Smiling, Eve looked back out over the slow transformations of stone and shadow and sunset.
«I keep wondering,» she said, «how the maze got here and why it’s so different from everything I’ve ever seen.»
«I felt the same way the first time I saw it. I came across a government paleontologist about eight years ago, and he —»
«What’s that?» Eve interrupted.
«A paleontologist?»
She nodded.
«It’s a four-dollar word for a man who hunts bones so old, they’ve turned to stone.»
Eve made a sound of disbelief. «A stone bone?»
«It’s called a fossil.»
«Where do the bones come from?»
«Animals that lived a long, long, long time ago.»
A vague memory came to Eve, left over from a time when she had attended the orphanage school.
«Like the ‘terrible lizards’?» she asked.
Reno looked surprised. «Yes.»
Eve put her chin back on her knees.
«I thought the older kids were teasing me, but one of them showed me a photograph in a book,» she said dreamily. «It was a skeleton of a lizard standing on its hind legs. It was taller than a church steeple. I wanted to read the book, but somebody stole it before I could.»
«I’ve got the same book back at Willy and Cal’s ranch,» Reno said, «along with about fifty others.»
«Do any of them tell you how that happened?» Eve asked, gesturing toward the stone maze far below.
«Ever see a river undercut its bank until the bank topples, making a new shape to the river?»
«Sure. Floods do it even faster.»
«Think how it would look if the river cut through stone rather than dirt, and every tributary creek and stream cut through stone, and stone banks slowly were worn away, widening all the ravines more and more. …»
«Is that what happened here?»
Reno nodded.
«It must have taken a long time,» Eve said.
«Longer than anyone but God can imagine,» he said simply.
Into the silence came the slow exhalation of a wind that had touched nothing but time, distance, and stone.
«Somewhere out there lie the bones of animals so strange, they can scarcely be believed,» Reno said. «Out there are sand dunes turned to rock, and with them the tracks of animals that died a thousand thousand years before anything like man ever lived.»
«Eden,» Eve whispered. «Or Hades.»
«What?»
«I can’t decide if this is a demanding kind of paradise or a seductive kind of hell,» she said.
Reno smiled strangely. «Let me know when you decide. I’ve often wrestled with that question myself.»
In silence they watched patterns of light and darkness shift and re-form until the distant mesas looked like stone ships anchored in a shadow sea.
«It’s so unbelievable. …» Eve’s voice faded into silence.
«It’s no stranger than men building a boat that carries four people and goesunderwater.»
Eve gave Reno a startled look, but before she could say anything, he was talking again.
«It’s no stranger than the New Madrid earthquake that changed the course of the Mississippi,» he said. «It’s no stranger than Mount Tambora blowing its top and bringing the Year Without a Summer to Britain.»
«What?» she asked.
«It’s true. Byron even wrote a poem about it,» Reno said.
«Good Lord. If one little volcano was worth a poem, what would he have written about this?» she demanded, gesturing to the view in front of her.
Reno smiled wryly. «I don’t know, but I would have enjoyed reading it.»
The smile faded from Reno’s face as he said, «The world is all of a piece, all connected. It’s big, but it’s still only one place. Someday Rafe will figure it out and stop roaming.»
«And until then?»
«Rafe will be like the wind, alive only when he’s moving.»
«What about you?» Eve asked softly.
«I’ll be what I’ve always been, a man who puts his faith in the only thing that’s as valuable as it is incorruptible…tears of the sun god, the transcendent brought down to earth, the one thing that a man can count on in life. Gold.»
There was a long silence while Eve looked out on the land with eyes that would rather have cried. She should have expected Reno to say nothing else, but the depth of her pain told her that she had.
She had been seduced by passion and love. The passion had been returned to her redoubled.
The love had not.
Becoming Reno’s woman had changed the world for Eve. But not for him. He still had only one Golden Rule:
You can’t count on women, but you can count on gold.
Reno stood and held out his hand to Eve. He pulled her to her feet with an ease that made her wonder if he ever grew tired, ever felt he couldn’t take one more step, ever knew hunger or cold or sleeplessness.
«Time to go, sugar girl.»
«We’re not camping here?»
«No. The shaman was right about the trail. It’s so easy, we can do it by moonlight.»
As Reno walked back to the horses, Eve looked out over the beautiful, enigmatic maze once more.
«Ships of stone,» she whispered. «Why can’t Reno see you?»
17
Even after the moon set, the stars burned in such radiant profusion that ghostly shadows formed. Though as sheer as a veil, the shadows were nonetheless real.
Unhappily Eve concluded that, no matter how vague, starlight wasn’t exempt from Reno’s list of impossible demands.
A stone ship, a dry rain, and a light that casts no shadow.
She might have found an armada of stone ships, but the dry rain was as unattainable as ever. The shadowless light was also beyond her reach.
One of the hobbled horses snorted, disturbing Eve’s gloomy thoughts. She turned in her bedroll, blaming her sleeplessness on the hard ground rather than on her depressing reflections.
But the ground wasn’t any harder than it had ever been. Turning over didn’t make her more comfortable. It simply gave her a better view over the ashes of the campfire.
Reno’s powerful, broad-shouldered silhouette was looming unmistakably against the stars. His bare chest and feet were a lighter shade of darkness. Obviously he was ready for bed but not ready for sleep.
Reno was standing quietly, watching Eve rather than the slow wheeling of the stars overhead. She wondered where he had been, and why he had told her to go to sleep when he walked out of camp alone, and if he knew she was awake now.
Then he spoke to her, answering one question; he knew she was awake.
«Can’t sleep?» Reno asked in a low voice.
«No,» Eve admitted.
He walked over and sat on his heels next to her bedroll.
«Know why?» he asked.
