Guns of the Canyonlands by Ralph Compton

they . . . ?”
    “Yup, Owen, both of them are dead as rotten stumps,” Boyd said, rising from where he’d been kneeling beside Henderson.
    “Then we have to bury them,” Fowler said, a man who couldn’t come to terms with the destruction around him desperately latching on to something he did understand.
    “Need a shovel for that, and we don’t have one,” Boyd said. “I saw a cave back in the arroyo. We’ll lay ’em in there. Good a place for their kind as any.”
    Tyree kneeled by the fire and placed the fry pan back on the coals and shook the bacon. “Let’s eat first,” he said. “No point in letting good grub go to waste.”
     
    Tyree and the others rode back to the cabin with their prisoner under a moonlit sky ablaze with stars.
    When he was a ways off, Boyd yelled to Lorena that he was coming in, and the door swung open a moment later, throwing a rectangle of light onto the porch. The girl ran into the yard.
    When her father dismounted, Lorena threw herself into his arms. “Pa, where were you? I’ve been so worried.”
    “Later, child. I’ve got a wounded man here.”
    “Who?”
    Lorena’s alarmed eyes went directly to Tyree, but he smiled and jerked his thumb at Roy Will. “Not me, him.”
    Had he seen real concern in Lorena’s face? Why, when her father said someone was wounded, had she looked for him first? It could, Tyree decided, mean nothing. Or everything.
    Fowler volunteered to unsaddle and feed the horses. Tyree followed Lorena and her father into the cabin. As the girl began to wash blood from the outlaw’s shoulder, Boyd told her what had happened, sparing none of the details.
    Lorena stopped what she was doing and looked at Tyree, an expression of horror crossing her lovely face. “You killed two of them?” She glanced at Will’s shattered shoulder. “And you did this?”
    Tyree nodded. “It was either them or me. It was a mighty sudden thing and I didn’t have time to study on it.”
    Lorena continued to look at Tyree for a long moment, a tangle of confused emotion in her eyes. She’d been born and raised in the West, and she knew well what happened to rustlers when they were caught. But now, seeing it up close in all its bloody reality, she was obviously struggling to come to terms with what had happened.
    “Chance did what he had to do, Lorena,” Boyd said mildly. He pointed at Will, who was sitting with his head bowed, sullen and silent. “Him and the others were taking my bull and they were willing to fight to keep it.”
    Lorena struggled to regain her composure. “Is this what it means to be a named gunfighter, Chance? Am I seeing the true, cruel reality behind all the dime novels? In a single instant to have the ability to cut down two men and smash another’s shoulder to pieces?”
    Though aware of the barb, Tyree smiled. “Yes, that’s what it means. That and other things.”
    The girl lifted her head high. “Then I hope to God I never meet another gunfighter. There isn’t a Hereford bull in the world that’s worth the lives of two men.”
    “I’m with you there,” Tyree said, nodding toward Will. “But maybe him and the other two should have thought of that before they stole it.”
    “That’s what I say, boy,” Boyd agreed. The rancher put his hand on Tyree’s shoulder. “Do you recollect my telling you to ride on once you were well enough? Well, that don’t go no more. You played the man’s part today, Chance, and I’m beholden to you. Stay on here as long as you want.”
    Whatever Tyree was about to answer was lost as the door opened and Fowler stepped inside. “I rubbed down the horses and fed them,” he said. “Turned the rustlers’ mounts into the corral. Rubbed down your paint too, Lorena. He was lathered up some.”
    The girl nodded. “I went riding just before sun-down. I was about to go see to him when you all came back.”
    Fowler nodded toward Will. “How is he?”
    “His shoulder is bad,” Lorena said. “I think the bullet