Elizabeth Lowell (7 page)

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun...’”

That day set the pattern for the next two weeks. When Janna thought Ty had been pushing himself too hard in his efforts to regain full strength, she would bring out the Bible or the Shakespearean plays or the poetry of Dante, Milton, or Pope, and she would read aloud. Ty saw through what she was doing, but didn’t object. He had too much fun teasing “the boy” over the real meaning of the words in
The Song of Solomon
or Pope’s
The Rape of the Lock.

“Read that verse to me again,” he said, smiling. “You ran over it so fast I missed most of the words.”

She tilted her head down to the worn pages of the Bible and muttered, “‘Vanity of vanities...all
is
vanity.’”

“That’s Ecclesiastes,” Ty drawled. “You were reading
The Song of Solomon
and a woman was talking about her sweetheart. ‘My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens...’ Now what do you suppose that really means, boy?”

“He was hungry,” she said succinctly.

“Ah, but for what?” Ty asked, stretching. “When you know the answer, you’ll be a man no matter what your size or age.”

She looked at his long, muscular arms and the smooth give-and-take of his skin over his chest and torso and vowed again that she would go into Sweetwater first thing tomorrow and get Ty some clothes. She wasn’t going to be able to look at him running around in a breechcloth much longer without reaching out and stroking her hands over all that tempting masculine hide.

The thought of his shocked expression if she gave in to temptation restored her humor. It would be worth almost anything to see him shocked. Until that time came, she would have to be satisfied with watching his unease when she leaned too close or casually brushed against him, making him uncomfortable because of “the boy’s” closeness.

When Ty saw Janna’s full lips curve into a slow, almost hidden smile, he felt a jolt of something uncomfortably close to desire lance through him.

That boy is too damned feminine for my self-respect, much less for my peace of mind. I think I
’
d better take another long soak in that hot pool in the head of the valley.

Doubt that it will take the starch out of me, though. I haven
’
t been this hungry since I was fourteen.
Damnation
, but I need a woman.

Disgusted with himself, he came to his feet in a muscular rush.

Janna was so surprised by the abrupt movement that she dropped the book she was holding. A sheet of paper that had been held safely between the pages fluttered out. He scooped it up before she could. He looked at the paper and let out a low whistle of admiration.

“Now there is a real lady,” he said, gazing at the drawing of a woman in long, formal dress and elaborately coiffed hair. “Elegance like that is damned rare. Where did you get this?”

“Papa drew it when Mother was alive.”

“This is your mother?”

Janna nodded.

“I see where you get your fine bones and...”

Ty’s voice died. There was no point in telling the kid that his mouth would have done credit to a courtesan and his eyes were too big and too expressive to belong to a child of any age. So he kept his mind on the drawing and off the fey creature whose skin and hair smelled like a meadow drenched in sunshine and warmth.

“Your daddy was a lucky man,” Ty said after looking at the drawing for a long time. “This is a woman to dream on. All silk and sweet softness. After I catch Lucifer and build my own horse herd, I’m going to Europe and court a fine lady just like this. I’ll marry her and bring her home, and we’ll raise strong sons and silky daughters.”

“Silk doesn’t last long on the frontier,” Janna said stiffly.

He laughed. “That’s why I’m going to build my fortune first. I’d never ask a true lady to live in a dirt-floored shack and ruin her soft hands on scrub brushes and the like.”

Janna looked at her hands. While not rough, they weren’t exactly silky, either. “Soft isn’t everything.”

He shook his head, seeing only his dream. “It is in a woman. I’ll have my silken lady or I’ll have none at all for longer than it takes to pleasure myself.”

The words sliced into her like knives, wounding her. The pain she felt shocked her, and the rage, and the sense of…betrayal.

“What makes you think that a silken woman would have a man like you?” Janna asked coolly.

Ty smiled to himself. “Women kind of take to me, especially when I’m cleaned up a bit.”

“Huh,” she sniffed. “I don’t think there’s enough cleaning time between now and Christmas to make any fancy woman look at you twice.”

Before he could say anything, Zebra whinnied in alarm. Even as he turned toward the sound, Ty yanked Janna to the ground and pulled out the hunting knife he wore at his waist. An instant later his big body half covered hers, pinning her against the earth.

“Don’t move,” he breathed against her ear, his voice a mere thread of sound.

She nodded slightly and felt his weight shift as he rolled aside. There was a flash of tanned skin in the tall grass, a suggestion of movement in the streamside willows, and then nothing more. Ty had vanished.

A shiver went over Janna as she realized how very quick he was now that he was well, and how powerful. She thought of wiggling backward until she was in better cover, then discarded the idea. He would expect her to be where he had left her—and he would attack anything that moved anywhere else. That thought was enough to rivet her in place.

The willows slid soundlessly past his nearly naked body as he eased through the streamside thickets. The creek was no more than a few feet wide and still slightly warm from its birth in a hot springs back at the head of the small valley, a place where black lava and red rock and lush greenery entwined in a steamy Eden whose water contained a sulfurous whiff of hell.

Nothing moved in the willows around him, nor was there any sound of birds. The silence was a warning in itself. Normally small birds darted and sang in the valley, enjoying the rare presence of water in a dry land. If the wildlife was quiet, it meant that an intruder was nearby.

Fifty yards away, belly-deep in grass, Zebra snorted. The sound was followed by a drumroll of hooves as the mare fled. The mustang’s flight told Ty that the intruder was either a cougar or a man. Nothing else would have sent the horse racing away in fear. Without disturbing the thick screen of willow branches, he looked out into the valley. Zebra was standing seventy yards away with every muscle quivering, poised for flight. Her head was high and her black ears were pricked forward. She was looking at
something that was well downstream from Ty.

Something just came out of the slot. Which direction is the intruder going, girl? Is he going for the hot springs at the north end or the Indian ruins at the south end?

Motionless, Ty watched the mare, knowing that she would track the intruder better than he ever would be able to with mere human senses. Zebra kept her head and ears up, watching something that he couldn’t see. Slowly her head turned toward Ty.

All right.
The intruder is coming toward me.

Mentally Ty reviewed the small, irregularly shaped valley. Barely more than a mile long, never more than a quarter of a mile wide, the valley was walled in by red sandstone on one side and black lava on the other. The hot springs at the north end fed the small stream. Other watercourses joined the stream at various points of the valley, but they held water only after heavy rains, when cliffs wore lacy waterfalls that were as beautiful as they were short-lived.

Ty decided that the best point for an ambush was right where he was. A very faint trail wound between the edge of the willows and the ancient lava flow that all but cut the valley in two. Anything trying to reach the head of the valley would be forced to walk between the willow thicket and the cliff. All he had to do was be very still and watch what passed within reach.

Motionless, poised for attack, he waited as he had waited too many times before.

Wish Logan were here. A man
’
s unprotected back gets real itchy at times like this.

But Logan was in Wyoming with Silver. As for his other brothers, the last Ty had heard, both Case and Duncan were looking for gold with Blue Wolf, trying to repair the MacKenzie family fortunes and make a future for themselves.

At least, that’s what Duncan was doing. No one but God—more likely, the devil—knew what went on in Case’s mind. Fighting in the war had closed his youngest brother up tighter than bark on a tree.

A few minutes later Ty heard the faint sounds of a man’s progress through the tall grass. When the sounds passed the willows where Ty hid, he came out in a silent rush. One arm hooked around the intruder’s neck from behind as the knife sliced upward in a lethal arc.

At the last instant he realized that the man was old and unarmed. He pulled the knife aside.

“Who are you?” Ty asked quietly, holding the blade across the man’s throat.

“John Turner. And I’m right glad you ain’t an Injun or a bandit. I’d be dead by now.”

Ty didn’t bother to make welcoming sounds. “Walk ahead of me toward that red cliff. Don’t hesitate or turn around. If you make a wrong move I’ll kill you.”

Ty followed close behind the intruder, but not so close that a sudden turn and lunge would have caught him off guard. A few minutes later they walked up to the edge of Janna’s bidden camp.

“All right, kid. Come on out,” Ty said.

Janna stood up. “How many times do I have to tell you that my name isn’t kid, it’s—oh, hello, Jack. Did you run out of stomach medicine already?”

The old man didn’t answer, because Ty’s knife was resting once more against his throat.

“You told me your name was John Turner,” Ty said.

“’Tis, but most folks call me Mad Jack.”

Ty looked over at Janna.

She nodded. “It’s all right. Jack was Papa’s friend.”

Ty lowered the knife. Mad Jack turned and spat a thin stream of brown liquid toward a nearby bush.

“Her pa staked me. We was partners,” Mad Jack said, shifting the cud of tobacco to the other side of his mouth. “He cashed in his chips a few years back, but I ain’t done with the game yet.” He looked at Janna. “Brung you some more gold, but you wasn’t in any of the old places.”

“It wasn’t safe anymore. Cascabel’s new camp was too close.”

“Yeah, them pony soldiers have made that old rattlesnake’s life pure hell this summer.” Mad Jack shucked off his backpack, untied a flap and pulled out a fat leather bag that fit in his hand. “Figured you’d need to lay in some winter supplies. From the size of your young buck, I shoulda brung two pokes of gold.”

“How has your stomach been?” she asked hurriedly, wanting to get off the subject of her “young buck.”

“Middlin’,” Mad Jack said, shifting the wad of tobacco again. “How ‘bout you, little Janna? You be all right? You come early to your winter-over place.”

“Ty was injured,” Janna said. She glanced briefly at him and prayed without much hope that he would ignore the difference between the names Janna and Jan. “He ran Cascabel’s gauntlet and got away.”

Mad Jack turned and looked at Ty as though for the first time. “So you’re the one, huh?” The old man’s chuckle was a dry, rustling sound. “Made Cascabel the laughingstock of the Utes. Black Hawk ever finds you, he’ll like as not give you a medal ‘fore he lifts your hair. How’d you hitch up with Janna?”

The second time Ty heard the name Janna, he knew it hadn’t been a slip of the old prospector’s tongue. Ty turned and looked at the “boy” with narrowed green eyes. After an instant the “boy” began to study the ground as though it were alive and likely to start nibbling on toes at any instant.

“Janna, huh?” Ty asked. “Is that your real name, kid?”

She threw him a quick, sideways glance, looked away, and nodded very slightly.

His right hand flashed out as he yanked off the floppy old hat Janna always wore. Two long, thick, Indian-style braids fell down her back. The braids were tied with leather thongs. An Indian band went around her forehead and tied in back, keeping any stray locks from escaping the hat’s confinement. Her hair was a dark auburn that shimmered with unexpected fire whenever her head moved. In contrast with the darkness of her hair, the pale, crystalline depths of her eyes looked as brilliant as diamonds. The delicacy of her bone structure and the fine-grained texture of her skin seemed to taunt him for his blindness.

“Well, kid,” he drawled, narrow eyed, furious with himself for having been deceived and with her for having deceived him, “I’ll say this—you made a prettier boy than you do a girl.”

Mad Jack’s rustling chuckle did nothing to make Ty feel better. He flipped the hat over Janna’s head and pulled down hard, covering her to her nostrils.

“Fooled ya, did she?” the old asked, slapping his hands together in pleasure. “Don’t feel bad, son. That’s a right clever gal. She’s got the Indians believing she a
bruja—
a witch—and the mustangs believing she’s just a funny kind of two-legged horse.”

Ty grunted.

“’Course,” Mad Jack continued, looking at Ty’s nearly bare, tanned body, “a body what runs around near naked and sneaks up on folks might be accused of tryin’ to make folks think he’s an Injun. Might also explain why a young lady might want to be taken fer a boy.”

“Lady?” Ty asked sardonically, looking up and down her ragged length. “That might indeed be a female, Jack, but it sure as hell isn’t a lady. A lady wouldn’t be caught dead in that outfit.”

She ignored the hurt caused by his caustic comments and let her anger bubble forth instead. She turned to Mad Jack and spoke in the cool, cultured voice that her father had taught her was appropriate for reading Shakespeare.

“Of course, you have to understand that Ty is an expert on ladies. You can tell that just by looking at him. Note the fashionably cut pants and the spotless linen shirt. His suit coat is obviously handmade from the finest blend of silk and wool. His boots are a superb example of craftsmanship raised to the level of art. His own skin couldn’t fit him better.”