Reckless Love

Saying nothing, Ty smoothed a patch of dirt with his hand, then began drawing on the surface with his fingertip. Knowing that the plateau was Lucifer's preferred range, Ty had spent weeks scouting the area before he had decided on the best way to capture the wild stallion. Unfortunately Ty had ended up captured by Indians before he could try out his plan. Ja

"This outline is Black Plateau," he said, pointing to the very rough rectangle he had drawn in the dirt. He added sides to the rectangle, showing depth as well as area. Only the western side remained untouched, suggesting the relative flatness where the plateau's surface blended into the rumpled front of the Fire Mountains. "From what I've seen, the closer you get to Black Plateau from the east, the steeper and deeper the canyons, gullies and ravines get."

Ja

"That's right," she said. "The plateau's east face rises very steeply from the flatlands." She leaned forward again, and again braced herself on Ty's leg, ignoring his attempts to evade her touch. "Black Plateau is really part of the Fire Mountains," she added, drawing a series of pyramids along the plateau's western flank to represent the mountains. "According to Indian legends, the spirits fought each other until the earth cracked and bled and everything the blood touched became fire. Long after the earth healed, the angry spirits roared and spit fire among the peaks of the Fire range, and sometimes new blood flowed over the plateau and dripped down into the desert, where it turned into black rocks. The angry spirits still live beneath the earth around here, turning water so hot that there are springs that cook food faster than a campfire."

Ty tried to concentrate on Ja

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place… Ty told himself, disgusted because the hard place was in his own lap. He pulled off his hat and dumped it between his legs, hiding the growing evidence of his discomfort in the only way he could.

"There are two good trails up on top of the plateau on its western side," Ja

"Or war parties?"

Ja

"And you?"

She smiled. "And me. But Zebra grew up on that trail. Sometimes I think her mama was a goat. Zebra is as surefooted as one. Besides, most of the time I get off and walk. There's one slick rock patch that gives me nightmares."

Ty smiled thinly. "You? Nightmares?" he scoffed. "You're too tough to be afraid of anything."

Ja

"Is your keyhole canyon about here?" asked Ty, pointing to a place near the southeast corner of the plateau.

"Yes."

Steadfastly ignoring the gentle crowding pressure of Jan-na's body, Ty looked at the map and mentally began turning the plateau's neat edges into a fringe of varying lengths, for that was closer to the truth of the landscape. The plateau's north, east and south edges were fringed with sheer-sided stone promontories and cliffs, as well as canyons and ravines of varying sizes and depths; and the larger canyons had side canyons, which in turn branched into finger canyons, which branched into runoff crevices.

The result was a maze in which a person could stand on one canyon edge and look at the opposite edge only a few thousand feet away-and it would take a day of circling around to get to the other side. Most of the hundreds of nameless canyons that fringed the plateau were blind; ultimately they had only one outlet, and that was down onto the flatlands rather than up onto the top of Black Plateau itself.

"Do you know of any other trails up to the top?" Ty asked, marking the ones Ja

Ja

"Does Lucifer graze in blind canyons?"

"The biggest ones, yes. The narrow ones, never. Some mustangers must have trapped him once. He won't even go near the entrance of any canyon that isn't at least a quarter mile across. He's smart and wild as they come."

"No wonder he's still ru

"It's been tried by every mustanger who ever came here."

Ty didn't ask what the result had been. He didn't need to. The stallion still ran free.

"No wonder Troon decided to try creasing that black devil," iy muttered.

Ja

Ty saw and had to look away. The idea of gently biting Ja

Cursing silently, viciously, Ty tried to ease away from the intimate contact. Half an inch away he came flat up against the crevice's stony limits. Close beside him, Ja