But first she had to get the bullets into the chambers.
Four hundred feet away and to the right of Ty, a thrown pebble bounced harshly on the hard ground. Knowing it was a feint, Ty fired in that direction anyway, then turned quickly toward the position of the first attacker.
Come and get it, he urged silently.
As Ty had hoped, the first renegade assumed he was facing an enemy armed with a single-shot rifle. The Indian broke cover and stood up, striving for a clean shot before his prey could reload or find better cover. Smoke puffed from Ty's carbine and the renegade died before he could even realize what had gone wrong. Ty levered another bullet into the firing chamber even as he whipped around to confront the second renegade, who had had time to reload and was taking aim.
Ty threw himself to the side, spoiling both his own shot and the renegade's. Ty's second and third shots were dead on target. He rolled to a new position of cover and waited. No more shots came. Either the other renegades hadn't had time to take position yet or the speed with which Ty could "reload" and fire his carbine had made them cautious.
"Janna," called Ty. "Are you all right?"
"Yes." Her voice was oddly thinned but strong.
"Tell me when you've reloaded."
Swearing shockingly, Janna worked at the unfamiliar task of putting cold, slippery bullets into the warm cylinder. She dropped two bullets before she managed to get all six chambers full. Cocking the revolver, she looked out over the land once more. "Ready," she called. "I'm coming in from your right." "Go!"
An instant later Ty was on his feet and running toward the slot, dodging and turning every few seconds, doing everything he could to spoil a hunter's aim. Janna's gray eyes scanned the countryside to the left of the slot, alert for any sign of movement. At the edge of her side vision she watched Ty's long-legged stride eat up the distance between himself and safety. Only twenty yards to cover. Then ten, then-There was no time to warn Ty, no time to aim, no time to do anything but fire at almost point-blank range as a renegade sprang from cover just outside the cleft and came at Janna with a knife. Her first shot was wild. Her second shot hit the renegade's shoulder a glancing blow, knocking him backward. The third and fourth shots were Ty's. No more were needed.
"Get back," Ty said harshly, dragging Janna farther inside the cleft. "There are three more out there and God knows how many will come in at the sound of the shots."
Breathing hard, Ty shrugged out of his backpack and took up a position just inside the slot. He began refilling the carbine with quick, sure motions. As he worked he looked up every few instants to scan the landscape. What he saw made him swear tonelessly. There was a distant swirl of dust, which was probably a rider going off for reinforcements. One of the remaining renegades was taking up a position that would cover the mouth of the cleft.
The second Indian wasn't in sight, but he was within rifle range, as a screaming, whining, ricocheting bullet proved. Rock chips exploded, showering Ty with dust and stinging shards.
"Get farther back," he yelled as he blinked his eyes and took aim.
Ty fired several times at the most likely patches of cover from which the renegade might be shooting. Then he lowered his carbine and waited. A few moments later another shot whined past. This time he saw where it had come from. He answered instantly with closely spaced shots, sending bullets raking through the cover. There was a startled yell, then silence. Methodically Ty shoved bullets into the carbine's magazine, replacing those he had spent.
No more shots came.
"Janna?"
"I'm back here," she said.
The odd acoustics of the canyon made her sound close, though she was thirty feet away.
"We're going to have to get out on foot and try to steal horses from the Indians," Ty said.
Janna had arrived at the same conclusion. Getting Lucifer and Zebra out without being spotted by the Indians would be impossible.
"There's no moon tonight," Ty continued without looking away from the bit of cover where the Indian had hidden. "We'll go out an hour after full dark. Try to get some sleep until then."
"What about you?"
"I'll guard the entrance."
"But the ricochets-"
"If I get out of range of a ricochet," Ty interrupted impatiently, "I won't be able to see the mouth of the slot to guard it." Ty's expression softened for a moment when he looked at Janna. "Don't look so worried, sugar. He doesn't have a very good angle from where he is. I'll be all right."
Ibrning back to the slot, Ty fired six times in rapid succession, stitching bullets on either side of the place where the renegade had taken cover, forcing anyone who might still be in range to get down and stay down. Janna hesitated, then went quickly to Ty. She threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. He returned the embrace with a strength and a yearning that made tears burn against J anna's eyelids. In tones too soft for him to hear, she whispered her love against his neck before she turned away and retreated toward the meadow.
But Ty had heard Janna's words. For an instant he closed his eyes and felt the exquisite pain of having been given a gift he didn't deserve.
With automatic motions Ty propped his backpack against a stone, sat on his heels and loaded the carbine to full capacity once more. The angle of the shadows on the canyon walls told him that he had several hours to wait until sunset came, much less full dark.
Leaning against the wall, carbine at the ready, Ty tried to convince himself that when dawn came he and Janna would still be alive.
Chapter Forty
The meadow's sunlight seemed blinding after the cool, dim passage into the secret valley. Janna stood on the edge of the opening and sent a hawk's wild cry into the still air. A second call brought Zebra at a trot, her head high, her ears pricked. Lucifer followed after the mare, for the two horses had become inseparable during the weeks when the stallion was healing.
Janna mounted Zebra quickly and turned the mare toward the ancient ruins where Mad Jack had hidden his gold. She had never pried into the old prospector's secrets before-but then, she had never been trapped in a stone bottle before, either.
"Jack must have had a way in and out of this valley without coming through the slot," Janna said aloud to Zebra, "because I never saw a mark in that creek bed. If he had been coming and going from my end of the valley, I'd have heard him or you would have or Lucifer would have."
Zebra flicked her ears back and forth, enjoying the sound of Janna's voice.
"But you didn't hear Jack, and that old man was too weak to carry more than a few pounds of gold at a time, which means there was a lot of coming and going before those saddlebags were full. He had to have left some kind of trail, somewhere. He just had to."
And Janna had until dark to find it.
She urged Zebra into a canter, watching the rocky walls and lava flows, probing light and shadow for any sign of a faint trail. The valley narrowed in at the south end, where the ruins were. Beyond ascertaining that there was a clear spring welling up at the base of the ramparts that were just before the ruins, Janna had never really explored this part of the valley. The ruins were eerie by daylight and unsettling by night. She much preferred the clean reach of the stone overhang at the opposite end of the valley to the cramped and broken rooms of a people long dead.
But Janna wasn't looking for a campsite now, or even for temporary shelter. She was looking for the ancient trails that the vanished Indians must have left if they came and went from their home by any route other than the dark cleft. It was possible that the Indians might have built their fortress in a blind valley with only one exit, but Janna doubted it. A tribe that took so much trouble to hide its home was a cautious people, and cautious people knew that the only difference between a fortress and a trap was a bolt hole.