While Ty talked he began to shift his weight off the stallion's muzzle a bit at a time until very little was left to hold the horse down.
"Ready to try getting up again? Slowly, son, slowly. Real nice and gentle. You lunge around this little gully and you're going to hurt both of us."
Once Lucifer realized that his head was free, he rolled off his side and got his feet underneath him. He quickly learned that the same man who could pin his muzzle to the ground could also help getting him to his feet with a few judicious pulls on the halter rope. Very shortly the stallion was standing again, unblindfolded and trembling all over at the strangeness of being close to a man.
"I was right. You're as smart as you are handsome. It's a shame you ran loose so long. You would have been a fine partner for a man, but after all these years I doubt you'd accept a rider. But that's all right, son," Ty said, slowly coiling the rawhide lead rope until he was right next to Lucifer's head. "I don't need to strut and show off how grand I am by breaking you. There are a thousand horses I can ride, but you're the only one I want covering my mares."
The words meant nothing to the stallion, but Ty's calm voice and gentle, confident hands did. Lucifer gave a long snort and stopped rolling his eyes and flinching at every touch. Slowly he was accepting the fact that although man in general had been his enemy in the past, this particular man was different. Lucifer had been pinned and blinded and helpless, but the man hadn't attacked him. Obviously he wasn't going to, either.
As the stallion slowly relaxed, Ty let out a long, quiet breath. "You're going to make it easy on both of us, aren't you? I'm sure glad that bullet and a few miles of running took the starch out of you. I've got a feeling you wouldn't have been nearly so civilized about this if I'd caught you fresh. But then, if you'd been fresh, we'd never have caught you, would we? The Lord works in strange ways, Lucifer. I'm glad He saw fit to give you to us, if only for long enough to heal you and set you free."
Ty stood and praised the stallion for a long time, until at last the horse let wariness slide away and weariness claim his big body. With a huge sigh, Lucifer allowed his head to drop until it all but rested against Ty's chest. Standing three-legged, favoring his injured hip, the stallion took no more notice of Ty than if he had been a foal.
Slowly Ty bent until he could release the hobbles on Lucifer's front legs. The stallion's shoulder muscles flinched and rippled as though shaking off flies, but that was all the notice he took of being free.
"That's real good, son," Ty murmured, stroking the stallion's black hide. "Now let's see if you're going to try to kill me the first time I tug on that hackamore."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
As Ty slowly tightened the lead rope, Janna watched with breath held and her hands so tightly clenched around the spyglass that her fingers ached.
"Be good, Lucifer," she prayed. "Don't go crazy and hurt Ty when that hackamore gets tight."
Lucifer's head came up sharply when the hackamore began to exert pressure behind his ears and across his upper neck. He snorted and shook his head, but the gradually increasing pressure didn't diminish. Trembling, sweating nervously, ears swiveling forward and then away from the man's gentle voice, the stallion tried to understand what was happening, how to meet the new threat. When he attempted to back away from the pressure, it got sharply worse. When he stood still, it got slowly worse.
But when he limped forward, the pressure lifted.
"That's it," Ty murmured, slacking off on the lead rope immediately. He petted Lucifer, praising the horse with voice and hands. "Let's try a few more steps, son. We've got a long way to go before we're safe."
It didn't take Lucifer more than a few minutes to understand that a pressure urging him forward meant walk forward and a pressure across the bridge of his nose meant stop.
"You're not an outlaw at all, are you?" Ty asked softly, stroking the horse's powerful, sweaty neck. "Men have chased you, but thank God no man ever had a chance to ruin you with rough handling."
Lucifer flicked his ears as he followed the calm sounds of Ty's voice while the man backed up, paying out lead rope as he went.
"All right, son. It's time to get you out of this hole." Slowly Ty tightened the lead rope. "Come on. That's it…that's it. One step at a time, that's all." His mouth flattened as he saw the stallion's painful progress. "That hip sure is sore, isn't it?" Ty said in a low voice. "Well, son, it's going to get worse before it gets better, I'm afraid. But you'll live, God willing."
Ty coaxed the limping stallion along the bottom of the ravine until they came to a place he had spotted from the ridge above, a place where the sides of the gully were less steep. Ty climbed halfway out, turned and began applying a steady pressure on the lead rope once more.
"Up you go. It will be easier to walk once you're on sort of level land again. Come on… come on… don't go all mulish on me now, son. It's not as steep as it looks."
Lucifer disliked the idea of climbing the gully, but he disliked the slowly tightening vise of the hackamore even more. Suddenly he lunged forward, taking the side of the ravine in a hurtling rush. Ty leaped aside just in time to avoid being trampled and scrambled up the slope after the stallion. Once on top, Lucifer came to a stop and stood three-legged, trembling from nervousness and pain.
Janna left her lookout place on the ridge and ran down to meet Ty, slowing to a walk for the last few yards so as not to frighten Lucifer.
"No one in sight," she said quietly.
"All right." Ty lifted his hat, wiped his forehead and resettled the hat with a hard tug. "How's your arm?"
Surprised that Ty had noticW, Janna hesitated and then shrugged. "Better than Lucifer's haunch."
"Hand over your pack."
She tried not to wince as he helped her out of the rawhide straps, but she couldn't Conceal her left arm's growing soreness. With gentle fingertips he traced the dark bruise where one of Lucifer's hooves had struck a glancing blow.
"Any numbness?" Ty asked.
She shook her head.
"All your fingers work?"
Silently she wiggled each of them in turn.
"Can you scout for us?" Ty asked, releasing her arm, caressing her all the way to her fingertips.
Suddenly breathless, Janna nodded.
"Cat got your tongue?"
She smiled and stuck her tongue out at Ty.
"Is that a promise?" he drawled. He smiled and touched her lips with his fingertip. "Stick it out again, sugar."
"I don't think-"
That was as far as Janna got before Ty bent and took what she had promised to him a moment before. Surprise stiffened Janna for an instant before she sighed and invited Ty into the softness and warmth of her mouth. Almost shyly she touched his tongue with her own, retreated, then returned to touch fleetingly again and again, until there was no more retreat, just two mouths in a seething, seamless mating.
When Ty finally lifted his head he was breathing too hard, but he was smiling.
"It occurred to me when that stallion was doing his best to trample me into the dirt," Ty said, "that a man shouldn't die without tasting a woman on his lips. You taste good, like Christmas and Thanksgiving and my birthday all rolled into one. And if you don't turn around and get busy scouting, I'm going to be walking bent over double and in damn near as much pain as Lucifer."
Janna smiled up at Ty, showing him the same near shyness with which she had begun their kiss. His eyelids lowered and desire changed his expression, making it both harder and more sensual. For an instant she thought that he was going to kiss her again, and she longed for it. Then he reached out, turned her around and swatted her lightly on the rear. She would have said something about the trail she was going to take to the east, but the swat had ended with Ty's hand tracing the curve of her buttocks with loving care and suddenly she found herself breathless and aching.