Reckless Love

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Janna looked at the stone overhang that had been the only home she had ever had. Only scattered ashes remained of the campfire that had always been carefully tended. The pots and pans had been washed, upended and set aside. The trunk had been filled with herbs that would discourage insects or mice from settling in. All that she had kept out was a small pack consisting of her bedroll, herb pouch and canteen… and the sketch of her mother, a silken lady who hadn't survived the rigors of frontier life.

"We'll be able to get the books once the Army takes care of Cascabel," Ty said, putting his arm around Janna.

For an instant Janna leaned against Ty, savoring his strength and the knowledge that for once she didn't have to stand alone. Then she straightened and smiled up at him, but she said nothing about their coming back to the secret valley. If she kept her portion of Mad Jack's gold, she could build a home anywhere she wished, save one-wherever Ty was. That she would not do. She had been lucky enough to have her dream of a home made possible. The fact that she now wished for Ty to share that dream was unfortunate, but it was her misfortune, not his. She had taken advantage Of his natural woman-hunger by teasing him until he was beside himself with need. She hadn't realized the power of the weapon she had turned on him. He had tried to resist, but he hadn't been able to, not entirely. That was her fault, not his.

Especially yesterday, when she had thrown herself at him with utter abandon, touching him in ways that made it impossible for him to turn away. Eyen now the memories made her tremble with the aftershocks of what he and she had shared.

But to Janna, her wantonness was no reason for Ty to give up his own dream. Requiring him to give up his deepest desire just because he had been the first man to show her ecstasy; that would be an act of hatred, not of love… and she loved Ty so much it felt as though she were being pulled apart by claws of ice and fire and night.

Silken lady, wherever you are, whoever you are, be kind to the man I love. Give him the dream he has wanted for so many years.

"Janna?" Ty asked, his throat aching with the sadness he felt twisting through her, the bleak shadow of night just beneath her sunny smile. "We'll come back. I prom-"

She put her fingers over his lips, sealing in the unwanted promise before it could be spoken. "It's all right," she said. "I knew I would have to leave someday. Someday… is today."

Ty lifted Janna's hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. "Wyoming is beautiful, too. If you don't like it there we can go anywhere."

Tears Janna couldn't conceal came to her eyes. Ty's words were agony to her, for they weren't the words she had longed so much to hear, the words he only spoke to her in her dreams, the words his silken lady would someday hear from his lips.

I love you.

But Ty didn't love Janna. He was amused by her, he liked her, and he was enthralled by her sensuality without realizing that passion's wellspring was her own deep love for him. He talked about their future together, but it was a future decreed by his unbending sense of honor and duty, not his desire to make Janna his mate, his lifetime companion, the mother of his children.

Honor and duty weren't love. Neither was kindness. Janna would rather live the test of her life in the wild than watch Ty become bitter and ground down by regrets for the freedom and the dream he had lost.

And Janna would rather die than live to see the day when Ty stood like a captive mustang, his head down and his eyes as dead as stones.

"Go ahead and cry," Ty said, folding Janna into his arms, rocking her. "It's all right, sugar. It's all right. You'll have the home you've dreamed of if it's the last thing I do. It's the very least that I owe you."

Janna closed her eyes to conceal the wave of pain his words had caused. Very gently she brushed her lips over his shirtfront, savoring for the last time his heat, his scent, his strength, the male vitality that radiated from him.

"You owe me nothing at all."

Ty's laugh was harsh and humorless. "Like hell I don't. You saved my life, and all I've done since then is take from you. When I think of you throwing yourself under Lucifer's hooves just to catch him for me, I…"

Ty's words faded into a hoarse sound. Strong arms tightened almost painfully around Janna, as though Ty were trying to convince himself that she was all right despite all the dangers she had endured for him.

"I didn't catch Lucifer to make you feel obligated to me," Janna said quietly. "I did it so Lucifer wouldn't be killed by some greedy mustanger or be caught by a man too cruel to do anything but make Lucifer into a killer. You were the one who gentled Lucifer. You were the one who taught him to trust a man. Without that, what I did would have been worse than useless. Thank yourself for Lucifer, not me."

Ty tilted up Janna's chin and stared at her translucent gray eyes. "You really believe that, don't you?"

"I know it. You don't owe met anything. Not for your Me, not for Lucifer, and not for the pleasure we shared. Not one damn thing. Once we get to the fort we're quits. You're as free as Lucifer once was. And so am I."

A chill came over Ty, making his skin tighten and move in primitive reflex. Janna's voice was calm and precise, lacking in emotion, as bleak as the darkness underlying her smile. She was systematically pulling away from him, cutting the ties that had grown silently, powerfully between them during the time they had spent in the hidden valley.

"No."

Ty said nothing more, just the single word denying what Janna had said. Before she could say anything in argument, Ty turned away and whistled shrilly.

Moments later Lucifer came trotting over and began lipping at Ty's shirt in search of the pinch of salt Ty often had hidden in a twist of paper. There was no salt today, simply the voice and hands Lucifer had come to enjoy.

Ty petted the stallion for a few moments before he picked up the heavy saddlebags Mad Jack had left behind. Ty had cut slits in the leather that joined the saddlebags. Through the slits he had threaded the surcingle. Once the strap had been tightened, the saddlebags would stay in place on the stallion's back.

Lucifer didn't care for the surcingle around his barrel, but he had become accustomed to it. He did nothing more than briefly lay back his ears when the strap tightened just behind his front legs. Ty praised the stallion, shrugged his own backpack into place and vaulted onto the mustang's back. It was a heavy load Lucifer was carrying, but Ty wasn't worried. Lucifer was an unusually powerful horse. Even if Ty had added a saddle to the load, the stallion wouldn't have been overburdened for normal travel.

"I'll scout the area beyond the slot," Ty said. "Get Zebra over there and wait for my signal."

"Ty, I won't let you-"

"Let me? Let me!" he interrupted, furious. "To hell with 'letting'! You listen to me and you listen good. You might be pregnant. If you think I'll run off and leave an orphaned girl who could be carrying my child to fend for herself in Indian country, there's no damned point in even talking to you! I'll try hammering my message through that thick skull of yours after we get to the fort. Maybe by then I'll have cooled down or you'll have grown up. Until then, shut up and stop distracting me or neither one of us will live to see tomorrow."

Lucifer leaped into a canter before Janna had a chance to speak, even if she had been able to think of something to say.

By the time the stallion reached the exit to the valley, Ty had gotten his temper under control. He didn't permit himself to think about Janna and the immediate past, only about Cascabel and the immediate future.

Ty dismounted and looked at the area right in front of the cleft. No new tracks marked the meadow. A vague, telltale trail had been worn through the grass despite his and Janna's efforts never to take the same way twice into the cleft.

It doesn't matter now. By the time we come back the grass will have regrown. And when we do come back, we won't have to try to live so small we don't even cast shadows.

Beyond the ghostly paths there were no signs that anything had ever passed through the cleft to the outer world. Ty picked his way over the narrow watercourse and through the shadowed slot between rock walls. The afternoon light glowed overhead, telling him that the sky was nearly cloudless. Until the sun went down they would be vulnerable to discovery, for there would be no rain to conceal their presence while they crossed the wild land.

Yet they had no choice but to move in daylight. There was simply too much risk that one of the horses would injure itself scrambling over the cleft's treacherous watercourse in the dark. Besides, even if they got through the slot safely at night and then traveled until dawn, they would still be deep within Cascabel's preferred range when the sun once more rose, exposing them to discovery.

Their best chance was to sneak out of the slot and take a long, looping approach to the fort, hoping that Cascabel would have been driven to the southern edges of his territory while the two of them traversed the northern part. The fort itself was a hard three-day ride, and there was no haven short of the stockade walls.

Standing well back from the sunlit exit to the cleft, Ty pulled out his spyglass and examined as much of the land as he could see beyond the stone walls. A quick look showed nothing. A long look showed no more. A point-by-point survey revealed no sign of renegades.

Wish my backbone didn't itch.

But it did, and Ty wasn't going to ignore his instincts. There was danger out there. His job was to find out where and how much. Unconsciously he fingered the hilt of the big knife he always carried at his belt. He waited for fifteen minutes, then lifted the spyglass and studied the land again. Again he saw nothing to alarm him. He took off his backpack, checked the load in his carbine, grabbed a box of bullets and went out to have a closer look at the land.

He was no more than thirty feet from the cleft when he cut the trail of three unshod ponies. The hoof prints stayed together and marked a purposeful course, telling Ty that the horses had been ridden; they had not been grazing at random as wild horses would. The horses had come out of Cascabel's usual territory.

As Ty followed the traces he hoped that the Army had been successful in driving the renegades away. That hope died when he saw other tracks meet those that he was following. The two sets of tracks mingled, then split once more, heading in all directions, as though the riders had exchanged information and had then separated and gone to search for something.

Ty had a terrible suspicion that what the renegades were searching for was a bruja called Janna Wayland.

Keeping to cover as much as possible, crawling when he had to, walking when he could, Ty followed the tracks that crisscrossed the flatlands in front of the cleft. Everything he saw brought him to the same conclusion: the renegades were going to beat the bushes and ravines until their auburn-haired quarry burst from cover. Then they would run her down and bring her back to Cascabel. There would be medicine chants and dances, celebrations of past victories and future coups; and then Cascabel would lead his renegades into war with Janna's long hair hanging from his lance like a flag, proving to the world that his spirit was the greatest one moving over the wild face of the land.

For a moment Ty considered simply sneaking back to the cleft and waiting until Cascabel got tired of searching for his elusive quarry. That was what Janna had done in the past-hide. But in the past, Cascabel hadn't been so determined to catch her. If Ty and Janna retreated to the valley and then were found, they would be trapped in a stone bottle with no chance of escape. Better that they take their chances in the open.

Retreating silently back toward the cleft, Ty made a brief side trip to the top of a rise. From there he hoped to get a better view of the rugged land they had to cross. Just before he reached the edge of the rise, he took off his hat and went down on his stomach, presenting as little human silhouette as possible.

An instant later Ty was glad he had taken the trouble to be very cautious. On the far side of the rise, four warriors sat on their heels, arguing and gesticulating abruptly as they divided up the area to be searched for the Shadow of Flame, the witch who had been stealing Cascabel's spirit. Just beyond the warriors, seven horses grazed on whatever was within reach.

Four renegades. Seven horses. And my backbone is on fire.

The only warning Ty had was a slight whisper of sound behind him. He rolled onto his back and lashed out with his booted feet as the renegade attacked.