Elizabeth Lowell (34 page)

“Once we get to Wyoming, you can go back to riding Zebra any way you want,” Ty said. “Hell, you can let her run wild again for all of me. But not until then, Janna. Not until you’re safe.”

Closing her eyes, she nodded in defeat. “I know.”

He gave her a surprised look. He had expected a fierce battle over the necessity of introducing any real control over Zebra. Her unhappy expression told him just how much the concession cost her. Without thinking about his vow not to touch her again, he took her hand and squeezed it gently.

“It’s all right, sugar. Even with a hackamore and surcingle, you aren’t forcing Zebra to obey you. You aren’t strong enough to force an animal her size. Anytime Zebra lets you up on her back, it’s because she wants you there. All the hackamore will do is make sure Zebra knows where you want her to go. After that, it’s up to her. It’s always that way, no matter what kind of tack the horse wears. Cooperation, not coercion.”

The feel of Ty’s palm sliding over her own as they walked was like being brushed by gentle lightning. Janna’s whole body tingled with the simple pleasure of his touch.

“Thank you,” she said, blinking back sudden tears.

“For what?”

“For making me feel better about putting a hackamore on Zebra.” She squeezed his hand in return. “And for understanding. It’s frightening having to give up the only home I’ve ever known.”

Knowing he shouldn’t, unable to prevent himself, he lifted her hand to his face. The long weeks of not shaving had softened his beard to the texture of coarse silk. He rubbed his cheek against her palm, inhaled her scent, and called himself twelve kinds of fool for not touching her in the past four weeks—and fifty kinds of fool for touching her now.

She wasn’t a whore or a convenience. She was a woman who appealed to him more with every moment he spent in her company. Her sensuality was like quicksand, luring him deeper and deeper until he was trapped beyond hope of escape.

But she didn’t mean to be a trap any more than he meant to be trapped. That was what made her feminine allure all the more irresistible.

With aching tenderness he kissed her palm before he forced himself to let go of her hand. The loss of her touch was a physical pain. The realization appalled him.

God in heaven.
I
’
m as stupid as that damned unicorn being drawn to his captivity and not able to pull away to save his life, much less his freedom.

Abruptly Ty shifted the heavy gold to his other shoulder, using the saddlebags as a barrier between himself and Janna.

She barely noticed. She was still caught in the instant when his hand had been sharply withdrawn. It had been like having her sense of balance betray her on a steep trail, leaving her floundering. She looked at him questioningly, only to see a forbidding expression that promised unhappiness for anyone asking questions of a personal nature, especially questions such as
Why
haven
’
t you touched me? Why did you touch me just now? Why did you stop as though you could no longer bear my touch?

“Will you take the gold on Lucifer?” Janna asked after a silence. She forced her voice to be almost normal, although her palm still felt his caresses as though his beard had been black flames burning through her flesh to the bone beneath.

“He’s strong enough to take the gold and me both and still run rings around any other horse.”

“Then you’ll have to use a surcingle on him, too, either for stirrups or to hold the saddlebags in place or both.”

“The thought had occurred to me,” he said.

“First time he feels that strap bite into his barrel should be real interesting.”

Ty shifted the gold on his shoulder again and said no more.

In silence they continued toward the camp beneath the red stone overhang. Janna felt no need to speak, for the simple reason that there was little more to say. Either Lucifer would accept a rider or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, the odds for survival against Cascabel were too small to be called even a long shot.

“We have to talk Mad Jack into leaving the gold behind,” she said finally.

Ty had been thinking the same thing. He also had been thinking about how he would feel in Mad Jack’s shoes—old, ill, eaten up with guilt for past mistakes, seeing one chance to make it all right and die with a clean conscience.

“It’s his shot at heaven,” Ty said.

“It’s our ticket straight to hell.”

“Try convincing him.”

“I’m going to do just that.”

Janna’s chin came up and she quickened her pace, leaving Ty behind. But when she strode into camp, all that was there of Mad Jack was a piece of paper held down by a stone. On the paper he had painfully written the closest town to the farm he had abandoned so many years ago. Beneath that were the names of his five children.

“Jack!” she called. “Wait! Come back!”

No voice answered her. She turned and sprinted toward the meadow.

“What’s wrong?” Ty demanded.

“He’s gone!”

“That crafty old son of a bitch.” Ty swore and dropped the heavy saddlebags with a thump. “He knew what would happen when we found out how much gold there was to haul out of here. He took our promise to get his gold to his children and then he ran like the hounds of hell were after him.”

She raised her hands to her mouth. A hawk’s wild cry keened across the meadow. Zebra’s head came up and she began trotting toward them.

“What are you going to do?” Ty asked.

“Find him. He’s too old to have gotten far in this short a time.”

Ty all but threw Janna up on top of Zebra. Instants later the mare was galloping on a long diagonal that would end at the narrow entrance to the valley. By the time they arrived at the slot, Zebra was beginning to sweat both from the pace and from the urgency she sensed in her rider. Janna flung herself off the mare and ran to the twilight shadow of the slot canyon.

Heedless of the uncertain footing, she plunged forward. She didn’t call Mad Jack’s name.  She didn’t want the call to echo where it might be overheard by passing renegades.

No more than fifty feet into the slot, she sensed that something was wrong. She froze in place, wondering what her instincts were trying to tell her.

There was no unexpected sound. No unexpected scent. No moving shadows. No sign that she wasn’t alone.

“That’s what’s wrong,” she whispered. “There’s no sign at all.”

She went onto her hands and knees, but no matter how hard she examined the ground, the only traces of any passage over the dry stream course were those she herself had just left.

Zebra’s head flew up in surprise when Janna hurtled back into the valley from the slot.

“Easy, girl. Easy,” she said breathlessly.

She swung onto the mare. Within moments a rhythmic thunder was again rolling from beneath Zebra’s hooves. When she galloped past Lucifer, he lifted his head for an instant, then resumed biting off succulent mouthfuls of grass, undisturbed by the pair racing by. In past summers, Zebra and Janna often had galloped around while he grazed.

“Well?” Ty demanded when the mare galloped into the campsite.

“He’s still in the valley. You take the left side and I’ll take the right.”

Ty looked out over the meadow. “Waste of time. He’s not here.”

“That’s impossible. There’s not one mark in that little slot canyon that I didn’t put there myself. He’s still here.”

“Then he’s between us and Lucifer.”

Janna looked to the place where the stallion grazed no more than a hundred feet away. There wasn’t enough cover to hide a rabbit, much less a man.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Wind is from that direction. Lucifer stopped testing the wind and settled down to graze about ten minutes ago.”

Janna’s urgency drained from her, leaving her deflated. If the stallion didn’t scent Mad Jack it was because he wasn’t around to be scented.

Grimly she looked at the heavy saddlebags, an old man’s legacy to a life he had abandoned years before. It was too heavy a burden—but it was theirs to bear. Her only consolation was that Ty’s share, plus her own, should be enough to buy his dream.

She didn’t know how much silken ladies cost on the open market, but surely sixty pounds of gold would be enough.

Ty’s expression as he looked at the saddlebags was every bit as grim as Janna’s. His consolation, however, was different. He figured that her thirty pounds of gold, plus his thirty, would be more than enough to ensure that she would never have to submit her soft body to any man in order to survive.

Lucifer’s ears flattened and he screamed his displeasure, lashing out with his hind feet. Ty made no attempt to hold the mustang. He just ducked and ran for cover. The stallion exploded into wicked bucking as he tried to dislodge the surcingle Ty had cut from the buffalo robe in Janna’s trunk. When bucking didn’t work, the stallion tried outrunning the strap and the flapping rope stirrups.

By the time Lucifer realized that he couldn’t outrun the contraption clinging to his back—and that he wasn’t being attacked by whatever was on him—the stallion’s neck and flanks were white with lather and he was breathing hard.

Janna wasn’t surprised at the horse’s signs of exertion. The stud had been racing flat out around the valley for nearly half an hour.

“Lord, but that’s one strong horse,” she said.

Ty grunted. He wasn’t looking forward to the next part of the stallion’s education, the part when he felt a man’s weight on his back for the first time. he approached the big mustang slowly, speaking in a low voice.

“Yeah, I know, it’s a hell of a world when you can’t outrun all of life’s traps and entanglements. But it isn’t as bad as it seems to you right now,” he murmured, stroking the stallion. “Ask Zebra. She took to the surcingle and stirrups like the good-hearted lady she is.”

Lucifer snorted and butted his head against Ty as though to draw the man’s attention to the irritation caused by the unwanted straps.

“Sorry, son. I’ll rub away the itches but I’m not taking off that surcingle. I had enough trouble getting the damned thing on you in the first place.”

Janna had a hard time not saying a heartfelt “amen.” Watching him risk his life under Lucifer’s hooves in the process of getting the surcingle in place had been the most difficult thing she had ever done. She had both admired Ty’s gentle persistence and regretted ever asking him not to use restraints on the powerful stallion.

He continued petting and talking to Lucifer until the horse calmed down. Gradually Ty’s strokes became different. He leaned hard on his hands as he moved them over the horse, concentrating mainly on the portion of Lucifer’s back just behind the withers, where a man would ride. At first the stallion moved away from the pressure. Ty followed, talking patiently, leaning gently and then with more force, trying to accustom the mustang to his weight.

Again, Janna watched the process with a combination of anxiety and admiration. Most of the men she had known would have snubbed Lucifer’s nose to a post, twisted his ear in one hand, and then climbed aboard in a rush. Once the rider was in the saddle, the horse was released and spurs began raking tender hide. The bucking that followed was inevitable.

So was the fact that some horses broken that way weren’t trustworthy. They tended to wait until the rider was relaxed and then unload him with a few wicked twists.

Yet Ty had to be able to trust Lucifer with his life, and he had promised Janna to treat the stallion as gently as possible and still get the job done.

Breath came in sharply and then stuck in her throat while she watched Ty shift his weight until his boots no longer touched the ground. Lucifer moved nervously, turned around in a circle rapidly several times, then accepted the fact that Ty’s soothing voice was coming from a new direction. After a few minutes the stallion began grazing rather irritably, ignoring the fact that a man was draped belly down over his back.

By the time two more hours passed, Ty had gotten Lucifer to the point of not flinching or even particularly noticing when Ty’s weight shifted from the ground to the horse’s back. Janna had seen Ty creep into position, moving so slowly that every muscle stood out as he balanced against gravity and the mustang’s wary, mincing steps. When Ty finally eased from his stomach to a rider’s normal seat, Janna wanted to cheer. All that kept her quiet was an even bigger desire not to spook the mustang.

For the stallion’s part, Lucifer simply twitched his ears and kept grazing when Ty sat upright. The horse’s whole stance proclaimed that the bizarre actions of his human companion no longer disturbed him.

Elation spread through Ty when he felt the calm strength of the stallion beneath him. More than ever, he was certain that Lucifer had been gently bred, raised by humans, and then had escaped from his owners to run free before any brand of ownership had been put on his shiny black hide.

“You’re a beauty,” Ty murmured, praising the stallion with voice and hands. “Does part of you know that you were born and bred to be a man’s friend?”

Lucifer lipped grass casually, stopping every few minutes to sniff the wind. Ty made no attempt to guide the stallion with the hackamore. He simply sat and let the mustang graze in a normal manner. When the stud moved in the course of grazing, he walked a bit awkwardly at first, unaccustomed to the weight settled just behind his withers.

By the time the sun was tracing the last part of its downward arc in the west, Lucifer was moving with his former confidence, adjusting automatically to the presence of a rider. Occasionally he would turn and sniff Ty’s boot as though to say, “What, are you still here? Well, never mind. You’re not in the way.”

Ty’s answer was always the same, praise and a hand stroking sleek muscles. When the stud responded to a firm, steady pull on the hackamore by turning in that direction, the praise and the pats were redoubled. When the pulls were accompanied by gentle nudges with Ty’s heels, Lucifer learned to move forward. When the pressure on the hackamore was a steady pull backward, the stallion learned to stop.