Elizabeth Lowell (40 page)

Just as he reached the far end of the ledge, a piece of stone crumbled away beneath his great weight. His right rear hoof lost purchase entirely, throwing him off balance.

Janna bit back a scream as she watched Lucifer scramble frantically to regain his balance and forward momentum. For long seconds the stallion hung poised on the brink of falling. Without stopping to think of the danger, Janna darted past Zebra, grabbed Lucifer’s hackamore and pulled forward as hard as she could, hoping to tip the balance.

“
Janna.
”

Ty’s horrified whisper was barely past his lips when Lucifer clawed his way over the last of the ledge and lunged onto the wider trail, knocking Janna aside in his haste to reach safe footing. The stallion crowded against Zebra, nipping at her haunches, demanding that she keep going up the trail.

Ty barely noticed the narrowness of the ledge or the rub of his left shoulder against the overhang. He covered the stone pathway with reckless speed, wanting only to get to Janna. With fear like a fist in his throat, he knelt next to her and touched her cheek.

“Janna?”

She tried to speak, couldn’t, and fought for air.

“Take it easy, sugar. That fool stud knocked the breath out of you.”

After a few more moments air returned to her in an aching rush. She breathed raggedly, then more evenly.

“Do you hurt anywhere?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Have enough air now?”

She nodded.

“Good.”

Ty bent and pulled Janna into his arms, hugging her hard, then taking her mouth in a kiss that was both savage and tender. After a long time he lifted his head.

“Don’t ever do anything like that again,” he said roughly. “Nothing’s worth your life. Not the stallion. Not the gold. Not
anything.
Do you hear me, Janna Wayland?”

She nodded, more breathless from Ty’s searching, hungry, and gentle kiss than from her skirmish with Lucifer.

Ty looked at Janna’s eyes. They were clear and warm as summer rain, radiant with emotion, and he felt his heart turn over in his chest. He closed his own eyes, unable to bear the feelings tearing through him, pulling him apart.

Two feet away from Ty’s left leg, stone chips exploded, spattering both of them with shards. From the valley below came the sound of rifle fire.

He dragged her up the trail and around an outcropping of rock until they were out of view of the valley. From ahead came the sound of stones rolling and bouncing as the mustangs scrambled upward.

“When you get to the top, wait ten minutes,” Ty said. “If I don’t come, get on Zebra and ride like hell for the fort. Don’t come back, Janna. Promise me. Don’t come back. There’s nothing you can do here but get killed.”

“Let me stay,” she pleaded.

“No,” he said. Then he added in a low voice, “Please. Let me feel that I’ve given you something. Just once. Just once for all the things you’ve given to me. Please.”

She touched his cheek with fingers that trembled. He turned his head and kissed her fingertips very gently.

“Now go,” he said softly.

Janna turned and walked away quickly, trying not to cry. She had gone no more than a hundred feet before she heard the harsh, evenly spaced sounds of Ty’s carbine firing down into the valley below.

The remaining trail to the top of the plateau was more of a scramble than a walk, for the ravine that the path followed was filled with stony debris and a few hardy evergreens. The mustangs had left ample signs to follow—broken twigs and overturned stones and shallow gouge marks along solid rock.

The few steep pitches were mercifully brief. Within fifteen minutes she was standing on top of the plateau. She hadn’t heard any sounds of shooting for the last ten minutes as she had climbed upward. She had told herself that that was good, that it meant Ty was on his way up the trail. She also had told herself he was all right, but tears kept ruining her vision and fear made her body clench.

From where Janna stood on the plateau there was no hint that there might be a trailhead nearby, or even that the long, shallow gully she had just climbed out of was in any way different from any of hundreds of such gullies that fringed the steeper edges of the plateau.

The horses grazed nearby, wary of all sounds and shadows. All that forced Janna to mount Zebra was the memory of Ty’s eyes pleading with her to be safe, and the gentle kisses that still burned on her fingertips, sealing her promise. Torn between fear and grief, rebellion and love, she sat on Zebra and waited, counting off the minutes.

Three minutes went by. Then five. Eight. Nine. Ten.

I
’
m safe enough here. It won
’
t hurt to wait just a bit more. The mustangs will tell me if anyone else is near.

Twelve minutes. Fifteen. Seventeen.

Janna had reached eighteen when the mustangs lifted their heads and turned to watch the mouth of the gully with pricked ears and no nervousness whatsoever. Minutes later Ty came scrambling up out of the ravine.

“I told you—ten minutes,” he said, breathing heavily.

“I don’t know how to c-count,” she said, trying to blink back tears and laughter at the same time.

Ty swung up on Lucifer, brought the stallion alongside Zebra and gave Janna a fierce kiss.

“Sweet liar.”

He smacked Zebra hard on the rump, sending the mare into startled flight. Lucifer leaped to follow. Together the two mustangs settled into a ground-covering gallop. The plateau’s rumpled surface flew beneath their hooves.

Twice Janna and Ty heard gunfire. Each time they veered more to the east, for the sounds were coming from the north and west. About every ten minutes Janna would slow the pace to a canter, allowing the horses to catch their breath. Despite the itching of his backbone, Ty never complained about the slower pace. He knew that the mustangs might be called upon to outrun Indians at any moment. The horses wouldn’t have a prayer if they were already blown from miles of hard running.

During the third time of resting, the distant crackling of rifle fire drifted to Janna and Ty on the wind. This time the sound was coming from the east.

“Should we—” began Janna.

She was cut off by a curt gesture from Ty. He pulled Lucifer to a stop and sat motionlessly, listening.

“Hear it?” he asked finally.

“The rifles?”

“A bugle.”

Janna listened intently. She was turning to tell Ty she couldn’t hear anything when the wind picked up again and she heard a faint, distant cry, rising and falling.

“I hear it. It must be coming from the flatlands.”

“Where’s the closest place we can get a good look over the edge?” Ty asked.

“The eastern trailhead is only a few miles from here.”

Janna turned Zebra and urged the mare into a gallop once more, not stopping until she came to the crumbling edge of the plateau where the trail began. Lucifer crowded up next to Zebra and looked out over the land, breathing deeply and freely, appearing for all the world as though he had barely begun to tap his strength.

Ty examined the land through his spyglass, sweeping the area slowly, searching for signs of man. Suddenly he froze and leaned forward. Six miles north and east of his present position, a small column of cavalry was charging over the land, heading south, sweeping a handful of renegades before it. Well behind the first column of soldiers, a larger one advanced at a much more sedate pace.

He swung the spyglass to look to the south, closer in to the plateau’s edge.

“Christ almighty,” he swore. “Cascabel’s got an ambush set up where the trail goes through a ravine. That first group of renegades is the bait. He’s got enough warriors hidden to slaughter the first group of pony soldiers before the rear column can get there to help.”

“Can we get down in time to warn them?”

Grimly he looked at the trail down the east face of the plateau. It was even more precipitous than he had remembered. It was also their only hope of getting to the soldiers before Cascabel did.

“Would it do any good to tell you to stay here?” Ty asked.

“No.”

“You’re a fool, Janna Wayland.”

He jerked his hat down on his forehead, settled his weight into the rope stirrups, gave a hair-raising battle cry, and simultaneously booted Lucifer hard in the ribs.

The stallion lunged over the rim and was launched onto the steep trail before he had a chance to object. Front legs stiff, all but sitting on his hocks, Lucifer plunged down the first quarter mile of the trail like a great black cat. In helping the stallion not to overrun his balance, Ty braced his feet in the rope stirrups and leaned so far back that his hat brushed the horse’s hard-driving rump.

When Lucifer stumbled, Ty dragged the horse’s head back up with a powerful yank on the hackamore reins, restoring the stallion’s balance. Surrounded by flying grit and rolling, bouncing pebbles, horse and rider hurtled down the dangerous slope.

Zebra and Janna followed before the dust had time to settle. As had the stallion, Zebra sat on her hocks and skidded down the steepest parts, sending dirt and small stones flying in every direction. Janna’s braids, already frayed by the wind, came completely unraveled. Her hair rippled and swayed with every movement of the mustang, lifting like a satin pennant behind her.

When Lucifer gained the surer footing on the lower part of the trail, Ty risked a single backward look. He saw Zebra hock-deep in a boiling cloud of dirt and pebbles, and Janna’s hair flying behind. The mustang spun sharply sideways, barely avoiding a stone outcropping. Janna’s body moved with the mare as though she were as much a part of the mustang as mane or tail or hooves.

Lucifer galloped on down the sloping trail, taking the most difficult parts with the surefootedness of a horse accustomed to running flat out over rough country. Ty did nothing to slow the stallion’s pace, for each second of delay meant one second nearer to death for the unsuspecting soldiers in the first column. As soon as the trail became more level, Ty pointed Lucifer in the general direction of the advancing column, shifted his weight forward over the horse’s powerful shoulders and urged him to a faster gallop.

When Zebra came down off the last stretch of the eastern trail, she was more than a hundred yards behind Lucifer. But Janna knew the country far better than Ty. She guided Zebra on a course that avoided the roughest gullies and rocky rises. Slowly the mare began to overtake Lucifer, until finally they were running side by side, noses outstretched, tails streaming in the wind. Their riders bent low, urging the mustangs on.

Rifle fire came like a staccato punctuation to the rhythmic thunder of galloping hooves. A lone rifle slug whined past Ty’s head. He grabbed a quick look to the right and saw that the Indians apparently had abandoned the idea of leading the soldiers into a trap. Instead, the renegades had turned aside to run down the great black stallion and the spirit woman whose hair was like a shadow of fire.

Even Cascabel had joined the chase. Dust boiled up from the ambush site as warriors whipped their mounts to a gallop and began racing to cut off Janna and Ty from the soldiers.

Ignoring the wind raking over his eyes, Ty turned forward to stare between Lucifer’s black ears, trying to gauge his distance from the column of soldiers. Much slower to respond than the renegades, the cavalry was only now beginning to change direction, pursuing their renegade quarry along the new course.

It took him only a few moments to see that the soldiers were moving too slowly and were too far away to help Janna and himself, whose descent from the plateau had been so swift that they were much closer to Cascabel than to the soldiers they had wanted to warn of the coming ambush.

Even worse, the renegades who had waited in ambush were riding fresh horses, while Zebra and Lucifer had already been running hard for miles even before the hair-raising race down the eastern trail. Now the mustangs were running flat out over the rugged land, leaping ditches and small gullies, whipping through brush, urged on by their riders and by the whine of bullets.

Ty knew that even Lucifer’s great heart and strength couldn’t tip the balance. The soldiers were simply too far away, the renegades were too close, and even spirit horses couldn’t outrun bullets. Yet all that was needed was two minutes, perhaps even just one. With one minute’s edge, Janna’s fleet mustang might be able to reach the soldiers’ protection.

Just one minute.

Ty unslung his rifle and snapped off a few shots, knowing it was futile. Lucifer was running too hard and the country was too rough for Ty to be accurate. He hauled on the hackamore, trying to slow the stallion’s headlong pace so that he could put himself between the renegades and Janna. Gradually Zebra began pulling away, but not quickly enough to suit Ty. He tried a few more shots, but each time he turned to fire he had to release the hackamore’s knotted reins, which meant that Lucifer immediately leaped back into full stride.

Dammit, horse, I don
’
t want to have to throw you to make you stop. At this speed you
’
d probably break your neck and I sure as hell wouldn
’
t do much better. But we
’
re dead meat for certain if the renegades get us.

And I
’
ll be damned in hell before I let them get Janna.

Ty’s shoulders bunched as he prepared to yank hard on one side of the hackamore, pulling Lucifer’s head to the side, which would unbalance him and force him to fall.

Before he could jerk the rein, he heard rifle fire from ahead. He looked over Lucifer’s ears and saw that a group of four horsemen had broken away from the column of soldiers. The men were firing steadily and with remarkable precision, for they had the platform of real stirrups and their horses had been trained for war. The repeating rifles the four men used made them as formidable as forty renegades armed only with single-shot weapons. The horses the four men rode were big, dark, and ran like unleashed hell, leaving the cavalry behind as though the soldiers’ mounts were nailed to the ground.