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Flarity’s face twisted up in anger. Bartram had known the man wouldn’t like it, but there was nothing else that could be done. Anyway, he wasn’t scared of Flarity the way the other men were.
“Duffy and her riders must have made it over somehow,” Flarity said.
“It appears they were already on the other side when the rocks fell, and just barely at that. I climbed over to have myself a gander. From the looks of it, they galloped their horses out from under them falling rocks and ran smack into a snakeman. There was a scuffle, but they ended up blowing the snakeman to bits. I was inspecting the carcass when the thing’s wife showed up. Ugly bitch tried to put her fangs on me, but…”
He lifted the bloody bundle again.
Flarity puffed angrily on his cigar. After a minute, he said, “So we have to backtrack then.”
The old man was finally getting the idea. He wasn’t quite as stupid as he looked.
“Sir, I seen a switchback a few miles behind us. Maybe you seen it too. I reckon we could get the horses up that and then find ourselves another way down on the other side. Like I said, it won’t be no problem regaining Duffy’s trail once we’re on the other side. Her riders are alphas like me. I can smell ’em from miles away.”
Ned Flarity grunted and chucked his cigar stub onto the ground. “Alright then. Let’s get ourselves turned around.”
Bartram nodded.
He hadn’t quite told Flarity everything. He’d failed to mention, for example, the items he’d found scattered on the ground near the dead snakeman’s body. There were some pieces of jerky and hardtack. Some clothing too. A woman-sized shirt with one sleeve torn off, a pair of dirty jeans.
And a bottle.
There was no label on it, only a red “S” stamped onto the top of the cork. Bartram had removed the cork and taken a sniff, but the stuff hadn’t had much of a smell. He’d taken a sip too, just the tiniest little taste. Almost immediately, he’d noticed a diminution in his alpha senses. His nose and ears had dulled ever so slightly, and so too had that painful lust that had burned inside his balls without ceasing ever since the day he’d revealed as an alpha.
Bartram’s first thought was that the fluid was a drug designed to weaken alphas. Maybe the Duffy woman was using it to keep her alpha riders tame?
Then another idea had occurred to him. Maybe the stuff worked onomegastoo.
Maybe the Duffy woman wasn’t exactly what she seemed.
Bartram kept all that to himself for now. No point in telling Flarity everything. It was always wise to keep a couple of cards up one’s sleeve.
He turned his head and spit a stream of tobacco juice, extinguishing the burning end of the cigar butt Flarity had tossed on the ground. Then he spurred his horse forward and rode after the other men, who were still getting their own horses turned around.
CHAPTER 20
Logan Summerhill was impressed. The spring was exactly where the Duffy woman had said it would be, and she’d led them to it without trouble. Her mental map was even more accurate than he’d realized.
The spring itself was perfect for their needs. It was situated slightly below the level of the surrounding desert, and it was walled in on three sides by low cliffs of pale pink stone. The fourth side descended to a flat, broad bank with plenty of plants for the horses to eat.
And of course, there was the water.
It had formed a kind of small pond at the bottom of the bowl formed by the low cliffs that surrounded it. The shade from the cliffs had kept it cool, and when Logan brought a handful to his mouth, he found that it tasted clean and slightly sweet with minerals.
The day had already lost most of its heat when they’d arrived at the spring, and by the time Logan had gotten Tanner down off his horse and fed him some water, the sun was smoldering low on the horizon. The coming night threatened to be a chilly one, so Logan decided to build a small fire using the limbs of a dead cottonwood that had once lived by the spring. If they’d been out on the open desert, a fire would have been too dangerous, and they would have stuck out like a sore thumb, but here the low cliffs surrounding the spring would keep the light hidden.
Once Logan had the fire going, he sat back and took stock of the situation.
Tanner was lying across from the fire resting. His arm was bandaged to keep his wounds clean, but that wasn’t going to help with the venom. His body would have to work that out on its own. His face was still pale and stippled with sweat, but Logan thought he already looked better than he had before.
He was going to pull through.
They had the woman to thank for that. If she hadn’t struck the snakeman in its eyes when she had, the creature would have delivered an even larger, probably fatal, dose of venom into Tanner’s arm.
You could learn a lot about a person from the way they acted under pressure. Most folks would either freeze or run. A few would take matters into their own hands and fight back. Apparently Shannon Duffy belonged in the latter category. Logan was impressed by that too, and grateful.
Her actions had saved his brother’s life.
Logan turned his attention to the woman. She was sitting just beyond the ring of light provided by the small fire, and her eyes glittered like glass as they stared into the flames. She had been sullen and silent ever since they’d arrived at the spring. Logan could only assume that was due to the way he’d snapped at her earlier.
