Elizabeth Lowell Read online

  Twenty minutes after Zebra attacked the precipitous trail down into Mustang Canyon, she slid to the canyon’s floor and stretched out for a good run. Janna let her go until she was as close to the stranger’s hiding place as she could come without making her destination obvious.

  “That’s it girl. Whoa, Zebra. This is where I get off.”

  Reluctantly the horse slowed. Janna leaped off and smacked the mare lightly on her dust-colored haunch to send her on her way.

  Zebra didn’t budge.

  “Go on,” Janna said, smacking the mare again. “I don’t have time to play anymore today. Next time, I promise.”

  Abruptly the mare’s head went up and her nostrils flared. She stood motionless, drinking the wind and staring off down the canyon. Janna didn’t need any more warning. She faded back into the rocks and clumps of brush. Zebra stood for a few moments more, then quietly withdrew back up the canyon. Within minutes she was all but invisible, protected by her natural camouflage.

  Moving quickly, silently, camouflaged by her own dusty clothes and earth-colored hat, Janna retreated along the canyon bottom until she could turn and climb up to the small hollow. Wiping out her traces as she went, she approached the stranger’s hiding place from a different, even steeper angle, scrambled over the rock slide at the hollow’s entrance and immediately looked toward the tangle of piñons and rocks at the base of the cliff.

  The man was gone.

  Janna ran across the hollow and went into the piñons on her hands and knees. There was blood still fresh on the ground, as well as signs that the man had dragged himself deeper into cover. She followed his trail, wiping it out as she went, crumbling and scattering earth and the debris that piled up beneath the piñons. She found him in a dense thicket that crowded up against the cliff. Bloody handprints on the stone told her that he had tried to climb, only to fall. He lay where he had fallen, facedown in the dirt, his hands still reaching toward stone as though he would awaken at any moment and try to climb once more.

  She bit her lip against unaccustomed tears, feeling as she had once when she had found a cougar with its paw wedged into a crack in the rocks. She hadn’t been able to approach the cat until it was nearly dead with thirst. Only then had she been able to free it—but she would never forget the agony of waiting for the magnificent cat to weaken enough to allow her close.

  “Pobrecito,” she murmured, touching the man’s arm as she settled into place beside him. Poor little one.

  The swell of firm muscle beneath her fingers reminded her that the man was hardly little. He was as powerful as the cougar had been, and likely as dangerous. He had shown a frightening determination to survive, driving himself beyond all reason or hope. Perhaps he was like Cascabel, whose ability to endure pain was legendary. As was his cruelty.

  Was this man also cruel? Had it been savage cunning and coldness that had driven him to survive rather than unusual intelligence and courage and determination?

  Shouts floated up from the canyon bottom as renegades called to one another, searching for the man who had run their gauntlet and then disappeared like a shaman into the air itself.

  Janna shrugged out of her pack, untied the rawhide thongs, and spread the army blanket over the stranger. An instant later she removed it. The solid color was too noticeable in the dappled light and shadow of the piñons. As long as there was any chance of Cascabel finding the hollow, the man was better off camouflaged by random patterns of dirt and dried blood.

  Slowly, silently, she shifted position until she was sitting next to him, his face turned toward her. She looked at him intently, trying to guess what kind of man lay beneath the bruises and dirt. If she hadn’t already had ample evidence of his strength, his body would have convinced her of his power. His shoulders were as wide as the length of an ax handle, his back was a broad wedge tapering to narrow hips, and his legs were long, well muscled, and dusted by black hair that was repeated in the small of his back and beneath his arms.

  Gradually Janna realized that the stranger was very handsome and intensely male. There was a regularity of feature in his face that was pleasing. His forehead was broad, his eyes were set well apart and thickly lashed, his cheekbones were high and well defined beneath the black beard stubble, his nose was straight, his mustache was well trimmed, and his jaw fully reflected the determination he had already shown.

  She wondered whether his eyes were dark or light, but his skin gave no clue. Faint lines of laughter or concentration radiated out from the corners of his eyes. Beneath the dust and blood, his hair was thick, slightly curly, and the color of a raven’s wing. His hair tempted her to run her fingers through it, testing its depth and texture.

  More voices floated up from the canyon, freezing her in the act of reaching out to stroke the stranger’s hair. Cascabel’s men were closer now—much too close. They must have seen past her efforts to obscure the trail.

  The man’s eyes opened. They were a deep, crystalline green, and they burned with the savage light of his determination to live. Instantly Janna put her fingers over his lips and shook her head. Her other hand pressed down on his back, urging him not to move. He nodded his understanding that he must not speak or make any motion that might give away their hiding place.

  Frozen, barely breathing, they waited and listened to the sounds of Cascabel’s renegades searching the rugged land for their prey.

  Gradually the sounds withdrew. Apparently the Indians hadn’t believed that their wounded prey could climb the steep side of the canyon. When the voices died away and didn’t return, the man let out a long, broken breath and fell unconscious again.

  Janna bent and stroked the stranger’s hair in a silent reassurance meant to soothe the animal awareness that had awakened him at the first sound of pursuers. She understood the kind of life that resulted in a division of the mind where part slept and part stood guard. It was how she slept, alertly, waking often to listen to the small sounds of mice and coyote, the call of an owl and branches rustling against the wind. She accepted the dangers of a wild land, thinking no more about their presence than she did that of the sun or the wind or the brilliant silver moon.

  After it had been silent for an hour, Janna cautiously opened the leather pouch she had brought. One by one she unwrapped the herbs she had collected at different times and places as she roamed the Utah Territory. Some of the herbs had already been made into unguents. Others were whole. Working quickly and quietly, she treated the wounds she could reach without disturbing the stranger’s sleep. His feet were a collection of cuts, thorns and bruises. She cleaned the cuts, removed the thorns, applied a thick layer of healing herbs and wrapped his feet in strips she cut from the blanket. Not once did he stir or show any signs of waking. His stillness would have worried her had it not been for the strong, even beating of his heart, and his rhythmic breathing.

  When she could do no more for the stranger, she pulled the blanket over him, sat next to him, and watched the sky catch fire from the dying sun. She loved the silent blaze of beauty, the incandescence and the transformation of the sky. It made her believe that anything was possible—anything—even her fierce, silent hope of someday having a home where she could sleep without always waking alone.

  Only when it was full dark and the last star had glittered into life did she put her arms around her knees, lower her forehead to them and sleep, waking every few minutes to listen to the small sounds of the living night and the breathing of the man who trusted her enough to sleep naked and weaponless at her feet.

  Chapter Three

  Tyrell MacKenzie awoke feeling as though he had slept beneath a herd of stampeding steers. Despite the pain lancing through his head with every heartbeat, he didn’t groan or cry out. His instincts were screaming at him that he had to be silent and hide. The Civil War had taught Ty to trust those instincts. He opened one eye a bare slit, just enough to see without revealing the fact that he had returned to consciousness.

  A pair of moccasins was only inches away from
his face.

  Instantly memories flooded through his pain-hazed mind—Cascabel and his renegades and a gauntlet of clubs that had seemed to go on forever. Somehow he had gotten through it and then he had run and run until he thought his chest would burst, but he had kept on running and trying to find a place where he could go to ground before the Indians tracked him down and killed him.

  Another memory came, that of a thin boy with ragged clothes and steady gray eyes warning him to be silent. Ty opened his eyes a bit more and saw that the moccasins belonged to the boy rather than to one of Cascabel’s killers. The boy had his head on his knees and was hugging his long legs against his body as though still trying to ward off the chill of a night spent in the open.

  The angle and direction of the sunlight slanting between the towering black thunderheads told Ty that it was early afternoon rather than early morning, which meant that he had slept through yesterday afternoon, all of the hours of darkness, and most of the day, as well. He was surprised that the cold hadn’t awakened him during the night. Even though it was still August, the countryside wasn’t particularly warm once the sun set behind Black Plateau.

  The boy turned his head until his chin rested on his knees. Ty found himself staring into the clear gray eyes he remembered. Such a steady glance was unusual in a boy so young that he wouldn’t need a razor for a few years. But then, Ty had seen what war did to children. The ones who survived were old far beyond their years.

  The youth raised his index finger to his lips in a signal for Ty not to make a sound. Ty nodded slightly and watched while the boy eased through the underbrush with the silence of an Indian. Despite the aches of his bruised and beaten body, Ty didn’t shift position. That was another thing the war had taught him. The man who moved first died first.

  While Ty waited for the youth to return from reconnoitering, he noticed that there was a blanket covering his body, protecting him against the chilly air. From the look of the corner covering his arm, the blanket was as ragged as the boy’s clothes. Ty realized that the blanket must belong to the boy, who obviously had stood guard throughout the cold night and the long day as well, protecting a helpless stranger, giving him the only cover.

  Hell of a kid, Ty thought. Wonder what he’s doing out here alone?

  It was the last thought Ty had before he drifted off into a pain-filled, fitful sleep.

  He was still dozing when Janna returned through the brush as silently as she had come. Even so, his eyes opened. Like a wild animal, he had sensed that he was no longer alone.

  “You can move around, but we can’t leave yet,” she said in a low voice. “Cascabel and his men are still searching for you, but they’re on the east side of Black Plateau.”

  “Then you better get out while you can,” Ty said hoarsely. He shifted position with cautious movements, grimaced with pain, and kept moving anyway. He had to find out what his body would be good for if he had to run again. And he would have to run if Cascabel were still searching. “I left a trail a blind man could follow.”

  “I know,” Janna said softly. “I wiped it out as I followed you.”

  “Won’t do any good,” he said in a low voice that was more like a groan. He forced himself into an upright position despite dizziness and the excruciating pain in his head. “Once Cascabel sobers up, he’ll find your sign. He could track a snake over solid rock. Go on, kid. Get out while you can.”

  Janna saw the stranger’s pallor and the sudden sweat that covered his face. She wanted to tell him to lie down, not to move, not to cause himself any more pain. But she knew that he might have to move, to run, to hide. Better that they find out now how much strength he had so that they could plan for his weakness rather than being caught by surprise.

  “I laid a false trail to a blind keyhole canyon way back up Mustang Canyon,” she said softly. “Then I climbed out. I’d stopped bleeding by then, so I didn’t leave any sign of where I went.”

  “Bleeding?” Ty looked up, focusing on the boy with difficulty because pain had turned the world to red and black. “Are you hurt?”

  “I cut myself,” Janna said as she unwrapped the bandanna from her arm. “Cascabel knew you were bleeding. If there wasn’t any sign of blood, he wouldn’t believe the trail was yours.”

  The last turn of the bandanna was stuck to her skin by dried blood. She moistened the cloth with a small amount of water from the canteen, gritted her teeth and pulled the bandanna free. The cut oozed blood for a moment, then stopped. There was no sign of infection, but she dug in the leather pouch and sprinkled more herb powder over the cut anyway.

  “You all right?” Ty asked thickly.

  She looked up and smiled. “Sure. Papa always told me that cuts from a sharp knife heal better than cuts from a dull one, so I keep my knives sharp. See? No sign of infection.”

  Ty looked at the long red line on the back of the unmuscular forearm and realized that the boy had deliberately cut himself in order to leave a trail of blood for Cascabel to follow.

  “Your papa raised a brave boy,” Ty said.

  Janna’s head came up sharply. She was on the edge of saying that her father had raised a brave girl, when she caught herself. Other people had mistaken her for a boy since her father had died, especially after she had done everything she could to foster the impression. She bound her breasts with turn after turn of cloth to flatten and conceal her feminine curves. For the same reason she wore her father’s old shirts, which were much too big, and his old pants rode low on her hips, hiding the pronounced inward curve of her waist. She wore her hair in thick Indian braids stuffed beneath a man’s hat, which was also too big for her.

  Being taken for a boy had proved useful when she went to the few ranches around to trade her writing and reading skills for food, or when she went to town to spend a bit of Mad Jack’s gold on store-bought clothes or rare, precious books. Being a boy gave her a freedom of movement that was denied to girls. Because she loved freedom as much as any mustang ever born, she had always been relieved when strangers assumed she was a boy.

  Yet it galled her that this particular stranger had mistaken her sex. Her first reaction was to make him look beyond the clothes to the woman beneath. Her second reaction was that that would be a really stupid thing to do.

  Her third reaction was a repeat of her first.

  “Your papa didn’t do badly, either,” she said finally. “Cascabel has killed more men than you have fingers and toes.”

  “Don’t know about the toes,” Ty said, smiling crookedly as he sat upright and examined his feet. The sight of the bandages made him look quickly at Janna.

  “Oh, you’ve still got ten of them,” she said. “A bit raw, but otherwise intact. It’s going to hurt like the devil to walk on them, though.”

  He hissed softly through his teeth as he crossed his legs and sat Indian-style. “Don’t have to wait until I walk. Hurts like hell right now.”

  She said nothing because her mouth had gone dry. When he had sat up and crossed his legs, the blanket had fallen away, revealing a broad, bloody chest and muscular torso. Crisp black hair swirled around his flat nipples, gathered in the center line of his body and curled down to his loins. There the hair became thick and lush as it fanned out, defining and emphasizing the essential difference between male and female.

  Abruptly she looked away and forced herself to drag air into her aching lungs, wondering if she was going to faint.

  Why am I being such a goose? she asked herself fiercely. I’ve seen naked men before.

  But somehow cowboys washing off in lonely water holes and dancing Indians wearing little more than strings and flapping squares of cloth weren’t the same as the powerful man sitting naked and unconcerned just a few feet away from her.

  “Hey, kid,” Ty said softly. “You sure you’re all right? You look kind of pale.”

  She swallowed hard, twice. “I’m fine,” she said huskily. “And my name is...Jan, not ‘kid.’”

  “Jan, huh?” Ty said, unwrapping
his right foot carefully. “My mother’s father was called Jan. He was a big Swede with a laugh you could hear in the next county. Mama used to say I took after him.”

  “Well, you’re big enough,” Janna said dryly, “but I’d keep a tight rein on the laughing until Cascabel gives up.”

  Ty hissed an obscenity under his breath when the strip of blanket refused to come off the sole of his foot. After a moment he added, “My name’s Ty MacKenzie.” He looked up at the long-legged, thin youth and smiled. “As for big, don’t worry, ki—Jan. You’ll start putting on height and muscle about the same time you think you need to shave.”

  “And pigs will fly,” she muttered beneath her breath.

  He heard anyway. He smiled widely and gave Janna a brotherly pat on the knee. “I felt the same way when I was your age. Thought I’d never catch up with my older brother, Logan, but I finally did. Well, almost. No one’s as big as Logan. I’ve had one hell of a lot more luck with the ladies, though,” Ty added with a wink.

  The news didn’t sweeten Janna’s temper. She could well imagine that women would swoon over a cleaned-up version of Tyrell MacKenzie, because the beaten, dirty, naked version was giving her pulse a severe case of the jump and flutters. And that irritated her, because she was certain that she hadn’t had the least effect on Ty’s pulse.

  You’ll start putting on height and muscle about the same time you think you need to shave.

  Grimly she told herself that one day she would think back on this and laugh. Someday, but definitely not today.

  A small sound from Ty made her glance up—way up, all the way to his eyes, which were narrowed against pain. He was sweating again and his hands were pressed against his forehead as though to keep it from flying apart. Instantly she forgot her pique at not being recognized as a woman and reached to help him.