Her voice died. She didn’t like to remember the time Troon had trapped her and started stripping off her clothes before she managed to break free and run. He had spent hours searching for her. The whole time he had yelled just what he would do when he caught her.
The combination of fear and dislike on her face told Ty more than he wanted to know about Janna and Joe Troon.
“Janna,” Ty said softly, pulling her out of her unhappy memories, “from what I’ve heard in towns where I bought my supplies, Troon is a drunk, a thief, a coward, a woman beater, and a back shooter. He deserves whatever Cascabel feels like giving to him. Besides, you don’t even know if Troon has been captured. He could be back in Sweetwater right now, getting drunk on Ned’s rotgut. There’s no point in either of us risking our butt to scout a renegade camp for a no-good bit of swamp gas like Joe Troon.”
“I know,” she said. “I just hate to think of anyone caught by Cascabel. He’s so cruel.”
Ty shrugged. “Cascabel doesn’t see it that way. He’s a warrior who has stood up to the worst the country, the pony soldiers, and his fellow Indians can offer in the way of punishment. He’s never given quarter and he’s never asked for it. And he never will.”
“You sound like you admire him.”
There was a long silence before Ty shrugged again. “I don’t like him, but I do respect him. He’s one hell of a fighter, no matter what the weapon or situation. He has knowledge of how to use the land and his limited arms to his own advantage that many a general would envy.”
“Do you have any idea what he does to the captives who don’t escape?”
“Yes,” Ty said succinctly. “I didn’t say I admired him. But I learned in the war that honor and good table manners don’t have a damned thing to do with survival. Cascabel is a survivor. Black Hawk knows it. He hasn’t pressed a confrontation because he hopes that the U.S. Army will take care of the renegades for him.”
“Black Hawk is lucky that Cascabel hasn’t lured the whole tribe away from him,” Janna grumbled. “Cascabel must have half of Black Hawk’s warriors down here by now, and they’re still coming in by twos and threes every day.”
“Cascabel is half-Apache. The elders in the Ute tribe would never let him be a headman. As for the younger men, they still believe that they’re invincible. They haven’t had time to learn that the same army that flattened the South sure as hell won’t have too tough a time ironing out a few renegade wrinkles in the Utah Territory.”
She started to speak, then caught a flash of movement at the far edge of the meadow. Ty had seen the movement, too. As one they flattened completely to the earth, taking advantage of every bit of cover offered by the slight depression where they lay to watch the meadow.
Four hundred feet away, five Indians rode out into the wide river of meadow grass that wound between the two evergreen forests. The men rode boldly, without bothering about cover or the possibility of ambush, because they knew that Cascabel ruled Black Plateau. The only reason they weren’t laughing and talking among themselves was that human voices carried a long way in the plateau’s primal silence, and the deer they were hunting had excellent hearing.
Peering cautiously through the dense screen of evergreen boughs, spyglass shielded so that it wouldn’t give away their position by reflecting a flash of light, Ty watched the hunting party ride along the margin of forest and meadow. Usually in any group of Indians, barely half the men were aimed with carbines, rifles or pistols, and there were rarely more than a few rounds of ammunition for each weapon. Part of the problem in getting arms was simply that it was illegal to sell weapons or ammunition to Indians. What they couldn’t take as the spoils of war they had to buy from crooked white traders.
But most of the problem the Indians had in staying well armed was that none of the tribes had any experience in the care and repair of machines or in the art of making reliable bullets. The weapons they acquired through war or bribery quickly became useless due to lack of ammunition or because of mechanical failure.
Cascabel’s men were well outfitted. As well as the traditional bow and arrows, each man had a carbine and a leather pouch bulging with ammunition. Ty was relieved to see that the carbines were single-shot weapons of the type that had lost the Civil War for the South. None of the five Indians had a weapon that could compete with the new Winchester carbine he had discovered in an otherwise empty box at the store Preacher had rather hastily abandoned.
Ty’s new carbine was the type of weapon Johnny Rebs had enviously insisted that a Yank “loaded on Sunday and fired all week long.” With his new Winchester, Ty could reload as fast as he could fire, an advantage the Indians didn’t have unless they used their bows and arrows.
Ty went over the details of the renegades’ gear with the experienced eye of a man to whom such knowledge had meant the difference between continued life and premature death. The presence of good weapons explained some of Cascabel’s allure for young warriors—on a reservation, these men would have barely enough to eat, no weapons beyond what they could make with their own hands, and no freedom to roam in search of game. With Cascabel, the young men would have a chance to gain personal fame as warriors, they would be well fed and well armed, and they could live the roving life celebrated in tribal legends.
The fact that the young men would also find themselves the target of every white man with a gun simply added spice to the Indians’ lives. After all, there weren’t that many white men.
Ty knew that the situation would change, even if the Indians didn’t. Since the end of the Civil War, footloose and disenfranchised white men had pressed west in greater and greater numbers. Most of them had already been in shooting battles, so the prospect of occasional skirmishes with Indians wasn’t much of a deterrent.
He was one of those men, as were his brothers. There were hundreds and thousands more men like the MacKenzies, drawn by the West’s wild horizons and seductive promises of a better life for anyone who had the courage and stamina to withstand the hardships. Not all the promises of the new land would be kept, but each man was certain that, for him, the dreams would indeed come true.
And a lot of those men would be armed with repeating rifles and carbines and as many bullets as they could wear without dragging their belts down to their boot tops. The Indians would take some of those weapons and put them to deadly use, but more white men would come west, and then more and more, and their superior arms would always be enough to offset the Indians’ superior knowledge of the land.
Ty had no doubt about the eventual outcome of the battle between Indian and white. He just wasn’t sure he would be alive to share in the celebration when the renegades were defeated.
Abruptly the five Indians stopped their mounts. One of the warriors leaped from his horse, landed lightly and sat on his heels while he examined something on the ground. After a time he stood again, walked a few steps, and then bent over the ground once more, looking at everything from a different angle.
Ty lay without moving, going over in his mind once more what he would do if he and Janna were discovered. With his new carbine he could cause as much damage in one minute as ten men with single-shot guns. Even allowing for the fact that he hadn’t had time to accustom himself to the Winchester’s action, he should be able to put two warriors out of the fight before the others took cover. That would give Janna plenty of time to slip away while he played cat and mouse with the remaining warriors. With a little luck, he might even get away himself.
With a lot of luck, he and Janna wouldn’t be discovered in the first place.
When the warrior finally remounted and the five continued along the far edge of the meadow without looking in the direction where Janna and Ty lay concealed, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He had known some men who loved fighting and killing. He wasn’t one of them. He was quite pleased to see the Indians disappear into the trees without a single shot having been fired from his shiny new carbine.
Neither Ty nor Janna stirred from their prone
position. Something had piqued the Indians’ curiosity enough to deflect them from their original course of hunting. If their curiosity was quickly satisfied, the Indians would come back to the meadow and resume hunting deer.
Besides, Janna was lying quite close to Ty, able to feel him all along her right side, able to move subtly against him, reminding him of her presence. She had done a lot of that in the past five days, leaning over him by the campfire, brushing his hand when she gave him a plate of food, tripping and falling against him when the trail permitted it.
She had seen the green intensity of his glance and had known that her presence was felt, but she was no longer certain that she would laugh and walk away if she brought him to his knees with desire. The thought of being close to him, truly close, weakened her own knees with an answering desire that burned just beneath her skin, silently reaching out to him even as his own male heat radiated out to her, caressing and calling to her.
The bronze light of very late afternoon burnished the meadow. Soon deer would be emerging from cover to feed. At first they would graze only along the western margin of the meadow, where the descending sun pushed thick shadows out of the dense pines. As the shadows stretched across the grassy clearing, the deer would follow until finally the meadow would be dotted by graceful shapes grazing upon moon-silvered grass.
That was when it would be safest for Ty and Janna to move, when the much more acute senses of the deer would give warning of other men roaming around in the night. Not that Ty expected to run across any Indians on the move in full darkness, but he had learned that allowing for the unexpected was the best way to survive life’s lethal little surprises.
Besides, it was very pleasant to lie in the warm aftermath of day on a thick bed of pine needles and listen to birds settling into cover for the night, calling and singing to one another as though they had a lifetime of information to pass on and only a few minutes until the last golden sunlight faded, bringing with it darkness and night.
It was also pleasant to feel Janna’s warm body pressed against his left side.
After a moment’s thought, he conceded to himself that perhaps pleasant wasn’t the right word to describe the combination of sensuous heat and mental torture she had inflicted on him in the past days. He couldn’t turn around but she was there, touching him in the most casual ways, never forward or aggressive, just...there. Always. A smile or a fleeting brush of her body over his, a look from gray eyes as clear as springwater, a soft laugh that made his loins tighten. He sensed that she was getting even with him for belittling her feminine allure, but he couldn’t prove it. There was always a logical reason for her touches.
And her touches were driving him crazy, sending fire licking over his skin, heat whispering to him, telling him that beneath those flapping clothes was a woman.
With each second that passed, the chance of the Indians returning became less likely, and the fragrance of her body became more compelling. He sensed each of her breaths, knew that she felt him as well, and he wanted nothing more than to turn toward her and mold her along the aching length of his body.
He kept remembering that single, penetrating kiss he had given to her. He could recall the feeling of her body beneath his with a vividness that sent blood rushing hotly, hardening his male flesh until it ached.
But she hadn’t enjoyed that kiss. She had taken it as a punishment.
Yet it was Ty who was being punished. He owed Janna his life. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t repay that debt by frightening or hurting her as other men had. The only way he could keep his promise to himself was to keep his hungry hands off her. And his hungry mouth. And most of all, his hungry—
“Ty?” she whispered softly.
Her body was shaking. So was her voice. Though she made no more noise than a sigh, he heard her. He heard every breath she took, saw every time she licked her lips, tasted her in his memory. He didn’t know how much longer he would be able to admire her without touching the easy sway of her hips as she led him along the plateau’s secret byways.
“Ty?” she said, a bit more loudly.
“What?” he groaned, wondering how much longer he could lie next to her without grabbing her.
“There’s a snake crawling along my leg.”
Chapter Twenty
“Don’t move.”
Ty knew as soon as he whispered the urgent words that his command was unnecessary—Janna knew better than to make a sudden move around a snake. She also must know that all she had to do was lie quietly until the snake slithered off into the late afternoon and she would be all right.
“Can you see the snake?” he whispered.
Her answer was more a whimper than a “no.”
“Just stay quiet,” he repeated. “The snake isn’t interested in you and he won’t be as long as you don’t move.”
But she couldn’t remain still. Tremors of sheer terror were rippling through her. She could face almost anything without losing her head, but not a snake. She remembered all too well the nightmare of awakening to her father’s shouts and frantic flailing about as he tried to shake off the rattlesnake that had crawled into his bedroll. He had been bitten on his feet and his calf, his wrist and his cheek.
At the time they had been deep in Indian country, chasing one of her father’s dreams of gold. There had been no one to help. None of the herbs or balms or potions her father knew had managed to pull the poison out of his body. Nor had lancing the oozing wounds helped.
She would never forget the endless death throes of the big snake after she had cut off its triangular head with her sheath knife. Nor would she forget the long days of her father’s agony and delirium before he finally died.
Without realizing it, she began whimpering softly with every shallow breath she took.
Ty heard and knew that she wouldn’t be able to lie still until the snake moved on in search of its normal evening meal of mice or young rabbit. She was terrified. In the grip of such mindless fear she might scream, and then the snake would be the least of their worries.
“Janna,” he whispered urgently. “You’ll be all right. Just lie still. I’ll take care of it. Whatever happens, don’t move.”
The increasingly violent trembling of her body was her only answer.
Slowly he eased onto his right side, lifted himself on his elbow, and reached to his waist for his sheath knife. The way he and she were lying, he had no choice except to use his left hand, but that didn’t slow him down. The first thing the elder MacKenzie had taught his boys was that a left-handed knife fighter had an advantage in a brawl, and a two-handed fighter would win every time.
Ty’s movements and Janna’s trembling had made the snake freeze in place as it tried to decide whether the motion represented food or danger or simply a neutral presence such as the wind. In the dying light the motionless snake blended so well with its surroundings that he had a hard time seeing it. When he did, he swore silently.
It was a timber rattlesnake, and it was as thick around as his forearm. There would be enough venom stored up in that big mouth to kill a man, much less a girl the size of Janna.
When nothing came of the quaking movements, the rattler lowered its head and continued on its evening hunt. The snake was so close that Ty could easily make out the flickering tongue and the triangular head darting from side to side with the forward motion of the coils. He could even distinguish the third “eye” that identified the deadly pit viper.
The rattlesnake’s body made an odd rubbing-rustling sound as it progressed slowly along the length of her pant leg. He watched with the poised patience of a predator, knowing that he had no choice but to wait for an opening. Until the snake’s head was drawn away from her body by the sinuous movements of reptilian coils, there was nothing her could do that the snake couldn’t do quicker—and it would be Janna rather than Ty who suffered from any miscalculation on his part.
Speaking softly and reassuringly to her, telling her that there was nothing to fear, he waited u
ntil the snake’s undulating forward motion finally pulled its head to the left, away from her leg. Ty struck swiftly, cleanly, severing the rattlesnake’s head from its body. Then he struck again with savage speed, using the knife point to pick up the deadly head and fling it far away from Janna. He grabbed the writhing coils and threw them away, as well. Then he went down beside her and pulled her into his arms.
“It’s all right, little one,” he whispered, holding her shaking body. “It’s all right. The rattlesnake is dead.”
The soothing rumble of his voice and the gentle stroking of his hands over her back calmed her more than his words. Unable to control the trembling of her own body, she clung to him, whispering incoherently about a water hole and a rattlesnake that had struck again and again, and the long days and nights before her father had finally died.
When Ty finally understood what she was saying, emotion went through him like a burst of dark lightning. He couldn’t bear the thought of her alone with her dying father, watching him swell and blacken as the poison slowly destroyed his flesh. It could so easily have been her bedroll the snake had chosen, her tender skin pierced by fangs, her life draining away between labored breaths.
And then Ty never would have known her, never held her, never breathed kisses over her tear-streaked face.
The realization of how close he had come to losing Janna caused a surge of emotion that was both tender and fierce. The thought of almost having been deprived of her presence made it impossible to deny himself the sweet luxury of holding her now.
The warmth and comfort of his big hands rubbing slowly down her back gradually penetrated her panic. His gentle, brushing kisses brought heat back to skin that had been chilled by fear. Turning her face up to his lips, she gave a long, shaky sigh and snuggled even closer to him, needing the reassurance of his body in a way that she couldn’t put into words. Nor did she have to. He needed her close in the same way, the warm pressure of her body against his telling him that they both were alive and safe.