Guns of the Canyonlands

When they’d eaten, Fowler took up his Henry rifle and nodded toward the entrance to the valley. “Years back, I discovered a game trail on the southern cliff that leads to the top of the mesa. I’ll spend the night up there. I don’t expect Laytham and his boys to come looking for us in the dark, but you never know. If he does, I want to see him coming.” He hesitated a few moments, then added, “At first light I’ll come down and change the dressings on your side.”

“Thanks,” Tyree said. “You really think he’ll come?”

Fowler nodded. “He’ll come all right. I’d say by this time he knows you wasn’t hung all the way. Now he has to kill us both. Me, so he can get clear claim to this valley, and you to shut you up about what happened and what’s going to happen in the future. You can bet the Arapaho Kid has picked up our tracks already.”

“Fowler,” Tyree said urgently, “I need a gun. I mean, I need a gun in the worst way.”

“I know you do,” the older man said. “But Len Dawson has your guns, so all we got is this here Henry—and about now I’m the only one of us well enough to use it.”

“You shoot real good?” Tyree asked, a vague hope rising in him.

“Me?” Fowler answered, grinning. “Hell, no. I shoot real bad.”

Chapter 4

Fowler’s food, rough and ready as it was, had given Tyree strength. When the man left, Chance unbuttoned his bloodstained shirt and carefully examined his gunshot wound. He had no way of knowing how the one in his back looked, but when he removed the prickly pear plug the entrance wound showed no sign of infection, though it was an angry red and sore to the touch.

As far as he could tell, the bullet had gone through clean and hadn’t hit any vital organs. But how long would it be before his strength returned?

Tyree had no answer to that question, but to prove to himself that he was already on the mend, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He would scout the canyon and see how he held up.

The moon was riding high in the sky, touching the rims of a few clouds with silver, when he came on the stone foundation of Fowler’s cabin. Judging by the charred beams that were left from the roof, the cabin had been built solid, skillfully crafted to last by a man who knew carpentry and liked to use his hands.

Tyree was puzzled. Fowler had obviously planned to put down roots here, make a home for himself. Why throw it all away by murdering a well-respected preacher for his watch and the few dollars in his pockets?

The killing didn’t make any sense, and Tyree decided that when Fowler came down from the mesa come sunup he’d ask him for the whole story.

He stood in the moonlight and looked around him. The cattle had stirred, got to their feet and were now grazing, all of them Quirt Laytham’s.

Fowler said the rancher had lied about his role in the preacher’s murder. Did someone else kill John Kent, maybe a nameless saddle tramp passing through the canyon country? It could be that Kent’s death dropped like a plum into Laytham’s lap, a golden opportunity to pin the murder on Fowler and claim his land.

Tyree’s eyes lifted to the top of the mesa rising a thousand feet above the valley floor. The moonlight touched the branches of a few juniper growing near the edge and bathed the mesa’s pink-and-red walls in a pale glow.

Up there the wind would be blowing and would help Fowler keep alert. Tyree fervently hoped the man’s eyesight was better than his shooting skills. If Laytham and his men rode into the valley undetected, he and Fowler would be caught in a death trap.

The canyon grass showed signs of overgrazing, in some places worn down to bare patches of mud. If Quirt Laytham wanted to expand his empire, he’d have to push constantly for more water and grass, both hard to come by in the barren canyon country.

But there was another way—take away grass and water from those who already owned it. That had been done before in Texas and a lot of other places. From what he’d learned of Quirt Laytham, the man was ambitious enough to be capable of anything.

Tyree allowed himself a wry smile. He’d thought to ride into the canyonlands to find peace and quiet, away from guns and gunfighting men. Instead, he’d kicked over a hornet’s nest, and it seemed like every man he’d come in contact with had his stinger out and was spoiling for trouble.

Then so be it. He would give Laytham and the rest all the fight they could handle—and then some.

After making a round of the canyon, Tyree returned to the camp under the rock overhang and studied the colored drawings on the wall. Fowler had said the Utes had occasionally used this place for shelter, and he found small scraps of the finely woven baskets in which they’d stored food. There were also fragments of water jugs, made with coiled ropes of tough yucca or bear grass lined with pine pitch.