Guns of the Canyonlands

“Can you make it?” Fowler asked, concern shading his dark brown eyes.

“I’ll make it,” Tyree answered. “Let’s hit the trail.” He looked at Fowler and saw the doubt in the man’s homely features. “I told you, I’ll make it,” he said, a sudden, stubborn anger in him.

Fowler nodded. “Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.” A slight smile tugged at his lips. “Right now, Tyree, I’d say your chances of reaching my place are slim to none, and slim is already saddling up to leave town.”

Tyree disentangled from Fowler’s supporting arm. “Let’s ride,” he said, his face stiff. “Believe me, I can get there.”

Fowler swung into the saddle of the buckskin, then kicked the stirrup loose for Tyree. It took the wounded man several attempts before he summoned the strength to finally get up on the buckskin and settle himself behind the high cantle of Fowler’s saddle.

“Ready?” Fowler asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Tyree answered.

“Then let’s get it done.”

When he thought about it later, Tyree could recall little of that ride.

The sun was already hot when they crossed the brush flats then entered the canyon country, but in the gorges between the cliffs and mesas the heat was almost unbearable.

Around them spread an immense, rough-hewn wilderness of sculptured rocks, needles, arches and narrow slot canyons that seemed to stretch away forever in all directions. Stunted spruce grew on the flat tops of immense mesas, desperately struggling for life in an uncaring environment, and the air smelled dry, like the dust of ancient Indian dead.

Only occasionally, mostly along the banks of the creeks, would there be islands of green with trees and grass where fat, white-faced cattle grazed.

“Quirt Laytham’s cows,” Fowler said, talking over his shoulder as they rode under spreading cottonwoods. “See his Rafter-L brand? Looks like he’s pushing his herds into the whole damn country.”

Tyree heard but did not answer. The pain in his side hammered at him and the skin of his face and neck felt thin and chafed. His hands were stiff and hard to close.

He knew he needed rest, lots of it, to regain his strength. His revenge on Laytham and the deputies who worked for him would have to wait. For the present, they could enjoy their victory. The reckoning would come later.

It was not in Tyree’s nature to back away from what he believed was right. He had been abused, victimized on the orders of a man who didn’t even know him, a man who made judgments only in the light of his own greed for wealth and power.

An enduring, sometimes stubborn man, there was in Chance Tyree a fierce determination to live, to fight back and win. He knew of no other way.

He and Fowler rode on. Despite its double load, the man’s rawboned buckskin made light of the trail. For miles they traveled in silence, the only sound the soft footfalls of the horse and the high lonesome creak of saddle leather.

The sun climbed in the sky and the day grew hotter. Riding among the canyons was like traveling through a gigantic brick oven. Above them, the sky had been scorched to a pale lemon and the dry dust kicked up by the horse rose around them in veils of swirling tan and yellow.

Tyree dozed, wakening only now and then when Fowler quickly reached back and stopped him from toppling off the horse.

As the daylight began to fall, the cry of a hunting peregrine falcon woke Tyree for the last time. “Hatch Wash just ahead,” Fowler said, feeling the younger man stir. “We’re almost home. And, as I said before, it sure ain’t much.”

Tyree blinked his eyes into focus and looked over Fowler’s shoulder. They were riding through a narrow gulch that gradually opened up ahead of them, revealing two narrow bands of green on either side of a shallow creek that wound between high canyon walls. Beyond the walls, towering cliffs, mesas, sandstone domes and spires of rock seemed to stretch away forever, here and there rincons, ancient streambeds, showing as yellow streaks high on their steep pink, yellow and red sides.

“The wash runs for twelve miles,” Fowler said. “Runs pretty much north and then west. But I guess you’ll be glad to hear we’re not going that far.”

The man kicked his buckskin into an easy lope, and Tyree found himself passing through thick stands of fragrant piñon and juniper. As the trail edged closer to the east bank of the wash, the trees changed to cottonwoods and willow, and cattle lifted their dripping muzzles from the water to watch them as they rode past.

“More of Laytham’s cows,” Fowler said, his face like stone.

Fowler swung his horse away from the creek, heading for what looked like a break in the canyon wall. The grass played out and the ground they crossed was sandier, covered in a profusion of desert shrubs, mostly sagebrush, greasewood and black-brush, with tall leaves of yucca spiking among them.