«Shod?»

He nodded again.

«How many horses?»

Though Willow’s voice was no more than a thread of sound, Caleb heard. Sometimes he thought he could hear her in the silence of his mind, a woman crying passion, crying love, crying grief, crying hate.

«No less than twelve horses,» Caleb said roughly, preferring the unhappy truth of enemies to the thoughts that stalked him no matter how ruthlessly he shoved them aside. «No more than sixteen. Hard to tell. They weren’t picketed separately.»

Willow frowned and looked around. The days of cautious, relentless travel had brought them among the splendor of the San Juan mountains. At present, she and Caleb were in the midst of a high, grassy basin that was perhaps two miles across and circled by snowy peaks of breathtaking size and ruggedness. Slender aspen grew in the rolling folds of the basin, providing cover for deer and for people such as Willow and Caleb, who had no desire to be spotted from nearby peaks or ridges.

But the basin would soon be transformed as all other parks and meadows had been transformed by the rising of the land. Rugged peaks would close in, the meadows would shrink, and the creeks would race between dark walls of stone until a higher meadow was reached, a smaller meadow, and the cycle would be repeated again and again until they came to the headwaters of a tiny brook at the apex of yet another pass. Then the route would begin to descend, repeating the cycle in reverse, creeks becoming rivers and meadows becoming huge parks once more.

«Is there another pass we could take?» Willow asked.

«There’s always another pass somewhere.»

She bit her lower lip. «But not nearby, is that it?»

«That’s it. We’d have to backtrack a few hours to where the creek forked. Then we’d have to go three days out of our way to come in from the other side of that mountain.» Caleb jerked his thumb over his shoulder, looked at Willow, and waited.

«Are we close to Matt?» she asked finally.

«If he drew the map right and we read it right, yes.»

«While you were scouting ahead, I thought I heard gunfire,» she said.

«You’ve got good ears,» Caleb said. Nothing in his tone revealed that he had been hoping she hadn’t heard the shots.

«Was it you?» she asked.

«No.»

«Matt?»

«Doubt it. More likely someone from Slater’s bunch saw a deer. A bunch of armed men don’t need to worry overmuch about attractingUtes by shooting fresh meat.»

«Matt is alone.»

«He’s used to it.»

«I heard five shots. How many does it take to kill one deer?»

Caleb said nothing. He knew that more than one or two shots usually meant a fight, not a hunt.

«Matt might be hurt,» Willow said urgently. «Caleb, we have to find him!»

«More likely we’ll find Slater’s bunch if we head up that draw,» Caleb said, his voice flat. But even as he spoke, he was reining his horse around, heading into the canyon that rose on either side of the river. «I’ll ride ahead. You keep that shotgun handy. Unless we have Satan’s own luck, we’re going to need it.»

Despite Caleb’s grim warning, they found nothing that afternoon but tracks. The land began rising slowly beneath their feet. The river became faster, more narrow, more rocky, and mountains crowded in on both sides. Willow could tell from the horses’ breathing that the altitude was higher than the little valley had been, and they were climbing higher with each step.

The water course they had been following forked as the land rose once more. The tracks of shod horses followed the right fork. Caleb took the left, for it led toward the place where five lines had intersected on the map that he had burned to ash, wishing that he could burn the past with it.

But burning all the bitter yesterdays wasn’t possible.

So be it.

The words were like rifle fire in Caleb’s mind. Their echo came back as Wolfe’s warning.

You hear me, amigo? You and Reno are too well matched.

And Caleb’s own answer, the only one there could be, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, the past echoing into the present, the savage circle complete.

So be it.

Except that it could not be. Caleb could not leave Willow alone in the mountains, no one to protect her, a woman abandoned unwillingly by her man, but abandoned just the same….

Will she die the way Rebecca did, in agony and exhaustion, bearing her lover’s dying child?

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.

Bile rose behind Caleb’s clenched teeth as he rebelled against the very idea of hurting Willow. He could not do that to the girl whose only sin was to love too much. She had done nothing to earn such betrayal.

Nor had Rebecca. Yet betrayal had come, and agony, and death. The man who had brought disaster to her walked free, able to seduce another innocent, abandon her, and create another savage circle of betrayal and vengeance.

In an anguish that grew greater with each step forward, Caleb searched for a way out of the trap of duty and desire and death. He found none except to let the seducer live, and in so doing condemn some unknown girl to a seduction and abandonment she had done nothing to earn, and then another girl, and then another; for a man’s desire rose with the sun and set only in the dark warmth of a woman’s body.

As Caleb rode into the dark canyon, he wondered how he could let Reno live and still call himself a man.

Walls of rock loomed on either side of the narrow cleft, blocking out all but a thin swath of sky overhead. High above, the mountain peak was still washed with clear sunlight, but in the bottom of the ravine dark forerunners of night flowed out of every crevice. The dense shadows were exactly what Caleb had been seeking. He dismounted and went back to Willow.

«No fire,» he said in a low voice.

Willow nodded her understanding. She had heard the gunfire clearly half an hour before. Two rifle shots. It was impossible to determine the direction of the shots, for the sounds had echoed off stone walls too many times before reaching her ears.

«How close?» Willow asked quietly.

Caleb knew she was asking about the shots they both had heard. He looked up at the rim of the gully and shrugged. «Could be the next ravine over. Could be a mile across the basin and up on another peak. Sound carries real well up here.»

While Caleb picketed the horses fifty feet downstream, Willow rinsed the canteen in the tiny brook that leaped and foamed from a notch high in the rock wall. The water was so cold it made her hands ache. A chill wind blew down the gully from the hidden peak, making her shiver despite her heavy wool jacket.

«I’ve never felt water so cold,» Willow said as she handed Caleb the canteen. «It made my teeth ache.»

«Meltwater,» Caleb said briefly. He took Willow’s hands and rubbed them between his own, warming them. «Damn near ice. There’s a snowfield at the top of that notch.» He breathed heat over her fingers before he opened hisshearling jacket, pulled her hands inside, and smiled down at her. «Better?»

«Much.»

Willow smiled and made amurmurous sound of approval as she smoothed her hands over Caleb’s warm chest. Within a few moments, she had picked apart the button just above his belt buckle and eased one hand inside to rest against the heat of his skin. His breath hissed in as her fingers tangled gently in the line of hair that ran down his torso.

«You’re better than any fire,» Willow whispered as she turned her hand over to warm the other side. «Heat but no smoke to give us away.»

«Keep that up and there might be.»

«Really?» she asked softly, laughing up at him. «Where?»

«Don’t tempt me, honey.»

«Why not? I’m so very good at it.»

Caleb’s eyes narrowed and his heart beat with redoubled force. In the sudden, hushed silence between Caleb and Willow, the sound of the tiny creek was like a river, but it wasn’t loud enough to cover the break in his breathing when her cool fingers dipped below his belt. The width of thegunbelt defeated her attempts to touch him.