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"What do you think? Could we go to bed?" She coughed. "I mean, could we go to sleep?"
"No."
There was a long pause, then she said, "The posse slept at Entrada Pass tonight."
Killian drew back on the reins and turned around, trying to see her in the jet blackness behind him. All he saw was the silhouette of her body against the amethyst canyon opening behind them. "How do?"
The Bitch rammed into Captain's butt. The gelding snorted and crowhopped to the right, slamming Killian's leg into the sandstone wall.
"I asked you to signal before you stopped," she snapped.
"How do you know where the posse slept ... uh ... will sleep?"
"I wrote it."
He sighed and turned around, staring unseeingly through the gray, moonlit slit at the end of the canyon.
"Does it matter?" she asked in a soft voice. "I know."
He couldn't deny it. She'd known so many impossible things, what was one more? And this one ... Hell, he wanted to believe her. "Entrada Pass, huh?"
"Yeah. There's a small stream and a grove of cottonwoods?"
"I know what it looks like. Okay, we'll go as far as the caves tonight and make camp."
58
"Thank you, God," she breathed in a voice that sounded as tired as he felt.
He almost smiled. "You're welcome."
In spite of herself, Lainie laughed. No doubt it was lack of food and water. Her brain was eroding; it had to be if she thought Mr. Macho was funny.
She stared straight ahead, trying to make him out. He was a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette, a black horseman against the lavender slash of sky that lay beyond the entrance to the canyon.
They rode in silence for another hour, through one winding, stream-lined canyon after another. And even though she was exhausted, she couldn't close her eyes.
This place was incredible. At one moment, jet black and freezing cold; a second later, moonlit and magical. It was so much more than she'd expected. She'd read about the rock formations that filled the American Southwest, from Monument Valley to Arches to Canyon de Chelly. She'd studied them all when she created this landscape, her fictional "The Ridge" hideout.
She'd seen photographs, literally thousands of them at all times of day and night. She'd seen the colors, the curves, the canyons .. . but never had she seen the majesty. Everything about this place was more than she'd expected, bigger, taller, redder, hotter, colder. The sky went on forever, the canyon walls rose into heaven itself. It was a place worthy of the greatest writer, a place that had to be seen.
They emerged at last from the series of canyons and entered a huge, sweeping mesa. Lainie gazed around and drew in a sharp breath. The land was unlike anything she'd seen before. The earth stretched out before her, an endless, moon-drenched plain dotted with black shrubs and twisting towers of smoke-colored stone.
"My God," she murmured, feeling suddenly cold.
59
"The Ancient Ones called this place the Valle de Muerte," Killian said quietly.
"Lovely. You've picked the Valley of Death as our campsite."
Killian dismounted, then turned around and reached a hand up for her.
She looked down at him, surprised by the gesture. He stood there, silently, staring up at her, his face half-shadowed by the night, half-touched by the moonlight. She crossed her reins over the horse's mane. Then, uncertainly, she reached out and placed her cold, aching hand in his gloved palm. The coarse, warm leather folded around her fingers, gave her an anchor in the darkness.
She lifted out of the saddle and swung her right leg over the horse's huge, red-speckled hindquarters. At the motion, her left leg wobbled in the stirrup and gave way, unable to support her full weight. With a shriek of horror, she fell to the dirt in a bone-crushing thud.
He had the gall to laugh.
