Reno didn’t answer.

«Now who’s sulking?» she muttered.

«Dry up, saloon girl. I’m just looking for a way around that.»

Eve looked beyond Reno’s finger and saw nothing but another dry watercourse winding down to another notch in the land, one more step in what she privately called God’s Staircase down to the bottom of the stone maze of canyons.

«We’ve gone through worse,» she said.

«The back of my neck itches.»

«Maybe I didn’t get off all the soap.»

Reno turned and looked at her with glittering green eyes. «Are you offering to try again?»

«Your throat in one hand and a razor in the other?» Eve asked sweetly. «Don’t tempt me, gunfighter.»

Reno looked at the girl who last night had been a summer storm, wild and sultry. Just the memory of it made his blood run savagely, swelling and hardening him in a torrid rush. But in the end she had refused him the very thing she had held out as a lure.

At least he had the bitter satisfaction of knowing that he wasn’t the only one who had slept restlessly last night, raked by claws of unfulfilled desire.

«Wait here,» he said. «I’m going to see if there are any tracks heading into the notch. If anything happens to me, turn and run for Cal’s ranch.»

It wasn’t the first time Reno had left Eve in order to reconnoiter, but it was the first time he had so flatly warned of danger. She watched anxiously while he quartered back and forth on either side of the most obvious routes into the notch.

Finally Reno signaled Eve forward. While she brought the packhorses up, he drew his six-gun, spun the cylinder once to check the load, and holstered the gun again. Then he reached back and pulled another six-gun and two spare cylinders from a saddlebag. With them came an odd harness, rather like a Mexican bandolier rigged to hold more than just ammunition.

The second pistol was already fully loaded. So were the two extra cylinders. The spare gun went into a holster on the bandolier. The extra, loaded cylinders went into special loops.

Eve watched the preparations with unhappy eyes as he checked the ammunition loops one by one.

«Is there something you aren’t telling me?» she asked.

Reno’s mouth turned up at one corner. «Hardly. I’ve always told you exactly what was on my mind.»

«You didn’t use a second pistol before,» Eve said.

«Cal’s journal mentions a passage up ahead so narrow you can’t swing a cat.»

«Can a horse get through?»

«Yes, but my repeating rifle is no good in a box like that,» Reno said calmly.

«I see.»

Nervously Eve took off her hat, tucked up wisps of hair, and looked everywhere but at Reno’s ice green eyes. She didn’t want him to know how fearful she felt.

And how alone.

«What about my shotgun?» she asked after a moment.

«Use it, but make damn sure you hit what you aim at. A ricochet cuts you up worse than a regular bullet.»

Eve nodded.

«Are your reins still tied together?» Reno asked.

She nodded again.

«Take Shaggy One off the lead and put the packhorses between us,» he said.

Eve’s head turned swiftly toward him. «Why?»

Reno saw the shadows in her golden eyes and felt like pulling her into his arms to reassure her.

But reassurance would be a lie. The way ahead was dangerous, and Reno’s instincts were riding him like iron spurs. Reassuring Eve wouldn’t be a kindness. She would need all her wariness. So would he.

«There are a lot of tracks,» Reno said. «The ground is too sandy to be sure if it’s mustangs or shod horses. If Slater’s up ahead, he’ll be shooting at me. If you’re too close, you could catch a bullet. So put the packhorses between us.»

«I’ll take my chances on a bullet.»

Reno’s left eyebrow rose in a black arc. «Suit yourself. Either way, take off the lead rope.»

«If I were going to suit myself,» Eve said distinctly as she began working over the lead rope, «I’d stay away from the notch.»

«It’s the only route to the Spanish mine marked in your journal, unless you want to go all the way back through the Rockies and take the route up from Santa Fe.»

«Perdition,» Eve muttered. «It would be spring before we got back here.»

«This route also leads to the only sure water.»

Eve sighed. She had never realized how much water it took to keep horses going, and how precious water could be.

«Maybe Slater gave up,» she said.

She leaned over in the saddle and tied the lead rope around Shaggy One’s neck.

«He might have given up on punishing a cheating saloon girl, but I don’t think he’ll give up on gold. Or,» Reno added sarcastically, «on the man who helped to shoot his twin brother’s gang to pieces.»

«You?»

Reno nodded. «Me, Cal, and Wolfe.»

«Caleb Black? My God — what if Slater goes after Caleb instead of us?»

«Old Jericho is smarter than that. Cal has some hard men riding for him, especially those three freed slaves. Two of them were Buffalo Soldiers. The third one is called Pig Iron. He’s half Seminole and pure poison mean.»

Eve frowned.

«Except with Willow,» Reno added, seeing the uneasy expression on Eve’s face. «She tended them after they ate bad meat. They think the sun rises and sets in her. So do their women — including the Comanchero squaw who can’t make up her mind between Crooked Bear and Pig Iron.»

«Are they armed?»

«Hell, yes. What use is an unarmed man?»

«All the same,» Eve said, «Slater has a lot of men.»

«That’s not the same as havinggoodmen. Don’t you worry about Cal. He’s a one-man army all by himself. Wish to God I had him at my back right now.»

With that, Reno reined the blue roan toward the notch. The lineback dun followed immediately. The two Shaggies fell into place despite the absence of lead ropes.

Reno didn’t have to tell Eve to be silent. She rode the way he rode, alert to every shadow, wary of every bend in the river bottom that could conceal riders waiting in ambush. The shotgun across her lap gleamed in the rare patches of sunlight.

The heat of day slowly gave way to a hushed kind of twilight as rock walls rose on either side of the track. Layers of stone piled one upon another until the sky retreated to scarcely more than a wide, cloud-ridden banner high overhead. There was no sound but that of creaking leather, the dry swish of a horse’s tail, and hoofbeats softened by sand.

Small finger canyons joined the larger one from time to time. All of them were dry.

Finally the strip of cloudy sky overhead began to widen, telling Eve they were almost out of the dry riverbed that separated the towering walls of stone, just ahead, the wash bent to the right around one more nose of rock. Behind her and to the left, another side canyon opened.

Suddenly the blue roan tried to leap out of her tracks. Reno yelled at Eve to take cover.

Then men were shouting and shots were hammering as lead whined and screamed between stone walls. Some of the shots were Reno’s. In a wild drumroll of sound, he fired at the men who had leaped from hiding behind the wall of stone that lay just ahead of his horse.

Reno’s speed in drawing and shooting both guns took the ambushers by surprise. His deadly accuracy shocked the men who survived the brutal thunder of the first twelve shots. The outlaws who were still able to move dove for cover in a tangle of flailing limbs and vicious curses.

With movements so fast they blurred, Reno swapped empty cylinders for loaded ones and began shooting again before the men could recover.

«Behind us!» Eve screamed.

The last part of her cry was lost in the deafening thunder of the shotgun as she triggered both barrels. The two outlaws who had been concealed in the underbrush of the side canyon shouted in pain as buckshot whipped and whined around them.

Reno spun the blue roan and fired so quickly the sound of his bullets was buried beneath the shotgun’s noise. The men dropped where they were and didn’t move again.