Elizabeth Lowell (32 page)

But that wasn’t the worst.

The worst was the emptiness growing inside her, the feeling of having lost something unspeakably rare and beautiful. It was the certainty that where she had once gone through life alone and content, now she would go through life alone and lonely. She was doomed to remember a time when she had touched love…and then it slid like sunlight through her outstretched fingers, leaving bleak night behind to pool in her palms until it overflowed and kept on overflowing, consuming the remaining light. Consuming her.

A velvety muzzle nudged Janna gently, then more insistently. She started and realized that she had been staring at Ty once more, her breath held in anticipation of…something. Yet there was nothing to anticipate now but one more day, one day worse than yesterday, more light sliding through her outstretched fingers, more darkness pooling in her empty soul.

With a stifled cry she looked away from Ty. She tried to make herself breathe deeply. It was impossible. Her body was so taut that she vibrated like a bow being drawn by too powerful an archer, the wood bent so harshly that breakage was only a breath away…so she refused to breathe.

I can
’
t be with Ty like this. I can
’
t bear it. It
’
s worse than being alone. It
’
s like watching Papa die all over again, all the life, all the possibilities, all the laughter,
all
the love, everything sliding away beyond my reach.

Something thumped soundly against her chest. She made a startled noise and looked down. The thump had come from Zebra’s muzzle. The mare was getting impatient for her mistress’s attention.

“H-hello, girl,” she said, stammering slightly, unable to prevent the telltale trembling.

The catch in her voice made Ty feel as though a knife had flicked over an open wound. Like her body, her voice said that she wanted him until she shook with it. He wanted her in the same way, wanted her until he felt as if his guts were being drawn through the eye of a red-hot needle.

And he wouldn’t take her.

“Easy, son,” he said, making his voice as gentle as he could under the circumstances.

Lucifer eyed him warily, telling the man that his attempt to be reassuring hadn’t been very convincing.

“Let’s take a look at that wound,” Ty murmured, smoothing his hands over the stallion’s warm hide. “Easy, son, easy. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The echo of his reassurances to Janna by the pool pierced the silence between the two of them with uneasiness.

He refused to look at her, knowing that if he did he would see in her eyes the sweet, consuming wildfire of her passion. He had never touched a woman as he had Janna that night; even the memory of it brought an almost shocked disbelief...and a searing hunger to know her that way again, to bathe in her like a warm pool, washing away the impurities of the years in which he hadn’t known that he could touch his own soul by soaring deep within Janna’s sensual generosity.

“You’ll have a scar,” Ty said tightly, looking at Lucifer’s haunch, “but that’s little enough for a bullet wound to leave as a calling card.”

Silently he wondered what wound would be left on his own life by the much softer, much more agonizing brush of a satin butterfly’s wings.

“Soon Lucifer will be strong enough to go to Wyoming,” Janna said, speaking her worst fear aloud.

“Yes.” Ty’s tone was curt. “You won’t be able to take much except clothes, but your books should be safe enough here. When things settle down in the territory, you can...” His voice died. “I’ll see that you get your books. I’ll see that you get everything you need for the kind of life you deserve.”

She turned away from him, not letting him see in her expression the decision she had made not to go to Wyoming. She really had no choice but to stay. Instinctively she knew it would be easier to live alone in the valley than anywhere on earth with Ty always within reach, never touching her.

“Janna?” he asked roughly.

After a few seconds she said calmly, “I’ll do what has to be done.”

It sounded like agreement, yet...

He stared at the back of her head and wished that he could read her mind as easily as she seemed to read the animals and the clouds.

And him.

“The sooner we start, the better,” he said.

She said nothing.

“We should get out of here before the Army decides to move against Cascabel.”

She nodded as though they were discussing nothing more important than the shape of distant clouds.

“We’ll have to take it slow until I can find a horse to ride. Even if Lucifer would accept me as a rider—which I doubt—he should have another week or so without any strain.”

Ty waited.

She said nothing.

“Janna?”

Auburn hair flashed in the sun as she turned to face him. Her eyes were as clear as rain—and haunted by elusive shadows.

“Yes, it would be better for Lucifer not to have to take the strain of a rider for a few more days.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “The first days will be slow and dangerous. Walking is always slower than riding.”

“You’re coming with me,” Ty said bluntly.

“Of course. Lucifer would never leave the valley without Zebra,” she said, turning away again, stroking the mare’s dust-colored hide with loving hands.

“And Zebra won’t leave the valley without you,” Ty said.

“She never has before.”

His scalp prickled. Every instinct he had told him that Janna was sliding away from him, eluding his attempts to hold her nearby. She was vanishing as he watched.

“Say it,” he demanded.

“Say what?”

“Say that you’re coming to Wyoming with me.”

She closed her eyes. Hidden beneath Zebra’s mane, her hands clenched into fists. “I’m leaving the valley with you.”

“And you’re coming to Wyoming with me.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“Force me to lie to you.”

“What does that mean? You can’t stay here forever and you know it.”

“I can’t stay on your brother’s ranch in Wyoming, either.”

“You won’t have to stay there forever.”

“Just long enough to set a marriage snare for some man who’s too stupid to know the difference between true silk and an ordinary sow’s ear?” she offered bitterly.

“Dammit, that’s not what I said.”

“You don’t have to say it. I did.” She swung onto Zebra’s back with a quick motion that spoke of wild emotions barely restrained. “I promised to help you get your stallion. You promised to teach me how to please a man. Those promises were made and kept on Black Plateau. Wyoming was no part of it.”

Abruptly Zebra exploded into a gallop.

In seething silence Ty watched while the mare swept toward the far end of the valley where Indian ruins slowly eroded back into the stony land from which they had come. Janna had spent a lot of time in the ancient place since they had brought the stallion into the valley. Ty had thought her sudden interest in the ruins was an attempt to remove Zebra’s distracting presence while he spent hours with Lucifer, accustoming the wild stallion to a man’s voice and touch.

But now he suspected that she had been trying to wean Lucifer of Zebra’s company so that the stallion wouldn’t balk at being separated when the time came for Ty to head for Wyoming—without Janna.

“It won’t work!” Ty called savagely. “You’re coming to Wyoming with me if I have to tie you over Zebra’s back like a sack of grain!”

Nothing answered him but the drumroll of thunder from the mare’s speedy, fleeing hooves.

His words echoed mockingly in his own ears. He knew that all she had to do was ride off while he slept or worked with Lucifer. On foot he couldn’t catch her.

Even if she didn’t ride Zebra, Ty wasn’t much better off. Black Plateau was an open book to Janna. She could hide among its countless ravines the way a shadow could hide among the thousand shades of night.

He would find her eventually, of course. Assuming Cascabel didn’t find them first.

The stallion’s clarion call resonated through the valley, echoing and reechoing from stone walls, telling anything with ears that an enemy had appeared in the tiny, concealed Eden.

Ty dropped his dinner plate, grabbed his carbine, and sprinted for the willows. Within seconds he was under cover, but he didn’t slow his speed. Running, twisting around slender limbs, leaping roots and rocks, heedless of noise, he raced toward the entrance of the valley.

When he arrived at the edge of the willows’ dense cover, he stopped and watched the meadow for signs of man.

Nothing moved near the cleft, which was the valley’s only access to the outer world.

Carbine at his shoulder, Ty stared down the metal barrel at the expanse of grass. Nothing moved in the emptiness but the wind.

Lucifer’s wild, savage call to arms came again, making Ty’s scalp ripple in primal response. The stallion was far up the valley, out of sight in the narrow bend where the Indian ruins were hidden. Neither Zebra nor Janna was in sight.

Desperately Ty wanted to call out to Janna and reassure himself that she was safe. He kept silent. He didn’t want her to give away her position to a skulking renegade.

Ty had no doubt that the stallion’s savage cry had been triggered by the presence of a strange human being. In the weeks since he had come to the valley, Ty had never seen signs of anything larger than a rabbit within the valley itself. Of all the animals in the vast land, only man had the curiosity—or the need—to follow the narrow, winding slot through stone-lined darkness into the canyon’s sunlight.

Stay down in the ruins, Janna,
Ty prayed silently.
You
’
ll be safe there. Indians avoid the spirit places.

The birds that usually wheeled and darted over the meadow were silent and hidden. Ty’s narrowed glance raked the valley again, looking for any sign of the intruder.

Suddenly Lucifer burst out from the area of the ruins into the larger meadow. Zebra was running at his side. When the stallion dug in and stopped, the mare kept galloping, stopping only when she was several hundred feet beyond. Lucifer reared and screamed again, hooves slashing the air, putting himself between the mare and whatever danger threatened.

As the stallion’s feral challenge faded, the cry of a hawk soared above the silence, followed by Janna’s voice calling what could have been Ty’s name. He turned toward the sound. Over the metal barrel of the carbine, he saw Janna coming from the area of the ruins. A man was walking behind her.

Reflexively Ty took slack from the trigger, let out his breath and waited for the trail to turn, giving him a view of the stranger.

It was Mad Jack.

Gently Ty’s finger eased from the trigger as he lowered the carbine from his shoulder. When he emerged from the cover of the willows and trotted out into the open and across the meadow, Lucifer neighed shrilly, as though to warn him of danger. He turned aside long enough to reassure the stallion.

“Thanks for the warning, but it’s just a crazy old prospector,” Ty said, talking soothingly to the stallion.

Lucifer snorted and stamped nervously but permitted Ty to stroke his neck. Even then the stallion never stopped watching the two figures that were coming out of the ruins. When the people began walking toward him, Lucifer spun and ran away, sweeping Zebra before him.

Ty turned and waited for Janna and Mad Jack.

“Right fine lookout you have there,” Mad Jack said, holding out his hand for Ty to shake.

Smiling, he took the old man’s hand. He was surprised at how fine Mad Jack’s bones were beneath his scarred, leathery skin. The prospector’s grip was a quick, light pressure, as though any more would be painful.

“Run out of stomach medicine again?” Ty asked, although he suspected that medicine was the last thing on the other man’s mind.

Mad Jack laughed. He knew what Ty was thinking—that he had come to check up on Janna, not to replenish his supply of medicine.

“You be half-right, son. I come to check on my gal.”

“Well, you can see that she’s bright eyed and bushy tailed,” Ty said.

Mad Jack’s faded eyes appraised Janna with a frankness that made her flush.

“You be right,” he said, fishing in his pocket for his chewing tobacco. “’Course, mares in foal look right sassy for the first few months, too.”

“Don’t beat around the bush,” Janna said in a combination of embarrassment and exasperation. “Just say anything that’s on what passes for your mind.”

“I make it a habit to do just that. So are you?”

“Am I...?”

“Pregnant.”

Red flags burned on Janna’s cheeks. “Jack!”

“Well, are you?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she said succinctly. “As sure as I am that water runs downhill.”

Jack rubbed his face and sighed. “Well, durn it all anyway. That’s gonna fuss things up considerable.”

“Have you been drinking?” she demanded.

“No.” He sliced off a big hunk of tobacco, stuffed it in his mouth and said, “I been thinkin’, which is a horse of another color entirely. Both of ‘em make my head hurt, I’ll give you that.”

“What,” Ty asked, “is going on?”

“Mad Jack has been thinking,” Janna said. “That’s a serious matter.”

“Damn straight it is,” Jack agreed. “Last time I got to thinkin’, I took old Jimbo—he was my mule—out of the traces, hiked my leg across his back and headed west. Nary a word to my wife since then, nor my kids, neither. Thinkin’ is right hard on a man.”

“Sounds like it wasn’t real easy on your wife, either,” Ty said.

“That’s what I got to thinkin’ about,” Mad Jack agreed. “I been pokin’ in rocks for years, tryin’ to find the one glory hole what’s got my name on it. Well, I don’t rightly think I’m gonna find it this side of heaven and more ‘n likely I’m a-headed straight for hell.” Jack spit, wiped his mouth and continued. “Now, ol’ Charity—that’s my wife—probably died of some woman’s complaint or another by now, but my kids was right healthy grasshoppers. Some of ‘em are bound to be alive, or their kids. An’ that’s why I’m unhappy that you ain’t pregnant,” he added, pointing at Janna.