Elizabeth Lowell (2 page)

Leaving no trace of her passage, Janna leaped from boulder to boulder up the slot canyon’s floor until it became so narrow that she couldn’t extend both arms out from her sides at the same time. At this point the top of the canyon—which was the surface of the plateau itself—was only fifty feet away. Farther on, where the red stone walls pressed in even more tightly, she turned sideways, put her back against one wall and her feet against the opposite wall and inched up the chimneylike opening. The top was only thirty feet away now, but her progress was dangerously slow. If one of Cascabel’s men should happen into the tiny side canyon, she would be discovered within minutes.

In the distance shouts came from the renegades.

She ignored them, concentrating only on climbing out of the slot canyon and onto the relative safety of the plateau beyond. By the time she reached the top, she was trembling with the effort of levering her body up the narrow opening. She heaved herself over the edge and lay flat, breathing in great gasps, trembling all over and stinging from the scrapes and cuts she had gotten from the stone walls.

What am I complaining about?
she asked herself.
He suffered a lot worse and kept going. And if I don
’
t do the same, he
’
s going to come to and thrash around and groan and Cascabel will find him and spend the next four days torturing him to death.

The thought gave her energy. The stranger was too strong and too courageous for her to let him die at Cascabel’s cruel hands. She pushed herself to her feet and began trotting across the top of Black Plateau, whose rumpled forests, meadows, and crumbling edges she knew as well as any human being ever had. The plateau was part of the summer grazing territory of Lucifer’s band.

She had spent five years following Lucifer’s band, caring for the sick or the lame, taming those animals that hungered for human companionship or easy food, leaving free those horses that could not accept anything from man’s hand, even safety. One of the tamer horses had become Janna’s only companion in the plateau’s wildness, coming to her freely, staying with her willingly, carrying her on wild rides across the rugged land.

She hoped she could find mare she called Zebra now. The band often grazed this part of the plateau in the afternoon. Zebra should be with them.

She found Lucifer and his harem grazing along one of the plateau’s many green meadows, some of which ran like a winding river of grass between thick pine forests. A tiny creek trickled down the center of the sinuous meadow.

Janna lifted her hands to her mouth. Moments later a hawk’s wild cry keened over the meadow. She called three times, then went to one of the small caches she had scattered across the plateau and surrounding countryside for the times when Cascabel amused himself by pursuing her. From the cache she took a canteen, a handful of rawhide thongs, a leather pouch that was full of various herbs, a blanket and a small leather drawstring bag that contained some of the gold that Mad Jack insisted was her father’s share of his gold mine. As her father had been dead for five years, Mad Jack simply paid her instead.

After a moment of hesitation, Janna removed a knife as well, the last item in the small cache. It took just seconds and a few lengths of rawhide thongs to transform the blanket into a makeshift pack. She slung the pack diagonally across her back and looked over to where the wild horses grazed.

Lucifer was staring in her direction with pricked ears, but he was not alarmed. Though he had never permitted her to come within fifty feet of him, he no longer ran from or threatened to attack her. He had come to accept Janna as a particularly slow and awkward horse that showed up from time to time carrying delicacies such as rock salt and grain—certainly no threat to his band despite the man odor that accompanied her.

By the time Janna filled her canteen at the small stream, one of Lucifer’s mares had come over at a trot, whinnying a welcome. Zebra was dust colored with black mane, tail, stockings, ears, muzzle, and a black stripe down her back. Cowboys called such horses zebra duns and prized them above all others for stamina, intelligence, and the natural camouflage that allowed them to pass unnoticed where other horses would be spotted by hostile Indians or equally hostile outlaws.

“Hello, Zebra,” Janna said, smiling and stroking the dust-colored mare’s velvety black muzzle. “Ready for a run? It won’t be far today. Just a few miles.”

Zebra nudged her muzzle against Janna with enough force to stagger her. She grabbed a handful of mane and swung onto Zebra’s back. A light touch of Janna’s heels sent the mare into a canter, which rapidly became a gallop. Guided only by the rider’s hands, heels and voice, the mare took a slanting course across a corner of the plateau, then plunged down the hair-raising trail used by the wild horses to climb up or down the plateau’s north side.

This particular route was one of the most difficult ways to ascend or descend the plateau. That was why Janna chose the route. To her knowledge, none of Cascabel’s men had ever used it. They gained access to the plateau through one of the two western trails or from the southern edge, leaving the northern and eastern areas of the plateau pretty much alone. That suited Janna very well—a slot canyon that opened up from the plateau’s eastern face was as close to a home as she could ever remember having.

Twenty minutes after Zebra attacked the precipitous trail down into Mustang Canyon, she slid to the canyon’s floor and stretched out for a good run. Janna let her go until she was as close to the stranger’s hiding place as she could come without making her destination obvious.

“That’s it girl. Whoa, Zebra. This is where I get off.”

Reluctantly the horse slowed. Janna leaped off and smacked the mare lightly on her dust-colored haunch to send her on her way.

Zebra didn’t budge.

“Go on,” Janna said, smacking the mare again. “I don’t have time to play anymore today. Next time, I promise.”

Abruptly the mare’s head went up and her nostrils flared. She stood motionless, drinking the wind and staring off down the canyon. Janna didn’t need any more warning. She faded back into the rocks and clumps of brush. Zebra stood for a few moments more, then quietly withdrew back up the canyon. Within minutes she was all but invisible, protected by her natural camouflage.

Moving quickly, silently, camouflaged by her own dusty clothes and earth-colored hat, Janna retreated along the canyon bottom until she could turn and climb up to the small hollow. Wiping out her traces as she went, she approached the stranger’s hiding place from a different, even steeper angle, scrambled over the rock slide at the hollow’s entrance and immediately looked toward the tangle of piñons and rocks at the base of the cliff.

The man was gone.

Janna ran across the hollow and went into the piñons on her hands and knees. There was blood still fresh on the ground, as well as signs that the man had dragged himself deeper into cover. She followed his trail, wiping it out as she went, crumbling and scattering earth and the debris that piled up beneath the piñons. She found him in a dense thicket that crowded up against the cliff. Bloody handprints on the stone told her that he had tried to climb, only to fall. He lay where he had fallen, facedown in the dirt, his hands still reaching toward stone as though he would awaken at any moment and try to climb once more.

She bit her lip against unaccustomed tears, feeling as she had once when she had found a cougar with its paw wedged into a crack in the rocks. She hadn’t been able to approach the cat until it was nearly dead with thirst. Only then had she been able to free it—but she
would never forget the agony of waiting for the magnificent cat to weaken enough to allow her close.

“
Pobrecito,
”
she murmured, touching the man’s arm as she settled into place beside him.
Poor little one.

The swell of firm muscle beneath her fingers reminded her that the man was hardly little. He was as powerful as the cougar had been, and likely as dangerous. He had shown a frightening determination to survive, driving himself beyond all reason or hope. Perhaps he was like Cascabel, whose ability to endure pain was legendary. As was his cruelty.

Was this man also cruel? Had it been savage cunning and coldness that had driven him to survive rather than unusual intelligence and courage and determination?

Shouts floated up from the canyon bottom as renegades called to one another, searching for the man who had run their gauntlet and then disappeared like a shaman into the air itself.

Janna shrugged out of her pack, untied the rawhide thongs, and spread the army blanket over the stranger. An instant later she removed it. The solid color was too noticeable in the dappled light and shadow of the piñons. As long as there was any chance of Cascabel finding the hollow, the man was better off camouflaged by random patterns of dirt and dried blood.

Slowly, silently, she shifted position until she was sitting next to him, his face turned toward her. She looked at him intently, trying to guess what kind of man lay beneath the bruises and dirt. If she hadn’t already had ample evidence of his strength, his body would have convinced her of his power. His shoulders were as wide as the length of an ax handle, his back was a broad wedge tapering to narrow hips, and his legs were long, well muscled, and dusted by black hair that was repeated in the small of his back and beneath his arms.

Gradually Janna realized that the stranger was very handsome and intensely male. There was a regularity of feature in his face that was pleasing. His forehead was broad, his eyes were set well apart and thickly lashed, his cheekbones were high and well defined beneath the black beard stubble, his nose was straight, his mustache was well trimmed, and his jaw fully reflected the determination he had already shown.

She wondered whether his eyes were dark or light, but his skin gave no clue. Faint lines of laughter or concentration radiated out from the corners of his eyes. Beneath the dust and blood, his hair was thick, slightly curly, and the color of a raven’s wing. His hair tempted her to run her fingers through it, testing its depth and texture.

More voices floated up from the canyon, freezing her in the act of reaching out to stroke the stranger’s hair. Cascabel’s men were closer now—much too close. They must have seen past her efforts to obscure the trail.

The man’s eyes opened. They were a deep,
crystalline green, and they burned with the savage light of his determination to live. Instantly Janna put her fingers over his lips and shook her head. Her other hand pressed down on his back, urging him not to move. He nodded his understanding that he must not speak or make any motion that might give away their hiding place.

Frozen, barely breathing, they waited and listened to the sounds of Cascabel’s renegades searching the rugged land for their prey.

Gradually the sounds withdrew. Apparently the Indians hadn’t believed that their wounded prey could climb the steep side of the canyon. When the voices died away and didn’t return, the man let out a long, broken breath and fell unconscious again.

Janna bent and stroked the stranger’s hair in a silent reassurance meant to soothe the animal awareness that had awakened him at the first sound of pursuers. She understood the kind of life that resulted in a division of the mind where part slept and part stood guard. It was how she slept, alertly, waking often to listen to the small sounds of mice and coyote, the call of an owl and branches rustling against the wind. She accepted the dangers of a wild land, thinking no more about their presence than she did that of the sun or the wind or the brilliant silver moon.

After it had been silent for an hour, Janna cautiously opened the leather pouch she had brought. One by one she unwrapped the herbs she had collected at different times and places as she roamed the Utah Territory. Some of the herbs had already been made into unguents. Others were whole. Working quickly and quietly, she treated the wounds she could reach without disturbing the stranger’s sleep. His feet were a collection of cuts, thorns and bruises. She cleaned the cuts, removed the thorns, applied a thick layer of healing herbs and wrapped his feet in strips she cut from the blanket. Not once did he stir or show any signs of waking. His stillness would have worried her had it not been for the strong, even beating of his heart, and his rhythmic breathing.

When she could do no more for the stranger, she pulled the blanket over him, sat next to him, and watched the sky catch fire from the dying sun. She loved the silent blaze of beauty, the incandescence and the transformation of the sky. It made her believe that anything was possible—anything—even her fierce, silent hope of someday having a home where she could sleep without always waking alone.

Only when it was full dark and the last star had glittered into life did she put her arms around her knees, lower her forehead to them and sleep, waking every few minutes to listen to the small sounds of the living night and the breathing of the man who trusted her enough to sleep naked and weaponless at her feet.

Tyrell MacKenzie awoke feeling as though he had slept beneath a herd of stampeding steers. Despite the pain lancing through his head with every heartbeat, he didn’t groan or cry out. His instincts were screaming at him that he had to be silent and hide. The Civil War had taught Ty to trust those instincts. He opened one eye a bare slit, just enough to see without revealing the fact that he had returned to consciousness.

A pair of moccasins was only inches away from his face.

Instantly memories flooded through his pain-hazed mind—Cascabel and his renegades and a gauntlet of clubs that had seemed to go on forever. Somehow he had gotten through it and then he had run and run until he thought his chest would burst, but he had kept on running and trying to find a place where he could go to ground before the Indians tracked him down and killed him.

Another memory came, that of a thin boy with ragged clothes and steady gray eyes warning him to be silent. Ty opened his eyes a bit more and saw that the moccasins belonged to the boy rather than to one of Cascabel’s killers. The boy had his head on his knees and was hugging his long legs against his body as though still trying to ward off the chill of a night spent in the open.