But it did.

THE mountains receded behind Reno and Eve like a cool blue tide, leaving nothing but the memory of heights where water danced in crystal beauty and trees crowded so closely together that a horse couldn’t walk between. There was plenty of room for horses in the dry washes and on the spare plateau tops where the two of them rode now. There was nothing but room for miles and miles.

«Look!» Eve said.

As she spoke, she reached across the small space between her horse and Reno’s, grabbed his right arm, and pointed.

«There.»

Reno stared beyond Eve’s fingertip and saw only tawny, curving outcrops of sandstone, like the bones of the land itself pushing up through the thin skin of earth.

«What?» he asked.

«Over there,» Eve insisted. «Can’t you see it? Those stone buildings. Is that one of the ruins you talked about?»

After a moment, Reno understood.

«Those aren’t ruins,» he said. «They’re just layers of sandstone shaped by wind and storms.»

Eve started to argue, then thought better of it. When Reno had first told her that they would be riding through whole valleys where no creek drained the highlands and no water collected in the lowlands, she had thought that he was teasing her.

He hadn’t been. There were such valleys. She had seen them, ridden through them, tasted their sun-struck dust on her tongue. She was riding in one of them now.

For Eve, the transformed land was a constant source of wonder. In all the years she had read the journal of Cristobal Leon, she had never truly understood what it must have been like for the Spanish explorers to ride out into the unknown desert, following rivers that grew smaller and smaller until they disappeared entirely, leaving only thirst behind.

Nor had she imagined what it would be like to look a hundred miles in all directions at once, and see not one creek, not one pond, not one lush promise of shade and water to ease a thirst as big as the dry land itself.

Yet even more than the lack of water, Eve was astonished by the naked, multicolored, fantastically shaped rocks that rose out of the land. Taller than any building she had ever seen, drawn in shades of rust and cream and gold, the massive, seamless stone formations fascinated her.

Sometimes they resembled sleeping beasts. Sometimes they resembled mushrooms. And sometimes, like now, they resembled the picture she had once seen of a Gothic cathedral with flying buttresses of solid stone.

Reno stood in the stirrups and looked over his shoulder. The mountains were no more than a dark blue blot against the horizon. He could have covered them with his hand. The long, dry valleys he had led the way through offered few chances of concealment, whether for him or for the men who pursued him.

Yet since dawn Reno had seen nothing move over the face of the land but cloud shadows, and very few of those.

«Looks like Slater’s horses finally gave up,» Eve said, staring out over their back trail.

Reno made a sound that could have meant anything.

«Does that mean we can camp early?» Eve asked hopefully.

He looked at her and smiled.

«Depends,» he said.

«On what?»

«On whether that spring Cal’s daddy marked is still flowing. If it is, we’ll fill up the canteens and make camp a few miles away.»

«Miles?» Eve said, hoping she had heard wrong.

«Miles. In dry land, only a fool or an army camps next to water.»

She thought about it and sighed.

«I see,» Eve said unhappily. «Camping by water would be like camping in the center of a crossroads.»

Reno nodded.

«How far is the spring?» she asked.

«A few hours.»

When Eve was silent, Reno glanced aside at her. Despite the hard miles on the trail, she looked good to him. The shine of her hair was undiminished, her color was high, and the quickness of her mind hadn’t changed.

Even more pleasing to Reno, Eve shared his fascination with the austere land. Her questions showed it, as did her long silences while she studied the layers of stone he pointed out, trying to imagine the forces that had built them.

«How big is the spring?» she asked.

«What did you have in mind?»

«A bath.»

The thought of getting Eve naked in a pool of water had a rapid, pronounced effect on Reno’s body. With a silent curse he forced his thoughts away from the memory of her nipples drawn taut and shiny from the searching caresses of his mouth.

Reno tried very hard not to think about Eve in that way at all. It was too damned distracting. He was a man of unusual self-control, yet he had very nearly reached for her at dawn that morning, and to hell with worrying about the outlaws on their trail.

«You might get a basin bath out of the spring,» he said evenly.

The purring sound of pleasure Eve made did nothing to decrease Reno’s sensual awareness of her.

«Is it at the end of this valley?» Eve asked.

«This isn’t a valley. It’s the top of a mesa.»

She looked at Reno, then at their back trail.

«Looks like a valley to me,» she said.

«Only if you come at it from this direction,» he said. «You come at it from the desert, you have no doubt. It’s like climbing up onto a big, broad step, then another and then another until you come to foothills and then real mountains.»

Eve closed her eyes, recalling the maps from the journals, thinking of how different the land had looked to her than it had to the Spanish, who often were approaching from a different direction than she and Reno took.

«That’s why they called it Mesa Verde,» she said suddenly.

«What?»

«The Spanish. They first saw the mesa when they were in the desert. And compared to the desert, the mesa was as green as grass.»

Reno took off his hat, resettled it, and looked over at Eve with a smile.

«That’s been bothering you for days, hasn’t it?» he asked.

«Not anymore,» she said with satisfaction.

«The Spanish might have been fools for gold, but they weren’t crazy. What something looks like depends on how you come at it, that’s all.»

«Even red dresses?» Eve asked.

The instant the words left her mouth, Eve regretted them.

«You just never give up, do you?» Reno asked coolly. «Well, I’ve got bad news for you. Neither do I.»

For a long time after that, nothing broke the silence but the sound of hooves striking the ground in a rhythm so familiar, it was like a heartbeat, unnoticed unless it changed suddenly.

The valley that wasn’t really a valley began to descend with increasing steepness. As it slanted down to the stone maze, the land changed, rising slowly on either side of the dry wash Reno had chosen to follow.

The wash was lined with stunted cottonwoods whose leaves were a dusty green that gave shade but little coolness. Plants that required surface water to survive had long since flowered, gone to seed, and died back to brittle stalks that rustled with every breeze, waiting for the seasonal rains to come.

The farther the wash went to the west and north, the higher the walls on either side became, and the more narrow the passage between. After a time, Reno slipped the thong that held his six-gun in the holster and pulled his repeating rifle from its saddle scabbard. He levered a round into the firing chamber and rode with the rifle across his lap.

Reno’s actions told Eve that there was no other way to go but the one ahead. And that one led farther and deeper into what was rapidly becoming little more than a crack in the dry body of the land. She pulled the old double-barreled shotgun from its worn scabbard and checked the load.

The dry, metallic sound the shotgun made as Eve broke it open to put a shell in each firing chamber turned Reno’s head. She closed the gun and rode as he did, with a gun across the saddle, its muzzle pointed in the opposite direction of Reno’s rifle. The look on her face was intent and wary, but not frightened.