Eve cried out as her body experienced an ecstasy that had no beginning and no end, shattering her, transforming her. If there had been room in her for fear, she would have been terrified; but there was room only for Reno’s driving body and the dark words of desire and demand he poured over her.
She cried out in abandon, sinking her nails heedlessly into his back as she arched like a drawn bow, succumbing to the sweet violence he had called from her.
Reno’s smile was as untamed as Eve’s cries. He held himself utterly motionless, absorbing her violent trembling into his strength. When she was still once more, he bent his head, drew his teeth over her shoulder in a fierce caress, and began moving inside her again.
Eve gasped as passion ravished her body once more.
«Reno.»
«I warned you,» he said in a low voice. «Until we can’t even lick our lips.»
Reno moved powerfully, pulling the night down around them like a cloak of black fire.
And like fire, they burned.
18
The jumbled waste of rock, sand, and tough shrubs looked like it went on forever in all directions, but Reno knew it didn’t. It was simply another wide step down in the long descent from the Rockies to the place more than a hundred miles to the west, where the mysterious, powerful Rio Colorado coiled invisibly between stone banks.
If it weren’t for Slater hovering on the horizon like a vulture, I’d be happy to camp by fresh water and not move for a few weeks.
Or months.
Reno smiled wryly at his own thoughts. For the first time in his life, he was in no real hurry to find Spanish treasure. He was having too much pleasure in other explorations, charting the undiscovered territory of a dual sensuality that was both savage and sublime, violent and tender, demanding and renewing. He didn’t want it to end until both of them had drunk the dark wine to the last heady drop.
Until we find the mine, you’ll be my woman whenever I want you, however I want you.
Eve had kept her end of the bargain with a generosity that was as unexpected and consuming as the sweet violence of their joined bodies. The thought of never again reaching for her in the darkness was unsettling to Reno. Whenever the thought came, he pushed it away.
Sufficient unto each day the troubles thereof.
The old advice echoed in the silence of Reno’s mind. He had no argument with it. He had enough troubles for this or any other day.
By now, word of the presence of a man and a woman riding along the edges of the stone maze would have gone out along the mysterious, efficient grapevine that existed throughout the West wherever strangers met at a water hole or crossroads, or shared a cup of coffee over a tiny campfire.
Hope Rafe hasn’t forgotten all the old signs we used to leave each other when we hunted as boys.
And I hope Wolfe hears I’m out here with a woman looking for gold. He knows the country. He’ll know I need a good man at my back if I find the mine.
Damn Slater and his hawk-eyed half-breed tracker. Anybody else would have given up a week ago.
By the end of the following day, Reno and Eve were camped at the base of a red sandstone formation that rose against the sky like a sail hewn from a single piece of stone. High up on the side of the cliff, rock had weathered away more quickly than in other parts of the formation. The result was a window set like a gem in the solid rock wall. A shaft of light from the setting sun speared through the opening, gliding everything it touched with deepest gold.
Yet even more astonishing than a window in stone was the muted murmur of fresh water nearby. They had climbed out of the stone maze and were riding once more through a landscape where mountains were close enough to make out individual peaks. The camp they made was between a series of sunny river bends.
Reno had been right about Eve’s reaction to water after having ridden through a rock desert. The first time she saw a trickle of water twisting through the center of an arid valley, she talked excitedly about riding next to a «river» again. Reno had teased her about it, but he hadn’t objected when she asked to camp at the point where the small stream spread out into a series of sunwarmed pools bordered by whispering cottonwood trees.
At sunset and dawn, the land looked like an illustration for a mythic tale from a book men had forgotten how to read. It made Eve wonder if she had stumbled into an enchanted land where time stood still.
«It looks like it’s been here forever,» Eve said.
Reno followed her glance to the golden window time had carved from stone.
«Nothing lasts forever,» he said. «Not even rock.»
Eve looked at Reno, then back to the sail of stone rising improbably against the endless sky.
«It looks like it does,» she said softly.
«Looks don’t count for much. That window gets a bit bigger each day as grain after grain of the sandstone is chiseled out by the wind,» Reno said.
Eve listened, and sensed what lay beneath the words, change coming whether it was wanted or not.
«Someday that little window could be a full-blown arch,» Reno said. «Then the arch will get worn thin over time until it collapses, leaving a notch behind in the rock wall. Then the notch will be cut deeper and wider by wind and rain, until finally nothing is left but red rubble and blue sky.»
Eve shivered again. «I can’t imagine this land worn down like that.»
«That’s where the sandstone came from in the first place,» Reno said, looking at the soaring red wall. «Mountains that were worn down a grain at a time and piled by the wind into ancient dunes or washed down to seas so old even God has forgotten them.»
The quality of Reno’s voice drew Eve’s eyes from the fantastic rock formations. Motionless, she watched him as he watched the land and spoke calmly of unimaginable eons passing into eternity.
«Then the sand became stone again,» he said, «and the earth shifted and new mountains were lifted to the sky to be worn down by new winds, new storms, new rivers running down to new seas.»
«‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…’» Eve whispered.
«It’s the way of the world, sugar girl. Beginnings and endings all tangled together, like the pictographs on a canyon wall, Indian and Spanish and us, different symbols, different people, different times.»
Slowly Eve looked back to the red stone that seemed so massive and enduring. Then she faced the man who refused to acknowledge that anything endured, even stone.
Or love.
AS Reno and Eve followed the old Spanish trail, each valley or basin they rode through had more water and less rock than the previous one. The climb was so gradual that it was understood only at rare vistas where men could look back down toward the stone maze.
Slowly sagebrush gave way to pinon forests, and pinon gave way to pine. Red cliffs sank back down below the surface of the earth as sandstone gave way to different layers of rock that had come from deep beneath the surface of the earth, where heat transformed sandstone into quartzite, and limestone into marble.
Only one thing didn’t change. Each time Reno looked out over the back trail, there was a thin veil of dust miles and miles behind them.
«Somebody is still dogging us,» Reno said, putting away the spyglass.
«Slater?» Eve asked unhappily.
«They’re raising a lot of dust, so it’s either Slater’s men or an Indian raiding party.»
«Some choice,» Eve muttered.
Reno shrugged. «On the whole, I’m thinking it’s Slater. We don’t have anything Indians want enough to spend two days following us to get.»
«Are we going to try to lose him?»
«No time,» Reno said bluntly. «See those yellow patches high on the mountainsides?»
Eve nodded.
«Aspens are turning,» he said. «I’ll bet those clouds we’re looking at will leave a dusting of snow in the high country tonight.»