Only 03 - Only You

turned to ask a question, but all she saw was Reno spurring the blue roan back the way they had come.
    The two Shaggies crowded around Eve’s mustang as though needing reassurance. She fumbled a second shell into the shotgun before she bent over in the saddle to check the rigging on the packhorses. Nothing had shifted. Nothing had come undone. Even the awkward little barrels on the outside of the tarpaulins were still in place. So were the picks and shovels. Reno was as thorough in caring for the animals as he was in caring for his weapons.
    Gunfire echoed up the canyon in a staccato cataract that seemed to go on forever. The Shaggiessnorted and crowded closer, but showed no inclination to bolt. Eve’s heart was hammering so hard she was afraid it would burst from her chest.
    More gunshots echoed. The silence that followed the echoes was worse than any thunder.
    After Eve counted to ten, she could bear no more. She kicked the dun hard and went racing back to see what had happened to Reno. The mustang laid back her ears, flattened out, and began to gallop despite the uncertain footing. Head low and tail high, the dun tore over the dangerous ground.
    The sound of hoofbeats alerted Reno. He reined his horse around just in time to see Eve flying toward him on the back of a hard-running mustang. The dun leaped a spur of rock, sprayed sand through a soft spot, and nearly went down on a stretch of slickrock.
    Reno thought that would slow Eve, but as soon as the dun had all four hooves under her again, Eve set the mustang at a dead run once more.
    “Eve!”
    She didn’t hear him.
    Reno spurred his roan out into the open. Eve’s horse reared as she was hauled back on her hocks in a skidding, sliding stop.
    “Of all the damn fool—” yelled Reno.
    “Are you all right?” Eve said urgently.
    “—things to do. Of course I’m—”
    “I heard gunfire and then silence, and I called your name and you didn’t answer.”
    Anxious golden eyes searched Reno for injury.
    “I’m fine,” he said in a clipped voice. “Except that you damn near gave me heart failure running your horse over that ground.”
    “I thought you were hurt.”
    “What were you going to do—trample Slater’sbunch right into the sand?”
    “I—”
    Reno kept on talking. “If you ever pull a damn fool stunt like that again, I’ll turn you over my knee.”
    “But—”
    “But nothing,” he interrupted savagely. “You could have galloped right into a cross fire and been cut to ribbons.”
    “I thought that was what had happened to you.”
    Reno let out a breath and damped down the temper that threatened to flash out of control. He had been in a lot of tight places and been shot more than once, but he had never been as plain scared as when he had seen Eve run her mustang flat out over the sand and slickrock.
    “It was my ambush this time,” Reno said finally. “Not theirs.”
    A ragged sigh was Eve’s only answer.
    “It will be a while before they come asking for more,” he continued. “We better hope it isn’t too long, though.”
    “Why?”
    “Water,” he said succinctly. “This canyon is stone dry.”
    E VE looked up anxiously as Reno rode back in from his short exploration of the tributary canyon. The grim line of his mouth told her that he hadn’t discovered anything useful.
    “Dry,” he said.
    She waited.
    “And blind,” he added.
    “What?”
    “It’s a dead end.”
    “How far ahead?”
    “Maybe two miles,” Reno said.
    Eve looked down the narrow wash where Slater’s men waited for their quarry.
    “They need water, too,” she pointed out.
    “One man can lead a lot of horses to water. The rest will stay put, waiting for us to get thirsty enough to do something stupid.”
    “Then we’ll just have to get past them.”
    Reno’s smile wasn’t comforting.
    “All in all,” he said, “I’d rather take my chances on climbing the head wall of the canyon than get caught in that kind of a cross fire.”
    Eve looked beyond Reno to the stone wall that piled layer on layer to the sky.
    “What about the horses?” she asked.
    “We’ll have to turn them loose.”
    What Reno didn’t say was that a man on foot in a dry land didn’t have much chance of surviving. But as small as that chance was, it was better than the odds of successfully running a gauntlet of Slater’s guns through the narrow canyon.
    “Let’s go,” Reno said. “We only get thirstier from now on.”
    Eve didn’t argue. Already her mouth was