?” Fowler asked, laying down his book. “Those canyons are so darned narrow there’s no room for a pony to turn and not enough space to swing a cat, let alone a loop.”

  Boyd answered Fowler’s question with one of his own. “How long were you in the cattle business before you was sent to the hoosegow, Owen?”

  “Not long—a twelvemonth, I guess.” He thought about it. “No more’n a twelvemonth.”

  Tyree built a smoke and studied Fowler. The man had the long, melancholy face and sad brown eyes of a poet, and his hands were slender, like a woman’s. He was high-shouldered, his chest narrow and sunken.

  Fowler was, Tyree decided, nobody’s idea of a cattleman.

  “I was working as a bank clerk over to Crooked Creek when a feller rode in with twenty head of Herefords and a Red Angus bull he was trying to sell,” Fowler said, as though his start in the ranching business needed some explanation. “Well, I was getting mighty tired of the bank, so I withdrew my savings, asked for my time and bought the herd. Cost me just about every cent I owned. Then I pushed them up Hatch Wash, looking for a place to start a ranch, and by and by, I found my canyon. Built my cabin, then had it pretty good for three, four months, until Quirt Laytham moved into the territory with his herd.” Fowler shrugged. “After that, well, you know what followed.”

  “I don’t, Owen,” Tyree said. “You never did tell me what happened.” He smiled. “And feel free to tell me it’s none of my damn business.”

  “Since you’ve made an enemy of Quirt Laytham on my account I guess you’re entitled to know,” Fowler said. The leaves of the cottonwood cast shifting shadows on the man’s face and his eyes lost their light, fading to a dull, expressionless black.

  “We had a preacher in Crooked Creek by the name of John Kent. He was a good man, cared about folks and not only his own flock. John was a sociable man and he rode up the wash to visit with me from time to time, and we’d drink coffee and talk cattle prices and books we’d read and stuff like that.

  “Then one morning, nigh on nine years ago, I woke up and found John’s body near my cabin. I knew he’d been shot in the back at close range, because his coat had caught on fire. And he’d been robbed. I was leaning over John’s body when Quirt Laytham rode in along with Nick Tobin, Len Dawson, Clem Daley and a few others.

  “Tobin said they’d been out looking for John since he’d failed to return home last night after visiting with me. Then he pulled his gun on me, accused me of murder and told Dawson to go search my cabin. When Dawson came back out he was holding John’s watch and some money. Said he’d found it piled up on my table where I’d left it.

  “I looked up at Laytham and he was grinning, something mighty akin to triumph in his eyes. ‘We got him, boys,’ he said. ‘We got us that man who murdered John Kent.’ ” Fowler shrugged. “You know the rest. I was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five years at hard labor.”

  “Who do you think killed Deacon Kent, Owen?” Boyd asked.

  Fowler shook his head at him. “I don’t know. A drifter maybe. All I know is that it wasn’t me. I liked and respected John. He was a good man. I had no reason to murder him.”

  While Fowler spoke, Luke Boyd had been whittling on a piece of fallen tree branch. He tossed the branch away, folded his knife and said, “That’s quite a story, Owen. First time I’ve heard the whole thing.” He rose to his feet. “Time to mount up, boys. We’ve a passel of slot canyons to search before nightfall.”

  “You still haven’t told us how you plan on doing it, Luke,” Fowler said, also standing, carefully putting Carlyle in his back pocket.

  Boyd smiled. “Owen, I knowed you hadn’t been ranching long enough to learn about slot canyons and God apples.”

  “God apples are a new one on me, too, Luke,” Tyree said.

  The old rancher nodded. “All right, since neither of you know, I’ll tell you about them. A few years back a puncher had himself a one-eyed hoss for sale up in the Bradshaws in the Arizona Territory. This Easterner dude asks him why the pony has only one eye. ‘Well, sir,’ the puncher says, ‘that don’t bother him none. He’s still the best cow pony in these parts.’ But the dude wouldn’t let it go. ‘What happened to his eye?’ he asks, all curious like. ‘God did it,’ the puncher says. ‘How?’ asks the dude. ‘One time that there hoss wouldn’t go in the corral an’ I cut him down with a God apple,’ says the puncher. ‘A what?’ asks the dude, real buffaloed. ‘A rock, you eejit,’ says the puncher. ‘God left them around to help us poor cowboys.’ ”

  Boyd grinned. “And that’s how come that ever since punchers call rocks God apples.”

  Tyree and Fowler exchanged looks, then the younger man asked, “Luke, what’s all that to do with the slot canyons?”

  The rancher smiled, bent over and extended a hand to Tyree, who took it. With surprising strength, Boyd pulled the younger man to his feet. “This is how we’re going to do it, Chance. Since you’re the youngest atween us and feeling right spry again, you’re gonna get an armload of God apples and get up on the rims of those canyons. Toss your rocks into the slots and when the cattle come hightailing it out of there, me and Owen will count them.” He nodded to Fowler. “All except my bull, Owen. I plan to dab a loop on him and lead him closer to the cabin.”

  Tyree grinned. “Then I guess I’d better start searching for God apples.”

  “Plenty of them around, son,” Boyd said, throwing that last of the coffee on the fire. “God provides us with every blessing in abundance, the Good Book says. So get to gathering.”

  Chapter 8

  Getting up to the rim of a slot canyon was no simple task, as Tyree soon discovered when he studied his first climb. He had to make it to the summit of a massive pink-and-yellow mesa that rose in a series of narrow benches to a height of about a thousand feet above the flat.

  He decided his best route was to follow one of the many deep runoffs that scarred the mesa’s eroded surface where, he hoped, the going would be easier.

  Tyree clambered upward along a stony, slanting streambed, then across a sandbank that held captive the skeletal white trunk of a dead juniper. The way was made even more difficult by massive boulders and a series of steep, treacherous dry falls. The searing, relentless heat was an added misery along with the weight of the rocks in his pockets.

  Boyd had given Tyree a pair of work gloves for the
climb that protected his hands, but cactus spines, especially those of the tiny claret cup that hid behind boulders and laid traps for the unwary, soon lacerated his knees and elbows.

  Halfway up, he stopped to catch his breath on a bench, flat purple-colored rocks and clumps of sagebrush scattered along its length and breadth.

  Tyree took off his hat and wiped sweat from the band with his gloved fingers, the blazing sun hammering at him mercilessly. He was about to replace his hat but stopped in midmotion, frozen in place by a sudden, angry rattle.

  He turned slowly. Ten feet away a huge side-winder that had been basking on a rock raised its head, tongue flickering, warning him to keep his distance.

  Tyree took a step backward, then another, his hand dropping to the gun on his hip. But the snake, its point made, slithered into a cluster of boulders shot through with bunchgrass and disappeared.

  Swallowing hard, Tyree settled his hat back on his head and began to climb again.

  The slot canyon itself was a deep gash in the sandstone rock, sculpted over millions of years into fantastic twists and turns by raging floodwaters. Judging by the closeness of the walls in some places, parts of it were so narrow a wide-shouldered man would have been forced to turn sideways to get through.

  When Tyree stood on the rim and looked down into the canyon’s depths, he could see twenty or thirty feet of wall bathed in a dim amber light, and below that only darkness.

  There was no telling if there were actually cows down there, but if there were, the God apples would hopefully get them moving.

  One by one Tyree tossed his rocks into the canyon and listened to them bounce off the walls. A few moments later there was a thud of hooves as spooked cattle ran in panic along the sandy bottom.

  Tyree grinned, let out a wild whoop and tossed down a few more rocks. Luke had been right—it was actually working.

  But after four hours and as many slot canyons, Boyd and Fowler had counted only a handful of cows, and the Hereford bull was not among them.

  After throwing the last of his rocks, Tyree decided this fourth canyon, carved into the side of a high, flat-topped butte, was his last. He was scraped and bruised all over from climbing, and his knees and elbows were bleeding from cactus spines. He was yet to regain all of his strength, and he felt hot, irritable and completely worn-out. Making his way through scattered boulders, Tyree reached the meager shade of a stunted juniper and built a cigarette, the smoke tasting hot, dry and acrid on his tongue.

  Tyree finished his cigarette and ground out the butt under his heel. He walked back toward the run-off and had just begun his hazardous descent when a brownish-yellow smudge in the sky far to the north stopped him in his tracks.

  He used his hat to shade his eyes against the glare of the sun, scanning the hazy distance. But there was no mistaking what he’d seen, a dust cloud hanging in the still air, thick enough to have been kicked up by several riders.

  Tyree studied the dust, wondering at its meaning. Fowler had told him there was a settlement to the north called Moab, a farming and ranching community run by Mormons. It could be the dust was being raised by punchers from there, though it was a fair piece off their home range.

  But Tyree immediately dismissed the thought. Dust to the north coupled with Boyd’s missing bull was too much of a coincidence—or at least enough of a coincidence to justify an investigation.

  He came off the butte in a hurry, sliding on his rump most of the way. When he reached the bottom he jumped to his feet and yelled, waving his hat to Boyd and Fowler, who were some distance off by the creek.

  The two men loped toward Tyree, Boyd leading the steeldust.

  “What’s all the fuss, boy?” the old rancher asked, reining up beside the younger man. “You seen my bull?”

  Tyree shook his head at him. “There’s dust to the north, Luke: three, maybe four riders. It could be that your bull is with them.”

  A frown gathering between his eyes, the rancher sat his saddle for a few moments, thinking it through. He glanced at the sun, as though seeking the answer to a question he’d just asked himself.

  “How far?” he asked finally.

  “Four, five miles.”

  Again Boyd sat lost in thought. Then he said, “That bull wouldn’t have wandered far from the cows. We’ve searched high and low for him and he ain’t here, so he’s someplace else.” He glanced at the sun again. “We still have a couple of hours of daylight left, time enough to catch up with the rustlers if that’s what they are.” He tossed the reins of the steeldust to Tyree. “Mount up, boy. Slip the thong off your Colt, and let’s go talk to those gents and see what they’re about.”

  It did not occur to Tyree, for even an instant, to refuse. He had enjoyed Boyd’s hospitality and he was therefore expected to ride for the brand if the need arose. Among Western men, to do otherwise would have marked him as a man of low character and, even worse, a coward.

  The three men rode north, working their way through narrow, sandy canyons and wider draws, a few of them with grass and water. Whenever possible they kept to the grass or rode through stands of cedar to settle their own dust.

  After an hour, at the mouth of a canyon between high, heavily corroded bluffs, Tyree cut sign. The tracks of three horses led into the gulch and among them what could only be the wide, split-toed prints of Luke Boyd’s bull.

  “I reckon they’re planning to head all the way north to Salt Lake City,” the rancher said, his face grim. “They’ll sell my bull cheap, but even so, the money will keep them in whiskey and women for a long time.”

  “Could be Salt Lake, Luke,” Fowler allowed. “Unless they make a turn east and head for Colorado.”

  Boyd shook his head in irritation. “North, east, it don’t matter a damn. I’m going after them.” He turned in the saddle and looked at Fowler. “Owen, you’re not a gunfighting man. I wouldn’t think any less of you if’n you was to ride back to the cabin.”

  Fowler shook his head. “I reckon I’ll stick.”

  Boyd’s smile was slight but genuine. “Good man. Then let’s get it done.”

  The advancing dusk was starting to crowd out the light as the three riders entered the canyon and followed its twists and turns for several miles. Some places were so narrow their stirrups scraped along the walls. At other points the canyon widened around shallow, water-filled basins surrounded by willow and cottonwoods, the gound muddied by the tracks of deer, elk and cattle.

  In the falling darkness, Boyd led Tyree and Fowler out of the canyon and then up a steep, hogback rise formed by the slanting talus slopes of a pair of dome-topped mesas, the way made treacherous by loose rock and gravel. The air smelled stale and old, the dusty odor of sandstone not yet cooled from the blazing heat of the day.

  Before they reached the crest of the rise, Tyree told Boyd to hold up. “The way I see it, those boys will soon camp for the night,” he said. “Judging by their tracks, I’d say they’re not hustling any, so they don’t know they’re being followed and they won’t want to run too much beef off that bull.”

  “What’s on your mind, son?” Boyd asked.

  “I suggest you and Owen stay here. I’m going on ahead to scout for the camp. When I find it, I’ll come back and get you.” Tyree shrugged. “Less chance of being seen if we know exactly where those rustlers are holed up. Last thing we want to do is go wandering around in the dark.”

  Boyd thought that through, then turned to Fowler. “How does Chance’s notion set with you, Owen?”

  “Makes sense,” Fowler answered. “We go stumbling around hunting for their camp they could hear us coming and kill all three of us quicker’n scat.”

  Boyd turned back to Tyree. “All right, go do it, boy, but when you find the camp come hightailing it back here, mind. There’s too many of them for one man to handle.”

  His face revealing nothing, Tyree touched the brim of his hat then swung the steeldust toward the top of the hogback. He crested the rise and rode down the other side, dropping four h
undred feet, his horse sliding most of the way on its haunches. He crossed an area of sandy, open ground, dotted here and there with patches of prickly pear cactus and mesquite, and rode into a shallow arroyo.

  The moon came up, silvering the night, and out among the canyons the coyotes were talking.

  Tyree thought he smelled smoke, but with no wind to carry the scent the odor was faint and fleeting. He reined up the tired steeldust, stood in the stirrups, and lifted his nose, testing the air.

  There it was again, just a fragile whiff of burning cedar that seemed to come from right ahead of him. And there was something else, another smell intertwined with the cedar—the tantalizing aroma of frying bacon.

  The steeldust, mountain bred and as sensitive to the nearness of danger as any wild creature, suddenly tensed and tossed up his head, the bit jangling loud in the silence. The horse let out a low, soft whinny. Tyree whispered, “Easy, boy, easy.”

  He swung out of the saddle, yanked his rifle from the scabbard, then went ahead on foot, leaving the steeldust with its reins trailing.

  His boots shuffling softly in the sand, Tyree crouched low and worked his way out of the arroyo, then across flat ground, stepping quietly through cactus, clumps of mesquite and scattered rock toward the source of the smoke. He had no illusions about what he was facing. Rustling was a dangerous, rake-hell business and these young men would be as tough as rawhide, hard and good with guns, and willing to fight like wolves to escape the consequences of their misdeeds.

  There would be no backup in them. Chances were they’d be fast and deadly as striking rattlesnakes. They would not give mercy—or ask for it.

  His face grim, his jaw set and stubborn, Tyree took a moment to ask himself if his falsehood back there at the hogback had been justified. But he knew full well it had. Owen Fowler was no gunfighter and would only be in the way. Luke Boyd was slowed by age, good with a Spencer at a distance, but up close and sudden as this fight would be, he’d lack the flashing speed to make his gun count.