"No."
Ty said nothing more, just the single word denying what Janna had said. Before she could say anything in argument, Ty turned away and whistled shrilly.
Moments later Lucifer came trotting over and began lipping at Ty's shirt in search of the pinch of salt Ty often had hidden in a twist of paper. There was no salt today, simply the voice and hands Lucifer had come to enjoy.
Ty petted the stallion for a few moments before he picked up the heavy saddlebags Mad Jack had left behind. Ty had cut slits in the leather that joined the saddlebags. Through the slits he had threaded the surcingle. Once the strap had been tightened, the saddlebags would stay in place on the stallion's back.
Lucifer didn't care for the surcingle around his barrel, but he had become accustomed to it. He did nothing more than briefly lay back his ears when the strap tightened just behind his front legs. Ty praised the stallion, shrugged his own backpack into place and vaulted onto the mustang's back. It was a heavy load Lucifer was carrying, but Ty wasn't worried. Lucifer was an unusually powerful horse. Even if Ty had added a saddle to the load, the stallion wouldn't have been overburdened for normal travel.
"I'll scout the area beyond the slot," Ty said. "Get Zebra over there and wait for my signal."
"Ty, I won't let you-"
"Let me? Let me!" he interrupted, furious. "To hell with 'letting'! You listen to me and you listen good. You might be pregnant. If you think I'll run off and leave an orphaned girl who could be carrying my child to fend for herself in Indian country, there's no damned point in even talking to you! I'll try hammering my message through that thick skull of yours after we get to the fort. Maybe by then I'll have cooled down or you'll have grown up. Until then, shut up and stop distracting me or neither one of us will live to see tomorrow."
Lucifer leaped into a canter before Janna had a chance to speak, even if she had been able to think of something to say.
By the time the stallion reached the exit to the valley, Ty had gotten his temper under control. He didn't permit himself to think about Janna and the immediate past, only about Cascabel and the immediate future.
Ty dismounted and looked at the area right in front of the cleft. No new tracks marked the meadow. A vague, telltale trail had been worn through the grass despite his and Janna's efforts never to take the same way twice into the cleft.
It doesn't matter now. By the time we come back the grass will have regrown. And when we do come back, we won't have to try to live so small we don't even cast shadows.
Beyond the ghostly paths there were no signs that anything had ever passed through the cleft to the outer world. Ty picked his way over the narrow watercourse and through the shadowed slot between rock walls. The afternoon light glowed overhead, telling him that the sky was nearly cloudless. Until the sun went down they would be vulnerable to discovery, for there would be no rain to conceal their presence while they crossed the wild land.
Yet they had no choice but to move in daylight. There was simply too much risk that one of the horses would injure itself scrambling over the cleft's treacherous watercourse in the dark. Besides, even if they got through the slot safely at night and then traveled until dawn, they would still be deep within Cascabel's preferred range when the sun once more rose, exposing them to discovery.
Their best chance was to sneak out of the slot and take a long, looping approach to the fort, hoping that Cascabel would have been driven to the southern edges of his territory while the two of them traversed the northern part. The fort itself was a hard three-day ride, and there was no haven short of the stockade walls.
Standing well back from the sunlit exit to the cleft, Ty pulled out his spyglass and examined as much of the land as he could see beyond the stone walls. A quick look showed nothing. A long look showed no more. A point-by-point survey revealed no sign of renegades.
Wish my backbone didn't itch.
But it did, and Ty wasn't going to ignore his instincts. There was danger out there. His job was to find out where and how much. Unconsciously he fingered the hilt of the big knife he always carried at his belt. He waited for fifteen minutes, then lifted the spyglass and studied the land again. Again he saw nothing to alarm him. He took off his backpack, checked the load in his carbine, grabbed a box of bullets and went out to have a closer look at the land.
He was no more than thirty feet from the cleft when he cut the trail of three unshod ponies. The hoof prints stayed together and marked a purposeful course, telling Ty that the horses had been ridden; they had not been grazing at random as wild horses would. The horses had come out of Cascabel's usual territory.
As Ty followed the traces he hoped that the Army had been successful in driving the renegades away. That hope died when he saw other tracks meet those that he was following. The two sets of tracks mingled, then split once more, heading in all directions, as though the riders had exchanged information and had then separated and gone to search for something.
Ty had a terrible suspicion that what the renegades were searching for was a bruja called Janna Wayland.
Keeping to cover as much as possible, crawling when he had to, walking when he could, Ty followed the tracks that crisscrossed the flatlands in front of the cleft. Everything he saw brought him to the same conclusion: the renegades were going to beat the bushes and ravines until their auburn-haired quarry burst from cover. Then they would run her down and bring her back to Cascabel. There would be medicine chants and dances, celebrations of past victories and future coups; and then Cascabel would lead his renegades into war with Janna's long hair hanging from his lance like a flag, proving to the world that his spirit was the greatest one moving over the wild face of the land.
For a moment Ty considered simply sneaking back to the cleft and waiting until Cascabel got tired of searching for his elusive quarry. That was what Janna had done in the past-hide. But in the past, Cascabel hadn't been so determined to catch her. If Ty and Janna retreated to the valley and then were found, they would be trapped in a stone bottle with no chance of escape. Better that they take their chances in the open.
Retreating silently back toward the cleft, Ty made a brief side trip to the top of a rise. From there he hoped to get a better view of the rugged land they had to cross. Just before he reached the edge of the rise, he took off his hat and went down on his stomach, presenting as little human silhouette as possible.
An instant later Ty was glad he had taken the trouble to be very cautious. On the far side of the rise, four warriors sat on their heels, arguing and gesticulating abruptly as they divided up the area to be searched for the Shadow of Flame, the witch who had been stealing Cascabel's spirit. Just beyond the warriors, seven horses grazed on whatever was within reach.
Four renegades. Seven horses. And my backbone is on fire.
The only warning Ty had was a slight whisper of sound behind him. He rolled onto his back and lashed out with his booted feet as the renegade attacked.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ty's kick knocked the air from the Indian's lungs, preventing him from crying out and alerting the others. Even so, Ty had no sooner put his hand on his knife hilt than the renegade was on his knees and trying to bring his rifle to bear. Ty threw himself forward, pinning the Indian to the ground with a hard forearm across his throat. A knife flashed and blood burst silently into sunlight. The renegade jerked once, twice, and then lay motionless.