Chapter Eleven

Silently Ty endured the continual brush of Janna's body against his as they went toward the cleft. They rode alongside the stream until it spread out into a small slough and vanished, leaving not even a trickle to enter the stone slot that was the valley's only outlet. There was nothing about the mouth of the cleft to suggest that it was any different from the hundreds of other narrow, barren gouges in the eroded flanks of the huge plateau. That, and the fact that the narrow, twisting passage was both difficult and uninviting for a horse, were why the valley had remained Janna's secret.

The slit in the rocks looked like the entrance to hell, but Ty watched it approach with a feeling of relief. When the opening was thirty yards away, he could bear Janna's unintentional sensual torment no longer. With a feeling of relief, he slid off Zebra and away from the fiery brush of Janna's body.

"Wait here," Ty said curtly. "I'll check out the trail."

He was gone before Janna could put her objections into words.

Inside the cleft it was cool, damp, dusky. A few shallow pools left by recent rain showers reflected the dark red, oddly stained cliffs that towered above the floor of the narrow canyon. Overhead the sky was reduced to a thin blue string thrown carelessly between the cliffs. In the places where black lava replaced sandstone, the cleft darkened until it was both somber and eerie, as though night had condensed and taken a solid form on the face of the land itself.

There were no tracks at all in the dry watercourse, not even those of wildlife. Ty wasn't surprised by the lack of animal signs. He had expected to find nothing. Wild animals had an instinctive abhorrence of small openings, of being trapped somewhere that lacked room to run or places to hide. What did surprise Ty was that Mad Jack had left no more trail than if he had flown from the secret valley.

In fact, Ty found it impossible to believe that Mad Jack had gone through the cleft at all.

The passage itself was familiar to Ty. He had made it a point to familiarize himself with the slit that was the difference between the valley being a haven for them or a trap with no exit. Yet each time he walked the cleft he felt a deepening admiration for Janna, who had found and used a passage whose secret had been lost to the Indians for hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands. He doubted that any Indian had used the cleft at all since the coming of the horse several hundred years before.

Or perhaps the valley hadn't been lost by the Indians but simply avoided as a spirit place where mortal men shouldn't go, a place of the People who Came Before. Within the twilight confines of the slot canyon, it would be very easy to imagine malevolent spirits waiting in ambush for anything foolish enough to stray inside the black stone jaws.

The narrowest point of the cleft was not at the entrance to the valley but about a third of the way toward the open land beyond. At the stricture, both canyon walls were of a dense, black, fine-grained stone that cracked in long parallel columns. Water had polished the stone into a slick, shiny mass that, with the addition of a layer of fine mud, was almost as slippery as ice. Unlike Mad Jack, Janna had never found a way to avoid leaving tracks over that segment of the slot, which was why she had always taken on the passage just before or just after a rain, when any tracks she left would be washed completely away by the runoff stream.

That was another thing Ty admired. Few people who knew the country would have had the courage to test the stone slit when clouds massed over the plateau and water was running down its sides in rushing veils. Fewer people still would have had the skill to read the land and weather correctly enough to survive negotiating the narrow slot. He wondered how many times Janna had waited, eyeing the muddy rush of water and calculating her best chance to pass through without leaving a sign or being drowned.

Warily Ty looked up the uneven walls where debris lodged twenty or thirty feet higher than his head. The thought of the risk Janna had taken to get him into the hidden valley made sweat start on his body. He remembered the black clouds, the pelting rain…and nothing more. He only knew that she had taken an enormous risk while getting him to a safe place to heal. In fact, she had taken one hell of a risk for him, period, since the first moment she had begun wiping out his trail so that Cascabel would lose his prey. If the renegade ever found out how his prisoner had truly escaped, J anna's life wouldn't be worth a handful of cold spit.

Ty half walked, half slid over the cleft's slick bottom. Once he was past the place where black walls pinched in, the cleft opened out slightly again. He moved quickly, leaving very little trace of his passage. There was no other sign of life within the steep canyon. When the gloom brightened, announcing the end of the slot, Ty went to the deepest area of shadow and eased forward until he could look over the fan of debris that washed down from the plateau's edge, creating a sloping skirt that led to the flatlands beyond.

For several minutes Ty remained motionless, studying the landscape for any sign of movement. There was no motion but the ragged race of cloud shadows over the earth. No bird was startled into flight. No raven scolded an intruder in hoarse tones. No shape of man or horse separated from cover to ghost over the land. If there were anyone about, he was even better hidden than Ty.

After ten minutes Ty withdrew from the entrance to the slot and returned to Janna. She was waiting precisely where he had left her, for she knew the importance of keeping the secret of the slit canyon and the hidden valley beyond.

"All clear," Ty said, answering the question in Janna's eyes. "Nothing has been in or out since the last shower."

Even though Janna had expected nothing else, she couldn't conceal her relief. Without the secret valley she would have no place to hide, no sanctuary in which to live during the wild country's cold winters.

Ty saw Janna's relief, guessed at its source and had to restrain himself from telling her not to worry, she wasn't going to have to spend another winter hiding in the valley, she was leaving Indian country and that was that. But he said nothing, because she would have argued with him, and arguing against the inevitable was a waste of time. As far as he was concerned, it was inevitable that Janna would no longer live alone. No white woman should have to exist like a savage, fearful of every shadow and without even the company of other human beings when danger threatened.

Ty had decided that he would take Janna to Sweetwater or Hat Rock or Santa Fe or even all the way to Denver, if it came to that. It was the least he could do for the orphan girl who had saved his life.

To Ty's surprise, Janna slid down from Zebra and walked to the cleft. As always, the mare followed her.

"Aren't you going to ride?" he asked.

"Too dangerous. That narrow stretch must still be slick from the last rain."

"We rode in double that way."

"Someone had to keep you astride Zebra. We'll mount after the canyon widens again."

Ty didn't argue. No matter how important it might be not to leave human footprints, he had dreaded the thought of going over the slippery black rock while mounted bareback and double on an unbroken mustang.

In the end it was the very narrowness of the canyon that kept Ty from falling. He simply levered himself along by acting as though he were trying to push the two sides of the canyon farther apart with his hands. Janna, more accustomed to the tricky stretch, knew where there were handholds and niches to use in maintaining her balance. Zebra had the advantage of four feet-if one slipped, there were three to take its place.