Ty laughed. "That's why I'm going to build my fortune first. I'd never ask a true lady to live in a dirt-floored shack and ruin her soft hands on scrub brushes and the like."
Janna looked at her hands. While not rough, they weren't exactly silky, either. "Soft isn't everything."
Ty shook his head, seeing only his dream. "It is in a woman. I'll have my silken lady or I'll have none at all for longer than it takes to pleasure myself."
The words sliced into Janna like knives, wounding her. The pain she felt shocked her, and the rage, and the sense of… betrayal.
"What makes you think that a silken woman would have a man like you?" Janna asked coolly.
Ty smiled to himself. "Women kind of take to me, especially when I'm cleaned up a bit."
"Huh," she sniffed. "I don't think there's enough cleaning time between now and Christmas to make any fancy woman look at you twice."
Before Ty could say anything, Zebra whinnied in alarm. Even as he turned toward the sound, Ty yanked Janna to the ground and pulled out the hunting knife he wore at his waist. An instant later his big body half covered hers, pinning her against the earth.
"Don't move," Ty breathed against Janna's ear, his voice a mere thread of sound.
Janna nodded slightly. She felt Ty's weight shift as he rolled aside. There was a flash of tanned skin in the tall grass, a suggestion of movement in the streamside willows, and then nothing more. Ty had vanished. A shiver went over Janna as she realized how very quick Ty was now that he was well, and how powerful. She thought of wiggling backward until she was in better cover, then discarded the idea. Ty would expect her to be where he had left her-and he would attack anything that moved anywhere else. That thought was enough to rivet her in place.
The willows slid soundlessly past Ty's nearly naked body as he eased through the streamside thickets. The creek was no more than a few feet wide and still slightly warm from its birth in a hot springs back at the head of the small valley, a place where lava and red rock and lush greenery entwined in a steamy Eden whose water contained a sulfurous whiff of hell.
Nothing moved in the willows around Ty, nor was there any sound of birds. The silence was a warning in itself. Normally small birds darted and sang in the valley, enjoying the rare presence of water in a dry land. If the wildlife were quiet, it meant that an intruder was nearby.
Fifty yards away, belly-deep in grass, Zebra snorted. The sound was followed by a drumroll of hooves as the mare fled. The mustang's flight told Ty that the intruder was either a cougar or a man. Nothing else would have sent the horse racing away in fear. Without disturbing the thick screen of willow branches, Ty looked out into the valley. Zebra was standing seventy yards away with every muscle quivering and poised for flight. Her head was high and her black ears were pricked forward. She was looking at something that was well downstream from Ty.
Something just came out of the slot. Which direction is the intruder going, girl? Is he going for the hot springs at the north end or the Indian ruins at the south end?
Motionless, Ty watched the mate, knowing that she would track the intruder better than he ever would have been able to with mere human senses. Zebra kept her head and ears up, watching something that he couldn't see. Slowly her head turned toward Ty.
All right. The intruder is corning toward me.
Mentally Ty reviewed the small, irregularly shaped valley. Barely more than a mile long, never more than a quarter of a mile wide, the valley was walled in by red sandstone on one side and black lava on the other. The hot springs at the north end fed the small stream. Other watercourses joined the stream at various points of the valley, but they held water only after heavy rains, when cliffs wore lacy waterfalls that were as beautiful as they were short-lived.
Ty decided that the best point for an ambush was right where he was. A very faint trail wound between the edge of the willows and the ancient lava flow that all but cut the valley in two. Anything trying to reach the head of the valley would be forced to walk between the willow thicket and the cliff. All Ty had to do was be very still and watch what passed within reach.
Motionless, poised for attack, Ty waited as he had waited too many times before.
Wish Logan were here. A man's unprotected back gets real itchy at times like this.
But Logan was in Wyoming with Silver. As for his other brothers, the last Ty had heard, both Case and Duncan were looking for gold with Blue Wolf, trying to repair the MacKenzie family fortunes and make a future for themselves. At least, that's what Duncan was doing. No one but God-more likely, the devil-knew what went on in Case's mind. Fighting in the war had closed Ty's youngest brother up tighter than bark on a tree.
A few minutes later Ty heard the faint sounds of a man's progress through the tall grass. When the sounds passed the willows where Ty hid, he came out in a silent rush. One arm hooked around the intruder's neck from behind as the knife sliced upward in a lethal arc.
At the last instant Ty realized that the man was old and unarmed. He pulled the knife aside.
"Who are you?" Ty asked quietly, holding the blade across the man's throat.
"John Turner. And I'm right glad you ain't an Injun or a bandit. I'd be dead by now."
Ty didn't bother to make welcoming sounds. "Walk ahead of me toward that red cliff. Don't hesitate or turn around. If you make a wrong move I'll kill you."
Chapter Eight
Ty followed close behind the intruder, but not so close that a sudden turn and lunge would have caught him off guard. A few minutes later they walked up to the edge of Janna's hidden camp.
"All right, kid. Come on out," Ty said.
Janna stood up. "How many times do I have to tell you that my name isn't kid, it's-oh, hello, Jack. Did you run out of stomach medicine already?"
The old man didn't answer, because Ty's knife was resting once more against his throat.
"You told me your name was John Turner," Ty said.
"'Tis, but most folks call me Mad Jack."
Ty looked over at Janna.
She nodded. "It's all right, Ty. Jack was Papa's friend."
Ty lowered the knife. Mad Jack turned and spat a thin stream of brown liquid toward a nearby bush.
"Her pa staked me. We was partners," Mad Jack said, shifting the cud of tobacco to the other side of his mouth. "He cashed in his chips a few years back, but I ain't done with the game yet." He looked at Janna. "Brung you some more gold, but you wasn't in any of the old places."
"It wasn't safe anymore. Cascabel's new camp was too close."
"Yeah, than pony soldiers have made that old rattlesnake's life pure hell this summer." Mad Jack shucked off his backpack, untied a flap and pulled out a fat leather bag that fit in his hand. "Figured you'd need to lay in some winter supplies. From the size of your young buck, I shoulda brung two pokes of gold."
"How has your stomach been?" Janna asked hurriedly, wanting to get off the subject of her "young buck."
"Middlin'," Mad Jack said, shifting the wad of tobacco again. "How 'bout you, Janna? You be all right? You come early to your winter-over place."
"Ty was injured," Janna said. She glanced briefly at him and prayed without much hope that he would ignore the difference between the names Janna and Jan. "He ran Cascabel's gauntlet and got away."
Mad Jack turned and looked at Ty as though for the first time. "So you're the one, huh?" The old man's chuckle was a dry, rustling sound. "Made Cascabel the laughingstock of the Utes. Black Hawk ever finds you, he'll like as not give you a medal 'fore he lifts your hair. How'd you hitch up with Janna?"
The second time Ty heard the name Janna, he knew it hadn't been a slip of the old prospector's tongue. Ty turned and looked at the "boy" with narrowed green eyes. After an instant the "boy" began to study the ground as though it were alive and likely to start nibbling on toes at any instant.