The moon was covered in blood.
Chapter 10
Boyd and Fowler rode out with their prisoner at first light. For the rest of the morning Tyree kept himself busy with chores that badly needed to be done around the ranch.
He spent a couple of hours cutting hay against the coming winter. He had just straightened up and hammered in place a sagging partition between two of the stalls in the barn when Lorena stepped inside.
Despite the heat of the day she looked cool and lovely in a green velvet riding skirt topped by a butterfly yellow shirt, her hair drawn back from her face with a ribbon of the same color.
Tyree, feeling sweaty and dirty, tossed his hammer into the tool chest and smiled. “You look wonderful today, like a meadow of wild flowers.”
Lorena dropped a little curtsy. “Well, thank you, kind sir.” She turned and nodded to her saddled horse, a basket tied behind the saddle. “I wondered if you would like to join me for a picnic.”
“I’d love to,” Tyree said, delighted at the prospect. “Just as soon as I wash up some.”
He stepped outside to a barrel topped up by water from the creek, loosened the red bandana around his neck, then splashed his face and neck. He ran wet fingers through his thick, unruly hair and combed it into place as best he could, then did the same for his mustache. That done he retied the bandana and settled his hat on his head.
“You look very handsome,” Lorena said, smiling. “Quite the dashing gentleman.”
Tyree felt himself flush under Lorena’s amused scrutiny. He mumbled a hasty thank-you, then glad to make his escape, said, “I’ll go saddle the steeldust.”
A few minutes later he and Lorena rode away from the cabin, then turned east in the direction of Hatch Wash.
“Where are we headed?” Tyree asked.
“It’s a secret place of mine,” Lorena answered. “I found it when I was a little girl and I used to go there when I wanted to be alone.” She looked at Tyree from under the dark fans of her eyelashes. “I still do sometimes.”
Lorena seemed to have forgotten the events of last night, making polite small talk as they splashed across the wash. They saw plenty of Laytham cattle, then quartered to the northeast. The girl’s paint set a good pace as she led the way in the direction of looming Abajo Peak, a dome-shaped mountain rising more than eleven thousand feet above the level, its slopes covered in fir, maple and aspen.
Just when Tyree was convinced they were riding all the way to the mountain, Lorena turned into a narrow side canyon that opened up gradually around a massive boulder three times the height of a man on horseback. The huge rock had toppled from the canyon rim in ancient times and a third of its bulk was now buried in sand. They rounded the obstacle and rode through patches of sagebrush and mesquite, the ground under them rising steeply until, after a mile, it leveled off at a clear and beautiful lake.
Tyree reined up beside Lorena and smiled. “You must have been a brave little girl to have found this place by yourself.”
“I was.” She smiled in return. “I guess it was the way Pa raised me after my mother died. He always wanted a son, but when I came along he made do and turned me into a tomboy.” Lorena laughed, a small, lovely sound in the silence of the canyon. “I explored everywhere by myself, as far north as Moab and all the way south to Black Mesa.” She turned and patted the basket behind her. “Shall we?”
Lorena had packed roast beef sandwiches, a yellow cake dotted with poppy seeds, and a bottle of wine. They sat in the shade of a willow that trailed branches into the lake and ate in silence for a while, enjoying the play of the sun on the water and the small sound made by crickets in the bushes.
“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.”
