canyon after Fowler was hung. He didn’t count on him getting a prison sentence. Still, he did for him in the end, and he paid the Arapaho Kid well for doing it.”
The deputy shook his head, as though he was trying to erase bad memories. “Tyree, I ain’t proud of what I done. But Laytham said he’d get me fired from my lawman’s job and then he’d run me out of the territory if’n I didn’t help him. Me, I was too old for cowboyin’ and too proud to beg, so I done like he told me.”
“Dawson,” Tyree asked, “who ordered the murders of Luke Boyd and Steve Lassiter? Was that more of Laytham’s doing?”
The deputy shook his head. “Quirt had no hand in that.” Dawson felt death crowding him and he knew his time was short. He clutched Tyree by the front of his shirt. “Listen, there’s somebody else . . . somebody who wants respect, admiration maybe, and on top of that, he wants Quirt’s woman real bad. Crazy bad. He plans on being the biggest man in the territory and the only way he can do that is by money and power. He . . . he . . .”
Dawson was slipping away. Tyree leaned closer to him, whispering in his ear. “Who is he, Dawson? Who is that man?”
The old deputy opened his mouth to speak, but the words fled his tongue as his heart faltered to a stop.
Len Dawson was dead.
Chapter 22
Six dead men were scattered around the ranch, and Tyree and Sally spent the rest of that day burying them. It was hard, grueling work that involved dragging the bodies well away from the cabin and digging graves deep enough to discourage coyotes.
One horse was dead, and Tyree dragged the carcass behind the powerful black to the mouth of a canyon where he left it to be taken care of by scavengers. On the plus side, he and Sally had acquired five good horses and enought weapons and ammunition to start a small war. Tyree also relieved two of the dead of their tobacco and papers, necessity overcoming any squeamishness he might have felt on the matter.
Later, as the day died around them, he and Sally sat by the fire drinking coffee, lost in their own thoughts.
The men on whom Tyree had planned to take his revenge were now all dead, and their passing had left a void inside him that he had no idea how to fill. As he sat and watched the firelight play in Sally’s hair, touching each curl with burnished gold, he made a vow—as long as he lived, he would never hate another man. To hate a man as he had hated Quirt Laytham was to walk in darkness, never again to see the light. He had lived long with his hate and the older it got, the tighter it became until it gripped his gut like a fist holding a stick.
Now Laytham was gone, but Tyree found he could take no joy in his death.
But perhaps there was a path to the light, a way to remove the emptiness inside him . . . replace the hate he’d felt with another, more tender emotion.
He reached out and ran the back of his forefinger down Sally’s cheek. The girl smiled and inclined her head, trapping Tyree’s hand between her neck and shoulder. They sat that way for a long while as the coyotes called in the distance and the guttering fire made its small sound in the gathering darkness.
At first light, Tyree rose from his bed in the barn and filled the coffeepot with water from the creek. He built up the fire and placed the pot on the coals to boil.
Sally had heard him stir, and now she stepped beside him, looking impossibly fresh and pretty, despite the few stray straws in her hair.
Anticipating her question, Tyree said, “I’m riding to the Rafter-L. I have to tell Lorena about her father.” He hesitated a few moments, then added, “And hear what she has to say about Quirt Laytham’s murder.”
“Do you think she’ll accuse you?” Sally asked.
Tyree shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope she was around me long enough to realize that I’m not a bushwhacker. But there’s no telling how she’ll react. Could be when I tell her what Len Dawson said she’ll change her mind about Laytham, although I’m not counting on it. What is a lowlife like Dawson’s word to Lorena, or anybody else come to that?”
“He was dying when he told us about Laytham killing the preacher,” Sally pointed out. “Don’t dying men always tell the truth?”
His face bleak, Tyree said, “I’ve heard dying men lie, right up until they took their last breath. Lorena will have no reason to believe me, but I’ve got to try.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sally said. “I like Lorena and I think she likes me. I’m sure she’ll listen when I tell her you’d nothing to do with her intended’s death.”
Tyree nodded. “I’m hoping she will. As it is, she’ll take the news about Luke real hard and coming on top of what happened to Laytham. . . . Well, who knows how she’s going to react.”
The girl hesitated, thinking about what she had to say, then managed finally, “Chance, Luther Darcy could be at the ranch.”
“I thought about that, Sally. But if he is, let me deal with him. Him and me, we’re in the same business—the gunfighting business—and it’s only a question of who between us learned his trade better.”
“Chance,” Sally said, “I’ll take a shot at Darcy if I can. I haven’t let go of a thing.”
There was no point in arguing and Tyree knew it. He took the pot from the fire. “Ready for coffee?” he asked.
The night shadows were washing out of the canyons, and the mesas and ridges stood out sharp and clear in the morning light as Sally and Tyree rode away from the cabin toward the Laytham ranch, following a route Lorena had once described to him.
They rode for most of the morning through the wild country. Around them lay a vast, endless maze of winding canyons, craggy ridges and red-and-yellow mesas, one layer of rock piled on another, each a little smaller than the one before, like a tiered wedding cake. The air of the new day, still free of dust, smelled fresh and clean. They rode by a couple of deer, then a small herd of pronghorn antelope grazing under a cottonwood by a slow-moving creek, their heads buried to the ears in dark green grass.
The sun was almost directly overhead in a cloudless sky when Sally and Tyree topped a low lava ridge and saw the Rafter-L spread out in a wide valley below them.
The ranch was dominated by a white-painted, two-story frame house with a veranda wrapped around three sides and a spectacular backyard view of a towering mesa. To the right and left of the main house were stables, a blacksmith’s forge and other buildings, including an extensive bunkhouse, all of them well maintained. A couple of roofed artesian wells, shaded by trees, provided cool water, adding a reliable supply to the rushing spring that ran just to the north of the property.
Whatever Quirt Laytham had been, he knew ranching and he hadn’t stinted on hard work, as his place testified.
Tyree rode down the slope of the ridge, Sally following close behind. They reined up in the yard in front of the house, the eerie silence of the place enveloping them. Nothing stirred, not even the wind, and the door to the bunkhouse stood open, some scattered scraps of clothing lying in the dirt outside as though the occupants had left in a hurry.
“Hello the house!” Tyree called out.
He was answered with a hushed, uneasy quiet.
“There’s nobody to home,” Sally said, her voice sounding very small in the oppressive silence. “Maybe they’re all attending Laytham’s funeral.”
“Could be,” Tyree agreed. He looked around him, wondering what to do next. He was an uninvited stranger here and couldn’t very well go barging into the house.
Then he and Sally heard it at the same time . . . the slow, steady beat of a muffled drum. The noise seemed to come from the cookhouse, a small cabin with an iron chimney built for convenience sake near the bunkhouse. But no smoke rose from the stove inside, and, like the one to the bunkhouse, the door stood ajar.
The drumming stopped for a few moments, then started up again, a slow, cadenced
“Wait here, Sally,” Tyree said. “I’m going to take a look-see.”
