Only You (22 page)

“Very. I’ll take tunnels over ledges perched like God’s eyebrow over a thousand-foot drop,” Eve said wryly.

Reno’s smile flashed in the lantern light. “I’m just the opposite. I’d rather be on God’s eyebrow than down in coyote holes any day of the week.”

She laughed. “Want me to see where that double-headed tunnel leads?”

He hesitated, then reluctantly agreed. “But only if the walls are rock. I don’t want you crawling through any of the crumbling stuff we’ve seen. Understand?”

Eve understood perfectly. While the coyote holes didn’t bother her the way heights did, she had no desire to end as the slave child had, buried alive.

“Go on, then,” he said reluctantly.

Before she turned to leave, Reno pulled her close and kissed her hard.

“Be careful, sugar girl,” he said in a rough voice. “I don’t like this one damn bit.”

Reno liked it even less as the sounds of Eve’s passage through stone faded into silence and the minutes crawled by as though nailed to the stone floor. The third time he dug out his watch, stared at it, and discovered that less than thirty seconds had passed, he swore and began counting slowly.

Finally he heard the sound of Eve half crawling, half scrambling through the coyote hole. As soon as her head and shoulders appeared, he pulled her out and gave her a hug that all but squeezed the breath from her.

“That’s the last time you go into a coyote hole alone,” Reno said flatly. “I aged ten years waiting for you.”

“It was worth it, sugar man,” Eve said breathlessly, laughing, kissing him. “I found it! I found the gold!”

T
WO
gold ingots gleamed in the firelight, gold as pure and uncorrupted now as the moment when slaves had first poured the molten metal into molds to cool. Reno looked from the ingots to the girl whose eyes were the exact shade of the Spanish treasure she had found hidden in darkness.

Eve looked back at Reno, smiled, and then laughed softly.

“I can’t believe there are sixteen more just like that one,” she said. “You should have let me go back and get them. I could have had them all out in the time it took you to widen the coyote hole that connects the two big tunnels.”

“The gold has waited this long. It will wait until tomorrow.”

“With both of us working, it shouldn’t—”

“No,” Reno said flatly, cutting across her words. “You’re not going into that coyote hole again. The part where it cuts the second tunnel is too damned dangerous.”

“But I’m smal—”

“The reason they closed out that second big tunnel,” Reno said over her, “is that the middle section isn’t stable. It collapsed more than once. Each time they cut a coyote hole around the cave-in and kept digging until they mined out the good ore, and things kept on caving in. Finally they came at the ore from the other side, where we started.”

“Do you really think that second big tunnel goes all the way to the alcove?”

He shrugged. “The rock layers looked the same.”

“Dear Lord.” Eve shivered. “That mountain must be honeycombed with holes.”

“Are you cold?” Reno asked, noting the shiver that had passed over Eve.

“No,” she whispered. “I was just wondering how many slaves died for those eighteen ingots of gold.”

“Not to mention the other forty-four ingots that are hidden somewhere down there,” he said.

Another shiver passed over Eve. She knew that Reno was going to search for the missing ingots. The thought of him hunting through the mountain’s lethal coyote holes for gold that might or might not be there made her wish they had never found the mine.

“I didn’t see any other coiled-snake symbols chiseled in the wall,” Eve said. “Maybe the Jesuits took most of the gold with them. Maybe it would be a waste of time to search.”

“Maybe they didn’t have time to spend chiseling snakes into rock walls to mark where treasure was
buried,” he said dryly. “Maybe they just piled the ingots in a coyote hole and got the hell out of there before the king’s soldiers came and dragged them back to Spain in chains.”

Reno finished the last of his coffee and began scattering the embers of the small fire. Soon there was no illumination but that of the moon.

“It’s worth staying until the weather changes to look for forty-four gold ingots, isn’t it?” Reno asked.

The dark velvet of his voice acted on Eve like a caress. Suddenly she knew he wasn’t asking about staying for the gold; he was asking if she would stay here with him awhile longer.

Until we find the mine, you’ll be my woman.

And the mine had been found.

“With or without gold, I’d stay,” Eve said softly.

Reno held out his hand. When she took it, he kissed her palm, and led her to the place where he had cut evergreen boughs to make a bed. It was several hundred feet away, for any intruders would expect to find them by the campfire.

The tarpaulin rustled as Reno and Eve sank down on the bedroll together.

“I’ll never forget the smell of lilacs,” he whispered against her neck. “Or the taste of you.”

Before Eve could answer, Reno took her mouth in a long, deep kiss. By the time it ended, both of them were breathing quickly and flushed with heat. Long fingers moved over Eve’s shirt, baring her to the waist. The camisole gleamed like silver in the moonlight. Slowly he bent and brushed his lips over the rapid pulse in Eve’s neck.

“The first time I saw you in your camisole,” Reno said, “I wanted to take it off and bury my face in your breasts.”

Smiling, Eve unlaced the camisole and shrugged it aside.

“Lilacs and rosebuds,” he whispered. “God, but you’re sweet.”

“It’s my soap.”

Reno smiled slowly. “No, sugar girl. It’s your breasts.”

Reno kissed first one tip, then the other. The silky caresses of mustache and tongue drew Eve into velvet peaks. She made a murmurous sound of pleasure that became a gasp when he began taking tiny, gentle, repeated bites of her.

“I could eat every bit of you,” he said. “Head to heels and back again. Would you like that,
gata?”

“Do I get to nibble on you, too?”

For an instant Reno went still. Then a sensual shudder went through his whole body.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I’ve never asked that of a woman.”

“I want to,” Eve whispered. “I want to know you every way a woman can know a man.”

Between kisses and gliding caresses, they undressed each other until nothing lay between them but moonlight and the crisp air of mountain night. Reno pulled a blanket over them as he wrapped Eve in a long, naked hug.

“I wanted to do this, too, that first time I saw you,” he said. “I wanted to feel your body all bare against mine.”

Eve tried to speak, but the shiver of pleasure that went through her as the heat of Reno’s skin pressed against her whole body took her voice, making words impossible.

Her silent response was enough. A low, ragged sound came from Reno’s chest as he felt Eve’s delicate trembling.

“Each time it’s better,” he whispered. “Only you
affect me like this. I don’t understand it, but I don’t care anymore. I need you tonight, Eve. More each time. Only you.”

“Yes, I can feel it. More each time…”

Reno barely heard. The feel of Eve’s fingers wrapped around his aroused flesh was like having golden flames licking all over him. The pleasure was so intense his whole body tightened.

Then Eve pushed the blanket aside, slid slowly down his body, and taught him what it was like to be loved by fire.

Her name came in fragments from his lips as she tasted him with all the curiosity and delicacy of a cat. The satin roughness of her tongue licked and teased each difference in masculine texture from rigid base to blunt satin tip.

When Eve circled him with her mouth, Reno tried to speak, but couldn’t. She had taken the breath from him and left seething, searing currents in its place. Sweat broke out all over his body as he fought to control the firestorm coiling in his loins. Fists clenched, he made a raw sound of passion and restraint.

“Reno?” Eve asked in a low voice. “Did I hurt you?”

His laugh was as broken as his breathing.

“No, sugar girl. You’re killing me, but you’re not hurting me one bit.”

Her sigh washed over his moist, sensitive skin, sending a visible pulse of pleasure through him.

“Did it feel good?” she asked.

“There’s only one thing that ever felt better.”

“What?”

“When I sheathe myself in your sweet…”

The rest of Reno’s words were lost in the groan that was dragged from his lips as Eve caught him up in the loving firestorm once more. He took as
much as he could, and then more, because it was a wild, sweet ecstasy he didn’t want to end.

Suddenly he could bear no more.

“Eve, I…”

Reno shuddered, ravished by fire.

She whispered against him, telling him how much she liked his taste.

Another satin pulse escaped his control before he dragged her up his body until she straddled his hips, his waist, his chest.

“Higher,” Reno said huskily. “Higher. Make it easy for me. That’s it. Right there…so sweet…Stay there, sugar girl.”

The sleek questing of his tongue licked over Eve like sensual lightning. She made a husky sound that ended in a moan as a long finger tested her and found her sultry readiness.

Knowing that Eve had truly enjoyed the intimate caresses she had given him made Reno laugh with sheer pleasure. He redoubled his presence within her body, hearing her response in her broken breathing, feeling it in the slick heat of her body.

“You liked tasting me,” Reno said, nuzzling against Eve’s hot, soft skin.

“Yes, I…”

Her words became a broken sound as his teeth closed delicately over her most sensitive flesh. She barely succeeded in controlling the liquid heat bursting through her.

“Don’t fight it,” Reno said huskily. “Let it come.”

“But…”

Teeth raked with exquisite care, and tongue caressed.

“Share with me, sugar girl.”

Ecstasy stole softly through Eve’s body, claiming it. Reno felt it, tasted it, and laughed against her,
caressing her again and again, savoring the silken rain of her response. When she could bear no more, he lifted her and turned over, stretching her out beneath him. She clung to him until the wild shivering subsided.

When Eve opened her eyes, Reno was propped up on his elbow, fully aroused, watching her. The two slender dowsing rods were in his hand. He bent, kissed her gently, and waited, a question in his eyes. Without hesitation, she reached for one of the rods.

It was warm from his body heat.

Slowly Reno settled between Eve’s legs even as she drew them up around him, yielding her warmth to him. He paused just before he fitted himself to her.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. “It could make me…wild.”

Eve smiled and shifted her hips, taking Reno even as he took her. The rod tips met, meshed, shimmered…and blossomed in a soundless explosion of fire. The world receded as they joined more deeply than they ever had before, knowing no difference between their bodies. They kissed each other and were kissed at the same time, caressed and were caressed, until rapture both delicate and elemental coursed through their interlocked bodies, fusing them into a single flesh, a single being, a single life.

As one they learned that ecstasy was like fire itself, changeless and yet never the same, burning everything but itself, a mysterious Phoenix reborn in its own flames, soaring upward to fly and die and be born yet again.

T
HE
horses had been restless when Reno and Eve emerged from the mine the previous day, and were restless much of the night. Shortly after dawn, Reno and Eve were awakened by the sound of three rapidly fired shots from a six-gun.

Without a word, both of them got up and dressed quickly. Instead of wearing boots, Reno pulled on knee-high moccasins of the kind favored by Apaches, some Comancheros, and Caleb Black, who was the quietest man on the stalk that Reno had ever seen.

Wish I were that good,
Reno thought grimly.
I’d send him out to find out what’s riling the horses while I did what I’m good at—shooting and mining, not sneaking around like a shadow.

Reno shoved the spyglass in his belt, strapped on his six-gun and bandolier, and picked up his repeating rifle.

“Stay with the horses,” Reno said.

“But—”

“Promise me,” he interrupted urgently. “I don’t want to shoot you by mistake.”

“What if I hear more gunfire?”

“When I come back to camp, I’ll come in from the opposite direction. Shoot anything that comes in from the front of the valley.”

Eve closed her eyes, then opened them and looked at Reno as though she were afraid it was the last time.

“How long will you be gone?” she asked.

“I’ll be back before dark.”

Reno turned away, then turned back and gave Eve a kiss that was both tender and fierce.

“Don’t follow me. Be here when I get back, sugar girl.”

Eve’s arms tightened painfully around Reno before she let go and stepped back.

“I’ll be here.”

Without another word, Reno turned and began walking toward the mouth of the valley. He moved quickly over the meadow, keeping to the cover provided by the forest. The horses threw up their heads when they spotted him, then returned to their restless grazing when they recognized his scent.

Quickly Reno came to the place where the valley narrowed and the stream became a white cascade shooting between pincers of black rock. A game trail wound along one side of the cascade. Above the trail was a stand of squat, wind-blown spruce. Below it, at the end of the cascade, was a tiny, marshy meadow, another cascade, and then another, much larger valley with a rock-ribbed lake at one end.

Reno eased among the spruce trees and waited, motionless, until the birds and small animals returned
to their normal patterns of movement. A fitful wind blew up the mountainside. The smell of smoke rode the wind.

So did the sound of men’s voices.

Reno settled more deeply into cover and waited. A short time later, two men appeared along the middle cascade. Their horses were gaunt, stringy, and tough as a boot. The riders were the same. They watched the ground and the surrounding countryside by turns. Each man wore a six-gun and had a rifle in a saddle scabbard.

One of the men was familiar to Reno. The last time he had seen Short Dog, it had been over the barrel of a six-gun at Jed Slater’s camp high in the San Juans, where Willow had been held prisoner. Short Dog had lifted his rifle, Reno had shot first, and Short Dog had fallen. But when the time came to bury bodies, Short Dog hadn’t been among them.

The other man was known to Reno only by reputation. Bandanna MIke was a stage robber and small-time gunnie who thought he was God’s personal gift to womanhood. His trademark was a black and red silk bandanna that was big enough to use as a picnic cloth. At the moment, the bandanna was lying at ease around his dirty neck.

Conversation came with the wind, phrases and bits that Reno had to piece together.

“Nobody been here…days,” Bandanna Mike said. “Why in hell…”

“Eat beans up here, eat beans down…” Short Dog said. “Same beans.”

There was silence punctuated by the occasional sound of a pebble rolling as the horses scrambled up a rocky piece of trail just below the spruces.

Reno was afraid the Comancheros’ horses would scent him if they kept climbing until Reno was
upwind of them, but the men dismounted at the far end of the grove, perhaps thirty feet away. Unless the wind shifted, the horses wouldn’t catch Reno’s scent.

“No point to settin’ up here on a rock when we could be layin’ back there in grass,” Bandanna Mike grumbled. “They cain’t git out without walkin’ plumb through our camp, and even a skunk-drunk mestizo couldn’t miss ’em then.”

“Talk Slater,” Short Dog said.

“Might as well shoot myself and git it over with as talk to him,” grumbled Bandanna Mike.

“Shoot and Slater come hell-running you bet,” Short Dog said. “End same Walleye Jack.”

“Jericho had no call to shoot old Walleye. He was just funnin’ with that snake.”

“All same, Walleye Jack dead meat you bet. Snake same.”

“Jericho is a mean ’un,” Bandanna Mike agreed.

It was quiet for a few minutes. Then came the sound of a cork being pulled from a bottle. The satisfied gasping and coughing sounds that followed told Reno that it wasn’t water or coffee being passed around.

“What do you think happened to Crooked Bear?” Bandanna Mike asked.

Short Dog belched. “Dead or gone see squaw. Same thing.”

“Damn, but the thought of gold gets a feller to itchin’,” Bandanna Mike said after a moment. “Think they got it yet?”

“No leave yet. No gold yet,” Short Dog said succinctly.

For a time there was only silence and the sound of the restless wind. A horse snorted and stamped its foot.

Reno waited, motionless.

“You think that there Reno feller is as good with a six-gun as they say?”

“Goddamn straight fast hell-shooter you bet,” Short Dog said emphatically.

Silently Reno wished that he had shot just a bit straighter when he had had Short Dog in his sights. It would have meant one less Comanchero to deal with now.

On the other hand, there was never any lack of lazy, greedy, or cruel men to fatten the ranks of gangs led by men like Jericho Slater.

“What about thet gal? Did you see her? Is she a pretty ’un?”

“Squaw all same. Hell bad you bet.”

Bandanna Mike laughed. “Hell bad is goin’ without. Hope I’m one of the first. Ain’t no fun if’n there ain’t no vinegar left in a gal.”

There was another silence, another round of coughing and gasping as the men took a pull on the bottle, and then more silence.

“Acey-deucey?” Bandanna Mike asked.

Short Dog grunted.

The sound of cards being shuffled carried in the stillness.

Reno waited with the patience of a man whose life depended on it—and while he waited, he wished again that he had Caleb’s ability to move over terrain without making a sound. He would have given a great deal to slide up and cut Bandanna Mike’s dirty throat.

For an hour Reno listened to the two outlaws argue over cards. Then he withdrew slowly, using the fitful wind to cover any sounds he might make.

When Reno got back to camp, he circled around and came in from the back. Eve was waiting with the shotgun leveled and both barrels loaded. As soon as she saw him, she set down the gun and
ran to him. He wrapped her up in his arms and held on hard. When he finally released her, she watched him with eyes that read him too well.

“Slater,” Eve said.

It wasn’t a question.

“Slater,” Reno confirmed. “He’s got two men guarding that little marshy meadow just below this one. The rest of his men are camped in the big meadow further down.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Hunt for gold, sugar girl.”

“And then?”

Reno smiled coldly. “Then I’m going to teach those boys about black powder.”

And pray very hard that Cal, Wolfe, or Rafe is on the way.

E
VE
waited at the point where the coyote hole came into the main tunnel. Reno’s work yesterday had widened the hole enough that he could squeeze through. It wasn’t comfortable, but it got the job done; it took him to the place where sixteen ingots had been buried centuries before.

The sound of Reno crawling closer reassured Eve, but she still wanted to hear his voice. She flattened out on the floor of the tunnel and called out.

“Reno? Is everything all right? I thought I heard something fall.”

His answer came quickly, distorted by the curves of the wormhole he was crawling through.

“Just me pushing junk out of the way,” he said.

It was half the truth, but it was the only half Reno planned to tell Eve. The middle of the old tunnel was unstable as hell. Widening the coyote hole had triggered two small slides. Loose rock was
still raining down. A real slide could come at any moment. The longer he spent in either tunnel or coyote hole, the greater the danger was.

But Reno knew if he told Eve, she would insist on helping him get the gold out. He didn’t want her anywhere near the crumbling tunnels.

In fact, he hadn’t wanted her anywhere near any part of the mine this time, but she had gone mulestubborn on him. In the end he had agreed that she could come into the mine, but only as far as the solid rock of the main tunnel went. After that, she was to stay put.

“Stand back,” Reno said. Then he added wryly, knowing that standing wasn’t possible, “Crawl out of the way,
gata.
I’m coming through.”

Eve pushed away from the opening that still looked too small to admit Reno’s broad shoulders. As she watched, two gold ingots appeared. They gleamed in the lantern light as though freshly poured.

With a muscular twist of his body, Reno emerged from the small opening. His face was streaked with sweat and grit. So were his clothes. His weapons were clean, however. He had stacked them to one side of the coyote hole before he crawled in.

Reno picked up a heavy ingot in each hand and placed them with the others he had retrieved.

“Sixteen down and two to go,” Reno said, stretching.

“Let me get th—”

“
No.
”

Reno heard the flat rejection in his voice and prayed Eve didn’t hear the fear for her safety that lay just beneath it. He forced himself to smile as he tilted her face up for a quick, hard kiss.

“I’ll be back before you know it, with a gold bar in each hand.”

Eve wanted to argue even though she knew it would be futile. Instead, she made herself smile as she brushed her fingertips over his lips.

“Hurry back, sugar man,” she whispered.

After Reno disappeared back into the coyote hole, Eve crouched by the black opening and prayed.

She was still praying when she heard a rumbling, grinding sound. A burst of air gusted out from the mouth of the coyote hole, bringing with it a cloud of grit and the sound of rock rushing down.

The coyote hole had collapsed.

“Reno!” Eve yelled. “
Reno!
”

Nothing came back to her but the gnashing sounds of rocks as they found a new place to lie.

When Eve looked into the coyote hole, there was no gleam of light from Reno’s lantern. Frantically she grabbed her own lantern and crawled into the narrow tunnel, pushing the light in front of her. There was so much dust hanging in the air that the light looked as though it had been wrapped in gauze.

Within seconds Eve was coughing and choking from the swirling dust. She yanked her bandanna up and wriggled forward as fast as she could, ignoring the rocks that scraped and bruised her body.

With every breath Eve took, she called Reno’s name. No answer came but the raw echoes of her own screams.

The lantern hit something and refused to budge. Crying, calling for Reno, Eve battered blindly at the unexpected obstacle. Finally she realized what was wrong. Where the coyote hole should have emerged into the older, wider tunnel, the ceiling had given way. Now there was nothing but a wall of debris.

Eve clawed at the loose rubble, pushing it away down both sides of her body. For every handful she removed, two more took its place.

“
Reno.
”

There was no sound in the tunnel but that of her own broken sobs.

It was the same an hour later, when Eve finally realized that she didn’t have the strength to dig through the cave-in alone.

D
IRTY
, disheveled, wild-eyed, Eve crept past the point where Reno had said Slater’s guards were posted. Though twice she sent pebbles rolling, no man called out or came after her. She hardly noticed her good luck. She was intent on what had to be done, bribing Jericho Slater with a combination of gold ingots and lead bullets.

They want the gold, they can have it. But first they have to dig Reno free.

And I’ll be standing over them with a loaded shotgun every inch of the way.

A small corner of Eve’s mind knew that her plan was so foolish as to be suicidal. The rest of her mind just flat didn’t care. She wasn’t strong enough to dig Reno out of the mountain. Slater’s gang was.

So she would go to Slater, and let the devil take the hindmost.

Eve went through the marshy area like a gritty wraith. Her once white shirt was the gray-black color of the rocks. So were her pants. So was everything else but the guns she carried. She had wiped them down with a care Reno had taught her. The weapons were clean, fully loaded, and ready to fire.

The second cascade was bordered by forest and brush. Silence was impossible, but that didn’t matter
; the water was making enough noise to drown out a mustang stampede. Automatically Eve shifted the shotgun and bandolier so they wouldn’t catch on the shrubs and trees that reached out to snag her.

Just before the cascade spread out across the boulder-strewn mouth of the larger valley, the water took one final leap over a slate ledge. Eve wriggled out on the rock to get a look at the camp. She had already decided that Jericho Slater was the first prisoner she should take. It was just a matter of finding out where he was.

A quick look over the ledge told Eve she was lucky not to be a prisoner herself. Slater’s gang was camped about a hundred feet from the waterfall, back in a thick grove of evergreens. Horses were picketed around the meadow. A quick count gave her a total of twenty.

Despair curled blackly in Eve’s bones. Ten men, she might have managed to watch. Even twelve.