Rafe slammed his open hand against the rock wall and swore viciously.
But despite his anger, he didn’t crawl into the coyote hole and drag Eve back. If she could get through the opening, she was Reno’s best chance of survival.
And if Reno was dead, Eve could find out that, too, before Caleb or Wolfe got killed trying to dig out a man who was no longer alive.
Eve crawled and clawed her way through the rubble, lured by the haze of lantern light ahead. The last foot was the hardest, for the cave-in all but filled the opening. There was just enough space for her to put one arm and her head through. Using her feet to push, she drove herself through the hole.
Abruptly the ceiling gave way.
For an instant Eve felt a crushing weight. Then a tongue of rubble shot forward, taking her with it. She sprawled across the uneven floor of the tunnel and fought for breath.
The first thing Eve saw was Reno’s lantern. The second was Reno’s head and shoulders sticking out of a pile of rubble left by the series of caveins. The third thing she saw was that Rafe had accidentally done what the Spanish had done many times by design; he had dug a new coyote hole connecting to the big tunnel.
Eve didn’t know she was crying Reno’s name until the broken echoes came back at her. Coughing dryly, she pulled her bandanna into place and crawled toward Reno through the swirls of dust stirred by the new cave-in.
“Eve!” Rafe yelled. “Are you all right?”
“I found Reno!”
“Is he alive?”
Eve reached out to Reno, but her hand was shaking so badly, she couldn’t tell if there was a pulse in his neck. Then she saw blood welling slowly from a cut on his forehead.
Distantly Eve became aware of Rafe shouting her name.
“He’s alive!” she yelled back.
“Praise God. Watch out. I’m coming through.”
Moments later another shower of rubble spurted from the unstable wall where coyote holes riddled the old tunnel. Stones as big as Eve’s fist hammered down. One of them struck the lantern, knocking it over and extinguishing it. Another struck Reno, who groaned softly. The remainder of the rocks added another layer to the mound covering him.
“Stop!” Eve yelled. “Rafe, stop! Every time you move, Reno gets buried deeper!”
“All right. I’m stopping. What happened to the light?”
“A stone knocked it over and spilled the fuel.”
Rafe swore.
Eve groped in darkness through her pockets. Finally she found the stub of candle that Reno had insisted she carry in case something happened to her lantern.
Suddenly light from Rafe’s lantern poured through the small opening that was all that remained of the coyote hole.
“Can you see now?” he asked.
“Yes. Wait.”
A match sizzled. Soon a candle flame burned cleanly against the enveloping darkness. Eve crawled deeper into the old tunnel and wedged the base of the candle into a crevice.
“I’ve got light now,” she said.
“How bad is Reno hurt?”
“I don’t know. He’s facedown, buried from his heels to his ribs. He’s got a cut on his forehead.”
Rocks fell and rolled as the mine adjusted to its new shape.
“Can you get him out of reach of another cave-in?” Rafe asked urgently.
Eve put her hands beneath Reno’s arms and pulled. He groaned again. She closed her eyes and pulled harder.
The rocks covering Reno barely stirred.
“I’ve got to get the rubble off him first,” Eve said.
“Be quick about it. That opening is damned unstable.”
She worked frantically, pushing rocks until Reno was free to his hips.
“Eve?” Rafe called.
“I’ve got all but his legs uncovered.”
“Want me to try to come through and help?”
Even as Rafe spoke, more rocks came raining down on Reno.
“Stop digging!” Eve said frantically.
“I didn’t move!”
Rocks bounced and groanced and rattled.
“Get up the tunnel as far back from the coyote hole as you can,” Rafe ordered.
“But Reno—”
Another wave of rubble lapped out from the unstable wall as a low, grinding sound vibrated through the mine.
“You can’t help him now!” Rafe yelled savagely. “Save yourself!”
As though in a dream, Eve saw the wall shiver and shift minutely as it began to unravel.
Adrenaline poured through her in a wild cataract. She didn’t stop to think or worry or wonder. She just hooked her hands under Reno’s arms and pulled with every bit of strength and determination she had, dragging him in a single lunge away from the rubble and the unstable wall.
Rocks ground and gnashed and poured out in a wave of debris that lapped at Reno’s boots. Desperately Eve kept backing up, dragging him with her until she stumbled and fell. She struggled to her feet and kept pulling, but her frenzied burst of strength was spent, leaving her unable to budge him. Still she kept tugging and tugging, crying and calling brokenly to Reno.
“It’s all right, Eve. You can let go. You pulled him far enough.”
For a wild second she thought Reno was talking to her. Then she realized that it was Rafe kneeling next to her.
“How…?” Eve’s question ended in a cough.
“When the wall went, it opened up a whole new passage. I don’t know how long it will last, though. Can you walk?”
Shakily Eve got to her feet.
“Take the lantern,” Rafe said. “We’ll be right on your heels.”
He bent, levered his brother into place across his broad shoulders, and followed Eve. Soon they met Caleb and Wolfe, who had heard the rumble in the gut of the mine and had come running.
Fresh air and the jostling that came on the way through the mine revived Reno. He regained consciousness in a haze of pain and dizziness just as he was carried out of the mine. Sunlight was a hammer blow in his eyes. Groaning, he closed his eyes and wondered why the world was bumping so badly.
“Lie still,” said Rafe’s voice. “You’ve been hurt.”
Other voices came to Reno, men’s voices, Caleb and Wolfe talking as they carried him into the shelter of the camp.
Nowhere did Reno hear Eve’s voice, her touch, her scent. When he opened his eyes, sunlight blinded him.
“Eve?” he asked hoarsely.
“Other than being crazy enough to try to cut a deal with Slater, she’s fine,” Caleb said dryly. “Let’s set him down over here. Feet first, Wolfe.”
Reno heard nothing but the words about Eve. They echoed in his mind like the waves of concussion, pounding home the old truth about men and women and betrayal.
Tried to cut a deal with Slater. Cut a deal with Slater. Cut a deal…
The words echoed terribly in Reno’s mind, bringing a pain in their wake that was like nothing he had ever known. When he had felt the tunnel collapsing around him, his last thought was that at least Eve would be safe.
Her first thought had been to take the gold and cut a deal with Jericho Slater, leaving Reno to die in the mine.
“Should have learned…Savannah Marie,” he said bitterly.
“What?” Caleb asked.
“Did that cheating saloon girl…leave any gold?”
Before Caleb could answer, Reno passed out again.
Eve wished she could have done the same. She stumbled as though the ground had been taken away from beneath her feet.
Rafe caught her before she fell.
“Easy there,” he said kindly. “You’re at the end of your rope.”
She simply shook her head and said nothing.
“Who’s this Savannah Marie?” Caleb asked Rafe.
“A girl back home who used to drive boys crazy with her teasing. For a while there, Reno was young enough to think he loved her,” Rafe said as he set Eve back on her feet. “Who is the cheating saloon girl?”
“I am,” Eve said to
nelessly.
Abruptly Caleb realized that his words about Eve cutting a deal with Slater had been misunderstood by Reno.
“Reno’s out of his head,” Caleb said roughly. “When he wakes up, I’ll set him straight.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Eve said, turning away.
“Eve,” Caleb said. “Wait.”
She shook her head and kept walking.
Everything that mattered had already been said. Reno might have enjoyed her company, might have been gentle with her, might have shared the most intense kind of passion with her; but he didn’t love her.
He never would. Love required trust, and Reno would never forget that Eve had been a card cheat and a saloon girl.
I understand that women have to make up in cunning what they lack in strength. Understanding isn’t the same as liking.
You can’t count on women, but you can count on gold.
Sugar child, would you feel better if I told you sweet lies about love?
While the others hovered around Reno, Eve went into a grove of trees and washed the grit of the mine from every bit of her, and while she did, she wished she could wash away the past at the same time.
But she couldn’t. She could only leave the past behind her, like the dirty water she was pouring from the basin onto the stony ground.
With a calm that came from a loss so deep it numbed her ability to feel pain, Eve pulled on her only remaining clothing—the red dress with jet buttons and a bullet hole in the hidden pocket where she carried her derringer.
Mechanically she went about her preparations. The most difficult part was figuring out how to carry the gold. Finally she brought her mount over to the mouth of the mine, tied on her empty saddlebags, and loaded them. Reno’s saddlebags, she tied around the saddle horn. Then she loaded them, too. Gold bars clanked and shifted within the heavy leather pouches.
Only Caleb noticed Eve’s transformation from grubby miner to tawny-haired saloon girl. He watched with brooding amber eyes that shifted between the half-conscious Reno and Eve’s quick, efficient preparations.
Abruptly Caleb stood up and went over to her.
“You’re getting ready to pull out,” he said.
She nodded.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Canyon City, I guess. It’s the nearest saloon.”
“You’ll need someone to ride shotgun. I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“Like flaming hell you will. I was planning to get back to Willow as soon as I could anyway. Pig Iron is a fine guard, but he’s a mite short on social graces.”
Caleb stalked off, whistling shrilly. A black gelding stopped grazing in the meadow and trotted over to him. He saddled and bridled the horse with swift motions before he came back to camp to pick up his saddlebags. Their unexpected weight nearly yanked him off balance.
He spun toward Eve just as she mounted the lineback dun in a flurry of scarlet silk and rode across the meadow toward the people gathered around Reno.
Rafe and Wolfe looked up at her, saw the dress and the tightly drawn beauty of the girl with shining hair and golden eyes, and were too shocked to speak.
Jessi saw, too. Her eyes widened, but she said only, “Reno is much better. Steady pulse, good deep breaths. He’ll be coming around soon. I don’t think he’s badly injured at all. He’s strong as an ox.”
Eve’s smile was the saddest Jessi had ever seen.
“Yes,” Eve said softly. “He’s very strong.”
Caleb rode up, reined in beside Eve, and waited, saying nothing.
Jessi came to her feet and stood next to the girl who looked as though she had been pushed beyond her last reserves. Jessi knew what it was like to be pushed that hard by life.
“Caleb told me,” Jessi said in a low voice. “Reno didn’t know what he was saying. When he wakes up, he’ll call himself ten thousand kinds of fool.”
The compassion in Jessi’s blue eyes made Eve want to laugh and cry at the same time.
“You’re very kind,” Eve said huskily. “And very wrong. Reno knew exactly what he was saying. He’s said it often enough before.”
Jessi bit her lip and shook her head unhappily.
Eve continued speaking in an unnaturally calm voice.
“My half of the gold came to eight bars. I left two for you and Wolfe and two for Rafe. Caleb already has his.”
Wolfe and Rafe started to speak at the same time.
Eve ignored them. With breathtaking speed, she bent over and yanked Caleb’s belt knife from its sheath. The lethally sharp blade flashed, slicing through the tie that held Reno’s saddlebags to the saddle horn. They landed with a weighty thump a few feet from Reno’s legs.
“That gold belongs to Reno,” Eve said. “He can count on it.”
The lineback dun spun on its hocks and leaped forward as once again Eve left Reno behind in a drumroll of hoofbeats and a wild swirl of scarlet skirts.
23
R ENO sat quietly in the shade of a fir tree, watching the meadow through narrowed eyes. For the first time in five days he wasn’t dizzy in the least. The ringing in his ears was gone, as was the nausea that had plagued him. Though his mouth was drawn in a flat line of pain, his headache had subsided until it was little more than a nuisance.
It wasn’t the headache that was hurting Reno. It was thinking about a girl who had loved her own comfort more than she had cared whether he lived or died.
Reno hadn’t seen Eve since he came out of the mine. When he had asked where Caleb was, Rafe told him that Caleb had taken Eve back to Canyon City. Reno hadn’t mentioned her name again. Neither had anyone else.
The sound of Wolfe laughing came back through the clean air, followed by the silvery music of Jessi’s laughter as her husband lifted her off the ground and spun her around and around. Finally he sank down with Jessi and disappeared in the meadow’s long, lush grass.
A bitterness that Reno refused to acknowledge as grief twisted through him, memories like razors slicing him, making him bleed in secret.
Once he had chased Eve through this meadow, caught her, and pulled her laughing down into the grass. Once, but no longer. Now even the memory of their shared passion was a pain he couldn’t face, so he shoved it down in his mind, condemning it to darkness.
Yet the pain remained, reflected in the new brackets on either side of his mouth.
Tried to cut a deal with Slater. Cut a deal with Slater. Cut a deal…
Slowly Reno became aware of his brother standing nearby, watching him with shrewd gray eyes, holding a pair of saddlebags over his arms.
“Sure is a wonder to hear Wolfe laughing,” Rafe said. “Makes a man feel good just watching them together.”
Reno grunted.
Rafe’s smile was a warning any man other than Reno would have heeded. Rafe had been waiting impatiently until concussion and physical pain no longer hazed his brother’s eyes. Rafe wanted to be certain that Reno would hear and understand each word with great clarity.
The waiting was finally over.
“How’s your head this morning?” Rafe asked blandly.
Reno shrugged.
“Glad you’re feeling better, baby brother,” Rafe said. “We were all real worried about you.”
The look Reno gave his older brother didn’t invite convesation. Rafe ignored it and kept talking.
“Yessir,” he drawled, “the story went through the countryside like wildfire. A gunfighter called Reno, a Spanish treasure map, and the girl from the Gold Dust Saloon.”
Reno’s eyelids flinched at the mention of Eve, but he made no other response.
If Rafe hadn’t been looking closely for a reaction, he would have missed it. But he missed nothing. His smile widened without becoming a bit warmer.
“I was in the Spanish Bottoms when I heard you were trapped in a blind canyon and were going to be cut to bloody rags by Slater and a passel of Comancheros,” Rafe said.
�
�They tried.”
“By the time I got there, nothing was left but coyote bait.”
Reno’s smile was a cold match for his brother’s. “It was a near thing.”
“That’s what Caleb said. He came up on me when I was reading sign after the fight, trying to figure out which way to go. That man’s like a ghost. Near scared me out of my boots.”
More laughter floated up from the meadow, a man and woman’s voices joined in celebration of the sheer joy of being alive.
Reno looked away from the sunlight and grass, trying to forget the time when he had laughed and breathed in the heady fragrance of lilacs from Eve’s hair, her skin, her breasts.
“Seems word had gotten to Cal through that Comanchero squaw one of his men keeps,” Rafe continued. “I’ll tell you, brother, that was one hair-raising trail you found out of the blind canyon.”
“It was better than what Slater had waiting for me.”
“Well, Cal and I decided on the sensible route. We took after Slater. He left a lot wider trail than you did.”
“I didn’t expect friends to be following me,” Reno said dryly.
“You left signs for me.”
“Just covering my bets.”
“Bets, huh?” Rafe said sardonically. “Appears you’ve turned into quite a gambler since Canyon City. Must have been Eve’s bad influence.”
Reno’s mouth thinned even more beneath the black stubble that covered his cheeks.
Rafe pretended not to notice his brother’s grim reaction each time Eve was mentioned.
“We hooked up with Wolfe and Jessi on the far side of that mesa you blazed a trail over,” Rafe continued. “One of Wolfe’s Indian friends had told him you were in too much trouble to shoot your way out of alone, so Wolfe and Jessi came on the run.”
Reno barely heard. He was too busy trying to shut out the sound of laughter coming from the meadow where Wolfe and Jessi enjoyed the sunlight and the day and each other.
The rippling music of feminine laughter haunted Reno, reminding him of everything he wanted to forget.
“…Caleb came on Slater’s guards just after they were changed,” Rafe said. “No sooner had he taken care of them than he heard someone go by. Turned out it was Eve, on her way to spy on Slater’s camp.”
Abruptly Reno started to get up.
Only You Page 29
