Outlaw m-3

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “And up every nameless canyon,” Diana continued, her voice husky with emotion, “there’s a chance of finding the one extraordinary ruin that will explain why the Anasazi culture thrived in this area for more than ten centuries and then simply vanished without warning, as though the people picked up in the middle of a meal and left, taking nothing with them,”

  “That’s what you’re looking for? The answer to an old mystery?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  The question startled Diana. “What do you I mean?”

  “What is it you really want?” Ten asked. “Glory? Wealth? A tenured job at an eastern university? Classrooms full of students who think you’re smarter than God?”

  “Is it academia in general you dislike or me in particular?”

  Ten heard the echo of his own previous question and smiled to himself. “I don’t know you well enough to dislike you. I’m just curious.”

  “So am I,” Diana said tightly. “That’s why I want so know about the Anasazi. Their abrupt disappearance from the cliff houses at the height of their cultural success is as big a mystery as what really caused the extinction of dinosaurs.”

  She glanced covertly at Ten. Though he was watching the rough, difficult road, she sensed that he was listening closely to her words. Despite her usual reticence on the subject of herself, there was something about Ten that made her want to keep talking, if only to give him a better opinion of her than he obviously had. Not that she could really blame him for being cool toward her; she had done everything but crawl under the table to avoid him at dinner.

  The contrasts and contradictions of the man called Tennessee Blackthorn both intrigued and irritated Diana. A man who could fight with such savage efficiency shouldn’t also care about sick kittens. A man who could handle the physical demands of the big truck and the rotten road with such effortless skill shouldn’t be so interested in something as abstract and intangible as the vanished Anasazi, yet he had shown obvious interest every time the subject had come up.

  But most of all, a man who was so abrasively masculine shouldn’t have been perceptive enough to notice her silent yearning after unexplored canyons. Nor should she be noticing right now the clean line of his profile, the high forehead and thick, faintly curling pelt of black hair, the luxuriant black eyelashes and crystal clarity of his eyes, the subdued sensuality of his mouth.

  The direction of Diana’s thoughts made her distinctly uneasy. She turned and looked out the window again, yet it was impossible for her to go back to the long silences of the previous hours in the truck when she had tried to shut out the presence of everything except the land.

  “As for prestige or a tenured teaching position,” Diana continued, looking out the window, “I’m not a great candidate for any university, especially an eastern one. I love the Colorado Plateau country too much to live anywhere else. I stand in front of classrooms full of students-worshipful or otherwise-cause teaching gives me the money and time to explore the Anasazi culture in the very places where the Ancient Ones once lived, and then make what I’ve seen and learned come alive in drawings.”

  “You’re an artist?”

  Short, golden brown hair rippled and shone in the sun as Diana shook her head in a silent negative. “At best, I’m an illustrator. I take the site photographer’s pictures, read the archaeological summaries of the site and study the artifacts that have been excavated. Then I combine everything with my own knowledge of the Anasazi and make a series of drawings of the site as it probably looked when it was inhabited.”

  “Sounds like more than illustration to me.”

  “I assure you, it’s less than art. My mother is an artist, so I know the difference.”

  “Do your parents live in Colorado?”

  My mother lives in Arizona.” Normally Ten would have let the matter of parents drop, especially since Diana’s voice had planted warning flags around the subject, but his curiosity about Diana Saxton wasn’t normal. She showed flashes of passion coupled with unusual reserve. And it was reserve rather than shyness. Ten had known more than a few shy cowboys. Not one of them would have been able to get up in front of a room full of people and say a single word, much less teach a whole course.

  Diana wasn’t shy of people. She was shy of men. Ten had immediately figured out that she didn’t much care for the male half of the human race. What he hadn’t figured out was why.

  “What about your father?” Ten asked.

  “What about him?”

  Though Diana’s voice was casual, Ten noted the subtle tightening of her body.

  “Where does he live?” Ten asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he why you don’t like men?”

  “Frankly, it’s none of your business.”

  “Of course it is. I’m a man.”

  “Mr. Blackthorn-”

  “Ten,” he interrupted.

  “-whether I hate or love men is irrelevant to you or any other man I meet.”

  “I’ll agree about the other men, but not me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m the man you’re going to spend the next five days alone with.”

  “What?” Diana asked, staring at Ten.

  “One of the grad students broke his ankle climbing up a canyon wall,” Ten said. Without pausing in his explanations, he whipped the truck around a washout on one side of the road and then a landslide ten yards farther down. “Another one got a job in Illinois working on Indian mounds. The other three can come out only on the weekends because they work during the week.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m staying at the September Canyon site with you.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’ve been alone at remote digs before.”

  “Not on the Rocking M you haven’t. There will be an armed guard on the site at all times.” Without altering his tone at all he said, “Hang on, this will get greasy.”

  The relaxed lines on Ten’s body didn’t change as he held the truck on a slippery segment of road where sandstone gave way to thin layers of shale that were so loosely bonded they washed away in even a gentle rain.During the summer season of cloudbursts, the parts of the road that crossed shale formations became impassable for hours or days. Nor was the sandstone itself any treat for driving. Wet sandstone was surprisingly slick.

  “There are professional pothunters in the area,” Ten continued. “They’ve worked over a lot of sites. If someone objects, they work them over, too. Luke and I decided that no one goes to September Canyon without a guard.”

  “Why wasn’t I told this before I was hired?” Diana asked tightly.

  “Because the sheriff didn’t tell us until last night.”

  Diana said something beneath her breath. Ten glanced sideways at her. “If you can’t handle it,tell me now. We’ll be back at the ranch in time for dinner.”

  She said nothing, still trying to cope with her seething feelings at the thought of being alone with Ten in a remote canyon for five days.

  “If I thought it would do any good,” Ten said, “I’d give you my word that I won’t touch you. But you don’t know me well enough to believe me, so there’s not much point in making any promises, is there?”

  Diana didn’t answer.

  Without warning Ten brought the truck to a stop in the center of a wide spot in the road. He set the brake and turned to face his unhappy passenger.

  “What will it be?” he asked. “September Canyon or back to the ranch house?”

  Almost wildly Diana glanced around the countryside. She had been so excited when Carla had offered employment for the summer. The salary was minimal, but the opportunity to study newly discovered ruins was unparalleled.

  And now it was all vanishing like rain in the desert.

  She looked at Ten. Part of her was frankly terrified at the prospect of being alone with him for days on end. Part of her was not-and in some ways, that was most terrifying of all.

  Shutting out everything,
Diana closed her eyes. What am I going to do?

  The image of Ten’s powerful hands holding the kitten with such care condensed in her mind.

  Surely Carla wouldn’t send me out here alone with a man she didn’t trust. After that thought came another. My father was never that gentle with anything. Nor was Steve.

  The ingrained habit of years made Diana’s mind veer away from the bleak night when she had learned once and forever to distrust men and her own judgment. Yet she had been luckier than many of the women she had talked with since. Her scars were all on the inside.

  Unbidden came a thought that made Diana tremble with a tangle of emotions she refused to name and a question she shouldn’t ask, even in the silence of her own mind.

  Would Ten be as gentle with a woman as he was with that kitten?

  5

  Ten sat and watched the emotions fighting within Diana-anger, fear, hope, confusion, curiosity, longing. The extent of Diana’s reluctance to go on to September Canyon surprised him. He had glimpsed the depth of her passion for the Anasazi; if she were considering turning and walking away from September Canyon, she must be in the grip of a fear that was very real to her, despite the fact that Ten knew of no reason for that fear. While most women might have been initially uneasy at spending time alone with a stranger in a remote place, their instinctive wariness would have been balanced by the knowledge that their unexpected companion was a man who had the respect and trust of the people he lived among.

  That fact, however, didn’t seem to make much difference to Diana.

  “Can you talk about it?” Ten asked finally.

  “What?”

  “Why you’re afraid of men. Is it your father?”

  Diana looked at Ten’s searching, intent eyes, sensing the intelligence and the strength of will in him reaching out to her, asking her to trust him.

  Abruptly she felt hemmed in, required to do something for which she was unprepared.

  “Stop hounding me,” Diana said through clenched teeth. “You have no right to my secrets any more than any man has a right to my body!”

  For an instant there was an electric silence stretching tightly between Ten and Diana; then he turned away from her to look out over the land. The silence lengthened until the idling of the truck’s engine was as loud as thunder. When Ten finally turned back toward Diana his face was expressionless, his eyes were hooded, and his voice held none of the mixture of emotions it had before.

  “In an hour or less, those clouds will get together and rain very hard. Then Picture Wash will become impassable. Anyone who is at the September Canyon site will be forced to stay there. Which will it be, Dr. Saxton? Forward to the dig or back to the ranch?”

  Ten’s voice was even, uninflected, polite. It was like having a stranger ask her for the time of day.

  Bitterly Diana reminded herself that Ten was a stranger. Yet somehow he hadn’t seemed like one until just now. From the moment Ten had held out the injured kitten to Diana, he had treated her as though she were an old friend newly discovered. She hadn’t even realized the…warmth…of his presence until it had been withdrawn.

  Now she had an absurd impulse to reach out and touch Ten, to protest the appearance of the handsome, self-contained stranger who waited for her answer with cool attention, his whole attitude telling her that whether she chose to go forward or back, it made no personal difference to him.

  “September Canyon,” Diana said after a minute. Although she tried, her voice wasn’t as controlled as his had been.

  Ten took off the brake and resumed driving.

  Eventually the silence, which Diana had welcomed before, began to eat at her nerves. She looked out the window but found herself glancing again and again toward Ten. She told herself that it was only his casual skill with the truck that fascinated her. She had done enough rough-country travel in the past to admire his expertise. And it was his expertise she was admiring, not the subtle flex and play of his muscles beneath the faded black work shirt he wore.

  “You’re a very good driver,” she said. Ten nodded indifferently.

  Silence returned, lengthened, filling the cab until Diana rolled down the window just to hear the whistle of wind. She told herself the lack of conversation didn’t bother her. After all, she had been the one to resist talk during the long hours since dawn. When Ten had pointed out something along the road or asked about her work, she had nodded or answered briefly and had no questions of her own to offer.

  But now that she thought about it, she had a perfect right to ask a few businesslike questions of Ten and get a few businesslike answers.

  “Will it distract you to talk?” she asked finally.

  “No.”

  Brief and to the point. Very businesslike. Irritating, too. Silently Diana asked herself if her earlier, brief, impersonal answers had seemed cool and clipped to Ten.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude earlier,” she said.

  “You weren’t.”

  Diana waited. Ten said nothing more.

  “How much farther is it to September Canyon?” she asked after a few minutes.

  “An hour.”

  Diana looked up toward the mesa top where pinon and juniper and cedar grew, punctuated by pointed sprays of yucca plants. The clouds had become a solid mass whose bottom was a blue color so deep it was nearly black.

  “Looks like rain,” she said.

  Ten nodded. More silence, more bumps, more growling sounds from the laboring four-wheel-drive truck.

  “Why is it called Picture Wash?” Diana asked in combination of irritation and determination.

  “There are pictographs on the cliffs.” Six whole words. Incredible.

  “Anasazi?” she asked. Ten shrugged.

  “Did other Indians live here when the white man came?” Diana asked, knowing very well that they had.

  Ten nodded.

  “Mountain Utes?” she asked, again knowing the answer.

  “Yes,” he said as he swerved around a mass of shale that had extended a slippery tongue onto the roadway.

  Diana hardly noticed the evasive maneuver. She was intent on drawing out the suddenly laconic Ten. Obviously that would require a question that couldn’t be answered by yes, no or a shrug. Inspiration came.

  “Why are you called Tennessee?”

  “I was the oldest.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did Dad.”

  Diana gave up the word game and concentrated on the land.

  The truck kicked and twitched and skidded around a series of steep, uphill curves, climbing up a mesa spur and onto the top. There was a long, reasonably straight run across the spur. Pinon and juniper whipped by, interspersed with a handful of big sage and other drought-adapted shrubs.

  Abruptly there was an opening in the pinon and juniper. Though the ground looked no different, big sagebrush grew head-high and higher. Their silver-gray, twisting branches were thicker than a strong man’s arm.

  “Stop!” Diana said urgently.

  The truck shuddered to a halt. Before the pebbles scattered by the tires finished rolling, Diana had her seat belt off and was jumping down the cab.

  “What’s wrong?” Ten asked, climbing out of the track.

  Diana didn’t answer. Watching the ground with intent, narrowed eyes, she quartered the stand of big sage, twisting and turning, zigzagging across the open areas in the manner of someone searching for something. She was so involved in her quest that she didn’t seem to notice the scrapes and scratches the rough brush delivered to her unprotected arms.

  Ten hesitated at the edge of the road, wondering if Diana was looking for a little privacy. It had been a long drive from the ranch, and there were no amenities such as gas stations or public rest rooms along the way. Yet Diana seemed more interested in the open areas between clumps of big sage than in the thicker growths that would have offered more privacy.

  Without warning Diana went down on her knees had began digging hurriedly in the ro
cky ground. Ten started toward her, ignoring the slap and drag of brush over his clothes. When he was within ten feet of her, she gave a cry of triumph and lifted a squarish rock in both hands. Dirt clung to the edges and dappled light fell across the stone’s surface, camouflaging its oddly regular shape.

  “Look!” she cried, holding up her prize to Ten.

  He eased forward until her was close to her, ducked a branch that had been going after his eyes, straightened and looked.

  “A stone,” Ten said neutrally.

  Diana didn’t notice his lack of enthusiasm. She had enough for both of them and the truck, as well. Nor did she notice the dirty streaks left on her jeans when she rubbed the rock back and forth, cleaning the part of the stone that had been buried beneath the dirt. After a few moments she held the rock in a patch of sunlight coming through the open branches of the sage.

  “Beautiful,” she crooned, running her fingertips delicately along the stone, absorbing the subtle variations in the surface, marks that were the result of applied intelligence rather than random weathering. “Just…beautiful.”

  The throaty timbre of Diana’s voice lured Ten as no stone could have. He sat on his heels next to her and looked closely at the rock that she was continuing to stroke as though it were alive.

  The contours of the stone were too even, its edges too angular to be the result of chance. When the light touched the rock just right, tiny dimples could be seen, marks left by countless patient blows from a stone ax held in the hands of an Anasazi stone mason. Seeing those tangible marks of a long-dead man made the skin on Ten’s skull tighten in a primal reflex that was as far older than the civilized artifact Diana was cherishing in her hands.

  Without realizing it, Ten stretched out his own hand, feeling a need to confirm the stone’s reality through touch. The rock had the texture of medium sandpaper. The dimples were shallow, more a vague pattern than true pockmarks. Cold from the ground an one end, sun warmed on the other, bearing the marks of man all over its surface, the stone was enduring testimony to a culture that was known only by its fragmentary ruins.