Outlaw (10 page)

The kivas were rather like basements set off from the larger grouping of rooms. The kivas' flat roofs were actually the floor of the town meeting area where children played and women ground corn, where dogs barked and chased foolish turkeys. The balcony of a third-story room was the ceiling of an adjacent two-story apartment. Cedar ladders reached to cistlike granaries built into lateral cracks too small to accommodate even a tiny room. And the Anasazi used rooms so tiny they were unthinkable to modern people, even taking into account the Anasazi's smaller stature.

Diana opened the outer pocket of her backpack and pulled out a lightweight, powerful pair of binoculars. .As always, the patience of the Anasazi stonemasons fascinated her. Lacking metal of any kind, they shaped stone by using stone itself. Hand axes weighing several pounds were used to hammer rough squares or rectangles from shapeless slabs of rock. Then the imagined geometry was carefully tap-tap-tapped onto the rough block, thousands upon thousands of strokes, stone pecking at stone until the rock was of the proper shape and size.

The alcove's left side ended in sheer rock wall. A crack angled up the face of the cliff. At no point was the crack wider than a few inches, yet Diana could see places where natural foot-or handholds had been added. Every Anasazi who went up on the mesa to tend crops had to climb up the cliff with no more help than they could get out of the crack. The thought of making such a climb herself didn't appeal. The thought of children or old people making the climb in all kinds of weather was appalling, as was the thought of toddlers playing along the alcove's sheer drop.

Inevitably, people must have slipped and fallen. Even for an alcove that had a southern exposure protected from all but the worst storms, the kind of daily risking of life and limb represented by that trail seemed a terrible price to pay.

Diana lowered the glasses, looked at the ruins with her unaided eyes and frowned. The angle wasn't quite right for what she wanted to accomplish. Farther up the canyon, where the rubble slopes rose to the point that an agile climber could reach the ruins without a ladder, the angle would be no better. What she needed was a good spot from which to sketch an overview of the countryside with an inset detailing the structure and placement of the ruins themselves. The surrounding country could be sketched almost anytime. The ruins, however, were best sketched in slanting, late-afternoon light, when all the irregularities and angles of masonry leaped into high relief. That "sweet light" was rapidly developing as the day advanced.

With measuring eyes, Diana scanned her surroundings before she decided to sketch from the opposite side of the canyon. She shrugged her backpack into a more comfortable position and set off. The rains had been light enough that September Creek was a ribbon she could jump over without much danger of getting her feet wet. She worked her way up the canyon until she was half a mile above the ruins on the opposite side. Only then did she climb up the talus slope at the base of the canyon's stone walls.

When Diana could climb no higher without encountering solid rock, she began scrambling parallel to the base of the cliff that formed the canyon wall. Every few minutes she paused to look at the ruins across the canyon, checking the changing angles until she found one she liked. Her strategy meant a hard scramble across the debris slope at the base of the canyon's wall, but she had made similar scrambles at other sites in order to find just the right place to sit and sketch.

Finally Diana stopped at the top of a particularly steep scramble where a section of the sandstone cliff had sloughed away, burying everything beneath in chunks of stone as big as a truck. She wiped her forehead, checked the angle of the ruins and sighed.

"Close, but not good enough." She looked at the debris slope ahead, then at the ruins again. "Just a bit farther. I hope."

Climbing carefully, scrambling much of the time, her hands and clothes redolent of the evergreens she had grabbed to pull herself along the steepest parts, Diana moved along the cliff base. Suddenly she saw a curving something on the ground that was the wrong color and shape to be a stone. She walked eagerly forward, bending to pick up the potshard, which glowed an unusual red in the slanting sunlight. No sooner had her fingers curled around the shard than the ground gave way beneath her feet, sending her down in a torrent of dirt and stone.

Clutching at air, screaming, she plunged into darkness, and the name she screamed was Ten's.

8

Ten was running before Diana's scream ended abruptly, leaving silence and echoes in its wake. He raced away from the ruins at full speed, not needing to follow Diana's tracks in order to find her. In the first instant of her scream he had seen her red windbreaker vividly against the creamy wall of stone on the opposite side of the canyon.

And then the red had vanished.

"Diana!
Diana!"

No one answered Ten's shout. He saved his breath for running across the canyon bottom and scrambling up the steep slope. As soon as he saw the black shadow of the new hole in the ground he realized what had happened. Diana had stepped onto the concealed roof of a kiva and it had given way beneath her weight. Some of the kivas were only a few feet deep. Others were deeper than a man was tall. He was afraid that Diana had found one of the deep ones.

Moving slowly, ready to throw himself aside at the first hint of uncertain footing, Ten crept close to the hole that had appeared in the rubble slope.

"Diana, can you hear me?"

A sound that might have been his name came from the hole.

"Don't move," he said. "If you've hurt your spine, you could make it worse by thrashing around. I'll get to you as soon as I can."

This time Ten was certain that the sound Diana made was his name.

"Just lie still and close your eyes in case I knock some more dirt loose."

On his stomach, Ten inched closer to the hole. At the far side he saw stubs of the cedar poles that had once supported a segment of the ceiling. In front of him was an open slot where Diana had gone through about a third of the way across the circular ceiling. Parallel, intact cedar poles crossed the opening Diana had accidentally made.

Ten pulled himself to the edge of the hole and peered over. Eight feet down Diana lay half-buried in rubble, surrounded by a circle of carefully fitted masonry wall.

"I'm coming down now. Just lie still."

Ten tested the cedar poles as best he could. They held. Bracing himself between two poles, praying that the tough cedar would hold under his weight, he slipped through the ceiling and landed lightly on his feet next to Diana. Instinctively she tried to sit up.

"Don't move!"

"Can't—breathe."

The ragged gasps told Ten that she was breathing more effectively than she knew.

"It's all right. You had the wind knocked out by the fall, but you're getting it back now. Does any place in particular hurt?''

"No—"

Ten went down on his knees next to Diana's head. Her eyes went wide and she dragged raggedly at air when he reached for her.

"Easy now, honey," he murmured. "I've got to check you for injuries. Just lie still. I won't hurt you. Be still now. It's all right."

Dazed, helpless, Diana fought her fear and held on to the black velvet of Ten's voice, remembering the moments when he had soothed the panicked horse and held the injured kitten so gently. It was the same now, hands both strong and gentle probing her scalp, her neck, her shoulders, his voice soothing, directing, explaining; and all the while debris was being pushed away, revealing more of her body to Ten's thorough touch, his hands moving over her with an intimacy that she had never willingly allowed any man. All that kept her from panicking was the realization that his hands were as impersonal as they were careful.

"I can't feel anything broken and you didn't flinch anywhere when I touched you," Ten said finally. "Any numb spots?"

"No—I felt—'' Diana sucked in air as much from the emotional shock of being touched as from the force of her recent fall. "Everywhere—you touched—I felt."

"Good. Wiggle your fingers and toes for me."

Diana did.

"Hurt?"

"No."

"I'm going to check your neck again. If it hurts, even a little, you tell me quick."

Long fingers eased once more around Diana's neck, working their way through her hair, taking the weight of her head so slowly that she hardly realized when she was no longer supporting it herself.

"Hurt?"

"N-no."

Ten's fingers spread, surrounding the back of her head, and his thumbs glided gently over the line of her jaw. Diana's breath came in and stayed, trapped by the sensations shivering through her. So slowly that she realized it only after the fact, Ten began to turn her head to the right.

"Hurt?"

She tried to speak, couldn't, and shook her head instead. His smile flashed for an instant in the gloom.

"If shaking your head didn't hurt, you're okay. Let's see how you do sitting up. We'll take it slow. If your back hurts at any time, tell me. Ready?"

Diana didn't need Ten's assistance to sit up, but she got it anyway. His left arm was a hard, warm, resilient bar supporting her shoulders and his right arm rested across her chest, preventing her from pitching forward if she fainted, which she nearly did at the pressure of his forearm across her suddenly sensitive breasts.

"I'm fine," Diana said in a breathless rush.

"So far so good," agreed Ten. "Dizzy?"

She was, but it had nothing to do with her recent fall and everything to do with the powerful man kneeling next to her in the shadows of an ancient kiva, his arms supporting her, his face so close to hers that she tasted his very breath.

"I'm not—dizzy."

"Good. We'll just sit here for a minute and make sure."

While Ten studied the broken ceiling overhead, Diana studied him. For the first time she was struck by how truly handsome he was with his black, slightly curling hair, broad forehead, widely spaced gray eyes, thick lashes, straight nose, high cheekbones and a beard shadow that heightened the intensely male line of his jaw.

It was more than the regularity of Ten's features that appealed to Diana so vividly at the moment; it was the certainty that his abundant masculine strength
wasn't going to be used against her. The relief was dizzying, telling her how much of her energy had been locked up in controlling her fear of men.

Then Diana realized that Ten was looking at her. The clarity of his gray eyes was extraordinary. The lean curves and angles of his mouth made her think of touching him, of finding out if his lips tasted as good as his breath.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You look a little dazed."

"I am." Diana took a ragged breath, then another. "Having the world jerked out from under your feet does that."

Ten's smile flashed again. "Yeah, I guess so. Ready to try standing up?"

"Um."

"We'll take it nice and easy. Just onto your knees at first. Here we go."

With an ease that would have terrified Diana only yesterday, Ten lifted her into a kneeling position. His eyes measured her response, his hands felt the continued coordination of her body as she took her own weight on her knees, and he nodded.

"Ready to try standing? I don't want to rush you, but I'll feel a lot better once we're out of this kiva."

For the first time the nature of her surroundings sank into Diana.

"A kiva! I fell through the ceiling of a kiva?"

"You sure did, honey."

"We have to mark the site and be careful not to do any more damage and—"

"First," Ten interrupted smoothly, "we have to get the hell out of here. It's dangerous."

The voice was still black velvet, but there was the cool reality of steel beneath.

"Ramrod," she breathed.

"Ready?" was all Ten said.

Ready or not, Diana was on her feet a few seconds later, put there by Ten's easy strength. She braced herself momentarily on his hard forearms, feeling the vital heat of his body radiating through cloth. She snatched back her hands as though she had been burned.

"I'm fine," she said quickly. "Really. I can stand alone."

Ten heard Diana's uneasiness in the sudden tumble of words and released her. He didn't step back, for he wanted to be able to catch her if her knees gave way.

"No dizziness?" he asked.

There was, but it came from Ten's closeness rather than from any injury she might have received in the fall. Diana had no intention of saying anything about that fact, however.

"No," she said firmly. "I'm not dizzy."

"Sure?"

"Where have I heard that question before?"

A smile flashed in the gloom, Ten's smile, warm against the hard lines of his face.