“Might your name be Reno?” Slater asked.
“Some folks call me that.”
A sound went through the men in the saloon. As one, they eased backward, giving Reno all the room he might want and then a bit more just to be safe.
The only move Slater made was to nod as though a private guess had just been confirmed.
“Thought so,” he said. “Only a few men can move like that.”
Slater paused, then asked with real interest, “Is the Man from Yuma still hunting you?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Hear he’s fast. Really fast.”
Reno smiled. “You heard right.”
“Did you kill him?” Slater asked. “Is that why he isn’t hunting you anymore?”
“I had no reason to kill him.”
“I do.”
“So I hear. Pity you weren’t with your twin brother, Jed, when he died. Then Wolfe could have made it a clean sweep.”
Slater became very still. “You were the third one there that day. The one with a six-gun.”
Though it wasn’t a question, Reno nodded.
“I was there. Best piece of work I’ve done. Whole lot of folks are sleeping more easy now that Jed and his boys are pushing up daisies.”
Slater’s face went still and hard.
“Lie facedown on the floor, boys,” Reno said calmly. “I’m feeling a mite nervous right now, so don’t do anything to startle me while I take your guns.”
There was a muted surge of motion as the men in the saloon went facedown on the floor. Reno moved among them quickly, gathering guns. As he worked, he kept an eye on Slater, whose right hand was inching toward his belt.
“After I gather up all the loose iron,” Reno said casually, “I’m going to wait outside the door for a while before I ride on. Whenever you feel lucky, you just lift your head and see if I’m still around.”
None of the men seemed in a hurry to take Reno’s offer.
“Slater, I hear you keep a little hideout gun behind your buckle,” Reno continued. “Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Now, I’d hate to kill an unarmed man, but not as bad as I’d hate to be shot in the back by a coyote who beats women and cheats at cards enough to put Satan to shame.”
Slater’s hand stopped moving.
Reno went through the room, drawing guns and shucking bullets onto the saloon floor. His passage was marked by the sound of the bullets falling and bouncing across the uneven wooden boards.
When several minutes had passed without the noise of more ammunition falling, one of the men eased his face off the floor and looked around.
“He done left,” said the man.
“Check the street,” said Slater.
“Check it yourself.”
By the time one of Slater’s men got up the nerve to check the street, Reno was four miles away, riding at a dead run as he followed the trail of the girl called Evening Star.
2
A FTER the first two miles of hard running, Eve pulled Whitefoot back to a slower pace and began looking for the landmark Donna Lyon had described with her dying words.
All Eve saw to the west was the steeply rising Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. No ravine or shadowed crease in the land looked more inviting or more passable than any other. In fact, had she not already known that there was a pass through the looming peaks, she would have thought none existed. The rugged stone summits thrust straight into the blue afternoon sky, with little more than a notch here or there to hint at possible ways through the ramparts.
Nobody rode nearby. There were no houses, no farms, no settlements. All Eve could hear above the sound of Whitefoot’s deep breathing was the long sigh of the wind from the granite peaks. Pearly clouds wreathed some mountaintops, hinting at the afternoon and evening storms that flashed through the Rockies in summertime.
Eve had hoped for a good hard rain to hide her tracks, but she wasn’t going to be that lucky. The clouds weren’t nearly thick enough to help her out.
“Sorry, Whitefoot. We’ll have to keep running,” she said aloud, stroking the horse’s hot brown shoulder.
Her eyes searched the landscape once more, hoping to see El Oso, the bear-shaped mound of boulders described by Donna and the old journal.
No such pile of stones lay within view. There was nothing to suggest which way Eve should go to find the entrance to the ravine that would ultimately lead to a pass through the massed peaks.
Anxiously she turned and looked over her back trail. Behind her the rumpled land fell away in shades of green until the horizon came down on the plains, blurring everything into a gauzy, glittering blue.
Abruptly Eve stiffened and shaded her eyes, peering over her back trail.
“Perdition,” she muttered. “I can’t tell whether that’s men or deer or wild horses or something else entirely.”
What Eve’s eyes couldn’t make out, her instincts did. With her heart wedging in her throat, she kicked Whitefoot into a canter. She wanted to go at a fast gallop, but the land was too steep. If she ran Whitefoot any harder, she would find herself afoot before sunset.
Earth spurted and rocks rolled as Whitefoot cantered along the vague trail that ran parallel to the Front Range. In some places the trail was wide enough for a wagon. In others it unraveled into footpaths leading to sheltered places where people could camp out of the endless wind.
Each time Whitefoot crested a rise, Eve looked back. Each time the men following her were closer. If she didn’t do something, they would catch her before dark. The thought was enough to chill her more deeply than the wind blowing down from icy peaks.
Finally Whitefoot came to a ravine that held an odd pile of boulders and a brawling little stream in its bottom. The boulders didn’t particularly look like a bear to Eve, but Donna had warned her that the Spaniards who drew the map had been alone in the wilderness so long that they saw fanciful things.
Eve urged Whitefoot around the mound that might or might not be El Oso. Once past the rocks, she turned her horse in to the stream and kept him in the water until the going got too rough. Only then did she allow the gelding to splash out across a swath of stony ground. Whitefoot’s hooves left small marks and scrapes across pebbles to mark his passage, but it was better than the clear trail he had left in softer ground.
Zigzagging, guiding the horse alongside or actually in the stream, heading ever deeper into the wild mountains, Eve rode into the thick gold light of afternoon. Her legs were chapped from the rubbing of the old saddle and cold from exposure to the wind, but she didn’t dare stop long enough to change into Don Lyon’s old clothes.
As soon as the way became less steep, Eve reined Whitefoot back into the stream. This time she kept him wading for more than a mile before she found stony ground that wouldn’t take hoofprints.
She checked the journal and looked around unhappily. She was at the limit of the countryside covered by the journal. Soon she must turn and take a long, winding valley westward, following the grass like a river to its source high in the peaks, a divide marking one side of the range from the other.
But before she crossed that divide, she had to lose the men who were following her.
SLATER stood in his stirrups and looked down his own back trail. Nothing moved but the wind. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being followed. Slater was a man accustomed to listening to his instincts, but he was getting tired of having his spine itch when there was nothing more to show for it than an empty back trail stretching all the way to Canyon City.
“Well?” he asked impatiently as his best Comanchero scout rode up.
Crooked Bear held his cupped right hand to his mouth and then brought his hand across to his right shoulder in the sign for river.
“Again?” Slater asked in disgust. “Her damned horse must be part fish.”
Crooked Bear shrugged, made a sign for wolf, and then for small.
Slater grunted. He had already had a sample of the girl’s cleverness at the card table. He
didn’t need any further proof that she was as fast and wary as a coyote.
“Did you see that red dress of hers?” Slater asked.
Crooked Bear signed an emphatic no.
Slater looked at the clouds. “Rain?”
The Comanchero gave a Frenchman’s shrug.
“Crooked Bear,” muttered Slater, “someday you’re going to piss me off. Go over the ground again. Find her. You hear me?”
The half-breed smiled, showing two gold teeth, two gaps, and a broken tooth that hadn’t hurt enough to be pulled.
SHIVERING with a combination of cold and fear, Eve watched the Comanchero quarter the stream banks one last time, looking for her tracks. When he dismounted, she held her breath and looked away, not wanting to somehow call attention to herself by staring at him.
After a few minutes, the temptation to look was too great. Eve peered carefully through the greenery and rocks that studded the long slope between her and the stream. The low cry of the wind and the mutter of thunder from a distant peak shut out any sounds the men below her made.
Slater, Crooked Bear, and five other men were quartering the stream bank. Eve smiled slightly, knowing she had won. If Crooked Bear couldn’t find her tracks, no one could. The Comanchero was almost as famous throughout the territory for his tracking abilities as he was for his savage reputation with a knife.
It was an hour before Slater and his men gave up. By then it was almost dark, a light rain was falling, and they had thoroughly trampled whatever signs Whitefoot might have left coming out of the river.
Breath held until it ached, Eve watched Slater’s gang mount and ride out of sight up the stream. Then she scrambled back off the slope and went to Whitefoot, who was waiting patiently, head down, more asleep than awake.
“Poor boy,” she whispered. “I know your feet are sore after all those stones, but if you had been wearing shoes, Crooked Bear would have found us for sure.”
Despite the urgency driving Eve to get over the Great Divide, through the San Juan Mountains and down into the stone maze described by the Spaniards, she knew she had to make camp within a few miles. Whitefoot had to have rest, or he wouldn’t be able to take her over the Great Divide.
Once the divide was behind her, somewhere between the summit and the stone canyons the journal described, she had to find a way to get Whitefoot shod, buy a packhorse, and gather the supplies she would need for the trek.
But what Eve really needed to buy was a man she could trust, someone who would guard her back while she hunted for the lost mine of Cristóbal Leon, ancestor of Don Lyon, descendant of Spanish royalty and holder of royal permission to seek gold in the New World holdings of the Spanish Crown.
I might as well wish for a fairy godmother as for a strong man I can trust with gold. Weak men cherish and strong men destroy.
Makes a woman wonder what God was thinking of when He created man.
AS soon as Slater rode off, Reno collapsed the spyglass, wriggled down off the rocky rise, and went back to where his horse and the three pack animals loaded with winter supplies waited. His mare’s black nostrils flared at his scent. She snorted softly and extended her muzzle to him for a bit of rubbing.
“Hello, Darlin’. You get lonely while I was gone?”
Soft lips whuffled over his fingers, leaving a feeling of tickling warmth behind.
“Well, you won’t be lonely much longer. Crooked Bear finally got fed up with the game. If we hurry, we’ll be able to pick up her trail before sunset.”
Reno climbed into the saddle, stroked the mare’s neck with a strong, leather-clad hand, and reined the blue roan toward a steep slope. Working quickly, the horse zigzagged down into a ravine that ran roughly parallel to the place where Crooked Bear had lost the trail. The packhorses followed without being led.
“If we’re really lucky,” Reno said, “before breakfast we’ll see if that girl knows any more tricks than colddecking, bottom-dealing, and setting men up to be killed.”
FROWNING, edgy despite the empty back trail, Eve held Whitefoot still and listened. She heard nothing but the hushed rustling of raindrops sliding over leaves.
Finally she turned and led Whitefoot toward the vague notch where the journal assured her there was a place to camp at the base of a cliff. There was shelter from the rain, a small spring set amid moss and ferns, and a view of the surrounding countryside. All she would need was someone to stand guard while she slept.
It was full dark before Eve and the footsore gelding reached the campsite. The flat white disc of the rising moon had just cleared the peaks.
Talking softly to Whitefoot, feeling more alone than she had since Don and Donna Lyon died, Eve tended to her horse, ate a cold supper, and fell into the meager bedroll she had scrounged from the contents of the Gypsy wagon. She was asleep immediately, too exhausted by the sorrow and danger of the past week to keep her eyes open.
When she woke up at dawn, the stranger with the light green eyes and fast gun was calmly going through her saddlebags.
Eve’s first thought was that she was still dreaming, for the man’s accusing eyes had haunted her sleep, making her twist and turn restlessly. In her dreams she had been trying to get closer to the handsome stranger by dealing perfect hands to him, but each time he had seen the heart flush, he had thrown in his cards and walked away from the poker table, leaving her alone.
Now that Eve was awake, getting closer to the dangerous man who was going through her saddlebags was the last thing on her mind. Beneath the blankets, her hand began easing very slowly toward the shotgun that had been Donna Lyon’s preferred weapon. Following Donna’s example, Eve had slept with the shotgun alongside her bed since Donna’s hands had become too crippled to hold the weapon.
Through barely opened eyes, Eve assessed the intruder. Her breathing didn’t change. Nor did she shift her position in any noticeable way. She didn’t want the gunfighter who was so coolly rummaging through her possessions to know she was awake. She remembered all too well how fast he could draw and shoot.
There was a faint whisper of sound as the man pulled his hand out of the saddlebag. Pearls gleamed like moon-drops in the pale early morning light.
The sight of the jewelry draped across his lean, long-fingered hand intrigued Eve. The contrast between smooth and pale, tanned and powerful, sent an odd cascade of sensation from her breastbone to her belly. When he let the sleek, cool strands slide between his fingers as though savoring the pearls’ curves and texture, another sensation rippled through her.
Gusts of wind sighed through the hidden camp, setting the pines to swaying and murmuring among themselves. Beneath the moving boughs, sunlight retreated and returned, concealing and revealing the stranger’s features.
Eve tried not to stare, but found it impossible. She reminded herself that she had seen more attractive men, men with more perfect features, men with gentle eyes and mouths eager to smile. There was no reason for this hard stranger to appeal so deeply to her senses. There certainly was no reason for him to have haunted her dreams.
Yet he had. Without the dangerous card game to distract Eve, she was even more curious about him than she had been when he first sat down and took cards in the poker game.
Reno ran the pearls through his fingers one more time before he slipped them into a fawnskin bag and put them in his jacket pocket.
The next thing his fingers encountered in the saddlebag was a length of soft leather wrapped around something and tied with a worn leather thong. Curious, Reno pulled out the bundle and unwrapped it. Two long, slender metal rods with a notch in the blunt tips fell into his palm with a faintly musical sound.
Be damned, Reno thought. Spanish dowsing needles. Wonder if she’s skilled enough to use them.
Thoughtfully Reno wrapped up the large, blunt “needles” and put them back in the saddlebag.
The next thing his fingers encountered was the worn, dry leather of the Spanish journal. He opened it, flipped through it quickly to make certain it was the r
ight one, and transferred it to his own saddlebags.
The rest of the contents of the girl’s saddlebag made Reno feel frankly uneasy about reclaiming his winnings from the pretty little cheat. All she had in her kit was a boy’s jacket, the scarlet dress, another dress made of flour sacks, and a boy’s ruffled white shirt and black pants. The gold ring was nowhere in sight. Nor was the handful of coins she had scooped up with the ring.
It was obvious she was way down on her luck. On the other hand…
“You keep moving your fingers toward that shotgun,” Reno said without looking up, “and I’m going to drag you out of that bedroll and teach you some manners.”
Eve froze, stunned. Until that instant she would have sworn the man hadn’t even known she was awake.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Matt Moran.” As he spoke, he stuffed clothes back into the saddlebag. “But most folks call me Reno.”
Eve’s eyes widened to startled pools of gold. She had heard about the man called Reno. He was a gunfighter, but he never looked for battles. Nor did he hire out his lethal skills. He simply went his own way through the wild country, looking for placer gold during the high-mountain summers and for Spanish gold in the red hush of desert winter.
For a few crazy moments, Eve thought of bolting into the underbrush and hiding until Reno gave up and rode away. Almost as soon as the idea came, she abandoned it.
Reno’s aura of lazy grace no longer fooled her. She had seen him move in the saloon, his hands so fast they blurred. The Lyons had often praised Eve’s quick fingers, but she had no doubt that the man called Reno was faster than she was. She wouldn’t get three steps from her bedroll before he caught her.
“Don’t suppose you’d want to tell me where my ring is?” Reno asked after a moment.
“Your ring?” Eve asked indignantly. “It belonged to Don and Donna Lyon!”
“Until you stole it and lost it to Raleigh King, and I won it from him,” Reno said, shooting her a glance out of eyes like green ice. “Then it became my ring.”
“I didn’t steal it!”
Reno laughed.
Only You Page 2