"Will you take the gold on Lucifer?" Janna asked after a silence. She forced her voice to be almost normal, although her palm still felt his caresses as though Ty's beard had been black flames burning through her flesh to the bone beneath.
"He's strong enough to take the gold and me both and still run rings around any other horse."
"Then you'll have to use a surcingle on him, too, either for stirrups or to hold the saddlebags in place or both."
"The thought had occurred to me," Ty said dryly. "First time he feels that strap bite into his barrel should be real interesting."
Ty shifted the gold on his shoulder again and said no more. In silence they continued toward the camp beneath the red stone overhang. Janna felt no need to speak, for the simple reason that there was little more to say. Either Lucifer would accept a rider or he wouldn't. If he didn't, the odds for survival against Cascabel were too small to be called even a long shot.
"We have to talk Mad Jack into leaving the gold behind," Janna said finally.
Ty had been thinking the same thing. He also had been thinking about how he would feel in Mad Jack's shoes-old, ill, eaten up with guilt for past mistakes, seeing one chance to make it all right and die with a clean conscience.
"It's his shot at heaven," Ty said.
"It's our ticket straight to hell."
"Try convincing him."
"I'm going to do just that."
Janna's chin came up and she quickened her pace, leaving Ty behind. But when she strode into camp, all that was there of Mad Jack was a piece of paper held down by a stone. On the paper he had painfully written the closest town to the farm he had abandoned so many years ago. Beneath that were the names of his five children.
"Jack!" Janna called. "Wait! Comeback!"
No voice answered her. She turned and sprinted toward the meadow.
"What's wrong?" Ty demanded.
"He's gone!"
"That crafty old son of a bitch." Ty swore and dropped the heavy saddlebags with a thump. "He knew what would happen when we found out how much gold there was to haul out of here. He took our promise to get his gold to his children and then he ran like the hounds of hell were after him."
Janna raised her hands to her mouth. A hawk's wild cry keened across the meadow. Zebra's head came up and she began trotting toward them.
"What are you going to do?" Ty asked.
"Find him. He's too old to have gotten far in this short a time."
Ty all but threw Janna up on top of Zebra. Instants later the mare was galloping on a long diagonal that would end at the narrow entrance to the valley.
By the time they arrived at the slot, Zebra was beginning to sweat both from the pace and from the urgency she sensed in her rider. Janna flung herself off the mare and ran to the twilight shadow of the slot canyon.
Heedless of the uncertain footing, she plunged forward. She didn't call Mad Jack's name, however; she didn't want the call to echo where it might be overheard by passing renegades.
No more than fifty feet into the slot, Janna sensed that something was wrong. She froze in place, wondering what her instincts were trying to tell her.
There was no unexpected sound. No unexpected scent. No moving shadows. No sign that she wasn't alone.
"That's what's wrong," Janna whispered. "There's no sign at all!"
She went onto her hands and knees, but no matter how hard she examined the ground, the only traces of any passage over the dry stream course were those she herself had just left.
Zebra's head flew up in surprise when Janna hurtled back into the valley from the slot.
"Easy, girl. Easy," Janna said breathlessly.
She swung onto the mare. Within moments a rhythmic thunder was again rolling from beneath Zebra's hooves. When she galloped past Lucifer, he lifted his head for an instant, then resumed biting off succulent mouthfuls of grass, undisturbed by the pair racing by. In past summers, Zebra and Janna often had galloped around while he grazed.
"Well?" Ty demanded when the mare galloped into the campsite.
"He's still in the valley. You take the left side and I'll take the right."
Ty looked out over the meadow. "Waste of time. He's not here."
"That's impossible. There's not one mark in that little slot canyon that I didn't put there myself. He's still here."
"Then he's between us and Lucifer."
Janna looked to the place where the stallion grazed no more than a hundred feet away. There wasn't enough cover to hide a rabbit, much less a man.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Wind is from that direction. Lucifer stopped testing the wind and settled down to graze about ten minutes ago."
Janna's urgency drained from her, leaving her deflated. If the stallion didn't scent Mad Jack it was because Mad Jack wasn't around to be scented.
Grimly Janna looked at the heavy saddlebags, an old man's legacy to a life he had abandoned years before. It was too heavy a burden-but it was theirs to bear. Her only consolation was that Ty's share, plus her own, should be enough to buy his dream. She didn't know how much silken ladies cost on the open market, but surely sixty pounds of gold would be enough.
Ty's expression as he looked at the saddlebags was every bit as grim as Janna's. His consolation, however, was different. He figured that Janna's thirty pounds of gold, plus his thirty, would be more than enough to ensure that she would never have to submit her soft body to any man in order to survive.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lucifer's ears flattened and he screamed his displeasure, lashing out with his hind feet. Ty made no attempt to hold the mustang. He just ducked and ran for cover. The stallion exploded into wicked bucking as he tried to dislodge the surcingle Ty had cut from the buffalo robe in Janna's trunk. When bucking didn't work, the stallion tried outrunning the strap and the flapping rope stirrups.
By the time Lucifer realized that he couldn't outrun the contraption clinging to his back-and that he wasn't being attacked by whatever was on him-the stallion's neck and flanks were white with lather and he was breathing hard. Janna wasn't surprised at the horse's signs of exertion; Lucifer had been racing flat out around the valley for nearly half an hour.
"Lord, but that's one strong horse," she said.
Ty grunted. He wasn't looking forward to the next part of the stallion's education, the part when he felt a man's weight on his back for the first time. Ty approached the big mustang slowly, speaking in a low voice.
"Yeah, I know, it's a hell of a world when you can't outrun all of life's traps and entanglements. But it isn't as bad as it seems to you right now," Ty murmured, stroking the stallion. "Ask Zebra. She took to the surcingle and stirrups like the good-hearted lady she is."
Lucifer snorted and butted his head against Ty as though to draw the man's attention to the irritation caused by the unwanted straps.
"Sorry, son. I'll rub away the itches but I'm not taking off that surcingle. I had enough trouble getting the damned thing on you in the first place."
Janna had a hard time not saying a heartfelt "amen." Watching Ty risk his life under Lucifer's hooves in the process of getting the surcingle in place had been the most difficult thing she had ever done. She had both admired Ty's gentle persistence and regretted ever asking him not to use restraints on the powerful stallion.
Ty continued petting and talking to Lucifer until the horse calmed down. Gradually Ty's strokes became different. He leaned hard on his hands as he moved them over the horse, concentrating mainly on the portion of Lucifer's back just behind the withers, where a man would ride. At first the stallion moved away from the pressure. Ty followed, talking patiently, leaning gently and then with more force, trying to accustom the mustang to his weight.