Only 03 - Only You

about how much plain hard work gold mining is.”
    “It didn’t make him give up.”
    “No. He’s just going to wait for us to find the mine and get a bunch of gold together,” Reno said. “Then he’s going to come down on us like a blue norther’.”
    Silence followed Reno’s calm words.
    Finally Eve asked faintly, “What are we going to do?”
    “Find the mine and the gold and hope to God above that Cal or Wolfe or Rafe gets wind of Slater before he gets impatient and kills us, and to hell with the gold.”
    “What good would Caleb or one of the others be? It would still be three of us against however many Slater has.”
    “He’s got at least two men scouting us, and the rest are raising enough dust for an even dozen. And the longer he’s on the trail, the more the word goes out. But he’s replaced the men he lost in that ambush three times over.”
    “Do you think there’s much chance of Caleb following us?”
    “More chance than there is of us finding Spanish gold,” Reno said succinctly.
    “How will he know where we are?” Eve asked.
    “News travels fast in a wild land, and Cal is a listening kind of man.”
    “Then Slater could know about other people following us, too.”
    “He could,” Reno agreed.
    “You don’t sound worried.”
    “Cal isn’t hunting me with death on his mind,” Reno said. “Slater knows Cal as the Man fromYuma. He’ll be real unhappy about having Cal on his trail. Cal, Wolfe, and I caught Jericho’s twin brother in a cross fire. What happened to Jed would have been a lesson to a man smarter or less mean than Jericho Slater.”
    T WO days later, Eve was still watching the back trail as often as the way ahead. Hand shading her eyes beneath her hat brim, she stood in the stirrups and she looked out over the way she and Reno had come.
    She thought she saw a thickening in the air way back where the Abajos began rising from the last broad step up from the stone maze, but it was hard to be certain. In the dry air, it was possible to see eighty or a hundred miles. At that distance, things smaller than mountains and mesas tended to flow together in a muted rainbow blur.
    The slight haze she thought she saw could have been caused by a group of wild horses that had been startled by something and had galloped off, leaving a cloud of dust to rise behind.
    The vague darkening in the air could also have been caused by wind blowing up dust, but it was beneath one of the blue-black clumps of cloud that were marching over the land. Dust and rain didn’t seem a likely combination.
    It could have been simply a trick played on her by eyes tired from straining forever into the distance, seeking something that might or might not be there.
    Or it could be Slater and his gang, dogging Reno and Eve’s trail with unnerving patience.
    Eve turned away from her scrutiny of the back trail.
    She felt a distinct thrill of pleasure as she watched Reno ride closer. He called her gata, buthe was the one who moved with feline quickness and grace in everything he did.
    Even before Reno spoke, Eve sensed his buried excitement in the way he held himself. It was a difference few people would have noticed, but she had come to know him very well during the long days and passionate nights on the trail.
    “What did you find?” Eve asked before Reno could speak.
    “What makes you think I found anything?” he asked, reining in alongside her.
    “Don’t tease,” she said eagerly. “What is it?”
    Smiling, Reno reached back into a saddlebag. When his hand emerged again, he was holding a piece of curved wood wrapped in rawhide that was cracked with age and dryness, and bleached nearly white by the sun.
    Eve looked at the junk lying on Reno’s palm. Then she looked at him, perplexed by his excitement.
    Smiling, he hooked his arm around her neck, pulling her close for a brief, hard kiss before he released her once more and explained.
    “It’s a piece of stirrup,” Reno said. “The Spanish didn’t always use iron stirrups. This one was carved from a hardwood tree that grew half a world away from here.”
    Hesitantly Eve touched the fragment of stirrup. When her fingertips brushed the smooth, weathered wood, she felt a spectral chill down her spine. Awe and curiosity rippled through her.
    “I wonder if the man who used this was a priest or a soldier,” Eve said. “Was his name Sosa or Leon? Did he write in the journal, or did he watch while another man wrote? Did he have a wife and children