“Yes, that’s exactly what I did. Killing him would have been too easy. I wanted him to pay for what he did to Owen—pay for it every single day of his life.”
Tyree saw Boyd struggling to come to terms with what had he’d told him. Killing a man he understood, but maiming him and then letting him go was beyond his comprehension.
“Luke, I made the punishment to fit the crime,” Tyree said. “It was a reckoning. And in the end, the Kid knew it and the memory of what happened will stay with him.”
Boyd opened his mouth to speak again, but Tyree turned, gathering up the reins of his horse and doing the same to Sally’s pony. He was about to walk the animals to the barn, when a man’s voice called out from across the creek. “Hello the cabin!”
Boyd’s eyes screwed up against the falling darkness as he scanned the far bank. “Hell, that’s Steve Lassiter. He’s got a spread north of here. Now, what does he want?” Boyd cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Come on in, Steve.”
Steve Lassiter was a solemn, long-faced man with the eyes of a bereaved bloodhound. He sat round- shouldered and ungainly in the saddle of his bay mustang.
“Light and set a while, Steve,” Boyd said. “Take a load off yourself.”
The rancher shook his head. “I’m obliged, but I can’t stay, Luke. Jean will have supper on the table and she gets a mite testy if’n I’m late for meals.” Lassiter groaned softly and eased his position in the saddle. “Got news, Luke. Big news.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“I was in Crooked Creek buying pipe tobacco and some pins for Jean at the general store.” Lassiter shrugged his skinny shoulders. “I’m forever running out of tobacco. Then I heard shots being fired and all kinds of commotion going on in the street outside.”
Lassiter, a dour, taciturn man by nature, nodded. “Yup, that’s what I heard all right. Darnedest thing.”
“And?” Boyd prompted, a hint of irritation in his eyes.
“Well, it seems that rustler you caught . . . what’s his name—”
“Roy Will.”
“Yeah, him. Well, anyhoo, he escaped. Got himself a gun and a good pony from somewheres and skedaddled.”
“Tobin, that fat useless . . .” Boyd began angrily.
“The sheriff took a few shots at him,” Lassiter interrupted, “but there are them who say he was holding his gun mighty high, like he was shooting at the moon.”
Lassiter sat in silence for a few moments, then said, “Just thought you’d like to know, Luke. Best you keep that prize bull of your’n right close until Will is caught again or kilt.”
The rancher’s hound dog eyes slid to Tyree, widening in surprise. “By them that described you in town, I’d say you must be Chance Tyree. Heard about you this morning, you and the Arapaho Kid.” Lassiter shrugged. “Can’t say as I approve of what you done. Best just to kill a man like that and be finished with it. Don’t see much point in taking a man’s soul besides.” He touched his hat to Boyd. “Well, I’ll be on my way now, Luke. We’re having fried chicken for supper.”
After Lassiter had gone, Tyree tended to the horses, then rejoined Boyd who was sitting on the cabin stoop, thoughtfully smoking his pipe.
“Come first light tomorrow, I’ll go haze the bull back toward the cabin,” Tyree said. “Just in case.”
“You think Will plans on coming after you, Chance?”
“Certain of it. I believe that’s why Tobin let him escape. He figures Will can do Laytham’s dirty work for him.”
“You sure Laytham is behind it?”
“If I was a gambling man, I’d bet the farm on it.”
“Why does Laytham want you out of the way so bad?”
“Because I’m a thorn in his side. He knows Clem Daley and Len Dawson told me they were acting on his orders when they hung me. And he’s learned by this time that I found out about the Arapaho Kid getting paid a hundred dollar bonus for killing Owen.” Tyree shrugged. “Add to that the fact that I warned him through Tobin to leave the territory, taking only what he can carry on a horse, and he’s got reason enough to want me dead. Plenty of men have been killed for a lot less.”
Boyd smiled. “Leave the territory. Hell, I doubt ol’ Quirt will do that.”
“He has a couple more days. And if he doesn’t leave, I’ll go after him.”
The old rancher shook his head. “You’re not a forgiving man, are you, Chance?”
Tyree turned and looked into Boyd’s eyes. “Owen Fowler was a forgiving man, but it didn’t do him much good. He was still shot down in the street like a dog. I won’t repeat that same mistake.”
Boyd sat in silence for a while, then said, “Tomorrow, you be careful. Don’t make yourself a target for Roy Will. He’s a bad one.”
Tyree grinned. “Luke, I reckon I’m already a target for Roy Will.”
As the two men sat and smoked, the darkness gathered around them and the night sky became bright with stars. A cooling breeze had picked up from the north, rippling the surface of the creek, stirring the branches of the cottonwoods to a restless rustling.
Good smells wafted from the cabin—the tantalizing odors of frying beef and coffee—and Tyree felt his stomach rumble.
“Come and get it, you two,” Lorena said, her head popping out of the open doorway.
Tyree and Boyd stepped inside and Lorena bade them sit at the table. “Now,” she said, “I want both of you to close your eyes. Don’t peek.”
Boyd turned to Tyree, a long-suffering look on his face. “Best do as she says, Chance, or we’ll never get to eat.”
Tyree closed his eyes. Then, after a few moments, Lorena called out, “Ta-da!”
When Tyree opened his eyes again, Sally stood at the end of the table in a blue gingham dress with a lacy white front. She had washed her hair and it cascaded over her shoulders in loose, shining curls.
“Lorena gave me this,” she said. “I’ve never had a dress this pretty before in my whole life.” She smiled at Tyree. “It’s good to feel like a girl again.”
Sally had none of Lorena’s classic beauty, but to Tyree she looked fresh and lovely with a childlike innocence. It was hard to believe this was the same girl, smelling of horses and cheap whiskey, he’d met in the barn at Crooked Creek.
It was even harder to believe that she’d tracked a man all the way from Wyoming for the sole purpose of watching him die.
Tyree rose and gallantly pulled out Sally’s chair for her, while Boyd did the same for Lorena. “Why, thank you, Mr. Tyree,” the girl said as she sat.
“You are quite welcome, Miss Brennan,” Tyree said.
And they laughed, all four of them.
Tyree left the Boyd place before the sun was up, while the sleepless coyotes were still talking. He rode east along the creek, casually eyeing the darkened canyons as he passed. He saw no sign of Boyd’s elusive bull, but that didn’t really matter because it was not the reason he was here.
He knew Roy Will would come back to try and make good on his vow to kill him, and Tyree wanted the man well away from the cabin, where there was no chance a stray bullet might hit Lorena or Sally.
Just as the darkness was giving way to the dawn, Tyree stopped in a wide dry wash beside the creek and lit a fire. He built the fire big, with plenty of smoke, a beacon that would attract Will to this place.
Tyree filled his coffeepot at the creek, threw in a handful of Arbuckle’s Best and placed the pot on the coals to boil. Like smoke, coffee could be smelled for a long distance and would be further bait for the rustler.
When the coffee boiled, Tyree poured himself a cup, then rolled a cigarette. Around him the new day was brightening into morning. The light was chasing the shadows from the canyons, adding color to the surrounding mesas and rocky crags, painting them in muted hues of pink, tan and dusty yellow. Green splashes of spruce and juniper were becoming visible and along the creek trout jumped at the first flies.
Tyree hitched up his gun belt, slipped the thong off the hammer of his Colt and waited, every sense alert,
