«Willow likes Eve. Ethan took to her right away, and he’s cool with strangers.»

Reno froze with the brush just above the dun’s barrel. The mare snorted and nudged him, wanting more of the currying.

«She’s bright and she’s spirited,» Caleb said. He laughed softly. «She’ll be a real handful, and that’s a fact.»

«The dun? Maybe I better use her as a packhorse and give one of the Shaggies to Eve to ride.»

Caleb’s grin flashed. «She’d run rings around most men, but she’s a good match for you.»

«I like Darlin’ better.»

Caleb chuckled. «I thought my two horses were my best friends. Then Willow taught me that —»

«Eve isn’t like Willow,» Reno interrupted, his voice cold.

«That’s it, boy. You just keep on fighting that silk rope.»

Reno said something brutal under his breath.

«Fighting won’t do you any good,» Caleb said, «but no man worth his salt ever gives up without a fight.»

With a hissed curse, Reno turned and faced Caleb.

«I should be whipped for bringing Eve into my sister’s house,» Reno said flatly.

A chill settled over Eve. She knew what Reno would be saying next. She didn’t want to hear it.

But even more, she didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping, no matter how innocently. She began retreating one slow step at a time, praying that she would make no sound to give her away.

«You asked me how I met Eve, and I ducked the question,» Reno said. «Well, I’m through ducking.»

«Glad to hear it.»

«I met her in a Canyon City saloon.»

Caleb’s smile vanished. «What?»

«You heard me. She was dealing cards at the Gold Dust. Slater and a gunnie called Raleigh King were at the table.»

Reno stopped talking, walked around the lineback dun, and began brushing away dust.

«And?» Caleb prodded.

«I took cards.»

The only sound in the next minute was that made by the brush moving over sleek hide. Then came the muted bawling of cattle as dawn slowly began stealing stars from the sky.

«Keep talking,» Caleb said finally.

«She was cold-decking and bottom-dealing.»

Again Caleb waited.

Reno was silent.

«Christ, it’s like pulling teeth,» Caleb muttered. «Spit it all out.»

«You’ve got the meat of it.»

«Like blazing hell I do. I know you, Reno. You wouldn’t bring a whore into your sister’s house.»

«I said Eve was peeling cards, not men.»

There was a taut silence followed by the snap of a saddle blanket as Reno shook it out.

«Talk,» Caleb said bluntly.

«When it came time for Eve to deal, she gave me a pat hand.»

Caleb whistled through his teeth.

«When Raleigh went for his gun, I dumped the table in his lap. Eve grabbed the pot and ran out the back, leaving me in a shoot-out with Raleigh and Slater.»

«Crooked Bear’s whore said nothing about Slater being dead. Just Raleigh King and Steamer.»

«Slater didn’t draw on me. They did.»

Shaking his head, Caleb said, «Be damned. Eve doesn’t look like a saloon girl.»

«She’s a card cheat and a thief, and she set me up to die.»

«If any man but you said that, I’d call him a liar.»

Without warning Reno turned and looked into the darkness beyond the lamplight.

«Tell him, saloon girl.»

Eve froze in the act of taking a step backward. After a sharp struggle with herself, she controlled the impulse to turn and flee, but there was nothing she could do to put color in a face gone as pale as salt. Head high, she walked into the circle of lantern light.

«I’m not what you think I am,» she said.

Reno grabbed the saddlebags Eve was holding, opened one of them, and yanked out the dress she had worn in Canyon Qty. It hung from his fist in scarlet condemnation.

«Not as heart-tugging as a dress made of flour sacks, but a damn sight more truthful,» Reno said to Caleb.

Color returned to Eve’s cheeks in a crimson tide.

«I was a bond servant,» she said in a thin voice. «I wore what I was given.»

«So you say, gata. So you say. You were wearing this in a saloon when I met you, and your bond masters were dead.»

Reno jammed the dress back into the saddlebag, flipped the joined bags over the corral rail, and went back to saddling the lineback dun.

«Have you eaten?» Caleb asked Eve.

She shook her head, not trusting her voice. Nor could she look Caleb in the eye. He had taken her into his house, and what he must think of her now that he knew the truth made her wish to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

«Is Willow up yet?» Caleb asked.

Eve shook her head again.

«Not surprising,» Caleb said easily. «Ethan was cranky all last night.»

«Teething.»

The word was barely a whisper, but Caleb understood.

Reno swore under his breath. That, too, carried in the stillness of dawn.

«Cloves,» Eve whispered a moment later.

«Beg pardon?» Caleb said.

Eve cleared her throat painfully. «Oil of cloves. On his gums. It will sweeten his temper.»

«I’d a hell of a lot rather kick his butt around the barn,» Caleb said, «and I don’t mean Ethan.»

Reno’s head came up. He gave Caleb a hard look. Caleb gave it right back.

«Yuma man,» Reno said coldly. «I’d think you’d be the last one to be taken in by a pretty face.»

Reno reached under the dun’s belly, shot the long leather strap through the cinch ring, and began tightening the cinch with hard, quick motions of his hands. His words were the same — hard and quick.

«You went into the wilderness with Willy, an innocent girl who wanted love.»

Leather hissed over leather.

«I’m going into the wilderness with an experienced little cheat who wants half of a gold mine.»

Reno snapped the stirrup into place. The creak of leather was like a cry in the silence.

«If we find the mine, I’ll have to look sharp or she’ll steal me blind and shoot me in the back, or leave me to be shot up by the likes of Jericho Slater,» Reno concluded harshly. «She’s done it before.»

From the house came the sound of an iron triangle being struck with a metal wand as Willow called the men in for breakfast.

Reno yanked Eve’s saddlebags off the corral fence, took the bedroll from her hands, and secured both behind her saddle. When he finished, he spun around, picked Eve up, and dumped her in the saddle.

Only then did he turn to Caleb.

«Tell Willy good-bye for us.»

Reno sprang into the blue roan’s saddle like a big cat. A swift motion of his hand jerked Shaggy One’s lead rope free of the corral rail. He wheeled Darlin’ around and touched her with his spurs.

The mustang headed out of the yard at a brisk canter. The two Shaggies and the lineback dun followed.

So did Caleb’s voice.

«Run while you can, you hardheaded son of a bitch. There’s nothing stronger than a silk rope. Or softer!»

RENO knew they were being followed. He pushed the horses hard from dawn until dusk, covering twice as much ground as a normal traveler would, hoping to wear down Jericho Slater’s horses.

Right now Slater had the advantage, for his long-legged Tennessee horses were faster than the mustangs. In the desert, the advantage would quickly switch. The mustangs could go faster and longer on less food and water than any horse Slater had.

Not once through the long hours of riding did Eve complain about the pace. In fact, she said nothing at all except in response to a direct question, and Reno had very few of those.

Gradually Eve’s anger gave way to curiosity about the land. The high, open country was slowly filling her with both peace and a heady sense of being on the edge of a vast, undiscovered land.

To her left a high, ragged mesa rose, covered with pinon and juniper. To her right were the rolling slopes of low, pine-covered ridges. Behind her was a beautiful valley bounded by granite peaks, rugged ridges, and the immense, shaggy mesa with its cliffs of pale stone.

Even without the journal to guide her, she knew they were slowly descending from the green and granite heights of the Rockies. The land itself was changing beneath the agile feet of the mustangs. Foothills melted into plateau tops separated by steep, stream-cut ravines. Rocky stream banks had been replaced by dirt banks deeply cut and sandy tongues in river bends. Sandstone and shale had replaced granite and slate.

Graceful aspens and dense stands of fir and spruce had given way to cottonwoods and pines, pinon and juniper. Scattered, big sagebrush appeared in place of scrub oak. Clouds gathered and thunder rolled down from the peaks, but no rain fell at the lower elevations.

And over all loomed the dark mesa. Eve could not take her eyes from the ragged thrust of land, for she had seen nothing like it before. Plants grew on the mesa’s steep sides, but not enough to conceal the starkly different layers of stone beneath. No rivers or creeks drained its ragged length. No water winked from its ravines. No tall trees grew on its crest.

The map in the Spanish journal hinted that the mesa was only the beginning of the changes. It was the lip of an enormous, high plateau that was as big as many European nations. Ahead, beyond the setting sun, the plateau’s highlands fell away in immense stone steps that ultimately unraveled into countless stone canyons.

Eve couldn’t see the stone maze, but she sensed it just over the horizon, an end to the mountainous terrain that had begun in Canyon City and had continued for hundreds of miles.

The stone maze was a land of awesome dryness where no rivers flowed except after storms, and then only briefly. Yet at the bottom of the deepest canyon was a river so mighty that it was like death itself; none who crossed its boundaries returned to speak of what lay on the other side.