Only You (8 page)

“Only well north of the Chama. Red sandstone is what he saw most of.”

“Cliffs or arch-forming?” Reno asked.

“Both.”

“How thick? And what about mudstone?”

“Lots of it,” Caleb said. He pointed to the Spanish journal. “Here and about here.”

“Were the layers thin or thick, slanted or level?” Reno asked quickly. “How about slate? Granite? Chert?”

Caleb bent to his father’s journal once more. Reno did too, talking phrases that were more like code to Eve. With every minute, it became more obvious to her that Reno hadn’t spent all his time in gunfights and looking for gold. He was a man of rather formidable geological learning.

After a few minutes Reno made a sound of satisfaction and tapped a page of the Spanish journal with the clean, short nail of his index finger.

“That’s what I thought,” Reno said. “Your father and the Spaniards were on opposite sides of this big neck sticking out into the canyon country from the main body of the plateau. The Spaniards thought it was a separate plateau, but your daddy knew better.”

Caleb studied the two journals, then nodded slowly.

“Which means,” Reno continued, “that if there’s a way to cross over the neck about here, we don’t have to go all the way to the Colorado River to pick up the Cristóbal trail.”

“Where do you want to cross?” Caleb asked.

“Right here.”

Eve leaned forward. The hasty knot she had made at the nape of her neck after giving Ethan her scarf came loose. A long lock of her hair escaped and spilled across Reno’s hand. The individual strands gleamed in the lantern light like the very gold he had spent his life seeking.

And like gold, Eve’s hair was cool and silky against his skin.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, hastily redoing the knot.

Reno said nothing at all. He didn’t trust himself to. He knew his voice would reveal the sudden, hard running of his blood.

“Maybe you’re right,” Caleb said.

He looked intently between the two journals.

“But if you’re wrong,” he added after a minute, “you better pray there’s more water than either journal shows.”

“That’s why I’m hoping Wolfe won’t mind if I run off with a couple of his mustangs for packhorses.”

“Take the two Shaggies,” Caleb said. “And get Eve a desert mount, too. Her old pony wouldn’t make it.”

“I was thinking of the lineback dun,” Reno said. “She didn’t foal this year.”

Caleb nodded, then said bluntly, “Horses are the least of your problems.”

“Water,” Reno answered.

“That’s one, but not the worst.”

Eve made a questioning sound.

“The worst problem,” Caleb said, “is finding the mine—if the damned thing exists. Or were you expecting to find a sign saying, ‘Dig here’?”

“Hell no. I was expecting a carnival barker and dancing elephants to point the way,” Reno drawled. “Now, don’t you go telling me there won’t be any. It will plumb break my poor little heart.”

Caleb laughed and shook his head.

“All fooling aside,” he said a moment later, “how do you expect to find the mine?”

“Mining leaves marks on the land.”

“Don’t count on it. It’s been two hundred years. Long enough for trees to grow right over any signs of mining.”

“I’m not a bad geologist,” Reno said. “I know what kind of rock to look for.”

Caleb looked at Eve. “What about you? Think you can come close enough with that journal to find a mine?”

“If not, there’s always the Spanish needles,” she said.

“What?”

Eve reached into the front pocket of her faded dress. A moment later she brought out a small, leather-wrapped bundle. When she unrolled the leather, two slim metal rods fell into her palm with a musical sound.

“These,” she said.

“Spanish dip needles,” Reno explained to Caleb. “They’re supposed to find buried treasure, not metal ore or water.” Reno looked at Eve. “Where are the other two?”

She blinked, then understood. “Don said his ancestors had figured out that two worked as well as four, and were easier to use.”

“Hell’s fire,” Caleb said in disgust. “You’d be lucky to find the floor with those.”

“What do you mean?” Eve asked.

“They’re damned hard to use,” said Reno. “I’ve never tried it with two, though. God knows it can’t be worse than four.” He looked at Eve. “Have you ever used them?”

“No.”

Reno held out his hand. She dropped the small rods on his palm without touching his skin with her fingers.

“Look close,” Reno said to Eve. “The idea is to keep the needles touching on the forked end.”

“At the tips?” Eve asked.

“No. At the base. Interlocked but moving easily, able to respond to the least change.”

Eve watched, frowning. The notch of each Y was so shallow that it offered no real aid in keeping the rods together.

Delicately Reno brought the narrow metal sticks together until they barely met at the base of the
wide Y. Breathing very lightly so as not to break the contact, he held them out for Eve to see.

“Kind of like this,” Reno said. “Just kissing, mind you. No real pressure.”

“Doesn’t look all that hard,” Caleb said.

“Not when one person is holding both rods. But they don’t work that way. Takes two people, one rod each.”

“No fooling?” asked Caleb. “Give me one of those.”

Eve watched while Reno handed over one slim metal stick and kept the other. They indeed looked like needles when held in the men’s large hands.

Large, but not clumsy. Reno and Caleb had unusually fine coordination. Eve had seen both men use their fingers with the delicate precision of a butterfly landing on a flower.

Indeed, very quickly Caleb had matched the flattened notch on his needle with the one on Reno’s. Keeping them barely touching was more difficult. Even so, it was only a moment before Caleb mastered it.

“See. Nothing to it,” Caleb said.

“Uh-huh,” drawled Reno. “Now let’s take a walk around the table.”

Caleb gave him a startled look. “With the needles touching?”

“Every step of the way,” Reno said. “Just kissing, mind you. No shoving.”

A grunt was Caleb’s only answer. The two men stood, matched needles, and looked at each other.

“On three,” Caleb said. “One…two…three.”

They took a step.

Instantly the small rods separated.

The second time, Caleb tried applying more pressure when he took a step.

The rods crossed like swords.

The third time the men tried, the rods clashed, slipped, and drew apart.

“Damn,” Caleb said.

He flipped the dowsing rod end over end on his palm several times, then shot it toward Reno without warning.

Reno’s free hand flashed out and snagged the flying needle. With no break in the motion, he flipped a rod in each hand like a circus juggler.

Whatever the problem in using the rods, lack of dexterity on the part of the men wasn’t it.

“Good thing you’ve read enough geology books to stock a university,” Caleb said. “Those needles are as useless as teats on a boar hog.”

Eve’s hand shot out, catching one of the dowsing rods as it somersaulted obediently above Reno’s palm.

“May I?” she asked calmly.

The question was unnecessary. She had already leveled the forked end of the rod in Reno’s direction. The metal stick was balanced between her palm and her thumb, so lightly held that a breath could sway the metal.

Reno hesitated, shrugged, and carelessly pointed the forked end of his rod toward her. He held the rod as she did, balancing it between his palm and his thumb.

Eve moved her hand slightly. The notches met, brushed, and came back together like lodestone and iron.

As they caught and held each other, a ghostly current rippled through the rods to the flesh holding them, startling both people.

With a gasp, Eve let go of her needle. So did Reno.

Caleb caught both pieces of metal before they hit the floor. Giving Eve and Reno an odd look, Caleb
returned the rods to them.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I was clumsy,” Eve said quickly. “I knocked the rods together.”

“Didn’t look clumsy to me,” Caleb said.

Reno said nothing. He simply watched Eve through narrowed green eyes.

“Let me try it this time,” Reno said.

Eve positioned her needle and held still. “Ready.”

Reno brought his rod close, then closer, then closer still, brushing the prongs and then the cup of the Y on the end of Eve’s Y.

Ghostly currents rippled.

This time Reno and Eve managed to hold on to the rods, but their breath came in hard and fast. Even that small a motion should have jerked the needles apart.

It didn’t.

“On three,” Reno said.

His voice was unusually deep, a sound like black velvet. The tone was a caress as intangible and undeniable as the subtle currents flowing through the Spanish needles, stitching together two halves of an enigmatic whole.

“Yes,” Eve whispered.

Reno counted. As one, they took a step forward.

The prongs interlocked yet moved readily, as though faintly magnetized.

Deliberately Reno jerked his hand. Instantly the needles came apart.

“Again,” he said.

The needles came to each other as though alive, eager, hungry for the fragile currents that would both join and define them.

“I will be damned,” Reno whispered.

He looked up from the oddly shimmering
needles to the woman whose eyes were the color of purest gold.

And he wondered what it would be like to be buried within Eve, feeling her shiver as delicately and as completely as the two rods touching, two halves interlocked, moving freely, joined by currents of fire.

L
ONG
before first light, Eve was awake, dressed, and sneaking quietly out of the house. Carrying her saddlebags and bedroll, she headed for the barn. She expected to find Reno already there, getting the horses ready, for she had heard Caleb get up earlier and leave the silent house. A few minutes later she had caught the faint rumble of men’s voices coming from the barn.

Despite the fact that Eve had slept little the night before, she had been too restless to stay in the Blacks’ guest room a moment longer. She had told herself she was simply excited at starting the hunt for gold that had both possessed and eluded generation after generation of the Leon family.

Yet it wasn’t gold that had haunted Eve’s waking dreams. It was the memory of two dowsing rods touching and ghostly currents flowing.

The barn door was open. Just outside, two tall men were working over four horses. A lantern suspended
on a nearby corral pole glowed pale gold against the fading darkness of night.

As Eve quietly approached, she could hear Caleb talking.

“…coming down out of the high country. Most of them are too busy moving to winter camp to be a problem, but keep a sharp eye out. The warriors are raising hell with the army, and the shamans are all off looking for a powerful new vision.”

Reno grunted.

“And then there’s the rest of it,” Caleb continued.

“The rest of what?”

“Oh, I just feel that as your friend—and brother-in-law—I should warn you what can happen when a man takes a pretty girl into wild country,” Caleb drawled.

“Save your breath,” Reno said. Then, dryly, “Not you, Darlin’. If you hold your breath, you’re going to find my knee in your belly right quick.”

Eve smiled. She had learned on the trail that Reno’s mustang had a sly way of sucking in a lot of air before the cinch was tightened, then letting it out afterward. If Reno hadn’t been aware of the mare’s little trick, he would have found himself riding upside down half the time.

Leather slid over leather with a rushing sound as Reno drew his mare’s cinch strap up tight. She snorted and stamped her foot in displeasure.

In the stillness of predawn, each sound was unnaturally clear.

“All the same,” Caleb said, “I took a job guiding a pretty girl into the San Juans to find her brother, and I ended up married.”

Leather snapped against leather as Reno tied off the mare’s cinch with smooth, strong motions.

“Willow was one thing,” Reno said finally. “Eve is a horse of an entirely different color.”

“Not that different. Sure, her hair is darker than Willow’s, and her eyes are gold rather than hazel, but—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Reno interrupted curtly.

“You remind me of a mustang stud feeling a rope for the first time in his wild life,” Caleb said.

Amusement rippled plainly in his voice.

Reno grunted.

Laughing aloud, Caleb settled a pack saddle onto a wiry little bay. The bay’s thick mane fell to its shoulders, and the tail was so long it left marks on the dusty ground.

Another bay mustang stood patiently beside the first. The two animals were twins. Because it was hard to tell them apart, they were simply called Shaggy One and Shaggy Two, depending on which horse was closer to the speaker at the time. The geldings were inseparable. Where one went, the other followed.

The second Shaggy was already fully loaded. In addition to the usual trail gear, there were large, empty canteens and two small barrels of black powder tied on either side of the pack saddle.

“Surly as a fresh-caught stud,” Caleb continued cheerfully. “Wolfe was the same way at first. He came around, though. Smart men know when they’ve got something good.”

Reno acted as though he hadn’t heard.

“Take my word for it,” Caleb said, “whatever you think you have now isn’t a candle against the sun to what a good woman will give you.”

Reno smacked his mustang on her warm haunch.

“Stand on your own feet, Darlin’,” he muttered.
“Mine have their work cut out as it is.”

“She can cook, too,” Caleb pointed out. “That apple pie was like eating a slice of summer.”

“No,” Reno said curtly.

“Bull. If you didn’t like it, why did you have thirds?”

“Damn it, that’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Then what did you mean?” Caleb asked wryly.

Reno swore beneath his breath. He ducked under Darlin’s neck and went to the last horse in line, a dun-colored mare with black socks, black mane and tail, and a black line down her spine.

Now the two men were working so closely they were all but stepping on each other, which made it harder for Reno to pretend that he wasn’t hearing Caleb’s low, casual voice. Working quickly, as though anxious to be on the trail, Reno curried the lineback dun with muscular sweeps of his arm.

Just as Eve thought it would be safe to walk into the lantern’s ring of light, Caleb started speaking again.

“Willow likes Eve. Ethan took to her right away, and he’s cool with strangers.”

Reno froze with the brush just above the dun’s barrel. The mare snorted and nudged him, wanting more of the currying.

“She’s bright and she’s spirited,” Caleb said. He laughed softly. “She’ll be a real handful, and that’s a fact.”

“The dun? Maybe I better use her as a packhorse and give one of the Shaggies to Eve to ride.”

Caleb’s grin flashed. “She’d run rings around most men, but she’s a good match for you.”

“I like Darlin’ better.”

Caleb chuckled. “I thought my two horses were
my best friends. Then Willow taught me that—”

“Eve isn’t like Willow,” Reno interrupted, his voice cold.

“That’s it, boy. You just keep on fighting that silk rope.”

Reno said something brutal under his breath.

“Fighting won’t do you any good,” Caleb said, “but no man worth his salt ever gives up without a fight.”

With a hissed curse, Reno turned and faced Caleb.

“I should be whipped for bringing Eve into my sister’s house,” Reno said flatly.

A chill settled over Eve. She knew what Reno would be saying next. She didn’t want to hear it.

But even more, she didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping, no matter how innocently. She began retreating one slow step at a time, praying that she would make no sound to give her away.

“You asked me how I met Eve, and I ducked the question,” Reno said. “Well, I’m through ducking.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I met her in a Canyon City saloon.”

Caleb’s smile vanished. “What?”

“You heard me. She was dealing cards at the Gold Dust. Slater and a gunnie called Raleigh King were at the table.”

Reno stopped talking, walked around the lineback dun, and began brushing away dust.

“And?” Caleb prodded.

“I took cards.”

The only sound in the next minute was that made by the brush moving over sleek hide. Then came the muted bawling of cattle as dawn slowly began stealing stars from the sky.

“Keep talking,” Caleb said finally.

“She was cold-decking and bottom-dealing.”

Again Caleb waited.

Reno was silent.

“Christ, it’s like pulling teeth,” Caleb muttered. “Spit it all out.”

“You’ve got the meat of it.”

“Like blazing hell I do. I know you, Reno. You wouldn’t bring a whore into your sister’s house.”

“I said Eve was peeling cards, not men.”

There was a taut silence followed by the snap of a saddle blanket as Reno shook it out.

“Talk,” Caleb said bluntly.

“When it came time for Eve to deal, she gave me a pat hand.”

Caleb whistled through his teeth.

“When Raleigh went for his gun, I dumped the table in his lap. Eve grabbed the pot and ran out the back, leaving me in a shoot-out with Raleigh and Slater.”

“Crooked Bear’s whore said nothing about Slater being dead. Just Raleigh King and Steamer.”

“Slater didn’t draw on me. They did.”

Shaking his head, Caleb said, “Be damned. Eve doesn’t look like a saloon girl.”

“She’s a card cheat and a thief, and she set me up to die.”

“If any man but you said that, I’d call him a liar.”

Without warning Reno turned and looked into the darkness beyond the lamplight.

“Tell him, saloon girl.”

Eve froze in the act of taking a step backward. After a sharp struggle with herself, she controlled the impulse to turn and flee, but there was nothing she could do to put color in a face gone as pale as salt. Head high, she walked into the circle of lantern light.

“I’m not what you think I am,” she said.

Reno grabbed the saddlebags Eve was holding, opened one of them, and yanked out the dress she had worn in Canyon Qty. It hung from his fist in scarlet condemnation.

“Not as heart-tugging as a dress made of flour sacks, but a damn sight more truthful,” Reno said to Caleb.

Color returned to Eve’s cheeks in a crimson tide.

“I was a bond servant,” she said in a thin voice. “I wore what I was given.”

“So you say,
gata
. So you say. You were wearing this in a saloon when I met you, and your bond masters were dead.”

Reno jammed the dress back into the saddlebag, flipped the joined bags over the corral rail, and went back to saddling the lineback dun.

“Have you eaten?” Caleb asked Eve.

She shook her head, not trusting her voice. Nor could she look Caleb in the eye. He had taken her into his house, and what he must think of her now that he knew the truth made her wish to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“Is Willow up yet?” Caleb asked.

Eve shook her head again.

“Not surprising,” Caleb said easily. “Ethan was cranky all last night.”

“Teething.”

The word was barely a whisper, but Caleb understood.

Reno swore under his breath. That, too, carried in the stillness of dawn.

“Cloves,” Eve whispered a moment later.

“Beg pardon?” Caleb said.

Eve cleared her throat painfully. “Oil of cloves. On his gums. It will sweeten his temper.”

“I’d a hell of a lot rather kick his butt around the barn,” Caleb said, “and I don’t mean Ethan.”

Reno’s head came up. He gave Caleb a hard look. Caleb gave it right back.

“Yuma man,” Reno said coldly. “I’d think you’d be the last one to be taken in by a pretty face.”

Reno reached under the dun’s belly, shot the long leather strap through the cinch ring, and began tightening the cinch with hard, quick motions of his hands. His words were the same—hard and quick.

“You went into the wilderness with Willy, an innocent girl who wanted love.”

Leather hissed over leather.

“I’m going into the wilderness with an experienced little cheat who wants half of a gold mine.”

Reno snapped the stirrup into place. The creak of leather was like a cry in the silence.

“If we find the mine, I’ll have to look sharp or she’ll steal me blind and shoot me in the back, or leave me to be shot up by the likes of Jericho Slater,” Reno concluded harshly. “She’s done it before.”

From the house came the sound of an iron triangle being struck with a metal wand as Willow called the men in for breakfast.

Reno yanked Eve’s saddlebags off the corral fence, took the bedroll from her hands, and secured both behind her saddle. When he finished, he spun around, picked Eve up, and dumped her in the saddle.

Only then did he turn to Caleb.

“Tell Willy good-bye for us.”

Reno sprang into the blue roan’s saddle like a big cat. A swift motion of his hand jerked Shaggy One’s lead rope free of the corral rail. He wheeled Darlin’ around and touched her with his spurs.

The mustang headed out of the yard at a brisk
canter. The two Shaggies and the lineback dun followed.

So did Caleb’s voice.

“Run while you can, you hardheaded son of a bitch. There’s nothing stronger than a silk rope. Or softer!”

R
ENO
knew they were being followed. He pushed the horses hard from dawn until dusk, covering twice as much ground as a normal traveler would, hoping to wear down Jericho Slater’s horses.

Right now Slater had the advantage, for his long-legged Tennessee horses were faster than the mustangs. In the desert, the advantage would quickly switch. The mustangs could go faster and longer on less food and water than any horse Slater had.

Not once through the long hours of riding did Eve complain about the pace. In fact, she said nothing at all except in response to a direct question, and Reno had very few of those.

Gradually Eve’s anger gave way to curiosity about the land. The high, open country was slowly filling her with both peace and a heady sense of being on the edge of a vast, undiscovered land.

To her left a high, ragged mesa rose, covered with piñon and juniper. To her right were the rolling slopes of low, pine-covered ridges. Behind her was a beautiful valley bounded by granite peaks, rugged ridges, and the immense, shaggy mesa with its cliffs of pale stone.

Even without the journal to guide her, she knew they were slowly descending from the green and granite heights of the Rockies. The land itself was changing beneath the agile feet of the mustangs.
Foothills melted into plateau tops separated by steep, stream-cut ravines. Rocky stream banks had been replaced by dirt banks deeply cut and sandy tongues in river bends. Sandstone and shale had replaced granite and slate.

Graceful aspens and dense stands of fir and spruce had given way to cottonwoods and pines, piñon and juniper. Scattered, big sagebrush appeared in place of scrub oak. Clouds gathered and thunder rolled down from the peaks, but no rain fell at the lower elevations.

And over all loomed the dark mesa. Eve could not take her eyes from the ragged thrust of land, for she had seen nothing like it before. Plants grew on the mesa’s steep sides, but not enough to conceal the starkly different layers of stone beneath. No rivers or creeks drained its ragged length. No water winked from its ravines. No tall trees grew on its crest.

The map in the Spanish journal hinted that the mesa was only the beginning of the changes. It was the lip of an enormous, high plateau that was as big as many European nations. Ahead, beyond the setting sun, the plateau’s highlands fell away in immense stone steps that ultimately unraveled into countless stone canyons.