bottom of the mist-shrouded sky. Rain fell occasionally, but never enough to blur the signs left by the passage of seven horses as they pressed higher and higher into the first range of the Rocky Mountains.
Gradually, trees became more common on the hillsides. These weren’t the cottonwoods Willow had become accustomed to seeing scattered along the stream courses, but evergreens lifting their elegant arms to a gray sky that was almost close enough to touch. The tracks the horses left beneath the trees would be more difficult to follow. The realization comforted Willow, but not much.
Apparently, it didn’t comfort Caleb at all, for he kept up a hard pace, letting the horses rest only infrequently despite the steepness of the route. Centuries of pine needles softened the impact of hooves on the ground, giving a silence that was almost eerie to the horses’ passage. Other than the creak of saddles and the occasional snort of a horse, the only noise was a distant, fitful rumble that could have been repeated thunder or the sound of a waterfall carried by an unpredictable wind.
And once. Willow was certain she heard gunshots.
As the land rose, the air became colder and more restless. The wind strengthened into a steady moan. Willow tightened the chin string of her hat and settled more deeply into the saddle, hunched against the cold. Through the trees she caught glimpses of land falling steeply away. The horses were breathing deeply now, working hard even at a walk. Finally, they topped out on the shoulder of a mountain whose upper half was swathed in opaque veils of mist and rain.
Caleb pulled a gleaming brass spyglass from one of his saddlebags and looked out over theirbacktrail. Willow reined Ishmael in next to Caleb. Her breath came with a surprised gasp when she realized how much of thebacktrail they could see from their vantage point. The land was as empty as the wind. No smoke rising from the forested areas. No wagon roads or clear trails through the meadows. No buildings or tilled fields. No tree trunks or stumps with the mark of a steel axe upon them.
«What’s that?» she asked finally, noticing a dark thread over lighter meadow grass a thousand feet below.
«Seven horses flattening the grass,» Caleb said grimly. «Even if those two gunnies can’t track worth sour apples, they’ll find us at every meadow we had to cross. We’ll be damn lucky to avoid theUtes, too. Usually I don’t have any trouble with them, but usually I’m not trailing a chief’s ransom in horses behind me.»
«I didn’t realize…» Willow said. Her voice trailed off in dismay. Nothing in her previous experience had prepared her for a land so little traveled that tracks were like signal fires burning until a heavy rain came to put them out.
Caleb put the glass down long enough to look at the worried face of the young woman who was standing so close to him that he could hear the slow drawing and exhalation of her breath. In the gloomy morning light, her eyes were almost silver, with only a few hints of the warm splinters of gold and brilliant blue-green he had come to expect. Her lips were a soft rose, the same shade of pink that wind had teased from her cheeks, and her braids were the color of the absent sun. He wondered how her hair would feel spilling over his naked skin.
With a silent curse at his unruly desires, Caleb collapsed the spyglass and urged his horse forward again. The route he chose took them through forest much of the time, skirting meadows and the gentle, parklike clearings that Willow found so unexpected in such a wild land. Around them, shrouded in clouds, the land rose more and more steeply with each mile. Creeks fell awaydownslope in a racing white froth.
After a time it began to rain in earnest. At first, Willow welcomed the downpour as a means of blurring their tracks, but soon realized that rain was making their passage much slower and more difficult. Riding through a storm in gently rolling countryside was one thing. Riding through a storm in asteepsided, stone-bottomed landscape was quite another.
The heavy wool jacket Willow wore repelled most of the water, but eventually it become as wet as her Levis. Water ran off the brim of her hat onto the saddle. Low-sweeping evergreen branches added their lot to the miserable going, shedding sheets of water at the lightest touch. From time to time the ghostly, slender trunks of aspen trees appeared among the dark evergreens. The aspen leaves were light green on top, silver underneath, and trembled at every touch of rain. In many cases, the trunks grew so close together that Caleb avoided the groves whenever he could, knowing the packhorse and mares would come to grief in the tight spaces between trees.
A cold wind came wailing down the slope, tearing apart the clouds. Willow barely noticed, for the trail had become very steep as they worked around the shoulder of a mountain. Way down below and to the left, there was a stream. It was invisible beneath the shroud of rain, but Willow was certain a stream had to be there. The sheets of water washing down off the mountain guaranteed it.
Without warning the clouds parted ahead. Sunlight streamed over the land, setting ablaze the countless drops of rain clinging to the forest.
Caleb glanced up, but had little heart for the beauty of the land. He knew what was coming next, and he knew Willow would fight it. But he had no choice. He had known this moment would come since she had refused to leave her horses in Denver and refused again to leave them the night he had seen WolfeLonetree.
Grimly, Caleb urged his horse forward to the edge of aparklike clearing in the forest. There were many such places in the Rockies, some so high that tundra rather than grass grew. Watching the land for movement, Caleb waited for Willow to come alongside. Across the park, deer watched in return. After a few minutes of alert scrutiny, the graceful animals resumed browsing along the opposite edge of the park.
Green, shimmering with raindrops, bright with a crystal ribbon of water winding through its lush center, the grassy basin was so beautiful that Willow made a sound of pleasure when she reined in next to Caleb. Then she looked up from the grass to the mountain tops finally free of clouds, and she froze.
The mountains were overwhelming. Lashed by snow, swept by wind, naked in their bleak granite heights, the peaks dominated sky and earth alike. She had never seen anything to equal them in her life.
«It’s like seeing the face of God,» she said in a shaking voice.
The emotion in Willow was echoed in Caleb’s eyes. He loved the mountains in a way he loved nothing else, a soul-deep feeling of belonging to them and they to him. But he understood the Rockies as deeply as he loved them. The mountains were special to man.
Man was not special to the mountains.
Caleb dismounted and systematically began tying the mares’ lead ropes around their necks, releasing them from the relentless tugging at their halters.
«Does Ishmael have a favorite mare?» he asked.
«Dove. The sorrel you’ve been leading.»
«Get down. I’ll saddle her for you, unless you think Ishmael won’t follow us at all unless he’s on a rope.»
«I don’t understand.»
«I know you don’t.» Caleb’s mouth flattened. He didn’t like what he was going to do, but that didn’t change anything. It had to be done. «Your Arabians are tough and quick and well-trained. Now we’re going to find out if they’re smart. If they are, they’ll follow without a lead rope, no matter how tired they get or how rough the trail. If they aren’t smart…» He shrugged. «So be it. I’m not getting us killed for any horseflesh, no matter how fancy.»
«Surely the storm washed out our tracks,» Willow said urgently. «We’ll be able to keep ahead of anyone following unless they know the area as well as you do.»
«I doubt if they do, but whether or not they know the high, little-used passes just doesn’t matter.»
«What?»
«It doesn’t matter,» Caleb repeated flatly. «We’re through leading horses. It’s too damned dangerous. From here on out the trail gets rough.»
«Getsrough?» Willow’s voice was faint, appalled.
«That’s right, southern lady.» He fixed her with a fierce, tawny glance. «What we’ve been over so far is a few lumps set in the middle of a lot of valleys and parks. Nothing special. A horse can lose its footing, go down, get scuffed up some, get up, and go on its way.» Caleb took off his hat, whipped his fingers through his hair, and yanked the hat back into place. «It’s different where we’re going. Up ahead it will be worth your life to lose your footing. There are places where you could scream for a long time before you hit bottom.»
Willow turned away and looked at her horses. The altitude and the days of hard riding had told on all of them. They were thinner, less alert, and they grazed hungrily on any grass within reach. The Arabians were
