Elizabeth Lowell (25 page)

“You weren’t going to bite me anyway, were you?” she murmured, stroking Lucifer’s nose.

The stallion’s ears flicked but didn’t flatten against his head. He was too tired, too weak, or simply not fearful enough to attack Janna.

Wondering if anyone had been attracted by the stallion’s labored breathing, she glanced anxiously up and down the crease in the earth that was their only hiding place. She heard no one approaching. Nor did she see any movement along the ravine’s rim.

It was just as well, for there was no way to hide from anyone. The brush Lucifer had fallen through had been bruised and broken beyond all hope of concealment from any trackers. Nor was there any real cover within the ravine itself. She had no illusions about what her chances of escape would be if the renegades found her in the bottom of the ravine with the wounded, blindfolded stallion.

After a last look at the rim of the ravine, she pulled out Ty’s big pistol, rotated the cylinder off the empty chamber and cocked the hammer so that all it would take was a quick pull on the trigger to fire the gun. Very carefully she laid the weapon out of the way yet within easy reach. Then she turned back to Lucifer.

“This is going to hurt,” she said in a low, calm voice, “but you’re going to be a gentleman about it, aren’t you?”

She wet the last torn piece of her shirt with water from her canteen and went to work cleaning the long furrow Troon’s bullet had left on Lucifer’s haunch. The blindfolded stallion shuddered and his ears flattened, but he made no attempt to turn and bite her while she worked over him. She praised the horse in soothing tones that revealed neither her own pain from her bruises nor her growing fear that Ty hadn’t been able to evade the renegades.

Lucifer flinched and made a high, involuntary sound as she cleaned a part of the wound that had picked up dirt in his slide down into the ravine.

“Easy, boy, easy...yes, I know it hurts, but you won’t heal right without help. That’s it...that’s it...gently...just lie still and let me help you.”

The low, husky voice and endless ripple of words mesmerized Lucifer. His ears flicked and swiveled, following her voice when she turned from her backpack to the wound on his haunch.

“I think it looks a lot worse than it is,” she murmured as she rinsed out her rag and poured more water into its folds. “It’s deep and it bled a lot, but the bullet didn’t sever any tendons or muscles. You’re going to be sore and grouchy as a boiled cat for a while, and you’ll limp for a time and you’ll have a scar on your pretty black hide forever, but you’ll heal clean and sound. In a few weeks you’ll be up and running after your mares.”

The thought made her smile.

“And you’ll have a lot of running to do, won’t you? Those mares will be scattered from hell to breakfast, as Papa would have said. I’ll bet that chestnut stud you ran off last year is stealing your mares as fast as he finds them.”

Lucifer flicked his ears, sucked in a long breath through his flaring nostrils and blew out, then took in another great breath.

“Easy now, boy. Easy...easy... I know it hurts but there’s no help for it.”

She reached for her backpack again and winced. Her left arm was beginning to stiffen. By the time she was finished doctoring Lucifer, she’d have to start in on herself. With only one hand, it was going to be difficult.

Ty, where are you? Are you all right? Did you get away? Are you lying wounded and—

“Don’t think about it!” she said aloud, her voice so savage that Lucifer, startled, tossed his head.

“Easy, boy,” she murmured, immediately adjusting her voice to be soothing once more. “There’s nothing to worry about. Ty is quick and strong and smart. If he got away from Cascabel he can get away from a bunch of hurrahing renegades who were looking for a man on horseback, not one on foot. Besides, I’ll never get a better chance to tame you,” she said, stroking the mustang’s barrel, where lather was slowly drying. “If you accept me, you’ll accept Ty, and then he’ll have a start on his dream, a fine stallion to found a herd that will bring money enough to buy a lady of silk and softness.”

Janna’s mouth turned down in an unhappy line, but her hand continued its gentle motions and her voice remained soothing.

“Anyway, boy, if I leave you and go looking for a man who is probably quite safe, who will take care of you in three days or four, when your wound gets infected and you get so weak you can hardly stand?”

Lucifer’s head came up suddenly and his ears pricked forward so tightly that they almost touched at the tips. His nostrils flared widely as he took in quantities of air and sifted it for the scent of danger.

Watching him closely, Janna reached for the pistol. Being blindfolded was no particular handicap for the stallion when it came to recognizing danger—a horse’s ears and sense of smell were far superior to his eyes. But when it came to dealing with danger, a blind horse was all but helpless.

She looked in the direction that Lucifer’s ears were pointing. All she saw was the steep side of the gully and the brushy slope rising to the ridge top beyond. She hesitated, trying to decide whether it would be less dangerous to crawl up out of the ravine and look around or to simply lie low and hope that whatever Lucifer sensed wouldn’t sense them in return.

Before she could make up her mind, she heard what was attracting the horse’s attention. There was a faint chorus of yips and howls and cries followed by the distant thunder of galloping horses and the crack of rifle fire. The sounds became louder as the renegades galloped closer to the ravine. For a few horrible minutes she was certain that the renegades were going to race straight up the slope above the ravine—and then she and Lucifer would be utterly exposed, with no place to hide and no way to flee.

The sounds peaked and slowly died as the Indians galloped off to the northwest, where Cascabel had his camp.

Heart pounding, Janna set aside the pistol she had grabbed and went back to tending Lucifer with hands that insisted on trembling at the very instant she most needed them to be still. She watched Lucifer’s ears as she worked on his wound, for she knew that his hearing was superior to hers.

“I hope they’re not coming back,” she said softly, stroking the horse’s hot flank as she examined the long furrow left by the bullet. “Well, Lucifer, if you were a man I’d pour some witch hazel in that wound to keep it clean. But witch hazel stings like the very devil and I don’t have any way of telling you to hold still and not make any noise, so—”

She froze and stopped speaking as Lucifer’s ears flicked forward again. Concentrating intently, she heard the faintest of scraping sounds, as though a boot or a moccasin had rubbed over loose rock, or perhaps it was no more than the friction of a low branch against the ground. Then came silence. A few moments later there was another sound, but this time that of cloth sliding over brush. Or was it simply wind bending the spring brush and releasing it again?

The silence continued with no more interruptions.

Very slowly she reached for the pistol again, listening so intently that she ached. She didn’t breathe, she didn’t think, she simply bent every bit of her will toward hearing as much as possible. The stallion remained motionless as well, his ears pricked, his nostrils flared, waiting for the wind to tell him whether to fight or freeze or flee whatever danger existed beyond the ravine.

“Janna?”

At first the whisper was so soft that she thought she had imagined it.

“Janna? Are you all right?”

“Ty? Is that you?”

“Hell, no,” he said in disgust. “It’s Joe Troon’s ghost come to haunt you. Stand back. I’m coming down.”

A pebble rolled down the side of the ravine, then another and another as he chose speed over caution in his descent. Crossing the open spots from the top of the ridge to the gully’s edge had taken years off his life span, even though there was no reason for him to think that the renegades would come back right away. Nor was there any reason to think that they would
not.
The sooner he was under even the minimal cover of the gully, the better he would feel.

Janna watched Ty skid down the last steep pitch into the ravine. He braced himself on a dead piñon trunk, looked toward her and smiled in a way that made her heart turn over.

“Sugar,” he drawled, “you are a sight for sore eyes.” His glance moved over her like hands, reminding her that she was naked from the waist up. Blushing, she crossed her arms over her breasts but couldn’t conceal the pink tide rising beneath her skin.

His breath caught and then stayed in his throat at the picture she made, the pale perfection of her body rising from the loose masculine pants. Her arms were too slender to hide the full curves of her breasts. The hint of deep rose nipples nestled shyly in the bend of her elbows.

“Ty...don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Look at me like that.”

“Like what?” he said huskily. “Like I spent most of the night licking and love biting and kissing those beautiful white breasts?”

She couldn’t conceal the shiver of sensual response that went through her at his words.

“Put your arms down, sugar. Let me see if you remember, too.”

Very slowly her arms dropped away, revealing breasts whose rosy tips had drawn and hardened at his look, his words, her memories.

“God,” he breathed, shutting his eyes, knowing that it didn’t matter, the vision was already burned into his memory. Blindly he dug into his backpack, found the roll of cloth he had refused to let her wear, and dropped the cloth on her lap. “Here. Wrap up before you make me forget where we are. Do it fast, little one. A man never wants a woman so much as when he’s come close to dying.”

“Does it work that way for a woman, too?” Janna asked as she snatched the cloth and began wrapping it over her breasts.

“I don’t know. How do you feel right now?”

“Shivery. Feverish. Restless. And then you looked at me and I felt hot and full where you had touched me...and yet empty at the same time.”

“Then it works the same for a woman, if the woman is like you,” he said, trying to control the heavy beat of his blood. “Satin butterfly. God, you don’t know how much I want to love you right now. I saw Lucifer jump and fall into the ravine and then you threw yourself after him and I couldn’t get a clean shot at his head and—”

“What?” she interrupted, appalled. “Why did you want to shoot Lucifer? He isn’t that badly injured.”

“I know. That’s why I was afraid he’d beat you to death with those big hooves.”

“You would have killed him to save me?”

Ty’s eyelids snapped open. “Hell, yes! What kind of a man do you think I am?”

She tried to speak, couldn’t find the words and concentrated on wrapping herself tightly.

“For the love of God,” he said in a low voice. “Just because I seduced you doesn’t mean that I’m the kind of bastard who would leave you to be killed when I could have saved you.”

“That isn’t what I meant. It’s just that…that…”

“What?” he demanded angrily.

“I’m surprised you would have killed Lucifer without hesitation, that’s all,” she said, her voice shaking. “Lucifer is your best chance of building a fine horse herd. He’s your best hope of getting enough money to buy your silken lady. He’s the beginning of your dreams. He’s… everything. And I’m…” She drew in a deep breath, looked away from Ty’s harsh, closed expression and continued quietly. “I’m not your blood or your fiancée or anything but a…a temporary convenience. Why should you kill your dream for me?” She glanced quickly at him. “But thank you, Ty. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“How
bad is the stud hurt?” Ty asked.

Janna jumped in surprise. It was the first thing he had said to her in the hour since she had thanked him for being prepared to sacrifice his dream in order to save her life.

After that, he had gone to Lucifer’s head, knelt and put himself between the horse’s teeth and her. He had spoken gently to the stallion, stroking Lucifer’s powerful neck with slow sweeps of his hand until the horse relaxed and accepted the strange voice and touch.

Except for those murmured reassurances to the big horse, he had said nothing as he watched her tend Lucifer. He moved only to stroke the stallion or to hand her a packet from her leather pouch or to rinse the rag she was using to clean Lucifer’s cuts and abrasions.

“He’s strong. He’ll be fine,” she said, smiling tentatively at Ty.

“That’s not what I asked. I’ve treated horses for sprains and stones in their shoes and colic and such, but bullet wounds are new to me. It’s not a deep wound, but I’ve seen men die of shock with wounds not much worse than that. Do you think Lucifer can walk?”

She turned and reached for the stallion’s muzzle, only to have Ty quickly intervene.

“I can’t answer your question until I’ve looked at Lucifer’s mouth,” she said.

Ty gave her an odd look and reluctantly moved aside. She bent over the stallion’s muzzle and spoke in low, even tones as her fingers lifted his upper lip. His ears flattened warningly and he jerked his head away. Patiently she worked over him until he tolerated her fingers around his mouth without laying back his ears.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ty asked quietly.

“Papa said you can tell a lot about men or animals by the color of their gums. Lucifer was real pale when I first checked him, but he’s nice and pink now. He’ll be able to walk as soon as I untie his feet, but it would be better if he didn’t move around much. That wound will start to bleed all over again at the first bit of strain.”

Ty looked at the long gash on Lucifer’s haunch and muttered something beneath his breath.

“What?” she asked.

“We can’t stay here. Those renegades could come back or some of their friends could come prowling to see if anything was missed the first time around. Lucifer left a trail a blind man could follow.” Ty glanced at the sky overhead. “No rain today and probably not any tonight, either. And if there was enough rain to wash out the trail, we’d be washed right out of this gully, too. There’s no food, no water, and no cover worth mentioning. The sooner we get out of here the longer we’ll all live.”