Elizabeth Lowell Read Online Free PDF

the land so long that I know a lot of its secrets.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as—when the air over the Fire range gets an odd sort of crystal shine to it and then clouds form, it always rains about two hours before sundown. It rains hard and cold and sudden, like an ocean turned upside down and pouring back to earth. After an hour or two some of the finger canyons run twenty feet deep with water.” She pushed away the mare’s muzzle and looked at him. “Are you still dizzy?”
    He wasn’t surprised that his occasional dizziness had been noticed. He was discovering that not much escaped those clear gray eyes.
    “Some,” he admitted. “It comes and goes.”
    “Do you think you can get over that rockfall if I help?”
    “Count on it, with or without your help.”
    She looked at the determined lines of his face and the latent power in his big body and hoped he was right. The rocky hollow had been useful, but it would become a lethal trap the instant Cascabel scrambled up and found his prey. The sooner they left, the better.
    There was only one haven she could think of. It lay on the southeast side of Black Plateau, at the edge of Cascabel’s ill-defined territory. It was a spirit place avoided by Indians, whose legends told of a time when the mountain had roared in anguish and split open and thick red blood had gushed forth, spirit blood that made everything burn, even stone itself. When the blood finally cooled it had become the dark, rough rock that gave Black Plateau its name.
    There, at the foot of ancient lava flows and sandstone cliffs, she had found a keyhole canyon snaking back into the solid body of the plateau. Once past the narrow entrance, the canyon widened out into a park-like area that was thick with grass and sparkling with sweet water. It was there she wintered, secure in the knowledge that no warriors or outlaws would see her tracks in the snow.
    It had been her secret place, as close to a home as she had ever known. She had shared it with no one. The thought of sharing it with Ty made her feel odd. Yet there really was no other choice.
    “Soon as I get you patched up,” she said, turning to her bag of herbs, “we’ll go to a keyhole canyon I know about. Nobody else has any idea that it exists, except maybe Mad Jack, and he hardly counts.”
    “Mad Jack? I thought he was a legend.”
    “He’s old enough to be one.”
    “You’ve actually seen him?”
    She dug out the herbal paste she had made during the long hours of daylight while Ty had slept. “Yes, I’ve seen him,” she said, and began dabbing the paste on the worst of Ty’s cuts.
    “I’ve heard he has a gold mine hidden somewhere on Black Plateau.”
    Her hands paused, then resumed slathering on medication. “Whatever Mad Jack has or doesn’t have is his business.”
    Ty’s black eyebrows lifted at Janna’s curt words. “Ouch! Watch it, boy, that’s not stone you’re poking.”
    “Sorry,” she said in a tight voice.
    For several moments he watched the gray eyes that refused to meet his.
    “Hey,” he said finally, catching Janna’s chin in his big hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt that old man no matter how much gold he might have found. I’m not a thief or a raider. I’m not going to build my future on bloodstained gold.”
    She searched the green eyes that were so close to hers and saw no evasion. She remembered Ty telling her to leave him and save herself, and she remembered how he had put his own body between her and whatever danger might have been coming into the hollow. Abruptly she felt ashamed of her suspicions.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve had men follow me out of town when I buy supplies with a bit of gold I’ve found here and there. It’s usually easy enough to lose the men, but it hasn’t given me a very kind opinion of human nature.”
    The surge of anger Ty felt at the thought of a child having to lose white men in the rocks as though they were