«You?»
Reno nodded. «Me, Cal, and Wolfe.»
«Caleb Black? My God — what if Slater goes after Caleb instead of us?»
«Old Jericho is smarter than that. Cal has some hard men riding for him, especially those three freed slaves. Two of them were Buffalo Soldiers. The third one is called Pig Iron. He’s half Seminole and pure poison mean.»
Eve frowned.
«Except with Willow,» Reno added, seeing the uneasy expression on Eve’s face. «She tended them after they ate bad meat. They think the sun rises and sets in her. So do their women — including the Comanchero squaw who can’t make up her mind between Crooked Bear and Pig Iron.»
«Are they armed?»
«Hell, yes. What use is an unarmed man?»
«All the same,» Eve said, «Slater has a lot of men.»
«That’s not the same as havinggoodmen. Don’t you worry about Cal. He’s a one-man army all by himself. Wish to God I had him at my back right now.»
With that, Reno reined the blue roan toward the notch. The lineback dun followed immediately. The two Shaggies fell into place despite the absence of lead ropes.
Reno didn’t have to tell Eve to be silent. She rode the way he rode, alert to every shadow, wary of every bend in the river bottom that could conceal riders waiting in ambush. The shotgun across her lap gleamed in the rare patches of sunlight.
The heat of day slowly gave way to a hushed kind of twilight as rock walls rose on either side of the track. Layers of stone piled one upon another until the sky retreated to scarcely more than a wide, cloud-ridden banner high overhead. There was no sound but that of creaking leather, the dry swish of a horse’s tail, and hoofbeats softened by sand.
Small finger canyons joined the larger one from time to time. All of them were dry.
Finally the strip of cloudy sky overhead began to widen, telling Eve they were almost out of the dry riverbed that separated the towering walls of stone, just ahead, the wash bent to the right around one more nose of rock. Behind her and to the left, another side canyon opened.
Suddenly the blue roan tried to leap out of her tracks. Reno yelled at Eve to take cover.
Then men were shouting and shots were hammering as lead whined and screamed between stone walls. Some of the shots were Reno’s. In a wild drumroll of sound, he fired at the men who had leaped from hiding behind the wall of stone that lay just ahead of his horse.
Reno’s speed in drawing and shooting both guns took the ambushers by surprise. His deadly accuracy shocked the men who survived the brutal thunder of the first twelve shots. The outlaws who were still able to move dove for cover in a tangle of flailing limbs and vicious curses.
With movements so fast they blurred, Reno swapped empty cylinders for loaded ones and began shooting again before the men could recover.
«Behind us!» Eve screamed.
The last part of her cry was lost in the deafening thunder of the shotgun as she triggered both barrels. The two outlaws who had been concealed in the underbrush of the side canyon shouted in pain as buckshot whipped and whined around them.
Reno spun the blue roan and fired so quickly the sound of his bullets was buried beneath the shotgun’s noise. The men dropped where they were and didn’t move again.
«Eve! Are you hurt?»
«No. Are —»
The rest of Eve’s question was cut off by the ragged thunder of horses’ hooves echoing down between stone walls. The sound came from behind and from ahead, rising like a tide.
«We’re trapped!» Eve shouted.
«Go left!»
As Reno spoke, he spurred the blue roan toward the narrow side canyon, sweeping Eve and the packhorses before him. They hurtled the bodies of the two outlaws and raced into the small opening. Within twenty feet, the tributary canyon took a steep bend around a fin of red rock.
Eve clung to the lineback dun with knees and heels, trying to reload the shotgun while the mustang took the obstacle course of the dry stream bed at a dead run. She managed to get one shell into the shotgun.
She was trying for a second shell when it spurted from her fingers as the dun skidded on a patch of bedrock rising up through the thin layer of sand. The mustang went down to her knees, then righted herself with a force that sent sparks flying as steel shoes clashed against rock that was harder than sandstone.
After that, Eve forgot about loading the shotgun and concentrated on keeping herself and her mustang right side up.
A mile later the stream bed began to rise more steeply beneath the horses’ pounding hooves. No more cottonwoods whipped by at the edge of Eve’s vision. There were few bushes to hurtle or avoid, and even those were stunted.
The layered rock walls pinched inward. Sand thinned into patches and pools with stretches of water-polished rock in between. The trail became dangerously slick and uneven. Even the tough, agile mustangs nearly came to grief more than once.
«Pull up!» Reno called finally.
Gratefully Eve reined in the hard-running mare. She turned to ask a question, but all she saw was Reno spurring the blue roan back the way they had come.
The two Shaggies crowded around Eve’s mustang as though needing reassurance. She fumbled a second shell into the shotgun before she bent over in the saddle to check the rigging on the packhorses. Nothing had shifted. Nothing had come undone. Even the awkward little barrels on the outside of the tarpaulins were still in place. So were the picks and shovels. Reno was as thorough in caring for the animals as he was in caring for his weapons.
Gunfire echoed up the canyon in a staccato cataract that seemed to go on forever. The Shaggies snorted and crowded closer, but showed no inclination to bolt. Eve’s heart was hammering so hard she was afraid it would burst from her chest.
More gunshots echoed. The silence that followed the echoes was worse than any thunder.
After Eve counted to ten, she could bear no more. She kicked the dun hard and went racing back to see what had happened to Reno. The mustang laid back her ears, flattened out, and began to gallop despite the uncertain footing. Head low and tail high, the dun tore over the dangerous ground.
The sound of hoofbeats alerted Reno. He reined his horse around just in time to see Eve flying toward him on the back of a hard-running mustang. The dun leaped a spur of rock, sprayed sand through a soft spot, and nearly went down on a stretch of slickrock.
Reno thought that would slow Eve, but as soon as the dun had all four hooves under her again, Eve set the mustang at a dead run once more.
«Eve!»
She didn’t hear him.
Reno spurred his roan out into the open. Eve’s horse reared as she was hauled back on her hocks in a skidding, sliding stop.
«Of all the damn fool —» yelled Reno.
«Are you all right?» Eve said urgently.
«— things to do. Of course I’m —»
«I heard gunfire and then silence, and I called your name and you didn’t answer.»
Anxious golden eyes searched Reno for injury.
«I’m fine,» he said in a clipped voice. «Except that you damn near gave me heart failure running your horse over that ground.»
«I thought you were hurt.»
«What were you going to do — trample Slater’s bunch right into the sand?»
«I —»
Reno kept on talking. «If you ever pull a damn fool stunt like that again, I’ll turn you over my knee.»
«But —»
«But nothing,» he interrupted savagely. «You could have galloped right into a cross fire and been cut to ribbons.»
«I thought that was what had happened to you.»
Reno let out a breath and damped down the temper that threatened to flash out of control. He had been in a lot of tight places and been shot more than once, but he had never been as plain scared as when he had seen Eve run her mustang flat out over the sand and slickrock.