yelling, into the abyss.
Chapter 2
Awareness returned slowly to Chance Tyree and with it came pain, beating inside his skull like a gigantic hammer pounding on an anvil. A green sickness curled in his belly like a living thing and before his eyes he saw only a gray, shifting mist.
He tried to remember, fighting through the agony in his head. It came to him then. He was headed for a town . . . What was its name? Crooked Creek. That was it: He must be riding across the brush flats to Crooked Creek. The big zebra dun danced restlessly between his legs and blew through its nose and he had a mind to pat the horse’s neck and settle it down.
But he couldn’t move his hands!
Tyree opened his eyes. The valley around him spun wildly, the tumbling creek rocking up and down like a board laid across a log, a thing he’d seen children use for play.
Then he felt the rawhide ring of the honda pressing hard against his skin just under the lobe of his right ear. He tried to move his hands again, but they were tied behind his back.
“You got anything to say, boy, a prayer maybe?” The voice came from a long distance away, like someone speaking at the end of a tunnel.
Tyree tried to concentrate, struggling to find the words. He knew his time was short. “You got no right to hang me,” he croaked finally, looking down at Daley as his vision cleared. “I’m drifting, a stranger passing through.”
“I got every right,” Daley said, his face tight and hard. “Mr. Laytham is a big man around these parts and it was him who gave me the right. He said to get rid of any low-down buzzard who is kin, friend or hired man to Owen Fowler.”
As his eyes began to focus, Tyree saw Dawson standing off to one side, looking gray and sick, and suddenly very old.
“You,” Tyree called out to the deputy. “Can you stop this?”
Dawson shook his head, the rifle in his hands quivering. “Clem here wants you dead, son, and so would Mr. Laytham if’n he was here. It ain’t up to me to stop this thing. Best you make your peace with God and take your medicine.”
“Go to hell,” Chance Tyree said, knowing further pleas were useless.
Daley looked up at Tyree. “Hard thing for a man to die with a cuss on his lips.” The huge lawman stepped to the back of the dun and slapped the horse on the rump.
Startled, the animal darted forward and Tyree bumped over the high cantle of the Denver saddle and swung free, the noose yanking tight around his neck. A million stars exploded inside his skull and he found himself choking, battling for breath. He kicked his legs, desperately fighting for life as he slowly strangled, the merciless noose mocking his efforts.
There came a noise like thunder as a gunshot trembled loud in the air—then a sudden shock of pain like someone had crashed a sledgehammer into his left side . . . and Chance Tyree knew no more.
He woke to darkness. Floating somewhere above him, a man’s face swam into view and he heard a voice ask, “How are you feeling?”
Tyree tried to talk, but found no words, only a raspy croak that quickly died in his throat.
“You take it easy,” the man said. “You’re hurt real bad. You can talk later.”
Mustering his strength, Tyree lifted his head a few inches off the ground. He tried to speak again, and this time managed a feeble, “Who . . . are . . .”
“Who am I?” the man finished for him, and Tyree saw the blurry hint of a smile in a long, melancholy face. “Why, they call me Owen Fowler.”
Tyree laid his head back on the grass. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered.
And he let the darkness take him again.
The night was shading into a pale amber dawn, a solitary star standing sentinel in the sky, when Tyree woke.
For a while he lay still, desperately trying to remember what had happened to him. After a few moments, it began to come back to him, fitting together piece by piece—the fight in the saloon and then his run-in with Clem Daley and Len Dawson. But much of it was still hazy, like a half-remembered dream, faces moving like ghosts through the dim verges of his memory.
He turned his pounding head and looked around him. A tall, lanky man with the face of a martyred saint was squatting over a small fire, a coffeepot smoking on the coals. Beside him lay a Henry rifle and farther away a big buckskin grazed near the stream, a few fallen leaves from the cottonwoods lying on his back.
Tyree struggled to rise, but could not muster the strength and sank back to the ground. He heard the rustle of a man’s feet through the grass, looked up and saw Owen Fowler towering over him.
“So you’re still with us,” Fowler said. “Couple of times during the night I sure thought you wasn’t going to make it.” The man shrugged. “Your breathing slowed and I felt your heart flutter, like it was giving out finally.”
Fowler kneeled beside Tyree. “You’re a tough one, all right, and mighty hard to kill. I did what I could for you, cleaned the bullet wounds in your side, then plugged them up with prickly pear pulp. The Indians use it to stop inflammation and infection and I guess they know what they’re doing.”
Tyree’s hand strayed to his neck and Fowler nodded. “Your skin is badly burned by the rope. Couldn’t do much for that except boil up some thistle blossom and bathe the burns. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I guess we’ll find out.”
“What happened?” Tyree asked, the two words coming hard and painful from his torn-up throat.
A slight smile touched Fowler’s lips. “Well, near as I can tell, you were half-hung, then shot. I was riding west of here, getting reacquainted with the land on account of how I’ve been away for a fair spell, and I saw Clem Daley and Len Dawson leading a saddled dun across the flats. Daley was wearing a fancy buckskin coat, Apache maybe—”
“Kiowa. It was my coat.”
“Well, anyhoo, it seemed to me them two had been up to no good, so I came looking and that’s when I found you. And just in time, I reckon. Another couple of minutes and you’d have been dead as hell in a parson’s parlor.”
“I’m beholden to you,” Tyree said. “You saved my life.”
Fowler waved away his thanks. “Think nothing of it. Glad I was close by.”
“I’m betting it was Len Dawson who shot me,” Tyree managed, the words coming slow in a weak whisper. “I guess he wanted to put me out of my misery, but his hands were shaking so bad, he made a mess of it.”
“Oh, he didn’t mess up too badly,” Fowler said, his voice matter-of-fact. “His bullet hit just above your belt on the left side and exited out your back an inch higher. I don’t think any vital organs were hit, but I’m not a doctor so I can’t tell for sure.”
Fowler was silent for a few moments, then said, “Dawson has killed his share, but he’s not the worst of them. Daley now, he’s poison mean and good with a gun and his fists. The talk is that he’s killed seven men, and I believe it.”
Tyree tried to rise again, and Fowler helped him sit up, propping his back against a cottonwood trunk.
After he recovered from the pain caused by the shift of position, Tyree rasped, “Those two said they were acting on orders from a man named Quirt Laytham.”
The skin suddenly tightened around Fowler’s eyes. “Laytham is the man whose lying testimony got me sentenced to twenty-five years behind bars for murder. He swaggers a wide path around here, owns the biggest ranch for a hundred miles in all directions and is hungry for more, mine included. There are maybe two, three hundred cows on my grass right now, and all of them belong to Quirt Laytham.”
“Him and me have a score to settle,” Tyree said. He touched the rope burn on his neck. “For this. The two who hung me were acting on Laytham’s orders.”
