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.
For a few instants it was all Ty could do to breathe despite the screaming of his instincts that the danger had just begun, not ended, and he should be running rather than lying half-stunned. He rolled off the dead renegade and began collecting himself, relying on the survival reflexes he had learned in war. He cleaned his knife blade and put it back in its sheath. He picked up the carbine, checked it for dirt or mechanical damage, found none and made sure the weapon was ready for instant use.
Only then did Ty retreat silently, pausing long enough to close the dead warrior's eyes.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… And may God have mercy on both our souls.
Three hundred feet away Janna sank slowly to her knees, feeling as though her own heart had burst. The barrel of the pistol she was holding clanked softly against stone. She took a deep breath, then another, trying to quiet her body's trembling as she watched Ty glide from brush to boulder, retreating toward the cleft's uncertain shelter.
It had been nerve stretching for Janna to stay within the slot's narrow shadow, knowing as she did from Ty's actions that he must have cut the trail of renegades. She had been watching him for the past half hour while he recon-noitered. Her eyes ached from staring out and trying to guess what Ty was reading from various signs crisscrossing the earth.
Then an Indian had risen up out of the very ground and launched himself at Ty, choosing the greater glory of personal combat to the sure kill offered by picking off Ty with a rifle. Even though the range had been too far for Janna to use the pistol with real accuracy, she had reached for the gun. The fight had ended before she could even lift the weapon above her waist to take aim. She had never seen a man so quick as Ty, or so deadly in that quickness. She realized at that instant just how much of his strength he held in check when he was with her.
And Ty could have died despite all his power and speed, his blood a crimson stain bursting from his body to be drunk by the thirsty earth. All that was Ty, the passion and the laughter, the anger and the sensual teasing, the silence and the silken dream, all of it gone between one breath and the next.