The immediate objections that came to Janna's lips were overridden by Mad Jack, who didn't stop speaking even while he pushed a chunk of tobacco into his mouth and started chewing with gusto.
"Now you just listen to me, gal. Territory's gettin' too damn crowded. One of these days the wrong man's going to cut your trail, the kind of man what don't care about sweet talkin' or protecting or any damn thing but his own pleasure. And I don't mean just renegades, neither. Some of them pony soldiers is as bad as Injuns, an' the scum selling rifles to Cascabel is no better than him."
Mad Jack looked at Janna as she worked gracefully over the fire, every line of her body proclaiming both her femininity and her unwillingness to listen to his advice.
"It's gettin' too damn dangerous out here for any woman a'tall, even one wearing men's clothes. You be too good a woman to go to waste out here alone."
"I've done fine for five years."
He snorted. "Fine, huh? Look at you, thin as a mare nursing two foals. You want to get a man, you gotta put meat on them bones."
"My mother wasn't built like a butter chum," Janna muttered. "Papa didn't mind one bit."
And neither had Ty, if his reaction to the drawing were any guide.
Mad Jack cursed under his breath and tried another tack. "Don't you get lonesome chasing mustangs and living so small you barely cast a shadow?"
"Do you?" Janna countered.
"Hell, I'm different. I'm a man and you ain't, never mind the clothes you wear. Don't you want a man of your own an' kids to pester you?"
Janna didn't answer, because the answer was too painful. Until she had found Ty, she hadn't really understood what life had to offer. Then she had met him-and now she knew the meaning of the word lonely.
"The mustangs are all I have," she said.
"And they're all you'll ever have if'n you don't leave."
"If I leave, I'll have nothing," Janna said matter-of-factly. "I'm not the kind of woman to catch a man's eye. Ty has made that real plain, and he's the 'stud hoss' who should know." She shrugged, concealing her unhappiness. "I'd rather live with mustangs than cook at a boardinghouse where men grab at me when they think nobody's looking."
"But-"
"I'm staying, and that's that."
Chapter Nine
The Tub's slick-walled pool was far enough from its hot-spring source to have lost the scalding edge of its temperature and nearly all of its sulfurous smell. The water was a clear, pale blue that steamed gently in the cool hours of night and gleamed invitingly all the time. Though safe to drink, the water was too hot for plants to grow in it. Nothing but sand and stone ringed the pool. The high mineral content of the water had decorated the rock it touched with a smooth, creamy-yellow veneer of deposits that had rounded off all the rough edges of the native stone, making a hard but nonetheless comfortable place for Ty to soak out the last legacy of Cascabel's cruel gauntlet.
Usually Ty enjoyed the soothing heat of the pool, but not today. Today he simmered from more than the temperature of the water. Knowing that "the boy" was a girl made him want to turn Janna over his knee and paddle her until she learned some manners. When he thought how she had let him run around wearing nothing more than a few rags of blanket…
A flush spread beneath the dark hair on Ty's chest and face. The realization that he was embarrassed infuriated him. It was hardly a case of his never having been nearly or even completely naked around a woman; of all the MacKenzie brothers, Ty had been the one who had caught women's eye from the time he was old enough to shave. What bothered Ty was that he must have shocked Janna more than once. The thought of a girl of her tender years being subjected repeatedly to a full-grown man's nakedness made Ty very uncomfortable.
She must have been dying of embarrassment, but she never let on. She just kept on washing me when I was delirious and putting medicine all over me and reading to me while I teased her in a way I never would have teased a girl. A woman, maybe, but not a girl. Why, she can't be much more than… Abruptly Ty sat up straight on the stone ledge, sending water cascading off his body. Just how old is she? And how innocent?
Ty remembered the look of desire he had once seen in Janna's eyes. Instantly he squelched the thought. He was nearly thirty. He had no damned business even looking at a thirteen-year-old, no matter how soft her cheeks were or how her gray eyes warmed while she looked at him when she thought he wouldn't notice. Besides, boy or girl, at thirteen a case of hero worship was still a case of hero worship.
If she was, indeed, thirteen.
She can't be much older than that. I may be blind but I'm not dead. If she had breasts, I'd have noticed. Or hips, for that matter. Even under those flapping, flopping, ridiculous clothes, I'd have noticed… wouldn't I?
Hell, yes, of course I would have.
The reassuring thought made Ty settle back into the pool. A kid was still a kid, no matter what the sex. As for his own body's urgent woman-hunger, that was just a sign of his returned health. It had nothing to do with a gray-eyed waif whose delicate hands had touched nearly every aching inch of his body.
But it was the aching inches she hadn't touched that were driving him crazy.
"Dammit!" Ty exploded, coming out of the water with a lunge.
He stood dripping on the stone rim of the pool, furious with himself and the world in general, and with one Janna Wayland in particular. Viciously he scrubbed his breech-cloth on the rocks, wrung it out and put it on, concealing the rigid evidence of his hunger.
Then he turned around and got right back into the Tub again. This time he remembered the bar of camp soap that Janna always left in a nearby niche. Cursing steadily, he began washing himself from head to newly healed feet. When he was finished he rinsed thoroughly, adjusted the uncomfortably tight breechcloth once more and stalked back to camp.
Janna was calmly tying twists of greenery to branches she had laid between two tall forked sticks. The stems of the plants turned slowly in the sun and wind as the leaves gave up their moisture. In a week or two the herbs would be ready to store whole or to crumble and pound into a powder from which she would make lotions, pastes, potions and other varieties of medicine.
"How do your feet feel?" Janna asked without looking up from her work.
"Like feet. Where's Mad Jack?"
"Gone."
"What?"
"He was worried when he didn't find me in any of the usual places, so-"
"Where are the usual places?" Ty interrupted.
"Wherever Lucifer's herd is. Once Jack found out I was all right, he went back."
"To where?"
"Wherever his mine is."
Ty reached to readjust the breechcloth again, remembered that Janna wasn't a boy and snatched back his hands, cursing.
"Do you think that zebra dun of yours would take me to Sweetwater?"
"I don't know. She likes you well enough, but she doesn't like towns at all."
"You two make a fine pair," Ty muttered, combing through his wet hair with long fingers.
"Catch."
Reflexively Ty's hand flashed out and grabbed the small leather poke Janna had pulled from her baggy pants pocket.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Mad Jack's gold. You'll need it when you get to town. Or were you planning to work off whatever you buy?"
"I can't take gold from a thirteen-year-old girl."
Janna looked up briefly before she went back to arranging herbs for drying. "You aren't."
"What?"
"You aren't taking gold from a thirteen-year-old. I'm nineteen. I only told you I was thirteen so that you wouldn't suspect I was a woman."