Elizabeth Lowell by Reckless Love

nothing, because she would have argued with him, and arguing against the inevitable was a waste of time.
    As far as he was concerned, 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 her 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 his 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.”
    He 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 him 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.
    “How did you manage on horseback?” he asked when he reached a wider point in the slit and Janna came alongside.
    “There was no other choice.”
    He thought about that for a moment, then nodded slowly, understanding that was how she had managed to survive out here on her own. She believed that there was no other choice.
    But there was.
    “With all your books, you could be a teacher,” he said as he swung aboard Zebra once more, scraping his knee against the canyon wall in the process.
    She grabbed his arm and swung up behind him. “Not enough kids except in towns.”
    “So?”
    “I don’t like towns. They seem to bring out the worst in people.”
    He opened his mouth to argue, realized that he agreed with her and felt trapped. “Not all the time,” he muttered.
    She shrugged. “Maybe I just bring out the worst in towns.”
    “Do you really plan on spending the rest of your life out here?” he demanded.
    “Unless you keep your voice down, the rest of my life won’t amount to more than a few hours,” she said. “These walls make a dropped pin echo like a landslide.”
    He turned around and glared at her but said nothing more, except for a muffled word or two when his legs scraped against narrow points in the cleft. Her slender legs were in no such danger, and in any case were enveloped by protective folds of cloth. Even so, Ty had an acute appreciation of the warm flesh beneath the folds, especially when she rubbed against him as she adjusted to Zebra’s motions.
    Cautiously Ty urged the horse out of the cleft, keeping to shadows and high brush wherever possible, trying to break up the telltale silhouette of horse and rider. They had gone no more than a mile when they cut across tracks left by a group of unshod ponies. The horses had moved in a bunch, not stopping to graze or to drink from the few puddles that remained after the previous thunderstorm.
    From the distance between sets of prints, Janna guessed that the horses had been cantering.
    “That’s Cascabel’s horse,” she said in a low voice.
    She pointed to a set of larger hoofprints that had been all but obliterated by the rest of the group. Though the horse had once been shod, it had no shoes any longer. All that remained were vague traces of nail holes around the rim of the untrimmed hooves.
    “He stole two Kentucky horses from an officer at the fort over by Split-rock Springs,” she continued. “One of the horses used to be the fastest horse in Utah