Reckless Love

"That's real good, son," Ty murmured, stroking the stallion's black hide. "Now let's see if you're going to try to kill me the first time I tug on that hackamore."

Chapter Twenty-Eight

As Ty slowly tightened the lead rope, Ja

"Be good, Lucifer," she prayed. "Don't go crazy and hurt Ty when that hackamore gets tight."

Lucifer's head came up sharply when the hackamore began to exert pressure behind his ears and across his upper neck. He snorted and shook his head, but the gradually increasing pressure didn't diminish. Trembling, sweating nervously, ears swiveling forward and then away from the man's gentle voice, the stallion tried to understand what was happening, how to meet the new threat. When he attempted to back away from the pressure, it got sharply worse. When he stood still, it got slowly worse.

But when he limped forward, the pressure lifted.

"That's it," Ty murmured, slacking off on the lead rope immediately. He petted Lucifer, praising the horse with voice and hands. "Let's try a few more steps, son. We've got a long way to go before we're safe."

It didn't take Lucifer more than a few minutes to understand that a pressure urging him forward meant walk forward and a pressure across the bridge of his nose meant stop.

"You're not an outlaw at all, are you?" Ty asked softly, stroking the horse's powerful, sweaty neck. "Men have chased you, but thank God no man ever had a chance to ruin you with rough handling."

Lucifer flicked his ears as he followed the calm sounds of Ty's voice while the man backed up, paying out lead rope as he went.

"All right, son. It's time to get you out of this hole." Slowly Ty tightened the lead rope. "Come on. That's it…that's it. One step at a time, that's all." His mouth flattened as he saw the stallion's painful progress. "That hip sure is sore, isn't it?" Ty said in a low voice. "Well, son, it's going to get worse before it gets better, I'm afraid. But you'll live, God willing."

Ty coaxed the limping stallion along the bottom of the ravine until they came to a place he had spotted from the ridge above, a place where the sides of the gully were less steep. Ty climbed halfway out, turned and began applying a steady pressure on the lead rope once more.

"Up you go. It will be easier to walk once you're on sort of level land again. Come on… come on… don't go all mulish on me now, son. It's not as steep as it looks."

Lucifer disliked the idea of climbing the gully, but he disliked the slowly tightening vise of the hackamore even more. Suddenly he lunged forward, taking the side of the ravine in a hurtling rush. Ty leaped aside just in time to avoid being trampled and scrambled up the slope after the stallion. Once on top, Lucifer came to a stop and stood three-legged, trembling from nervousness and pain.

Ja

"No one in sight," she said quietly.

"All right." Ty lifted his hat, wiped his forehead and resettled the hat with a hard tug. "How's your arm?"

Surprised that Ty had noticW, Ja

"Hand over your pack."

She tried not to wince as he helped her out of the rawhide straps, but she couldn't Conceal her left arm's growing soreness. With gentle fingertips he traced the dark bruise where one of Lucifer's hooves had struck a glancing blow.

"Any numbness?" Ty asked.

She shook her head.

"All your fingers work?"

Silently she wiggled each of them in turn.

"Can you scout for us?" Ty asked, releasing her arm, caressing her all the way to her fingertips.

Suddenly breathless, Ja

"Cat got your tongue?"

She smiled and stuck her tongue out at Ty.

"Is that a promise?" he drawled. He smiled and touched her lips with his fingertip. "Stick it out again, sugar."

"I don't think-"

That was as far as Ja

When Ty finally lifted his head he was breathing too hard, but he was smiling.

"It occurred to me when that stallion was doing his best to trample me into the dirt," Ty said, "that a man shouldn't die without tasting a woman on his lips. You taste good, like Christmas and Thanksgiving and my birthday all rolled into one. And if you don't turn around and get busy scouting, I'm going to be walking bent over double and in damn near as much pain as Lucifer."

Ja

"I'll head east and a little bit south unless you come and tell me otherwise," Ty said. Quickly he removed a handful of bullets from his pistol belt. "Take these."

The bullets felt smooth, cool and heavy in Ja

And he would need that warning. Unable to hide his tracks, forced by Lucifer's injury to go slowly and to take the easiest-and therefore most open-way available, Ty would be a sitting duck in a pond surrounded by hunters. Both he and Ja

Ja

Behind her, Ty talked to the black stallion, praising him as he limped over the land. For his part, Lucifer moved as quickly as he could. A lifetime of ru

Initially Ty walked ahead of Lucifer, encouraging him with a steady pressure on the hackamore. After the first hour, the horse no longer needed to be reminded that he was supposed to keep walking. When Ty moved, so did Lucifer. When Ty stood, Lucifer stood. When Ty walked, Lucifer walked with his head even with Ty's left shoulder. The hackamore's lead rope remained slack.

"You're some kind of special," Ty said, talking to Lucifer as they walked. "You're as gentle as a lady's hack. Makes me wonder if maybe you weren't paddock raised and then got free somehow. Of course, it simply could be that we both want the same thing right now-a safe place to hide. You might be a lot harder to get along with if you wanted one thing and I wanted another."