«The next time goddamn Jericho wants me to go chasing goddamn Reno Moran, I’m gonna make goddamn damn sure I — goddamn!»
The sound of Eve’s shot echoed and reechoed through the narrow ravine. She levered in another shot and fired again. The bullet whined and caromed from stone to stone. She fired one more shot for good measure.
No one fired in return. They were all too busy diving for cover.
Eve looked over her shoulder. Reno was hammering the edges of the second can shut with the butt of his six-gun. A two-foot fuse dangled from each can.
«Keep them pinned down,» he said.
With a silent prayer, Eve sent bullets flying down the ravine while Reno crawled over to a ledge of smooth rock that jutted out to one side of the ravine. Carefully he shoved both cans into a deep crack.
«Keep firing,» Reno said.
While rifle shots echoed, he struck a match and lit both fuses.
Eve kept firing until she was snatched to her feet and set to running flat out away from the ravine. Scant seconds later, a sound like double thunder came from behind them. Reno took Eve down to the ground and covered her with his body while rock exploded and fell in a hard, sharp-edged rain.
Behind them a piece of the plateau sheared away. Skidding, bouncing, grinding, groaning, the stone avalanche went down the narrow ravine until it hit a barrier and piled up in a boiling cloud of dust and grit.
«You all right?» Reno asked.
«Yes.»
Reno rolled aside and came to his feet in an easy motion, bringing Eve with him. He approached the edge of the plateau cautiously and looked over.
The ravine was choked with stones of all sizes.
«Be damned,» he said. «That crack must have gone farther down than I thought.»
Numbly Eve stared, astonished at the change two cans of black powder had made.
Above the sound of random debris settling along the slope came the rhythmic beat of hooves. The sounds retreated farther and farther down the ravine as the mustangs fled the unexpected thunder.
«Even if those boys survived, they’ve got a long walk ahead of them,» Reno said with distinct satisfaction.
«Then we’re — safe?»
Reno gave Eve a rather dark smile.
«For a time, yes,» he said. «But if there’s another way onto this plateau, Slater’s Comancheros will know about it.»
«Maybe there isn’t,» Eve said quickly.
«You better hope there is.»
«Why?»
«Because their way up is our waydown,» Reno said succinctly.
Eve rubbed her dusty forehead against her equally dusty sleeve and tried not to show her dismay at the thought of being trapped on top of the plateau.
Reno saw anyway. He squeezed her arm reassuringly just before he turned away.
«Come on,» he said. «Let’s go see how well you hobbled the horses.»
13
Eve watched the blue roan scramble back up the head of the steep ravine. It was the fifth chute down the plateau Reno had tried in the past two hours. So far, each ravine had ended in a cliff that horses couldn’t descend.
This time, however, Reno had been gone at least half an hour. Though Eve didn’t say anything, she couldn’t keep a look of hope from her face. Without realizing it, she ran her tongue over her lips. No shine of moisture followed.
«Take a drink,» Reno said as he rode up. «You’re as dry as stone.»
«I can’t drink when my horse is so thirsty, she tries to crawl in my pocket each time I pick up the canteen.»
«Don’t let the sweet-faced fraud fool you. She sucked one of those littletinajasdry while you were a quarter mile back, trying to fall into that big slot.»
«Tinajas?» Eve frowned, then remembered what the Spanish word meant. «Oh. Those holes in the rock where rainwater collected. Is the water good?»
«The mustangs liked it.»
«You didn’t drink any?»
«The horses needed it more than I did. Besides,» Reno admitted with a slight grin, «I wasn’t thirsty enough to strain all those little critters between my teeth.»
Eve’s laughter surprised Reno. She was dusty, worn-out, scuffed from crawling over rock…and he had never seen a woman who appealed to him more. He tucked a tawny lock behind her ear, ran his fingertip over the line of her jaw, and touched her lips with the ball of his thumb.
«Mount up,» he said softly. «There’s something I want to show you.»
Curious, Eve stepped into the stirrup and rode alongside Reno as far as the trail allowed. To her surprise, the shallow ravine didn’t get deeper right away as the others had. Instead, it got wider and wider, descending gently through pinons and cedar.
Gradually the slickrock became buried under dirt. More and more small gullies joined the ravine, widening it, until they were riding through a valley that was nearly surrounded by steep walls of stone.
Eve turned and looked at Reno with hope on her face and a question in her eyes.
«I don’t know,» Reno said quietly. «But it looks good. I rode another mile and nothing changed.»
Eve closed her eyes and let out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding.
«No water, though,» Reno added reluctantly.
For several miles there were no sounds but that of an eagle keening on the wind, the creak of leather as the horses walked, and the muffled beat of hooves on the dry earth. Though it was late in the afternoon, the sunlight still held an amazing amount of heat.
Clouds gathered into groups high overhead. Their color ranged from white to a blue-black that promised rain. But not on the plateau. It wasn’t high enough to trap these clouds. Only the mountains were. Nowhere had Eve seen running water on the plateau.
«Reno?»
He made a rumbling sound that said he had heard.
«Does it rain here?»
He nodded.
«Where does it all go?» she asked.
«Downhill.»
«Yes, but where is it? We’re downhill from something, and there’s no water.»
«The streams only run after a rain,» he said.
«What about the mountain streams?» she persisted. «It rains there all the time, and snow melts. Where does the water go?»
«Into the air and into the ground.»
«Not down to the sea?»
«From here to the Sierra Nevadas of California, I know of only one river that gets all the way to the sea before it dries up — Rio Colorado.»
Eve rode silently for a few minutes, trying to understand how there could be land and no water.
«How far is it to California?» she asked.
«Maybe six hundred miles as the crow flies. Hell of a lot farther the way we do it.»
«And only one river?»
Reno nodded.
Eve rode in silence for a long time, trying to comprehend a land so dry, you could ride for weeks and find only one river. No streams, no creeks, no brooks, no lakes, no ponds, nothing but red rock, creamy stone, and shades of rust where any vegetation stood out like a green flag on the dry land.
The thought was both frightening an oddly exhilarating, like waking into a landscape seen before only in dreams.
As the valley slowly dropped down to an unknown end, the buff-colored cliffs that rose on either side became more and more of a barrier. From time to time Eve turned and looked over her shoulder. If she hadn’t known that a way onto the plateau existed behind them, she wouldn’t have guessed it from the view. The rock wall looked seamless.
Gradually the valley changed, becoming more narrow as the stone ramparts closed in once more. Twice they had to dismount and lead the mustangs over a particularly difficult patch of land, squeezing between massive boulders and sliding down gullies floored with water-polished stone.
The sun descended as they did, but with more ease. Long shafts of light gilded the stones and painted dense velvet shadows behind the least irregularity of the land.
«Look,» Eve said suddenly, her voice low. «What’s that?»