Only 03 - Only You

be?”
    “Could be tomorrow. Could be next month.”
    He looked beyond the puddle to the place where the stone walls pinched in.
    “Look!” Eve said.
    Reno turned to her. Silently she pointed to thewall behind him. There, on the rusty face of the rock, someone had chipped out a symbol. It was the same as one of the symbols in the Spanish journal.
    “Permanent water,” Eve translated.
    Reno looked at the puddle and then at the dry, unpromising slot that was so narrow he would have to enter it sideways.
    “Take the horses back to grass and hobble them,” Reno said. “Sleep if you can.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “To look for water.”
    T HE following Reno slept until a rising tide of sunlight crested the high canyon walls and flowed through the hidden valley. He awoke as he always did, all at once, with no fuzzy twilight between sleep and full alertness. He rolled on his side and looked across the ashes of the small campfire at the girl who slept on her side with her hair a tawny glory spilling across the blankets.
    Desire tightened Reno’s body in a rush as silent and deep as the sunlight filling the valley. With a whispered curse, he rolled out of bed.
    The crackle of the campfire startled Eve. She awoke in a rush, sitting up so suddenly that blankets scattered.
    “Easy, gata. It’s just me.”
    Blinking, Eve looked around. “I fell asleep.”
    “That you did. About fourteen hours ago.” Reno looked up from the fire. “You woke up when I came in.”
    “I don’t remember.”
    Reno did. When he had covered her, she sleepily kissed his hand and then snuggled deeper into the blankets, for the nights were always crisp.
    The trust implicit in Eve’s caress had burnedthrough Reno like lightning through night. He had almost slid in bed beside her. The amount of self-control it had taken not to peel off the blankets and run his hands all over her had shocked Reno.
    It told him how much he wanted a girl who didn’t want him. Not really. Not enough to give herself to him out of sheer passion.
    “Did you find water?” she asked.
    “That’s why we’re not on the trail right now. The horses need rest.”
    So did Eve, but Reno knew she would insist they get on the trail if she thought he was stopping only for her. The exhaustion implicit in her deep sleep last night had told Reno how close Eve was to the end of her strength.
    They ate breakfast in a lazy kind of silence that was more companionable than any conversation could have been. When they were finished, he smiled at her as she hid a yawn.
    “Feel up to a little walk?” he asked.
    “How little?”
    “Less than a quarter of a mile.”
    Eve smiled and got to her feet.
    She followed Reno into the narrow slot at the head of the feeder canyon. Her shoulders fit without walking sideways, which gave her an easier time of it for the first few yards. Then she, too, had to wriggle and twist to make any progress. Gradually the stone passage widened until two people could walk abreast. The rock walls became cool and damp. Puddles gleamed on the solid rock floor of the canyon.
    Twisting, turning, the slot canyon widened as it snaked through layers of rock. Small pools appeared. Some were only inches deep. Some were a foot or more. The water was cool and clean, for it was held in basins of solid stone.
    The sound of falling water came from somewhere ahead. Eve froze, listening with her breath held. She had never heard anything so beautiful as the musical rush of water in a dry land.
    Moments later Reno led Eve into a bell-shaped opening in the slot canyon. A stream of water no wider than Reno’s hand leaped from a shelf ten feet high and fell into a plunge pool carved from solid stone. The sound the water made was cool, exquisite, a murmur of prayer and laughter combined. From every crevice, ferns trailed, their fronds a green so pure it burned like emerald flame against the stone. Rays from the overhead sun touched the mist-bathed opening, making it blaze with a million tiny rainbows.
    Eve stood for a long time, lost in the beauty of the secret pool.
    “Watch your step,” Reno said in a hushed voice as he finally started forward.
    Moss softened the stone floor, making the footing tricky. The small marks left by Reno’s passage on the previous day were the only sign that anything living had visited the pool for a long, long time.
    But men had come there before. Indians and Spaniards had picked out messages and names in the surface of the sheer