"The tracks were left within the past few hours," Ty said.
"So was the blood."
Janna sensed rather than saw Ty's head jerk toward her. Within seconds he was squatting on his heels next to her, rubbing a bit of the dark, thumbnail-size spot between his fingers. He stared at the results and cursed the man who hadn't drunk enough to miss entirely.
"I'll bet it happened just after dawn," Ty said.
"We heard more than one shot."
Ty grunted. "There's more than one renegade riding around here looking for trouble. Maybe one of them found Joe Troon."
Ty rubbed his hand clean on his pants and stood. The idea of the magnificent stallion slowly bleeding to death made him sick. But before they followed Lucifer's trail, they had to know if it were Joe Troon or a renegade party they were likely to run into.
"I'm going to cast around back toward the meadow and see if I can find what spooked Lucifer," Ty said. "You follow his tracks. I'll follow you. If you lose the trail, stay put until I catch up." He looked into her clear eyes. "Do you want the carbine?"
She shook her head. "Keep it. I haven't shot a long gun in years. Snares or a bow and arrow are much more quiet for hunting game."
"At least take my pistol."
Janna hesitated, then gave in. She wouldn't do either Ty or herself much good if she stumbled across renegades and all she had to throw at them was a handful of pine needles.
Frowning uneasily, Ty watched Janna push his big revolver behind her belt. He knew it was irrational of him not to want to leave her alone-after all, she had survived for years on her own in this very country-but he still didn't like it.
"You're coming with me," he said without warning.
Startled, she looked up. "Why?"
"My backbone is itchy as all hell, that's why, and I'm a man who listens to my instincts."
"Lucifer's bleeding. If I hurry-"
"A few minutes more or less won't make much difference," Ty interrupted. "Besides, there's no way we can be sure that it was a bullet that hurt him. Could have been a sharp branch he shied into. Could have been another horse. I've seen him fight more than one eager stud and they both walked away dripping blood." Ty turned back toward the meadow. "Hurry up. We're wasting time talking when we could be tracking."
Mouth open, Janna watched Ty trot off along the game trail, covering ground at a good clip while looking for signs of other horses or other men. If he noticed that she wasn't following, he gave no indication of it.
Without a word Janna turned and began running in a different direction, following the trail Lucifer had left during his panicked flight away from the meadow.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Head down, his attention focused on the wild horse trail, Ty trotted rapidly through the forest toward the meadow. Tracks and signs abounded, but he could see without slowing that nothing was less than a few days old. He was looking for much fresher marks.
He found them less than two hundred feet from the meadow itself.
The empty rye bottle glittered on top of the pine needles. The bottle hadn't been there long, for when Ty picked it up and sniffed, the smell of alcohol was strong in his nostrils. Nearby was a tree stained with urine from chest high to the ground. There were hoof tracks left by a shod horse next to the tree.
From that point the trail was easy to reconstruct. Troon- for Ty was certain that the empty bottle had belonged to Joe Troon rather than to a solitary Indian-had been relieving himself from the saddle when something had surprised him.
"I'll bet he was hot on Lucifer's trail and had to piss so bad that his back teeth were floating," Ty said very softly, believing that Janna was right behind. "So there he was, still in the saddle and pissing up a storm when he saw Lucifer through the trees, dropped everything and grabbed for his rifle. Lord, what a mess that must have been."
When Janna made no comment, Ty turned and looked at his own trail. Janna was nowhere in sight.
The uneasiness that had been riding Ty crystallized in an instant of stabbing fear. He ignored his first impulse, which was to backtrack along his own trail until he found Janna. That would take too long, for he had come nearly half a mile. Obviously Troon's trail and Lucifer's crossed somewhere ahead. If Ty followed one and Janna followed the other, they would meet much quicker than if he retraced his own tracks and then hers, as well.
If both of them were really lucky, none of Cascabel's renegades would ride over to find the cause of the single rifle shot. But Ty really didn't expect that kind of luck.
Swearing savagely to himself, he began trotting along the trail left by the shod horse. Within ten yards he spotted the brass from a spent cartridge gleaming among pine needles. The shine of the metal told Ty that the cartridge hadn't been long out of a rifle barrel. He had no doubt that it was the debris of the shot that had awakened Janna and himself less than half an hour ago. He also had no doubt what the intended target had been.
You drunken, greedy swine. If you've murdered that stallion I'll roast you over a slow fire and serve you to Cascabel with an apple in your mouth.
Rifle shots split the silence, followed by the wild cries of Indian renegades hot on a human trail. Fear splintered through Ty like black lightning, for the sounds were coming from ahead and off to his right, where Troon's trail was going, where Lucifer would have gone if he had followed a straight course through the forest-and where Janna would be if she had been able to follow Lucifer's trail.
Ty had no doubt that Janna could track Lucifer anywhere the stallion could go.
Running swiftly and silently, Ty traced the twisting progress of Troon's horse through the forest. The animal had been moving at a hard gallop, a pace that was foolhardy under the conditions. Stirrups left gashes across tree trunks where the horse had zigzagged between pines. Farther down the trail low-growing limbs showed signs of recent damage. Bruised clusters of needles were scattered everywhere. A man's battered hat was tangled among the branches.
Ty had no doubt that he would find blood if he wanted to stop and check the bark on the limb that was wearing Troon's hat, but at the moment it wasn't Troon's blood that interested Ty. It was the palm-sized splotches that had suddenly appeared along with the hoofprints of a huge, unshod horse.
Lucifer.
Like the rifle cartridge, the blood hadn't been exposed to air for more than a half hour. The spots glistened darkly in the shade and were near-crimson markers in the occasional patches of sun. From their position, they could only have come from the stallion.
Breathing easily, running quietly, Ty followed the bloody trail. He knew that he should be sneaking from tree to tree in the thinning forest. He knew that at the very least he should be hunting cover in case he literally ran up on the heels of the renegades. He also knew that Janna was somewhere up ahead alone, armed with a pistol good for six shots and no spare cylinders or ammunition within reach. He didn't know how many renegades there were, but he doubted that six shots would get the job done.
Janna's too clever to be spotted by renegades. She'll go to ground and pull the hole in after her. They'll never find her.
The reassuring thought was interrupted by a flurry of rifle fire. The sounds came from ahead, but much farther to the right than Ty would have expected from the trail he was following. Either Lucifer or Troon-or both-must be hoping to escape by making a break for the steep northern edge of the plateau.
There were a few more sporadic shots and eager cries, then silence. Ty ran harder and told himself it was good that he hadn't heard any pistol shots, for that meant Janna hadn't been spotted. He refused to consider that it could also mean she had fallen in the first outbreak of shooting before she even had a chance to defend herself. He simply ran harder, carrying his carbine as though it were a pistol, finger on the trigger, ready to shoot and fire on the instant.