It could have been simply a trick played on her by eyes tired from straining forever into the distance, seeking something that might or might not be there.
Or it could be Slater and his gang, dogging Reno and Eve’s trail with unnerving patience.
Eve turned away from her scrutiny of the back trail.
She felt a distinct thrill of pleasure as she watched Reno ride closer. He called hergata, but he was the one who moved with feline quickness and grace in everything he did.
Even before Reno spoke, Eve sensed his buried excitement in the way he held himself. It was a difference few people would have noticed, but she had come to know him very well during the long days and passionate nights on the trail.
«What did you find?» Eve asked before Reno could speak.
«What makes you think I found anything?» he asked, reining in alongside her.
«Don’t tease,» she said eagerly. «What is it?»
Smiling, Reno reached back into a saddlebag. When his hand emerged again, he was holding a piece of curved wood wrapped in rawhide that was cracked with age and dryness, and bleached nearly white by the sun.
Eve looked at the junk lying on Reno’s palm. Then she looked at him, perplexed by his excitement.
Smiling, he hooked his arm around her neck, pulling her close for a brief, hard kiss before he released her once more and explained.
«It’s a piece of stirrup,» Reno said. «The Spanish didn’t always use iron stirrups. This one was carved from a hardwood tree that grew half a world away from here.»
Hesitantly Eve touched the fragment of stirrup. When her fingertips brushed the smooth, weathered wood, she felt a spectral chill down her spine. Awe and curiosity rippled through her.
«I wonder if the man who used this was a priest or a soldier,» Eve said. «Was his name Sosa or Leon? Did he write in the journal, or did he watch while another man wrote? Did he have a wife and children in Spain or Mexico, or did he give himself only to God?»
«I was thinking the same things,» Reno admitted. «Makes you wonder if someone two hundred years from now will find that broken cinch ring we left next to the campfire ashes yesterday, and if they’ll wonder about who rode there and when and why, and if we’ll somehow know someone is thinking about us hundreds of years after we died.»
Eve shivered again and withdrew her hand.
«Maybe Slater will find the cinch ring and use it for target practice,» she said.
Reno’s head came up sharply. «Did you see sign of him and his gang?»
«I couldn’t be sure,» Eve said, pointing. «It’s so far back.»
Standing in the stirrups, Reno stared along the back trail. After a long minute, he sat once more and looked at Eve.
«All I see in that direction are some storm clouds trying to rain,» he said.
«I thought it might be the wind kicking up dust,» she said, «but the clouds were right over that spot, and it looked dark almost all the way to the ground. Rain and dust don’t mix.»
«They do here. In the summer it’s so hot and thirsty that rain from a small storm like that never reaches the ground. The drops just dry up in midair and vanish.»
Eve looked back at the clouds. They were the color of slate on the bottom and cream on the top. A ragged, slanting veil of lighter gray came from the base of the little storm.
The longer she stared, the more Eve was certain that Reno was right. The veil became thinner and thinner as it approached the ground. By the time the surface of the earth was reached, there was no moisture left.
«A dry rain,» Eve said wonderingly.
Reno shot her a sideways look.
When Eve realized he was staring at her, she gave him an odd, bittersweet smile.
«Don’t worry, sugar man. You’re safe. I’ve seen ships made of stone and a dry rain, but even the smallest light casts a shadow.»
Before Reno could think of an answer, Eve urged her horse forward, heading deeper into the mountains, searching for the only thing the man she loved would count on.
Gold.
For two more days they followed a trail that was so old it appeared only to the half-focused eye or very late in the day, when sunlight slanted steeply and was the color of Spanish treasure. The valleys they rode through became smaller and steeper the higher they rode in the mountains. Every afternoon thunder rumbled through the mountains while first one peak and then another played host to the elemental dance of lightning. Rain came down cold and hard, running off the trees in veils of silver lace.
Between storms, aspens on the highest slopes lifted their golden torches to the indigo sky. Deer and elk were everywhere, fleet brown ghosts that withdrew before the horses. Creeks of startling purity abounded, filling shadowed ravines with the sound of running water. Only game trails were visible. There were no tracks of wild horses or man, for there was nothing on the steep slopes or in the rugged mountain canyons that couldn’t be found more easily at lower elevations.
When Reno and Eve came to the last, high valley described by both the shaman and the Spanish journal, they rode its length silently, looking all around.
There was no sign of Cristobal Leon’s lost mine.
19
«It's hard to believe we aren’t the first people to see this land,» Eve said as they came back to the mouth of the small valley.
«Feels that way,» Reno agreed, «but there’s plenty of signs that men have been through here.»
He reined in, hooked his right leg around the saddle horn, and lifted the spyglass again, but not to look at the meadow. Slowly he surveyed the green patchwork of forest and meadow falling away to the dry lands below, seeking any sign of the men he was certain were following them. The brass casing of the spyglass glowed in the muted light with every shift in direction.
«What signs?» Eve asked after a minute.
«See that stump at the edge of the meadow, right in front of that big spruce?»
Eve looked. «Yes.»
«You get close enough and you’ll see ax marks.»
«Indians?» she asked.
«Spaniards.»
«How can you be sure?»
«Steel ax marks, not stone.»
«Indians have steel axes,» Eve said.
«Not when that tree was chopped down.»
«How can you tell?»
Reno lowered the spyglass and gave his attention to Eve. He had come to enjoy her curiosity and quick mind as much as he did her feline grace.
«That big spruce has roots that were shaped around the fallen log that came off that stump,» Reno said. «Since the spruce has been there a long time, the log must have been there, too.»
«Why would someone go to all the trouble of chopping down a tree and not take it?»
«Probably they were forced to leave by weather or Indians or news that the Spanish king had double-crossed the Jesuits and they could look forward to going home in chains.» He shrugged. «Or maybe they only wanted the top of the tree to use as thatching or to make a chicken ladder for the mine.»
Eve frowned. «What’s a chicken ladder?»
«If I could find the damned mine, I’d probably be able to show you one,» muttered Reno, putting the spyglass to work again.
«If you stopped looking over our back trail, maybe you’d find the mine,» she said dryly.
With an impatient movement, Reno collapsed the spyglass and straightened in the saddle.
«There’s nobody there,» he said.
«I think you’d be happy about that.»
«I’d be a lot happier if I knew where they were.»
«At least they can’t be preparing an ambush up ahead,» Eve pointed out. «There’s only one way into this valley.»
«Which means there’s only one way out.»