“Why did you bring me here, Lorena?” Tyree finally asked the question he’d been turning over in his mind since they’d left the ranch. “Last night you did everything but accuse me of being a cold-blooded killer, and now we’re having a picnic together.”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to share my secret place with you. The lake is small, but it is lovely, isn’t it?”
Tyree nodded. “It sure is, but the lake isn’t the reason you brought me here.”
Lorena turned to him, her troubled eyes finding his. “You’re right. It’s not the reason. Chance, I wanted to talk to you about Quirt Laytham.”
Tyree stiffened. “What about him?”
“I want you and Quirt to be friends.” She held up her hand. “I know, I know, mistakes were made, but nothing that can’t be undone.”
A small anger flared in Tyree. “You’re blinded by him, aren’t you, Lorena? You can’t see past the good looks and flashy clothes to the man underneath. I was a stranger passing through, but I was hung by men acting on Laytham’s orders. I’d have strangled to death if Owen hadn’t found me. And what about him? What about Owen? Laytham wants him dead so he can claim his few acres of grass. Tell me, what kind of a man thinks that way? How can greed and the desire for power possess a man so badly that he’ll kill everybody in his path to get what he wants?”
Tyree dropped the piece of cake he’d been eating and wiped his fingers on his jeans. “How many must he kill to get you, Lorena?”
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” the girl snapped, color flooding into her cheeks. “The trouble is you’re jealous of Quirt because he’s rich and successful, and you’ll stop at nothing to discredit him.”
The day that had begun so full of promise was going downhill fast, the shadows once again gathering between them.
“I’m not jealous of Quirt Laytham, Lorena,” Tyree said. “In my entire life I’ve never wanted anything badly enough to envy the man that had it.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “That is, until I met you.”
“No one has me.”
“Does that include Laytham?”
“Quirt asked me to marry him, and he believes we’ve reached an understanding. For right now at least, I’m content to let matters rest where they are.”
“Laytham isn’t the man for you, Lorena,” Tyree said.
“And you are?”
Tyree nodded. “Yes, Lorena, I am.”
Maybe it was the sincerity in Tyree’s voice that made the girl hesitate. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again and for a few moments sat lost in thought. Finally she turned to Tyree. “Chance, no matter what, I won’t be the wife of a gunfighter. I’d sit at home, dreading the knock on the door. And, sooner or later, it would come. I couldn’t live like that.”
Tyree slid the Colt from the holster and held it in the palm of his hand. “Lorena, this is the Colt Frontier revolver, model of 1873, and a long time ago I accepted its ways and I’ve lived by its code most all of my adult life. But a man can change. Recently I’ve been thinking that it’s time to put this away and never pick it up again.” He shoved the gun back into the leather. “I’m thirty years old and it’s time I was moving on.”
“What would you do?” Lorena asked.
Tyree looked at the woman, at the sunlight tangled in her hair and the green fire in her eyes, and he thought her achingly lovely. “Ranch maybe,” he said after he’d collected his thoughts. “I’ve always had a yen to raise Percheron horses. Percherons are fine animals and they have a long history. Back in the Middle Ages, they carried armored knights into battle, and today they can drag a plow across rough land that would bring oxen to their knees. One time in Denver I even saw a team pull a carriage and look mighty good doing it. It seems to me that just about every farm and ranch in the country needs a pair of Percherons, so the market is there.”
Lorena smiled. “Chance, your whole face lights up when you talk about those horses.”
Tyree nodded. “I was fourteen when I went up the trail to Kansas for the first time. The chuck wagon was pulled by a Percheron team, grays they were, standing over sixteen hands, and I never forgot them.”
A frown gathered between Lorena’s eyebrows. “Raising horses takes money. I know Pa wants you to stay on and help him. He couldn’t pay much, but it might help.”
“I’ll work it out,” Tyree said, sidestepping the girl’s suggestion. “There’s always a way.”
“There is a way,” Lorena said uneasily, as though she was wary of widening the already yawning gulf between them.
Tyree smiled. “And what’s that?”
“You could make your peace with Quirt. He’d be willing to help you get started. I know he would.”
It took a few moments for the full impact of what the girl had said to hit Tyree. And when it came, it was like a punch in the gut.
“Lorena,” he said, rising to his feet, “the only thing I want from Quirt Laytham is six feet of ground between us and a gun in my hand.” It had been direct, almost brutal, and Tyree felt the hurt of it as much as Lorena.
The girl looked like she’d been slapped. She slammed the lid shut on the picnic basket, the noise adding the final period to their conversation.
“Let’s go,” she said. Her face looked like it was carved from pale marble. “It’s getting late.”
As the light began to fade, they rode home in silence under a lemon sky, tinged with thin brush-strokes of crimson.
Lorena went directly into the cabin, her head held high, while Tyree led the horses to the barn. He rubbed both animals down with a piece of sacking, then tossed them some hay and a bait of oats.
When he stepped outside again into a pale blue twilight, a single, sentinel star glimmered high over his head. Tyree was reluctant to enter the cabin, so he sat on the tree trunk that served as a seat beside the barn door and built a smoke.
The chasm between him and Lorena had widened so much that it could well nigh be impossible to bridge. She could not understand the depth of his hatred and bitterness toward Laytham, the wrong he felt had been done him. Tyree knew that only the man’s complete destruction could loose the bonds of revenge that gripped his heart, an emotion Lorena found alien and disturbing.
The pain in his side and the rope burn that was still red and raw on his neck were constant reminders that he had yet to bring about the reckoning. Defeated and baffled though he was, he knew there was no other way.
He could not walk away from Laytham—not now, not ever. If he did, he’d be spitting on every principle that made him what he was.
But in gaining his revenge he would lose Lorena. That was the price that had to be paid and there would be no bargaining.
A deep sense of loss in him, Tyree ground the butt of his cigarette under his heel and began to build another. But his hands stilled on papers and tobacco as the clarion clang of a cowbell echoed its clamor among the canyons, a mournful tolling that was growing closer.
Had Boyd belled one of his cows?
Tyree rose to his feet, puzzled, and listened as the ringing became louder. A couple of minutes passed and a rider trailing a horse emerged through the gathering dusk at the other side of the creek. The bell in the rider’s right hand clanged constantly, and he was yelling the same unintelligible words over and over again.
Tyree was aware of the cabin door opening, then Lorena was at his side. “It’s Pa,” she said. “And he’s leading Owen’s buckskin.”
Luke Boyd splashed across the creek, his horse stepping high, throwing tall sprays of water into the air. He kept right on ringing the cowbell, yelling something above its insistent clangor.
Behind him, a man was hanging facedown over the saddle of the buckskin, his falling hair moving with the motion of the horse.
Then both Tyree and Lorena heard the old rancher clearly.
“Owen is dead!” Boyd cried. “Shot down like a dog in the street!”
When he rode up to the cabin, Boyd reined u
p his horse and dropped the buckskin’s trailing reins. He rang his bell and called out again, “Owen Fowler is dead. . . . Owen Fowler is dead. . . .”
Tyree reached up and gently held Boyd’s arm, the bell clinking into silence. Boyd looked down at him with wounded eyes. “I bought this in town after Owen was killed. I rang it all the way here. I wanted everyone to hear me and know what had happened.”
As Lorena ran to help her father from the saddle, Tyree eased Fowler from the buckskin and laid him on his back on the ground. The front of the man’s shirt was covered in blood, but the two bullet holes in the center of his chest were easy to see.
Tyree looked up from the dead man. “Luke,” he asked, “who did this?”
“The Arapaho Kid,” Boyd answered. He stood close to Lorena, as though needing her strength and support. “He gunned Owen down in the street like a—”
“How did it happen?” Tyree interrupted, an ice-cold, killing rage building in him.
Boyd rubbed his hand across his face as though to erase a painful memory. “We couldn’t find Sheriff Tobin, so I dragged that no-good rustler into Bradley’s saloon to ask around for him. I told Owen to stay close, but he said he was crossing the street to talk to the gunsmith about repairing his rifle. Then somebody ran into the saloon and said the Arapaho Kid was outside, bracing Owen Fowler.
“I left the saloon to see what was happening, just in time to hear the Kid call Owen a back-shooting lowlife. Then the Kid said to Owen, ‘You’ve got a rifle. Use it.’ Owen tried to show the Kid that his Henry was damaged, but as soon as he done that, the Kid drew and fired.”
The old rancher shook his head. “I couldn’t stop it, Chance. I think the Kid would have killed me too. As Owen lay there dying, the Kid stood over him and grinned. He said now there was one less preacher killer in the territory.”
“Where was Tobin?” Tyree asked.
“He showed up later. Three men swore Owen had tried to level his rifle at the Kid and that the killing was self-defense. I told Tobin otherwise, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He said too many reliable witnesses stated that Owen Fowler tried to kill the Kid.” Boyd shrugged, his face haunted. “And that’s how it stands.” His baleful eyes sought Tyree’s. “Tobin locked up my prisoner and he says he plans to hang him directly.”
“Was Laytham there during all this?”
“No,” Boyd said. “I didn’t see him.”
“Quirt would have nothing to do with a cold-blooded murder,” Lorena snapped, sudden tears filling her eyes.
“The Arapaho Kid works for him, doesn’t he?” Tyree asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl said. “But if he does, Quirt will send him packing, I can promise you that.”
“Who were the three witnesses, Luke?” Tyree asked.
“Tobin’s deputies, Len Dawson and Clem Daley. The third was a gunfighter out of Missouri, dresses like a preacher his ownself. Calls himself . . .” Boyd shook his head. “Everything was happening so fast I don’t recollect his name.”
“Luther Darcy?” Tyree prompted.
“Yes. That was it. Luther Darcy. How did you know?”
“Owen told me about him,” Tyree said. His eye slanted to Lorena. “He said Darcy draws gun wages from Quirt Laytham.”
Tyree saw confusion in the girl’s face, but she made no attempt to defend Laytham again. Instead she kneeled by Fowler’s body and tenderly lifted a strand of hair off his forehead. “Poor Owen,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You were a mild-mannered man, never cut out to live in the West. You should have gone back home to Boston and worked in a bank.” Her tearstained eyes lifted to her father. “Pa, we have a burying to do.”
“Not here,” Tyree said. “We’ll bury him in his own ground, at his canyon. He loved that place and that’s where he’d want to rest.”
Neither Lorena nor her father voiced an objection, understanding that Tyree had the right of the thing.
“Chance, let’s lay Owen in the barn for the night,” Boyd said. “We’ll move out at sunup.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” Lorena snapped, her eyes flaring. “Bring him inside and let me wash his poor body. I won’t send Owen to his Maker looking the way he does.”
For the first time, Tyree was aware of the steel in Lorena Boyd, the metal tempered by the hard men among whom she’d lived and by the land itself. She was no shallow, bustled belle reluctant to touch a bloody corpse. She was a woman of the frontier—she’d swallow her revulsion and do what had to be done without complaint.
“So be it, Lorena,” Tyree said. “And you’re right. A man should be buried decent.”
There were just three mourners at Owen Fowler’s funeral when they laid him to rest in his canyon amid the first of the morning light, but in the end, it was enough for any man.
Lorena wet the black earth with her tears and Boyd said the words from the Book. When they were done, Tyree whispered his last farewell and walked quickly toward his horse.
“Chance, where are you going?” Boyd asked, closing his Bible.
Tyree stopped beside the steeldust and turned. “You know where I’m going, Luke. Where can I find him?”
The rancher looked into Tyree’s green eyes and shivered, as though their coldness had reached out to him. This was not the time for argument, he knew. Owen Fowler had saved Tyree’s life and now he would do right by him. Revenge was a harsh, unforgiving code, but men like Chance Tyree lived by it, and he would not be turned aside.
“The Kid works for Laytham,” Boyd said, “but he’s never used a rope or handled a branding iron in his life. He says he has to keep his hands soft for gun work. You’ll find him in Crooked Creek, most likely holdin’ court at Bradley’s.”
“No, Chance,” Lorena said, stepping toward him, her agitation evident by the way she waved her hands at him. “I’ve heard about the Arapaho Kid, and he’s a killer. He’s shot down a dozen men, and maybe more. You’re no match for him.”
Tyree swung into the saddle. “Look around you, Lorena,” he said. “There’s nobody else. Your pa isn’t a gunfighter, so I’ve got it to do.”
“Owen wouldn’t want this, Chance,” the girl said. “He wouldn’t demand blood for blood.”
The girl’s eyes were wet with tears, but for him or Fowler, Tyree couldn’t guess.
“Maybe so,” he said. “But Owen had his way and I have mine. Maybe I was wrong when we spoke of ranches and Percherons at the lake. It seems no matter how he tries, a man can’t turn his back on what he is.”
Tyree swung his horse toward the mouth of the canyon, but Boyd’s voice stopped him. “Chance, the Kid carries a gun on his hip and another in a cross-draw rig on his belt. He favors the crossdraw.”
“A thing to remember,” Tyree said. He touched his hat brim to Lorena and spurred the steeldust out of the canyon, swinging south along the bank of Hatch Wash.
He didn’t look back.
Chapter 11
Crooked Creek was a sprawling collection of shacks, saloons and houses scattered along the base of a high yellow mesa. The town had a raw frontier look to it, yet, like a penniless but genteel dowager, it had pretensions to grandeur. White-painted gingerbread houses huddled together on the outskirts of town and the place boasted a church, school and fire station.
It was not yet noon when Tyree, his hat pulled low over his face, rode along the main street and tied up his horse outside Bradley’s Saloon.
He stepped onto the boardwalk, but instead of entering the saloon walked to his right and stopped at a restaurant with a weather-beaten sign outside that said simply: EATS.
He was hungry and, at least for now, the Arapaho Kid could wait.
Tyree stepped inside, grateful for the coolness of the place, and found a table facing the door. At this time of the day, the restaurant was quiet. A couple of men who looked like bank clerks sat at another table, lingering long over their coffee.
The two had studied Tyree closely when he entered, taking in his gun and the hard glint
in his eyes, then had turned quickly away, wanting no part of him.
A young, pretty waitress took his order for steak and eggs and filled his coffee cup. He ate with an appetite, ordered more coffee and built a smoke. More people came into the restaurant, mostly the town’s respectable businessmen and their wives, then a couple of grinning young punchers in dusty range clothes who talked pretties to the waitress and made her giggle.
Tyree paid his bill and stepped to the door, his chiming spurs attracting the attention of the punchers. “Hey, Tex, you lookin’ for a ridin’ job?” one of them called out to him.
Tyree turned and shook his head. “Just passing through.”
“Too bad,” the man said. “We could use an extry hand or three.”
It was hot outside and a dust devil danced in the street before collapsing in a puff of yellow near the Overland Stage depot where passengers made small talk and tried not to think about the hours of jolting, sweating misery that lay ahead for them. Outside the firehouse, a man in suspenders and collarless shirt was polishing the brass of a red steam engine, arcs of dark sweat under his arms.
Including his steeldust, six horses now stood at the saloon hitching rail. Tyree stepped along the boardwalk and checked the brands. The five ponies bore Laytham’s Rafter-L on their shoulders. It was an easy brand to alter with a running iron, Tyree decided, but by now rustlers had probably learned to ride wide around the big rancher’s herds.
The horses’ necks were lathered where the reins had rubbed, so Tyree knew they had just arrived. Was the Arapaho Kid among them?
There was only one way to find out, and Tyree figured it was high time he did what he’d come to do. He stepped inside the saloon, letting the doors swing shut behind him.
Five men stood at the long, mahogany bar, one of them the huge Clem Daley, wearing Tyree’s buckskin coat. A smaller man stood at the deputy’s side, a smoking black cigar clenched in his teeth. This man was grinning as he held aloft a shining new double eagle. “The drinks are on me, boys,” he said. “We’re celebrating today and there’s more gold where this one came from.”
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