Boyd had stepped into the yard and the three men reined up opposite him. “What can I do for you boys?” the old rancher asked. “Starting to get right hot already.”
One of the riders—the tall man in the duster who had been in Bradley’s saloon when Tyree shot Benny Cowan—put both hands on the saddle horn and leaned forward. “We’re scouting the canyon country, looking for murdering scum who calls himself Chance Tyree,” he said. “You seen him?”
Boyd shook his head. “Not in a coon’s age. Spoke to a man by that name maybe a month ago, but he was just passing through.”
One of the riders had split away from the others and had headed toward the barn. Now he returned. “There’s a big steeldust in a stall back there, Chet,” he said to the man in the duster. “Looks powerful like the horse Tyree was riding.”
The man called Chet said, “Well, do tell.” He looked down at Boyd, a thin smile on his lips. “Now, Mr. Boyd, we know your daughter and our boss are planning to get hitched soon, so we don’t want to cause you no trouble, you being almost kin, like. But I’ll ask you one more time—is Chance Tyree here?”
The old rancher shook his head. “I haven’t seen him, so you boys just ride on out of here.”
Chet nodded, his smile slipping slightly. “Well, if’n that’s the case you won’t have no objections to us taking a look around.”
The man was about to swing out of the saddle when Tyree’s voice stopped him cold. “You looking for me?” he asked.
Tyree was standing outside the bunkhouse, his gun hanging loose in his hand. He was relaxed, but there was nothing careless about his posture. He was alert and ready, and by the wary look in the eyes of the three Laytham riders, they knew it.
Caught flat-footed, Chet eased back into the saddle and tried a bluff. “Tyree, Sheriff Tobin swore us three in as deputies, and we’re here to arrest you for the murder of Benny Cowan.”
Tyree’s mouth was a grim line. “You were there. You saw what happened. It was self-defense. That lowlife back-shot me.”
“Well, now, as it happens, maybe I got a different opinion on that. So I guess you’ll just have to state your case to the judge.”
Tyree laughed. “Judge? Why, you lying tinhorn, you’d never let me reach Crooked Creek alive.”
“Harsh talk, Tyree,” Chet said, his blue eyes hardening. “Mighty harsh and insulting. And me, I never take an insult from nobody.”
The man reached for his gun—and Tyree shot him.
For a few moments Chet stretched to his full height in the stirrups. Then his gun dropped from his hand, and he looked at Tyree, a puzzled frown on his face, as though he was trying to understand the awful fact of his dying. His eyes glazed and he fell from his horse, thudding onto the hard-packed dirt of the yard.
“His play, not mine,” one of the other riders said quickly as Tyree swung his smoking Colt on him. The rider turned to the man beside him. “Ain’t that right, Lloyd?”
The man nodded, his face stiff. “Chet called it.”
“Then load him on his horse and get him out of here,” Tyree said, anger riding him. “And tell Tobin if he wants to arrest me for murder, come himself next time.”
“Mister,” Lloyd said, “next time we come there will be a lot more of us, and we’ll come a-shooting.”
“So be it,” Tyree said. “I’ll be waiting.”
Sally Brennan returned to the cabin as the day was shading into evening. She looked tired, as though Jean Lassiter’s grief had used her up and drained her vitality.
“How is she?” Boyd asked the girl.
Sally’s face was pale, strain etched deep in her eyes. “Jean Lassiter grieves for her husband, and without him, she no longer wants to live,” she said. “She refuses to eat, she won’t sleep and very soon she’ll die. Whoever pulled the trigger on Steve Lassiter murdered two people.”
Boyd looked like he’d been struck. “There’s been so much death,” he said. “Too much dying.” He took a step toward Sally, shaking his head. “We had another killing here today.”
“What happened?” the girl asked, her eyes slanting to Tyree, knowing he would be the one to answer her question.
“Tobin made three of Laytham’s men deputies,” Tyree said. “They came looking for me and one of them went for his gun.”
Sally looked at Boyd, then back to Tyree. “I have to be on my way,” she said. “Things are moving so fast and I’ve still got to do what I came here to do.”
“Stay here, Sally,” Boyd said. “Lorena left out the dresses you liked. She said you’d come back for them. You can have Lorena’s room.”
Sally shook her head, blond curls bouncing around her face. “Thank you, Luke. Maybe there will be a time for pretty dresses after I kill Luther Darcy. Or I’ll be dead and will have no need for dresses.”
Tyree made up his mind. “I’m coming with you, Sally.” He turned to Boyd. “Luke, I can’t stay here any longer. If I do, I’ll only bring Tobin and his men down on you.”
The old rancher opened his mouth to object, then came a dawning awareness of the logic of Tyree’s statement. “I’ll sack you up some grub,” he said. He glanced at Sally, who was dressed in her shabby men’s clothes and looked very young and vulnerable. “Girl, you wouldn’t care to step away from this Luther Darcy thing? Just let it go.”
“No,” Sally said. “I can’t step away from it. If I did, the fact of my brother being dead and his killer still walking the earth would haunt me like a gray ghost for the rest of my life.”
A sadness shaded Boyd’s eyes. “Both of you are obsessed with revenge. In the end you might destroy those you hate, but in the process you could destroy yourselves.” The old rancher stepped to his desk and took a wooden box from a shelf. He opened it and showed the contents to Tyree and Sally. “There’s almost two hundred dollars in there—money I was saving for Lorena. Take it and ride east into Colorado. Get away from here. Leave your hate behind before it devours both of you and strips you clean to the bone.”
Sally leaned over and kissed Boyd on his hairy cheek. “Thanks for the offer, Luke. I know it was kindly meant, but I have to be riding now.”
“I guess that goes for me too,” Tyree said. He stuck out his hand. “You’re a fine man, Luke Boyd.”
The old rancher took Tyree’s hand and searched the younger man’s eyes. “I don’t know how this will all play out,” he said, “but I hope I never have to choose my side.”
“That goes for me, too,” Tyree said, again feeling a hurt in him. He smiled.
“Good luck to you, too,” Boyd said. He hesitated a fraction of a second, then added, “My friend.”
Under a wide starlit sky, Sally and Tyree rode east toward the La Sal Mountains, then swung south along the west bank of Hatch Wash. There was no possibility that they were being followed, yet both turned often and checked their back trail, the night falling behind them full of phantoms.
The darkness crowding around them, they made camp among tumbled rocks in a stand of cottonwoods and built a fire that was barely big enough to boil their coffee and fry some of the bacon and sourdough bread Boyd had packed for them. When they’d eaten, Tyree threw the last of the coffee on the coals. It was unlikely Tobin and his deputies would ride at night, but now was not the time to take chances.
At first light they saddled up and rode out. They angled away from the wash and headed into the wild broken country of the canyons, leaving little trail.
After an hour the two riders followed a game and cattle trail into some scattered juniper and sage, the land around them patchy desert and high sandrock. They emerged at the base of a vast tableland that rose in gradual steps to a height of well over a thousand feet. Tyree leading the way, they climbed, taking a steep, switchback route up the slope.
As the sun climbed directly overhead, Sally and Tyree stopped on a high, flat plateau of pink rock scattered with huge boulders and stunted spruce where they could overlook miles of country.
Less than thirty minutes later, they saw punchers driving a herd north along the wash, followed a few minutes after that by a group of ten riders heading in the same direction. The posse, if that’s what it was, kicked up
