“Ready?” she asked.
He nodded grimly. He was still angry at having lost the battle of the shrinking blanket. Over his objections Janna had cut the blanket up into a breechcloth, bandages for his bruised ribs and a makeshift poncho. He hadn’t objected to the breechcloth, had given in on the bandages, but had been damned if he would wear a blanket while a child ran around with no more protection against the thunderstorm than a ragged shirt and pants.
Yet here he was, wearing the blanket, and there the kid was, wearing only a shirt and pants.
“Stubborn as a Missouri mule,” Ty snarled, but his words were drowned out by thunder.
Zebra took the lightning, thunder, and pelting rain with the indifference of a horse born and raised out in the open. She watched with interest as Ty and Janna negotiated the rocky rubble at the head of the hollow. While the mustang wasn’t completely relaxed around Ty, she no longer shied at his every movement.
It was a good thing. He made some very sudden movements as he clawed over the rockfall, hobbled by his injuries and the increasing slickness of the rocks. Though he said nothing, he was grateful that his ribs were bound, despite the fact that it made breathing deeply impossible.
He was also grateful for the small, surprisingly strong hands that helped to lever him over the tricky places—although he had nearly yelped with surprise the first time he had received a firm boost from behind.
Janna passed Ty just beneath the crest of the rockfall. She motioned with her hand for him to wait. When he sank into a sitting position, she peered through a crevice between two rocks. All but the first two hundred feet of the slope was veiled in sheets of rain. In the stretch of land that she could see, nothing moved but rain itself. She turned and went back to him.
“How do your feet feel?”
He gave her a slanting glance. “You saw them. How do you think they feel?”
“Worse than your ribs and better than your head,” she said.
He grunted and began to struggle to his feet once more.
She bent, put both of her hands around his right arm just beneath his shoulder and steadied him as he came to his feet. The hissing intake of his breath, the pallor of his skin, and the clenched iron of the muscles beneath her hands told her just how painful it was for Ty to stand on his raw feet. There was no help for it, though. There would never be a better time to exit the hollow without attracting Cascabel’s notice.
By the time they had climbed up and over the rockfall, both of them were sweating in spite of the cold rain pouring over their bodies. Though he was breathing hard and fast, he didn’t suggest a rest. The slope was too exposed. One of Cascabel’s renegades—or a bolt of lightning—could find them at any moment.
Behind them came the clatter and slide of stones as the mustang scrambled over a slope Ty would have sworn a donkey would refuse. But then, he had watched in disbelief while Lucifer’s band took worse countryside at a dead run in order to escape from men, including one Tyrell MacKenzie. The horses that weren’t fast enough were caught. The remainder ran free to give birth to another generation of fleet, agile mustangs.
When the steepest part of the slope had been negotiated, Janna stopped and looked over her shoulder. Zebra was following close behind, watching the humans’ progress with interest, pausing from time to time to sniff the strange mixture of sweat and herbal odors that Ty gave off. On the whole, the mare was rather intrigued by his smell.
“She likes you,” Janna said.
“She ought to. I smell like the warm mash Daddy used to give his favorite brood mares.”
Janna smiled. “Can you ride bareback?”
Ty gave her a disbelieving look. “What do you think I am, a greenhorn? Of course I can ride bareback.”
“Let me rephrase that. Can you ride Zebra without a saddle or a bridle?”
“Boy,” he said, shifting his position in a vain attempt to ease the searing pain in his feet and the throbbing in his head and ribs, “this is a piss-poor time for me to be breaking a mustang.”
“I’ve ridden Zebra a lot. She likes it.”
He looked skeptical.
She made an exasperated sound, dropped her hold on Ty, and went to the mare. She grabbed a double handful of thick mane and swung onto Zebra’s back. The horse didn’t even switch her tail, much less offer to buck. When Janna urged her forward until she stood next to Ty, the mustang responded as placidly as a plow horse.
“Pet her,” Janna said.
Zebra flinched at the strange hand reaching up to her neck, but Ty’s low, reassuring voice and gentle touch soon calmed the mare. After a few minutes she sighed and lowered her head until she could use his chest as a shield against the cold rain. Smiling slightly despite his pain, he rubbed the base of the mare’s ears, scratching all the itchy spots a horse couldn’t reach for itself.
As she watched his big, careful hands caressing the mare so skillfully, an odd feeling shimmered in the pit of her stomach. She wondered what it would be like if he stroked her half as gently as he was stroking Zebra. The thought brought a tingling that spread out from her stomach to her fingertips, making her shiver.
With a quick motion she slid off the horse. In her haste she landed so close to him that she had to catch her balance against his bare, rain-chilled thigh. Instantly she snatched back her hand.
“I’ll help you on,” she said, then added quickly, “I know you could do it alone, but there’s no point in putting any more strain on your ribs than you have to.”
“Five will get you ten that your mustang bucks me off into the rocks,” he said.
“She’s never bucked with me.”
“She’s never had a man on her back instead of a skinny boy.
Boy.
“Listen,” she said through gritted teeth, very tired of hearing herself described as a boy, “it’s at least twenty miles to my winter camp. You can walk, you can ride, or you can freeze to death right here while you make smart remarks about my lack of muscle.”
“Easy, girl,” Ty said softly.
For an instant Janna thought he was talking to her. Then she realized that he had taken a good grip on Zebra’s mane and was looking over his shoulder toward the “skinny boy.”
“Well?” Ty asked. “You waiting for me to freeze to death?”
“Don’t tempt me,” she muttered.
She braced herself, cupped her hands to make a stirrup and prepared to help him onto the mare. A few seconds later Janna was looking up at him in surprise. He had moved so quickly that she had barely felt his weight before it was gone.
Zebra looked around in surprise as well, for she had been expecting a lighter weight on her back. But instead of mounting the horse, Janna stood with her hand on Zebra’s muzzle in a steady pressure that was a signal to stand quietly. The mare snorted uneasily, then stood still, adjusting to the strange weight on her back.
“You’re very quick for such a big man,” she said.
For the space of a few breaths Ty was in too much pain to answer. When he did look down he had to fight the impulse to cup his hand caressingly beneath that delicate chin. The eyes looking back up at him were as clear as rain and a lot warmer...the eyes of a woman experiencing the slow unfolding of desire.
Pain is making me crazy, he told himself in disgust. That’s a boy looking up at me, not a girl, and he’s got a bad case of hero worship. Poor kid must be lonely as hell, living with only wild horses for companionship.
“And you owe me ten dollars,” Janna added.
“What?”
“Zebra didn’t buck you off into the rocks.”
“You’ll have to collect from Cascabel. He stole my money along with my hat, boots, guns and clothes.”
“And your horse.”
Ty’s mouth flattened. “He shot Blackbird out from under me. That was the only way Cascabel caught me. Blackbird was half-thoroughbred and all heart.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, resting her hand on his leg in an impulsive gesture of comfort.
At first touch his skin was cold, yet within moments the vital heat of him flowed up and warmed her palm. After a time she realized she was staring up at Ty, and had been for too long. She snatched back her hand and turned away, heading down the steep slope to the flatter land beyond the plateau’s face. She would have to take a looping route to her secret canyon, for the base of the plateau itself was too rugged to travel along in anything approaching a straight line.
Zebra followed Janna without guidance, which was just as well. After the first four miles Ty was no longer in shape to give directions. The pounding in his head alternated with twisting strikes of agony from his ribs. The blanket was some protection against cold, but not nearly enough. He was shivering before a mile had passed beneath the mustang’s agile, untrimmed hooves.
During the first hours Janna turned and looked over her shoulder every few minutes to reassure herself that Ty was all right. The farther they went, the more he slumped over Zebra’s neck. Janna kept on going because there was no other choice. She had to get him to a safe place.
Rain pelted down in an unceasing, cold barrage. Behind the clouds the sun slowly set, its passage marked only by a gradual lowering of the level of light. A wind sprang up soon after sunset, tearing apart the storm until only brief, hard showers remained. Through great rents in the clouds a brilliant half-moon shined. The wind concealed and then revealed the moon again, weaving intricate patterns of darkness and light.
Shivering, tired, worried about Ty’s strength and his ability to endure any more pain, Janna forced herself to keep going, knowing that that was all she could do to help him. She walked quickly despite her own weariness, using the familiar silhouettes of buttes and mesas looming against the night sky as her landmarks. The moon had crossed more than half of its arc before she stopped and looked toward the bulky, ragged outline of the plateau whose north and east flanks she had been skirting through the long hours of darkness.
The long, sloping outwash plain glittered with rills and shallow streams as Black Plateau shed water from the recent storm. A branch of that network of shifting, gleaming temporary streams led to her hidden canyon. She hoped that there would be enough water in that temporary stream to hide her tracks, but not so much that it would be dangerous to go through the narrow slot that led to the concealed valley.
She hoped, but she had no way of knowing until she got there. Everything depended on how much rain had fallen on this side of Black Plateau.
Until now she had made little effort to conceal her trail, hoping that the violent, intermittent showers would wash out enough of her tracks to confuse any pursuer. But now she was within four miles of her hidden valley. She could take no chance that a wandering renegade would come across her tracks and follow them to the tiny slot carved by time and water into the side of Black Plateau.
Resolutely she turned toward the nearest shallow wash and began wading. Zebra watched, then calmly paced alongside—beyond the reach of water. Janna waded farther out. Zebra kept walking along the edge of the runoff stream. Finally she waded back toward the horse.
“Ty?”
There was no answer.
For an instant Janna’s heart stopped. She ran up and saw him slumped over Zebra’s neck, his hands twisted into her mane. He seemed to be asleep.
“Ty?” she asked, pressing against his arm. “Zebra has to walk in the water.”
Slowly he straightened. She looked up at him anxiously. As she watched, he began to slump again. Obviously he wouldn’t be able to guide the mustang. Nor could Janna lead her. She had never put a rope on Zebra, so the mare wouldn’t have the least idea how to respond.
“I hope you don’t mind riding double,” Janna said to Zebra. “Stand quiet, girl. It will be a big load for you, but it’s the only way I’ll be able to hide your tracks.”
She grabbed the horse’s long mane in her left hand and tried to swing around Ty and up onto the mare’s back. It was an awkward mount that was saved from disaster only when Ty wrapped his arm around her and heaved her into place. The groan that ripped through him at the effort told her more than she wanted to know about the condition of his ribs.
The mare sidestepped, almost unseating both riders. Janna spoke reassuringly and sat very still, letting the mare become accustomed to the added weight. When Zebra accepted the new addition, Janna nudged her lightly with her heels. The horse moved awkwardly for a few minutes, then settled back into her normal rhythmic walk.
Ty slumped forward once more, keeping his seat by instinct, experience, and sheer determination.
“Hang on, Ty. We’re almost there.”
It was a lie, but it was more helpful than the truth, which was that they had a lot of hard going left—and no assurance at all that the slot wouldn’t be choked with floodwaters when they finally arrived.
Chapter Six
Ty awoke with the sun shining right onto his face and the familiar sound of a horse cropping grass nearby. As he turned to check on Blackbird, pain brought back all the memories—his horse’s death and his own capture, Cascabel and the gauntlet, pain and running endlessly, and the gray-eyed waif who had patched up his wounds. Vaguely he remembered getting on a zebra dun and riding until he was certain he had died and gone to hell.
Except that this wasn’t hell. True enough, the overhang he lay beneath was hot red stone, but the canyon floor was lush with the kind of vegetation that only came from water. Definitely not a flaming hell. In fact, with the sun’s warmth and the lazy humming of insects and the calling of birds, this could only be a slice of heaven.
Automatically he sat up to have a better look around. Pain and dizziness struck, chaining him in place, forcing him to revise his opinion of where he was. Eyes closed, his weight braced on his elbows, he decided that the valley might be in heaven, but his body was indeed in hell.
“Lie down, Ty. You’ve been sick.”
He opened his eyelids. Gray eyes watched him with concern. Without thinking, he shifted his weight until he could raise his hand to touch the cheek that was so close to his. The skin was smooth and fine grained, as soft as an angel’s wing.
“It’s all right,” he said fuzzily “I’m fine now.”
“Lie down,” she said, pressing against his bare shoulders.
It did no good. He remained as he was, propped half-upright on his elbow.
“Please,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “Lie down. The fever’s broken and you’re much better, but you need to rest.”
“Thirsty,” he mumbled.
Instantly she grabbed a canteen, poured a stream of amber, herbal-smelling tea into a tin cup and helped him to drink. The taste of the liquid brought back other memories. He had drunk from this cup many times, with slender hands holding him upright and then easing him back down and stroking him until he fell once more into feverish sleep.
Sighing deeply, he allowed Janna to help him to lie down again.
“How long?” he asked.
“How long have we been here?”
He nodded slightly.
“Four days.”
His eyes opened.
“You’ve been sick,” she explained. “You caught a chill riding through the rain. That, plus your injuries from the gauntlet...” Her voice died. Automatically she reached forward and brushed back the slightly curly lock of black hair that had fallen over his forehead.
Ty flinched from the touch and looked Janna over with narrowed green eyes. “You don’t look so good yourself. You’re skinnier than ever. If you don’t take better care of yourself, you’ll never get tall and put on muscle.”
“Not all men are built like a side of beef,” she retorted, hurt because he had refused her touch. She reached into the herb pouch, brought out a twist of paper and sprinkled the white powder into another cup of the herbal tea. “Here. Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“Poison.”
“Fresh as paint, aren’t you, boy?”
“You’re half-right,” she muttere
d, but she said it so softly that Ty couldn’t hear. She silently vowed that she would make him see which half of the truth he knew—and that he would be crazy with desire before he figured it out.
He drank the contents of the cup, grimaced and gave his companion a green-eyed glare. “Tastes like horse piss.”
“I’ll take your word for it, having never tasted that particular liquid.”
He laughed, grabbed his left side and groaned. “Damn. Feels like a mule kicked me.”
“It won’t be so bad in a few minutes,” she said, standing up. “Then I’ll unwrap the bandages and take another look.”
“Where are you going?”
“To check on the soup.”
The thought of food made his salivary glands contract in anticipation.
“Hungry?” she asked wryly, recognizing the look.
“I could eat a horse.”
“Then I’d better warn Zebra to stay away from you.”
“That old pony would be too tough to eat,” he drawled, smiling slowly as he relaxed against the folded blankets beneath him.
Janna watched from a distance while Ty’s eyelids closed and the taut lines around his eyes relaxed as he drifted into sleep. Only then did she return to his side, kneel, and pull up the blanket so that his shoulders were covered once more.
Even with the overhang of red rock to reflect back the sun’s heat, she was afraid of his catching another chill. She didn’t know what she would do if he became ill again. She was exhausted from broken sleep or no sleep at all, and from worrying that she had helped Ty to escape from renegades only to kill him by dragging him through a cold rain into the secret valley.
These had been the longest days of Janna’s life since her father had died five years before, leaving his fourteen-year-old daughter orphaned and alone at a muddy water hole in southern Arizona. Watching Ty battle injury and fever had drained Janna’s very soul. He had been so hot, then drenched in cold sweat, then hot and restless once more, calling out names of people she didn’t know, fighting battles she had never heard of, crying out in anguish over dead comrades. She had tried to soothe and comfort him, had held him close in the cold hours before dawn, had bathed his big body in cool water when he was too hot and had warmed him with her own heat when he was too cold.