As the daylight began to fall, the cry of a hunting peregrine falcon woke Tyree for the last time. “Hatch Wash just ahead,” Fowler said, feeling the younger man stir. “We’re almost home. And, as I said before, it sure ain’t much.”
Tyree blinked his eyes into focus and looked over Fowler’s shoulder. They were riding through a narrow gulch that gradually opened up ahead of them, revealing two narrow bands of green on either side of a shallow creek that wound between high canyon walls. Beyond the walls, towering cliffs, mesas, sandstone domes and spires of rock seemed to stretch away forever, here and there rincons, ancient streambeds, showing as yellow streaks high on their steep pink, yellow and red sides.
“The wash runs for twelve miles,” Fowler said. “Runs pretty much north and then west. But I guess you’ll be glad to hear we’re not going that far.”
The man kicked his buckskin into an easy lope, and Tyree found himself passing through thick stands of fragrant pinon and juniper. As the trail edged closer to the east bank of the wash, the trees changed to cottonwoods and willow, and cattle lifted their dripping muzzles from the water to watch them as they rode past.
“More of Laytham’s cows,” Fowler said, his face like stone.
Fowler swung his horse away from the creek, heading for what looked like a break in the canyon wall. The grass played out and the ground they crossed was sandier, covered in a profusion of desert shrubs, mostly sagebrush, greasewood and black-brush, with tall leaves of yucca spiking among them.
From the trail, the break had looked narrow, but as he got closer Tyree saw that it was maybe two hundred yards wide, carved out of the flat side of a mesa. Fowler entered the break, then rode up a gradual incline onto a flat, open bench. He crossed that bench, then another, the buckskin blowing a little, before riding into a wide, hanging valley shaped like a great, open amphitheater, the thousand-foot walls of the mesa hemming it in on three sides.
“We’re here,” Fowler said. “This is where I call home.” He glanced over his shoulder and grinned without humor. “At least I did, nine years ago.”
Tyree glanced around him. The valley was at least nine hundred acres in extent, and had probably been formed when the mesa split and part of it collapsed during some ancient earth shake.
The grass was green and rich, watered by a stream Tyree heard bubble near the far wall. Close to a hundred cows were in the valley, grazing or hunkered down under scattered spruce trees. All of them were sleek Herefords branded with Laytham’s Rafter-L.
Fowler kicked the buckskin toward the far parapet of the canyon and stopped at a wide rock overhang. The sheer wall behind the jutting slab of sandstone was covered in ancient paintings of tall, angular, human figures surrounded by zigzag patterns of red, yellow and blue.
“That’s Ute work,” Fowler told Tyree. “Sometimes they used this valley as a hunting camp.” He swung out of the saddle, and Tyree, not wishful of being helped from the horse, slid off the buckskin’s rump. His feet hit the ground and immediately his knees buckled and he fell flat on his back.
“Need some help?” Fowler said, a smile tugging at his mouth as he looked down at the younger man. “Seems to me like you do.”
Tyree grimaced. “I can stand on my own feet.”
He willed himself to rise, but when he did the canyon bucked wildly around him. His head spun and he staggered against the side of the buckskin.
Fowler nodded. “Heard about the gunfighter’s pride—jail talk,” he said. “Never seen it in practice until now.”
But this time there was no argument from Tyree.
He allowed the man to grab him by the waist and help him into the shelter of the overhang where Fowler made him sit, propping his back against the wall.
“Guess I’m weaker than I thought,” Tyree said, lifting his eyes to Fowler, his smile weak and forced. “I’m glad you were here.”
It was an apology of sorts and Fowler accepted it as such. “You just sit there tight and I’ll rustle us up some grub.” He hesitated, his hands on his hips, then said, “Sorry about the accommodation. My cabin”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“was over there. It was a nice one, too. But Quirt Laytham and his boys burned me out.”
Fowler shook his head. “All they left me was ashes and a few memories.”
Easing his back against the hard stone of the wall, Tyree’s eyes lifted to the older man. “Fowler, you don’t look to me like a man who would shoot another man in the back. Someday you have to tell me what happened between you and that preacher.”
“Sure,” Fowler answered, the bleakness in his face suddenly making him look old, “someday.” He nodded, his eyes distant. “Yup, maybe someday.”
The man walked away and Tyree wondered at him. Fowler didn’t look like a killer, more like a dreamer than a doer, and he had a gentle, easy way about him, both with people and horses. Had he really put a bullet into a preacher’s back and then robbed him? It seemed hard to believe. And what of all that talk he’d heard from Clem Daley about him being a rustler? Certainly all the cows in this canyon bore a Rafter-L brand, but Fowler said Laytham had put them there and that rang true.
Tyree shook his head. He had much to learn about Owen Fowler. The question was—did he have anything to fear?
It was full dark, the sky spangled with stars, when Fowler started a fire and boiled up coffee. From his meager supplies he sliced salt pork into a pan, cooked it to a golden brown, then fried thick slices of sourdough bread in the smoking grease.
“This isn’t exactly invalid food,” he said, handing Tyree a huge sandwich and a cup of coffee. “But right now it’s all I’ve got.”
“It’ll do,” Tyree answered, suddenly realizing he was ravenously hungry. “My last meal wasn’t much, and I been missing the six before that one.”
“After prison grub, everything tastes good,” Fowler said around a mouthful of food. “They fed us pickled beef that was left over from the War Between the States and biscuit from the war before that.” The man shrugged. “The trick with a biscuit is to hammer it on the table so most of the weevils fall out. Then it isn’t too bad, if a man has teeth. Army biscuit can be as hard as a chunk of bois d’arc wood. Tastes like it, too.”
When they’d eaten, Fowler took up his Henry rifle and nodded toward the entrance to the valley. “Years back, I discovered a game trail on the southern cliff that leads to the top of the mesa. I’ll spend the night up there. I don’t expect Laytham and his boys to come looking for us in the dark, but you never know. If he does, I want to see him coming.” He hesitated a few moments, then added, “At first light I’ll come down and change the dressings on your side.”
“Thanks,” Tyree said. “You really think he’ll come?”
Fowler nodded. “He’ll come all right. I’d say by this time he knows you wasn’t hung all the way. Now he has to kill us both. Me, so he can get clear claim to this valley, and you to shut you up about what happened and what’s going to happen in the future. You can bet the Arapaho Kid has picked up our tracks already.”
“Fowler,” Tyree said urgently, “I need a gun. I mean, I need a gun in the worst way.”
“I know you do,” the older man said. “But Len Dawson has your guns, so all we got is this here Henry—and about now I’m the only one of us well enough to use it.”
“You shoot real good?” Tyree asked, a vague hope rising in him.
“Me?” Fowler answered, grinning. “Hell, no. I shoot real bad.”
Chapter 4
Fowler’s food, rough and ready as it was, had given Tyree strength. When the man left, Chance unbuttoned his bloodstained shirt and carefully examined his gunshot wound. He had no way of knowing how the one in his back looked, but when he removed the prickly pear plug the entrance wound showed no sign of infection, though it was an angry red and sore to the touch.
As far as he could tell, the bullet had gone through clean and hadn’t hit any vital organs. But how long would
