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.”
Chapter Eight
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.”
Long before she had finished her sarcastic summary of Ty’s attire, Mad Jack was laughing so hard he nearly swallowed his cud of tobacco.
Ty’s smile was a bleak warning curve carved out of the blackness of his beard. “There’s more to a man than his clothes.”
“But not to a woman, hmm?”
“Kid, you don’t have enough curves to be a woman.” He turned away before she could say anything more. “I’m going to the Tub,” he sai
d, using her nickname for the deep pool where they both bathed—separately. “Don’t worry about hurrying along to scrub my back. I can reach it just fine.”
Careful to show no expression at all, she watched him stalk from the camp. Then she turned and began preparing an herbal tea for Mad Jack.
“Sorry, gal,” he said said, watching her work. “If I’d thunk about it, I wouldn’t’ve opened my trap. You want I should stay with you?”
She shook her head. “It’s not necessary. I know how restless you get after you’ve been in camp for a few hours. Ty’s mad, but he’ll get over it.”
“That wasn’t what I meant. Now that he knows you’re a female, maybe you won’t be wanting to be alone with him.”
“There won’t be any problem,” she said unhappily. “You heard him. He thinks I’m about as appealing as a fence post.” She shrugged, trying to appear casual about her lack of feminine allure.
Mad Jack’s faded eyes watched Janna shrewdly. “And you be kinda wishin’ it was otherwise,” he said after a moment.
She opened her mouth to object forcefully, then realized there was no point in denying the truth, no matter how painful that truth might be.
“Yes, I’d like to be attractive to him. What woman wouldn’t? He’s all man,” Janna said. She added a pinch of herbs to the tiny pot. “And he’s a good man. Even when he was half out of his head with pain, his first instinct was still to protect me rather than himself. He’d never force himself on me.” She grimaced and added wryly, “Not that he’d ever have the chance. I’d probably say yes so quick it would make his head spin.”
Mad Jack hesitated, then sighed. “Gal, I don’t know how much your pa told you about babies and such, but more women have spent their lives wishin’ they’d said no than otherwise. When the urge is ridin’ a man, he’ll talk sweet as molasses and promise things he has no damn intention of giving.”
“Ty wouldn’t lie to me like that.”
“You can’t rightly call it lyin’. When a man’s crotch is aching, he don’t know lies from truth,” the old man said bluntly. “It’s natural. If menfolk stood around wonderin’ what was right instead of doin’ what come natural like, there wouldn’t be enough babies to keep the world goin’.”
She made a neutral sound and stirred the herbal tea. Despite the faint suggestion of red on his weathered face, Mad Jack forged ahead with his warning about the undependable nature of men.
“What I’m tryin’ to say,” he muttered as he dug around in his stained shirt pocket for a plug of tobacco, “is that’s a big stud hoss you found, and he’s getting right healthy again. He’ll be waking up hard as stone of a mornin’ and he’ll be lookin’ for a soft place to ease what’s aching.”
Janna ducked her head, grateful for the floppy brim of the hat concealing her face. She didn’t know whether to throw the steaming tea at the old man or to hug him for trying to do what he was obviously ill-suited to do, which was to be a Dutch uncle to a girl who had no family.
“Now, I know I’m being too blunt,” Mad Jack continued doggedly, “but dammit, gal, you ain’t got no womenfolk to warn you about a man’s ways. Next thing you know, you’ll be gettin’ fat, and I can tell you flat out it won’t be from nothing you et.”
“Your tea is ready.”
“Gal, you understand what I been sayin’?”
“I know where babies come from and how they get there, if that’s what you mean,” she said succinctly.
“That’s what I mean,” he mumbled.
She glanced up and made an irritated sound as she saw that he was sawing away on a plug of tobacco with his pocketknife. “No wonder your stomach is as sour as last month’s milk. That stuff would gag a skunk.”
Dry laughter denied her words. “I’m at the age when a good chew is my only comfort. That and finding a mite of gold here and there. I done right well for myself since your pa died. I been thinking ‘bout it, and I done decided. I want you to take some gold and get shuck of this place.”
The immediate objections that came to Janna’s lips were overridden by Mad Jack, who didn’t stop speaking even while he pushed a chunk of tobacco into his mouth and started chewing with gusto.
“Now you just listen to me, gal. Territory’s gettin’ too damn crowded. One of these days the wrong man’s going to cut your trail, the kind of man what don’t care about sweet talkin’ or protecting or any damn thing but his own pleasure. And I don’t mean just renegades, neither. Some of them pony soldiers is as bad as Injuns, an’ the scum selling rifles to Cascabel is no better than him.”
Mad Jack looked at Janna as she worked gracefully over the fire, every line of her body proclaiming both her femininity and her unwillingness to listen to his advice.
“It’s gettin’ too damn dangerous out here for any woman a’tall, even one wearing men’s clothes. You be too good a woman to go to waste out here alone.”
“I’ve done fine for five years.”
He snorted. “Fine, huh? Look at you, thin as a mare nursing two foals. You want to get a man, you gotta put meat on them bones.”
“My mother wasn’t built like a butter churn,” Janna muttered. “Papa didn’t mind one bit.”
And neither had Ty, if his reaction to the drawing was any guide.
Mad Jack cursed under his breath and tried another tack. “Don’t you get lonesome chasing mustangs and living so small you barely cast a shadow?”
“Do you?” she countered.
“Hell, I’m different. I’m a man and you ain’t, never mind the clothes you wear. Don’t you want a man of your own an’ kids to pester you?”
She didn’t answer, because it was too painful. Until she had found Ty, she hadn’t really understood what life had to offer. Then she had met him—and now she knew the meaning of the word lonely.
“The mustangs are all I have,” she said.
“And they’re all you’ll ever have if‘n you don’t leave.”
“If I leave, I’ll have nothing,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m not the kind of woman to catch a man’s eye. Ty has made that real plain, and he’s the ‘stud hoss’ who should know.” She shrugged, concealing her unhappiness. “I’d rather live with mustangs than cook at a boardinghouse where men grab at me when they think nobody’s looking.”
“But—”
“I’m staying, and that’s that.”
Chapter Nine
The Tub’s slick-walled pool was far enough from its hot-spring source to have lost the scalding edge of its temperature and nearly all of its sulfurous smell. The water was a clear, pale blue that steamed gently in the cool hours of night and gleamed invitingly all the time. Though safe for animals to drink, the water didn’t encourage plants. Not much but sand and stone and willows ringed the pool. The high mineral content of the water had decorated the rock it touched with a smooth, creamy-yellow veneer of deposits that had rounded off all the rough edges of the native stone, making a hard but nonetheless comfortable place for a man to soak out the last legacy of Cascabel’s cruel gauntlet.
Usually Ty enjoyed the soothing heat of the pool, but not today. Today he simmered from more than the temperature of the water. Knowing that “the boy” was a girl made him want to turn her over his knee and paddle her until she learned some manners. When he thought how she had let him run around wearing nothing more than a few rags of blanket...
A flush spread beneath the dark hair on his chest and face. The realization that he was embarrassed infuriated him. It was hardly a case of his never having been nearly or even completely naked around a woman. Of all the MacKenzie brothers, Ty had been the one who had caught women’s eye from the time he was old enough to shave. What bothered him was that he must have shocked Janna more than once.
The thought of a girl of her tender years being subjected repeatedly to a full-grown man’s nakedness made Ty very uncomfortable.
She must have been dying of embarrassment, but she never let on. She just kept on washing me when I was delirious and putting m
edicine all over me and reading to me while I teased her in a way I never would have teased a girl. A woman, maybe, but not a girl. Why, she can’t be much more than...Abruptly he sat up straight on the stone ledge, sending water cascading off his body. Just how old is she?
And how innocent?
Ty remembered the look of desire he had once seen in Janna’s eyes. Instantly he squelched the thought. He was nearly thirty. He had no damned business even looking at a thirteen-year-old, no matter how soft her cheeks were or how her gray eyes warmed while she looked at him when she thought he wouldn’t notice. Besides, boy or girl, at thirteen a case of hero worship was still a case of hero worship.
If she was, indeed, thirteen.
She can’t be much older than that. I may be blind but I’m not dead. If she had breasts, I’d have noticed. Or hips, for that matter. Even under those flapping, flopping, ridiculous clothes, I’d have noticed...wouldn’t I?
Hell, yes, of course I would have.
The reassuring thought made him settle back into the pool. A kid was still a kid, no matter what the sex. As for his own body’s urgent woman-hunger, that was just a sign of his returned health. It had nothing to do with a gray-eyed waif whose delicate hands had touched nearly every aching inch of his body.
But it was the aching inches she hadn’t touched that were driving him crazy.
“Dammit!” he exploded, coming out of the water with a lunge.
He stood dripping on the stone rim of the pool, furious with himself and the world in general, and with one Janna Wayland in particular. Viciously he scrubbed his breechcloth on the rocks, wrung it out and put it on, concealing the rigid evidence of his hunger.
Then he turned around and got right back into the Tub again. This time he remembered the bar of camp soap that Janna always left in a nearby niche. Cursing steadily, he began washing himself from head to newly healed feet. When he was finished he rinsed thoroughly, adjusted the uncomfortably tight breechcloth once more and stalked back to camp.
Elizabeth Lowell Page 6