Free Guns of the Canyonlands by Ralph Compton Page B

bothered him.
    Now the easy part of the tally was over. It was time for the three men to fan out and begin their search of the canyons and draws for the rest of Boyd’s cows.
    Tyree took a sandy switchback cattle trail up a sloping ridge and rode down the other side into a narrow gorge. The trail showed signs of recent use, the cattle tracks overlaid with those of deer and antelope. Because of the canyon’s steep walls, little light penetrated to the bottom and Tyree found himself riding in a strange, violet gloaming. Here, away from the sun, the air was much cooler—one reason cattle were so attracted to canyons, including the slots that were just narrow, twisting fissures in the rock.
    Tyree found half a dozen cows lying around a shallow seep on the canyon floor where grew a few stunted willows and scattered clumps of sagebrush. The Herefords were reluctant to move back to the heat and flies, but the steeldust knew his business and soon had them up and headed for the canyon mouth.
    Tyree hazed the cattle toward the creek and saw Fowler driving another small herd. Boyd, looking grouchy, had ridden into a canyon to the east and had returned empty-handed.
    “Damn it all,” the old rancher growled, the heat and dust making his patience wear thin. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of my bull. Now where in hell has he wandered off to? He always liked to stay close to them cows.”
    Tyree took off his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Still a lot of canyons and draws to search, Luke.” He settled his hat back on his head. “We’ll find him.”
    “I sure hope so,” Boyd said. “And I’ll rest a lot easier when we do. I set store by that bull. A time back I read that John Slaughter down in Texas had paid five thousand dollars for a prize Hereford bull. Well, a fool and his money are soon parted I guess, because I guarantee that I bought a better animal for less than half that price.”
    By eleven, after four hours of sweaty, grueling work in the growing heat of the day, Tyree and the others had counted over two hundred head. But there was as yet no sign of the bull and that rankled them all, especially Boyd.
    At noon, they camped in the shade of a cottonwood by the creek, boiled coffee and broiled slices of salt pork over the fire. Lorena had packed a round of yellow cornbread and a small pot of honey. They spread the corn pone thick with honey, then ate it with the pork.
    “Good vittles,” Fowler commented as he brushed crumbs from the front of his shirt. “Stick to a man’s ribs.”
    Tyree nodded, smiling. “You’re right about that. Salt pork does stay with a man and it keeps on repeating itself.”
    “And Lorena put a good scald on the corn pone—that’s fer sure,” Boyd said. He turned to Tyree. “How you holding up, boy?”
    “My side is punishing me some, but I reckon I’ll stick.”
    “Good, I’m glad you’re feeling spry, because next we start on the slot canyons. Maybe my bull is in one of them.”
    “How are we going to get the cows out of the slots, Luke?” Fowler asked, laying down his book. “Those canyons are so darned narrow there’s no room for a pony to turn and not enough space to swing a cat, let alone a loop.”
    Boyd answered Fowler’s question with one of his own. “How long were you in the cattle business before you was sent to the hoosegow, Owen?”
    “Not long—a twelvemonth, I guess.” He thought about it. “No more’n a twelvemonth.”
    Tyree built a smoke and studied Fowler. The man had the long, melancholy face and sad brown eyes of a poet, and his hands were slender, like a woman’s. He was high-shouldered, his chest narrow and sunken.
    Fowler was, Tyree decided, nobody’s idea of a cattleman.
    “I was working as a bank clerk over to Crooked Creek when a feller rode in with twenty head of Herefords and a Red Angus bull he was trying to sell,” Fowler said, as though his start in the ranching business needed some explanation.