As he walked toward town, he wished heartily for one of the new repeating carbines that loaded as fast as they fired. Even a pistol would have been nice. Two revolvers and extra cylinders loaded with bullets would have made him feel a lot better about going in among the canted shacks.
Though Janna seemed not to realize it, Sweetwater was an outlaw hangout, and the two ranches she bought supplies from had a reputation for branding “loose” cattle that was known from the Red River to Logan MacKenzie’s ranch in Wyoming. Some of the Lazy A’s and Circle G’s cowhands were doubtless reasonably honest men who had been forced to make a living any way they could after the Civil War had ruined their farms and homes. Other cowhands on those ranches were men who would have been raiders in heaven itself, because they plain enjoyed riding roughshod over people weaker than themselves.
How the hell did Janna ever survive out here? Ty asked himself for the hundredth time as he walked quietly into the collection of ramshackle, weathered shacks that constituted one of the few towns within several hundred miles.
No answer came back to him but the obvious one, the uncomfortable memory of women in a war-ravaged land, women selling themselves for bread or a blanket, women who in peacetime wouldn’t have dreamed of letting a man touch them outside the boundaries of love and marriage.
Is that how you survived after your father died, Janna? Did you sell yourself until you had the skill and the strength to survive alone?
Again there was no answer but the obvious one. She had survived.
The thought of her soft body lying beneath rutting men both sickened and angered Ty. For a woman to sell herself like that in order to live was simply another kind of rape.
In the past, he had surprised more than one woman caught within the ruins of war by giving her food or shelter or blankets and taking nothing in return. He would never forget one girl’s combined look of shock, relief, and gratitude when he had refused her thin, bruised body as payment for a plate of beans. She had eaten quickly and then had vanished into the night as though afraid he would change his mind and take her after all.
And when Ty had finally fought his way home, he had discovered that his sister, Cassie, hadn’t been so fortunate in the strange men who had crossed her path. Taken by raiders, she had been a captive until she became too ill to service the men. Then she had been abandoned to die. She would have, too, if Logan and Silver hadn’t caught up with her and gentled her back into sanity and health.
Ty’s grim thoughts were a match for the town that he finally reached. There were no men loitering in front of Sweetwater Mercantile when he walked by. There were no horses tied to broken railings. No dogs slept in sun-warmed dust.
The first person he saw was a boy who was emptying slops out the saloon’s back door. The boy took one look at Ty and ducked back inside. Instants later the door creaked open again. The bartender stood with a shotgun cradled in his thick hands. A single glance took in Ty’s muscular, naked body covered with healing bruises.
“Well, you be big enough and the right color,” the bartender said. “Maybe you be Tyrell MacKenzie.”
Ty nodded slowly.
The bartender stepped aside. “Come on in. Name’s Ned. A breed by the name of Blue Wolf was looking for you ‘bout two weeks back.”
When he heard Blue Wolf’s name, Ty almost laughed aloud. “Wondered how long it would take him to catch up with me.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Yeah.”
“Good thing, too. From the look of that buck, he’d make a powerful bad enemy. He’s damn near as big as Cascabel and white-man smart into the bargain. Talks English better than me.”
“He’s a dead shot, too.”
Ned grunted, reached behind the door and pulled a ragged shirt off a nail. He threw the cloth to Ty. “Wrap up and sit down.”
Within moments Ty had the shirt wrapped around his hips and between his legs in a semblance of a breechcloth. He sat down, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of a chair after months on the trail. Ned went to a sooty corner of the small room and pulled a pot off a broken-legged stove. He wiped a spoon on his britches, stuck it into the pot and shoved it in front of Ty.
“Reckon you’re hungry.”
He wasn’t, but admitting that would raise too many questions, so he dug into the cold beans and ate quickly, trying not to remember how much better Janna’s food had been. Cleaner, too. Living in the camp with the hot springs had spoiled him. A bath every day, clean dishes, and clean company. It would take him a long time to get used to the smell of a sty like Ned’s saloon.
“Thanks,” he said, shoving away the empty pot.
“Smoke?”
Ty shook his head. “Gave it up the night I saw a man get killed lighting a pipe when he should have been holding still and looking out for enemies.”
Ned grinned, revealing teeth about the color the beans had been. “Yep, war can be hard on a man. Worse ‘n robbin’ banks or rustlin’.”
Ty ignored the oblique question about his past.
“Don’t mean to jaw your arm off,” Ned said quickly, “but it’s been nothin’ but me and Johnny for two weeks now. Rest of ‘em went to the fort. Old Cascabel’s got ‘em pissin’ their britches. Hear tell he killed two white men a week ago.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve been too busy hiding and healing. Did Blue Wolf say when he’d be back here?”
Ned opened a stone jug and thumped it onto the table. “Don’t know as he’s comin’ back. I told him you’d been took by Cascabel. He said you wouldn’t stay took. Left a poke of gold for you over to the fort. Said you’d be needful of it when you got shuck of Cascabel. From the look of you, he was right.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He was meetin’ up with your brothers north of here. Looking for gold.” Ned grunted. “Probably’ll find it, too, if’n Black Hawk don’t lift their hair first.”
“With Wolf on scout, no one will even know they’re around.” Ty paused, then added casually, “When my brothers come back here looking for me—and they will—tell them I headed for Mexico. I’m going to finish healing up in some señorita’s bed.”
Ned’s smile was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg as he absorbed Ty’s gentle message: he might be naked and alone, but if he were killed his brothers would come hunting for the killer. So Ned poured cloudy liquid from the jar into a dirty tin cup and put it in front of Ty.
“Drink up.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d rather have water,” he said. “My daddy always told me not to mix liquor with an empty stomach or a knot on the head.”
Ned chuckled, picked up the cup and drained it. His harshly expelled breath made Ty glad there wasn’t an open flame nearby. Sure as hell, the alcohol on the other man’s breath would have caught fire and burned down the saloon.
“Damn, but that’s good ‘shine,” Ned said, wiping water from his eyes. “A man couldn’t get from dawn to dusk without it.”
Ty could have gotten from birth to death without moonshine, but he said nothing. He had known a lot of men like Ned, men for whom the savage bite of homemade liquor was the sole joy of life. With outward patience, Ty waited while Ned’s hands stroked the cold curves of the stone jar, lifted it, and shook it to gauge the amount of liquor left within.
“You say you and the boy are the only ones left in Sweetwater?” Ty asked after a few moments.
Ned poured another half cup of pale liquid, belched, and sat down opposite Ty. Though it was daytime, the interior of the saloon was gloomy. If there had ever been glass windows in the slanting walls, the panes had long since been replaced by oiled paper.
“Yep. Just me and that useless whelp. He’s so scared he’s gonna run off first time I turn my back.” Ned took another swig of liquor, shuddered deliciously and sighed.
“And Joe Troon. That sidewinder ain’t never far off. Used to keep a Mex gal stashed somewhere off in the rimrock to the north, but she run off with Cascabel’s renegades. O
l’ Troon is real lonely these days, less’n he caught that bruja again.”
“What?”
“That red-haired gal the renegades call Sombra, cuz she leaves no more sign than a shadow. Lives with the mustangs, and she’s a wild ‘un just like them.” Ned took another huge swallow, grimaced and sighed out the fumes. “Troon had her once a few years ago but she got away. Gals don’t cotton much to Joe Troon. Mean as a spring bear, and that’s gospel. Wish he’d kept her, though. I get right tired of squaws.”
When Ty understood that the bruja under discussion was Janna, it was all he could do not to hurl himself over the table and hammer the half-drunk bartender into the floor.
“But now Troon’s decided to make hisself rich off of that old black stud,” Ned continued. “He took his rifle and went to Black Plateau. Gonna crease that stud bastard, break him, and take his colts while every white man in the territory is too scared to butt in.”
Ty grimaced. “Creasing is a chancy thing. A lot more horses are killed than caught that way.”
“One mean stud more or less won’t make no never mind in this world. If’n it was me, I’d kill the stud, grab the best colts, and light a shuck clean out of the territory before the Army finds Cascabel and the whole shootin’ match goes up in smoke.”
Ty thought of Lucifer as he had last seen the stallion—ears pricked, neck arched, muscles gleaming and sliding beneath a shiny black hide. The thought of someone killing that much animal just to grab his colts made Ty both disgusted and angry. But he had no doubt that Troon would do just that.
If he got to Lucifer first.
“Is the mercantile closed?” Ty asked, interrupting Ned’s monologue.
“What? Oh, you mean the Preacher’s store. Naw, he didn’t close up when he went to the fort. Ain’t no man would steal from him. Sooner steal from Satan hisself. Even the renegades leave the Preacher alone. Cunning as a coon and snake-mean into the bargain. Troon gave up on the red-haired gal after the Preacher told him to leave her be. See, she gave him a Bible once. So when you see her again, you tell her it’s safe to come into Sweetwater. Troon won’t bother her.”
A cold breath of caution shivered over Ty’s skin. The bartender was no more drunk than Ty was.
“Who?” Ty asked, scratching his beard.
“The red-haired gal.”
“Don’t know her. She live around here?”
Ned squinted at Ty with pale, watery eyes. “Nobody knows where she lives. ‘Cept maybe you. She pulled your tail out of a mighty tight crack.”
“Mister, the only crack my tail has been in lately was with Cascabel’s renegades, and I got shuck of them by running my feet to the bone, hiding in brush, drinking rainwater, and eating snakes. Not a one of them had red hair.”
Ned stared at Ty for a long time and then nodded slowly. “If that’s the way you want it, mister, that’s the way it is.”
“Wanting has nothing to do with it,” he drawled coolly, standing up. “I’m telling you the way it was. Thanks for the beans. I’m going over to the Preacher’s store. I’ll leave a list of what I take. He can get his payment out of the gold Blue Wolf left at the fort.”
“I’ll tell Preacher when I see him.”
“You do that.” Ty started for the door, feeling an acute need for fresh air, then realized he wasn’t through with Ned yet. “I need to buy a horse.”
“The Circle G has right fine horseflesh. Best in the territory. Course, if’n a man was to ride one out of the territory, he might run into a cowpoke what lost a horse just like it.”
Ty smiled wryly as he got the message. “I’ll settle for a town horse.”
“Ain’t none,” Ned said succinctly. “Took ‘em all to the fort.”
“Where’s the closest homestead that might have an animal to sell?”
“Ain’t none left for a hundred miles, ‘cept renegade camps and wherever that redheaded gal lives. But you don’t know nothin’ about her, so it don’t help you none.”
Ty shrugged. “I’ll find a horse between here and Mexico. Thanks for the beans.”
The door shut behind him, but he still felt Ned’s narrow, calculating eyes boring into his naked back. It made his spine itch and his palms ache for the cool feel of an army rifle.
Janna didn’t know it, but she wasn’t coming back to Sweetwater again.
Ever.
Chapter Thirteen
Janna awoke when a man rose up from the ground in front of her, blocking out the sun with his body. She was grabbing for her knife when Zebra snorted and the man turned and sunlight caught the emerald glint of his eyes.
Hardly recognizing Ty beneath his store-bought clothes, she could do no more than stare. The slate-gray shirt and hat, black bandanna, and black pants emphasized his size and masculine grace. He looked as handsome as sin and twice as hard. His beard was shaved off, leaving his face clean but for a midnight slash of mustache that heightened the pronounced planes of his cheekbones and made his teeth gleam whitely.
In that instant, with fright still vibrating in her body and her defenses awry, Janna’s response to him was so intense that she could scarcely breathe.
“Ty?” she asked huskily. “Is that really you?”
“You better hope it is,” he snapped. “What the hell were you doing asleep? It could have been Joe Troon who cut your trail rather than me. Or maybe you’d like to be kept by him again?”
Her heart was beating too rapidly for her to make sense out of Ty’s words. “You scared the life out of me, sneaking up like that!”
“Sneaking up? Hell’s bells, Janna, you expect Cascabel to march in here with a band playing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’? You should have been on guard and seen me coming half a mile away!”
“Zebra was on guard,” she said, standing and wiping her palms on her baggy pants. “Yell at her. She must have recognized your smell and not made a fuss.”
He looked over at the mustang. Zebra was cropping at wisps of dry grass, lifting her head to scent the wind, then relaxing once more for a few moments before sniffing the wind again.
“Scented me, huh?” he said, feeling his anger slide away as he realized that she had been well guarded after all. “Are you saying I need some more time in your hot spring?”
“Ask Zebra. Her nose is better than mine,” Janna retorted, forcing herself to look away from the hard, handsome planes of Ty’s face. She closed her eyes, braced her fists in the small of her back and knuckled the tight muscles. “Lordy, there was a root beneath me the size of my arm. No matter how I lay I couldn’t avoid it.”
Whatever he had been going to say was forgotten beneath the impact of the supple reach and sway of Janna’s body while she worked out the kinks of lying in cover for several hours.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “This will help.”
Her eyes flew open when she felt his strong hands knead down her spine to her hips and back up again, lingering at the curve of her waist, rubbing the muscles in the small of her back, then caressing her waist once more before probing at the bands of cloth that wrapped her rib cage beneath her shirt. When he discovered the knotted muscle in her shoulder, he pressed down firmly, smoothing away the knot, making her knees loosen with relief.
“Oh, that feels good,” she said huskily, her voice catching with pure pleasure. “Yes, there. Ahhh...You’re unraveling me like a snagged mitten.”
With a low sigh that was almost a moan of pleasure, she let her head slowly drop back until it rested on Ty’s chest. His hands hesitated as his heart slammed suddenly, sending blood rushing through his body, making him feel both heavy and powerful. Taking a discreet, deep breath, he resumed the leisurely, gentle massaging of her back. Each murmur of her pleasure was like flames licking over him, tightening every muscle in his big body, flushing him with sensual heat.
The piñon-and-sunshine smell of her hair intoxicated him. The curve of her neck above her clothes tantalized him. The sounds she made inflamed him. He wanted to bend over and taste the clean skin
rising above her collar. Then he wanted to peel her clothes away and taste soft skin that had never seen the sun.
Yet she felt so fragile beneath his big hands, almost frail.
She’s just a girl, he reminded himself harshly.
The memory of what Ned had said about Joe Troon and Janna went into Ty like a knife
Poor little thing, he thought, moving his hands up to her shoulders and rubbing very gently before he released her with a reluctance he couldn’t disguise. She’s known little of kindness from men. I can’t take advantage of her just because she comes undone at a gentle touch.
She turned her head, brushing her lips lightly over his fingers as they moved away from her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she murmured, her eyes closed and her voice a sigh of pleasure. “That felt as good as sunlight on a cold day.”
Head still turned toward him, she opened her eyes—and felt her breath wedge tightly in her throat. He was so close, his eyes a glittering green that was both beautiful and savage. Tiny shards of black acted to deepen and define the vivid green surrounding the pupils. The dark gleam at the center of his eyes was repeated in the dense midnight of his eyelashes. His pulse beat full and strong at his temple and his lips were a flat line, as though he were angry or in pain.
“Did...did everything go all right in Sweetwater?” she managed.
Janna’s question sounded very far away to Ty. Slowly he realized that he was staring into the depths of her rain-clear eyes while his fingertips traced and retraced the soft curve of her cheek.
“You’re never going back there, Janna. That damned greasy bartender...” Ty’s voice died. He could think of no delicate way to put into words what he had seen in Ned’s eyes when he talked about women.
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