Elizabeth Lowell (24 page)

She was nowhere in sight.

The uneasiness that had been riding him crystallized in an instant of stabbing fear. He ignored his first impulse, which was to backtrack along his own trail until he found Janna. That would take too long, for he had come nearly half a mile. Obviously Troon’s trail and Lucifer’s crossed somewhere ahead. If Ty followed one and Janna followed the other, they would meet much quicker than if he retraced his own tracks and then hers, as well.

If both of them were really lucky, none of Cascabel’s renegades would ride over to find the cause of the single rifle shot. But he really didn’t expect that kind of luck.

Swearing savagely to himself, he began trotting along the trail left by the shod horse. Within ten yards he spotted the brass from a spent cartridge gleaming among pine needles. The shine of the metal told him that the cartridge hadn’t been long out of a rifle barrel. He had no doubt that it was the debris of the shot that had awakened Janna and himself less than half an hour ago. He also had no doubt what the intended target had been.

You drunken, greedy swine.
If you
’
ve murdered that stallion I
’
ll roast you over a slow fire
and serve you to Cascabel with an apple in your mouth.

Rifle shots split the silence, followed by the wild cries of Indian renegades hot on a human trail. Fear splintered through Ty like black lightning, for the sounds were coming from ahead and off to his right, where Troon’s trail was going, where Lucifer would have gone if he had followed a straight course through the forest—and where Janna would be if she had been able to follow Lucifer’s trail.

Ty had no doubt that Janna could track Lucifer anywhere the stallion could go.

Running swiftly and silently, Ty traced the twisting progress of Troon’s horse through the forest. The animal had been moving at a hard gallop, a pace that was foolhardy under the conditions. Stirrups left gashes across tree trunks where the horse had zigzagged between pines. Farther down the trail low-growing limbs showed signs of recent damage. Bruised clusters of needles were scattered everywhere. A man’s battered hat was tangled among the branches.

Ty had no doubt that he would find blood if he wanted to stop and check the bark on the limb that was wearing Troon’s hat, but at the moment it wasn’t Troon’s blood that interested Ty. It was the palm-sized splotches that had suddenly appeared along with the hoofprints of a huge, unshod horse.

Lucifer.

Like the rifle cartridge, the blood hadn’t been exposed to air for more than a half hour. The spots glistened darkly in the shade and were near-crimson markers in the occasional patches of sun. From their position, they could only have come from the stallion.

Breathing easily, running quietly, Ty followed the bloody trail. He knew that he should be sneaking from tree to tree in the thinning forest. He knew that at the very least he should be hunting cover in case he literally ran up on the heels of the renegades.

He also knew that Janna was somewhere up ahead alone, armed with a pistol good for six shots and no spare cylinders or ammunition within reach. He didn’t know how many renegades there were, but he doubted that six shots would get the job done.

She’s
too clever to be spotted by renegades. She
’
ll go to ground and pull the hole in after her. They
’
ll never find her.

The reassuring thought was interrupted by a flurry of rifle fire. The sounds came from ahead, but much farther to the right than Ty would have expected from the trail he was following. Either Lucifer or Troon—or both—must be hoping to escape by making a break for the steep northern edge of the plateau.

There were a few more sporadic shots and eager cries, then silence.

Ty ran harder and told himself it was good that he hadn’t heard any pistol shots, for that meant Janna hadn’t been spotted. He refused to consider that it could also mean she had fallen in the first outbreak of shooting before she even had a chance to defend herself. He simply ran harder, carrying his carbine as though it were a pistol, finger on the trigger, ready to shoot and fire on the instant.

The hoofprints, which had been a mixture of shod and unshod, abruptly diverged. The unshod prints continued without interruption. The shod hoofprints veered starkly to the right. Ty had no doubt that he was seeing the instant when the renegades had spotted Troon. The prints of Troon’s horse were inches deep in the ground at the point where the horse had dug in and spun away from the renegades. he had chosen to flee along the rumpled, downward sloping land that led to the plateau’s northern edge. There the land was rocky, broken, full of clefts and hollows and sheer-sided ravines where a man could hope to hide.

If Troon were lucky, he might even survive.

Ty hoped he didn’t. Any man who would shoot at a horse like Lucifer out of greed deserved to die.

Without a further thought, Ty veered
off after the stallion, leaving Troon to whatever fate luck and the renegades would visit upon him.

The stallion’s tracks showed no sudden gouges or changes in direction as Troon’s had. When the renegades had spotted Troon, apparently Lucifer hadn’t been within sight. The wild horse had cannily chosen a route that looped back toward the eastern end of Raven Creek’s long, winding meadow. From there Lucifer could head for the northeast edge of the plateau and slide on his black hocks down into Mustang Canyon or he could run southeast and then straight south, using the entire surface of the plateau, losing himself among the pines, meadows, ridges and ravines that covered the land’s rugged surface.

Assuming, of course, that Lucifer was in any shape for a long, hard run. It was an assumption Ty wasn’t prepared to make. The stallion’s tracks were becoming closer together. His strides were shortening as though he were winded, and the blood splotches were bigger and more frequent. Part of the horse’s slowed progress might have been simply that the land was broken and rolling here, with more uphill than down as Lucifer headed straight toward the eastern lip of the plateau.

But the shortening strides might also have been the result of injury.

He remembered Janna saying that she had once seen signs that Lucifer had skidded down the steep trail on the plateau’s east edge in order to evade mustangers. He wondered if the stallion had remembered his past success and was laboring toward the east trail in hope of another such escape.

He didn’t think Lucifer would make it. The path on the east face was too far, too steep, and the blood sign along the stallion’s trail was almost continuous now. The land here was harsh, rising sharply into one of the many low ridges that marked the plateau’s rumpled surface.

I hope they catch you, Troon. I hope they cut off your
—

His bitter thoughts of vengeance were wiped from his mind the instant he saw over the crest of the ridge to the land below. Less than a quarter mile away, Janna was running flat out down the slope. Her course paralleled a narrow, steep ravine that cut into the body of the ridge.

Lucifer was forty feet ahead of her, veering toward the ravine as though he were planning to jump it, but it was too wide a leap for an injured horse. A half mile off to the right, all but concealed in another fold of land, a dust cloud of renegades was in wild pursuit of Joe Troon, who apparently had abandoned the idea of making a run to the northwest and Raven Creek Trail. Instead he was spurring his horse toward the east, leading the renegades toward Janna, who couldn’t see them yet but almost certainly could hear their chilling cries.

Turn around and hide, Janna! Go to ground,
Ty commanded silently.
Don
’
t get yourself caught trying to help Lucifer.

The stallion reached the edge of the ravine and threw himself toward the far side. His forelegs found purchase on the opposite bank of the ravine, but his left rear leg gave way when it should have provided support. He was too weak to struggle over the lip to safety. Kicking and screaming in a mixture of fear, pain, and rage, the black horse skidded and rolled into the narrow, brush-choked bottom of the ravine twenty feet below. There he lay on his side, thrashing wildly in a futile attempt to regain his feet and scramble to safety.

Without pausing, Janna threw herself over the edge of the ravine, hurtling down into the tangle of brush and flailing hooves.

There was only one way Ty could save Janna from being injured or killed by the trapped stallion. Even as he whipped the carbine to his shoulder and took aim at Lucifer’s beautiful black head, he saw hooves glance off Janna’s body. At the precise instant he let out his breath and took the last of the slack from the trigger, her back appeared in the gun sight. She had thrown herself over the stallion’s head, pinning it to the earth, ensuring that the horse wouldn’t be able to struggle to his feet.

Get out of there, you little fool!
Ty screamed silently.
You can
’
t hold him. He
’
ll beat you to death with those big hooves.

The ravine Lucifer was trapped in was a long crease running down the side of the ridge at whose top Ty waited. It would be an easy shot, no more than three hundred feet. He had made more difficult shots with a pistol. A savage fusillade of shots and triumphant shouts came from the direction of Troon and the renegades. Ty’s attention never wavered from the bottom of the ravine, nor did the tension of his finger lift on the trigger.

A man’s screams told Ty that either Troon or a renegade had just been wounded. Ty’s glance remained fixed on the ravine bottom where Janna struggled to master the big horse. Sooner or later Lucifer’s struggles to free his head would throw Janna aside. When that happened, Ty’s finger would tighten on the trigger and the stallion would die.

What the hell
...
?

Janna had one knee pinning the stallion’s muzzle to the ground and the other knee just behind his ears. She was literally kneeling on the horse and ripping her shirt off at the same time.

A crescendo of triumphant whoops and shots told Ty that the chase was over for Joe Troon. Ty still didn’t look up from the ravine. He wouldn’t have walked across a street to aid the man who had captured Janna once and bragged to a bartender about what he would do when he caught her again. As far as Ty was concerned, Troon had gone looking for trouble and he had found more than he wanted. It often happened that way to a man who drank too much and thought too little.

Ty’s only regret was that Troon hadn’t bought it sooner, before he had led the renegades back to within a quarter mile of Janna.

Over the carbine’s steel barrel, Ty watched while she turned her torn shirt into a makeshift blindfold and struggled to secure it around Lucifer’s eyes. Abruptly the stallion stopped thrashing around. With rapid movements she whipped a few turns of cloth around the horse’s muzzle. When she was finished, Lucifer could open his mouth no more than an inch. She bent over him once more, holding him down while she stroked his lathered neck.

Ty could see the shudders of fear that rippled over the stallion with each stroke of her hand. He could also see that the horse was no longer a danger to her. Blindfolded, muzzled, pinned in place by her weight, Lucifer was all but helpless.

Very slowly he eased his finger off the trigger and sank down behind the cover of a piñon tree that clung to the rocky ridge top. Screened by dark green branches, he pulled out his spyglass and looked off to the right. A single glance confirmed what his ears had already told him. Joe Troon had made his last mistake.

Ty looked around carefully and decided that he had the best position for protecting the ravine. Pulling his hat down firmly, he chose a comfortable shooting position, shrugged out of his pack, and put two open boxes of ammunition within easy reach. Stomach against the hard earth, green eyes sighting down the carbine’s metal barrel, he settled in to wait and see if the renegades were going to come toward the ravine when they were finished looting and mutilating Troon’s body.

“Easy now, boy. Easy...easy.”

The ceaseless murmur of Janna’s soft voice and the gentle pressure of her hands finally penetrated the stallion’s pain and panic. With a long, groaning sigh, the horse stopped fighting. She rewarded him by shifting her knee from his muzzle to the ground, praising him with a flow of sentences and nonsense sounds, knowing that it was her voice rather than the meaning of her words that reached past the horse’s fear.

Very slowly she slid her other knee from Lucifer’s neck, allowing him to lift his head, which was the first thing a horse did before it came to its feet. Lucifer made no attempt to take advantage of his freedom in order to stand up. As she had hoped, the blindfold held him more quietly and more surely than any rope could have.

Even so, she reluctantly bound his left hind foot to his right foreleg. When she began cleaning and treating the bullet wound on his left rear leg, she didn’t want him to lash out at the pain. She was already bruised enough as it was. A broken bone wouldn’t do either of them any good.

Ignoring her own pain, she kept one hand constantly on Lucifer’s head, talking incessantly, softly, letting him know where she was. When his ears were no longer flattened against his skull, she leaned over and snaked her own makeshift backpack to a place within easy reach. While she sorted one-handed through her herbs and salves, she told herself that Ty was all right, that the shots had been from Troon or the renegades, not from Ty’s carbine, that he and she were safe even though they were separate…

“God, please let him be safe,” she prayed softly, stroking the powerful, lathered neck of the stallion.

Though Lucifer was no longer fighting her, he groaned with each heaving breath he took, for the cloth muzzle restricted his breathing. In the silence, the sound of the horse’s labored breaths were like thunder. After a few minutes she opened her pocketknife and cut the cloth free, allowing the stallion to open his mouth and nostrils fully. Immediately his breathing eased.