"You plan to use Lucifer to buy your silken lady?"
"Yes," Ty said, his voice flat inflexible. "The war took everything but my life and my dreams. I'll have that silken lady or die trying."
Janna held herself tightly, trying not to flinch against the pain she felt.
"Then you understand," she said huskily.
"What?"
"You understand why I can't live in a town as a kitchen maid or a saloon girl. I have my own dream."
There was a surprised silence while Ty digested the idea that the ragged waif had a goal beyond simple survival. "What is it?"
Shaking her head, eyes tightly closed, Janna said nothing. There was no point in telling Ty that she had begun to dream of having him turn to her and discover within her the silken lady he sought. It was a dream that would never come true and she was practical enough to know it.
But it was the most compelling dream Janna had ever had. She could no more turn away from it than she could transform herself into the lady of Ty's dreams.
Chapter Twelve
A mile outside of town, Ty shifted his weight and spoke softly to the mare. Zebra stopped obediently no more than two feet from a clump of boulders and brush.
"Get down," Ty said, handing Janna the big knife she had given him. "I'll be back as quick as I can."
"I'm going with you."
"No."
"But-"
"No!" Hearing the roughness in his own voice, Ty winced. "Janna, it isn't safe. If you're seen with me on a mustang-"
"We'll tell them you tamed her," Janna interrupted quickly.
"They'd have to be dumb as a stump to believe that," he retorted. "I'm going to have enough trouble making them believe I survived without help as it is. You know damn good and well if Cascabel finds out you were responsible for making him the laughingstock of the Utah Territory, he'll come after you until he gets you and cooks you over a slow fire."
Without another word Janna slid down from Zebra. She vanished into concealment between one breath and the next. For a moment Ty couldn't believe that she had ever been with him at all. An odd feeling shot through him, loneliness and desire combined into a yearning that was like nothing he had ever known.
"Janna?" he called softly.
Nothing answered but branches stirring beneath a rain-bearing wind. The scent of moisture reminded iy of the urgency of the situation. They had to be back at the hidden valley before the storm broke or they would spend a miserable night out in the open, unable even to have a fire to warm them for fear of giving away their presence.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, causing Zebra to throw up her head and snort. Ears pricked, nostrils flared, the horse sniffed the wind.
"Easy, girl," Ty murmured. "It's just the summer rains."
He slid from Zebra's back, landed lightly and pulled off his breechcloth. His foot wrappings came off next. After he poked the scraps of blanket into an opening between two boulders, he turned east and began working his way over the rocky surface of the land toward a wagon trail a half mile beyond. He was very careful not to leave any signs of his passage, for he had been into Sweetwater once before, riding Blackbird and armed with two pistols, a rifle and a shotgun. He had been glad for each weapon; the only thing sweet about the town was the name and the tiny spring that bubbled to the surface nearby, watering stock and men alike without regard to their individual natures.
As Ty walked toward town, he wished heartily for one of the new repeating carbines that loaded as fast as they fired. Even a pistol would have been nice. Two revolvers and extra cylinders loaded with bullets would have made him feel a lot better about going in among the canted shacks.
Though Janna seemed not to realize it, Sweetwater was an outlaw hangout, and the two ranches she bought supplies from had a reputation for branding "loose" cattle that was known from the Red River to Logan MacKenzie's ranch in Wyoming. Some of the Lazy A's and Circle G's cowhands were doubtless reasonably honest men who had been forced to make a living any way they could af ter the Civil War had ruined their farms and homes. Other cowhands on those ranches were men who would have been raiders in heaven itself, because they plain enjoyed riding roughshod over people weaker than themselves.
How the hell did Janna ever survive out here? Ty asked himself for the hundredth time as he walked quietly into the collection of ramshackle, weathered shacks that constituted one of the few towns within several hundred miles.
No answer came back to Ty but the obvious one, the uncomfortable memory of women in a war-ravaged land, women selling themselves for bread or a blanket, women who in peacetime wouldn't have dreamed of letting a man touch them outside the boundaries of love and marriage.
Is that how you survived after your father died, Janna? Did you sell yourself until you had the skill and the strength to survive alone?
Again there was no answer but the obvious one. She had survived. The thought of Janna's soft body lying beneath rutting men both sickened and angered Ty; for a woman to sell herself like that in order to survive was simply another kind of rape.
In the past, Ty had surprised more than one woman caught within the ruins of war by giving her food or shelter or blankets and taking nothing in return. He would never forget one girl's combined look of shock, relief and gratitude when he had refused her thin, bruised body as payment for a plate of beans. She had eaten quickly and then had vanished into the night as though afraid he would change his mind and take her after all.
And when Ty had finally fought his way home, he had discovered that his sister, Cassie, hadn't been so fortunate in the strange men who had crossed her path. Taken by raiders, she had been a captive until she became too ill to service the men; then she had been abandoned to die. She would have, too, if Logan and Silver hadn't caught up with her and gentled her back into sanity and health.
Ty's grim thoughts were a match for the town that he finally reached. There were no men loitering in front of Sweetwater Mercantile when Ty walked by. There were no horses tied to broken railings. No dogs slept in sun-warmed dust. The first person Ty saw was a boy who was emptying slops out the saloon's back door. The boy took one look at Ty and ducked back inside. Instants later the door creaked open again. The bartender stood with a shotgun cradled in his thick hands. A single glance took in Ty's muscular, naked body covered with healing bruises.
"Well, you be big enough and the right color," the bartender said. "Maybe you be Tyrell MacKenzie."
Ty nodded slowly.
The bartender stepped aside. "Come on in. Name's Ned. A breed by the name of Blue Wolf was looking for you 'bout two weeks back."
When he heard Blue Wolf's name, Ty almost laughed aloud. "Wondered how long it would take him to catch up with me."
"Friend of yours?"
"Yeah."
"Good thing, too. From the look of that buck, he'd make a powerful bad enemy. He's damn near as big as Cascabel and white-man smart into the bargain. Talks English better than me."
"He's a dead shot, too."
Ned grunted, reached behind the door and pulled a ragged shirt off a nail. He threw the cloth to Ty. "Wrap up and sit down."
Within moments Ty had the shirt wrapped around his hips and between his legs in a semblance of a breechcloth. He sat down, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation of a chair after months on the trail. Ned went to a sooty corner of the small room and pulled a pot off a broken-legged stove. He wiped a spoon on his britches, stuck it into the pot and shoved it in front of Ty.
"Reckon you're hungry."
Ty wasn't, but admitting that would raise too many questions, so he dug into the cold beans and ate quickly, trying not to remember how much better Janna's food had been. Cleaner, too. Living in the camp with the hot springs had spoiled him. A bath every day, clean dishes, and clean company. It would take him a long time to get used to the smell of a sty like Ned's saloon.