Chapter Twenty-Six
"Easy now, boy. Easy… easy."
The ceaseless murmur of Janna's soft voice and the gentle pressure of her hands finally penetrated the stallion's pain and panic. With a long, groaning sigh, Lucifer stopped fighting. Janna rewarded him by shifting her knee from his muzzle to the ground, praising him with a flow of sentences and nonsense sounds, knowing that it was her voice rather than the meaning of her words that reached past the horse's fear.
Very slowly Janna slid her other knee from Lucifer's neck, leaving him able to lift his head, which was the first thing a horse did before it came to its feet. Lucifer made no attempt to take advantage of his freedom in order to stand up. As Janna had hoped, the blindfold held him more quietly and more surely than any rope could have. Even so, she reluctantly bound his left hind foot to his right foreleg. When she began cleaning and treating the bullet wound on his left rear leg, she didn't want him to lash out at the pain. She was already bruised enough as it was. A broken bone wouldn't do either of them any good.
Ignoring her own pain, Janna kept one hand constantly on Lucifer's head, talking incessantly and softly, letting him know where she was. When his ears were no longer flattened against his head, Janna leaned over and snaked her own makeshift backpack to a place within easy reach. While she sorted one-handed through her herbs and salves, she told herself that Ty was all right, that the shots had been from Troon or the renegades, not from Ty's carbine, that he and she were safe even though they were separate.
"God, please let him be safe," Janna prayed softly, stroking the powerful, lathered neck of the stallion.
Though Lucifer was no longer fighting her, he groaned with each heaving breath he took, for the cloth muzzle restricted his breathing. In the silence, the sound of the horse's labored breaths were like thunder. After a few minutes Janna opened her pocketknife and cut the cloth free, allowing the stallion to open his mouth and nostrils fully. Immediately his breathing eased.
"You weren't going to bite me anyway, were you?" Janna murmured, stroking Lucifer's nose.
The stallion's ears flicked but didn't flatten against his head. He was too tired, too weak or simply not fearful enough to attack Janna.
Wondering if anyone had been attracted by the stallion's labored breathing, Janna glanced anxiously up and down the crease in the earth that was their only hiding place. She heard no one approaching. Nor did she see any movement along the ravine's rim.
It was just as well, for there was no way to hide from anyone. The brush through which Lucifer had fallen had been bruised and broken beyond all hope of concealment from any trackers. Nor was there any real cover within the ravine itself. Janna had no illusions about what her chances of escape would be if the renegades found her in the bottom of the ravine with the wounded, blindfolded stallion.
After a last look at the rim of the ravine, Janna pulled out Ty's big pistol, rotated the cylinder off the empty chamber and cocked the hammer so that all it would take was a quick pull on the trigger to fire the gun. Very carefully she laid the weapon out of the way yet Within easy reach. Then she turned back to Lucifer.
"This is going to hurt," Janna said in a low, calm voice, "but you're going to be a gentleman about it, aren't you?"
She wet the last torn piece of her shirt with water from her canteen and went to work cleaning the long furrow Troon's bullet had left on Lucifer's haunch. The blindfolded stallion shuddered and his ears flattened, but he made no attempt to turn and bite Janna while she worked over him. She praised the horse in soothing tones that revealed neither her own pain from her bruises nor her growing fear that Ty hadn't been able to evade the renegades.
Lucifer flinched and made a high, involuntary sound as Janna cleaned a part of the wound that had picked up dirt in his slide down into the ravine.
"Easy, boy, easy… yes, I know it hurts, but you won't heal right without help. That's it…that's it…gently…just lie still and let me help you."
The low, husky voice and endless ripple of words mesmerized Lucifer. His ears flicked and swiveled, following Janna's voice when she turned from her backpack to the wound on his haunch.
"I think it looks a lot worse than it is," Janna murmured as she rinsed out her rag and poured more water into its folds. "It's deep and it bled a lot, but the bullet didn't sever any tendons or muscles. You're going to be sore and grouchy as a boiled cat for a while, and you'll limp for a time and you'll have a scar on your pretty black hide forever, but you'll heal clean and sound. In a few weeks you'll be up and running after your mares.
"And you'll have a lot of running to do, won't you? Those mares will be scattered from hell to breakfast, as Papa would have said. I'll bet that chestnut stud you ran off last year is stealing your mares as fast as he finds them."
Lucifer flicked his ears, sucked in a long breath through his flaring nostrils and blew out, then took in another great breath.
"Easy now, boy. Easy…easy… I know it hurts but there's no help for it."
Janna reached for her backpack again and winced. Her left arm was beginning to stiffen. By the time she was finished doctoring Lucifer, she'd have to start in on herself. With only one hand, it was going to be difficult.
Ty, where are you? Are you all right? Did you get away? Are you lying wounded and-
"Don't think about it!" Janna said aloud, her voice so savage that Lucifer, startled, tossed his head.
"Easy, boy," she murmured, immediately adjusting her voice to be soothing once more. "There's nothing to worry about. Ty is quick and strong and smart. If he got away from Cascabel he can get away from a bunch of hurrahing renegades who were looking for a man on horseback, not one on foot. Besides, I'll never get a better chance to tame you," she said, stroking the mustang's barrel, where lather was slowly drying. "If you accept me, you'll accept Ty, and then he'll have a start on his dream, a fine stallion to found a herd that will bring money enough to buy a lady of silk and softness."
Janna's mouth turned down in an unhappy line, but her hand continued its gentle motions and her voice remained soothing.
''Anyway, boy, if I leave you and go looking for a man who is probably quite safe, who will take care of you in three days or four, when your wound gets infected and you get so weak you can hardly stand?"
Lucifer's head came up suddenly and his ears pricked forward so tightly that they almost touched at the tips. His nostrils flared widely as he took in quantities of air and sifted it for the scent of danger.
Watching him closely, Janna reached for the pistol. Being blindfolded was no particular handicap for the stallion when it came to recognizing danger-a horse's ears and sense of smell were far superior to his eyes. But when it came to dealing with danger, a blind horse was all but helpless.
Janna looked in the direction that Lucifer's ears were pointing. All she saw was the steep side of the gully and the brushy slope rising to the ridge top beyond. She hesitated, trying to decide whether it would be less dangerous to crawl up out of the ravine and look around or to simply lie low and hope that whatever Lucifer sensed wouldn't sense them in return.
Before she could make up her mind, Janna heard what was attracting the horse's attention. There was a faint chorus of yips and howls and cries followed by the distant thunder of galloping horses and the crack of rifle fire. The sounds became louder as the renegades galloped closer to the ravine. For a few horrible minutes Janna was certain that the renegades were going to race straight up the slope above the ravine-and then she and Lucifer would be utterly exposed, with no place to hide and no way to flee.
The sounds peaked and slowly died as the Indians galloped off to the northwest, where Cascabel had his camp.