Only 3 - OnlyYou - Elizabeth Lowell by Elizabeth Lowell

Author:Elizabeth Lowell
Language: bg
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-05-07T19:51:19+00:00

13

E VE watched the blue roan scramble back up the head of the steep ravine. It was the fifth chute down the plateau Reno had tried in the past two hours. So far, each ravine had ended in a cliff that horses couldn’t descend.

This time, however, Reno had been gone at least half an hour. Though Eve didn’t say anything, she couldn’t keep a look of hope from her face. Without realizing it, she ran her tongue over her lips. No shine of moisture followed.

“Take a drink,” Reno said as he rode up. “You’re as dry as stone.”

“I can’t drink when my horse is so thirsty, she tries to crawl in my pocket each time I pick up the canteen.”

“Don’t let the sweet-faced fraud fool you. She sucked one of those little tinajas dry while you were a quarter mile back, trying to fall into that big slot.”

“Tinajas?” Eve frowned, then remembered what the Spanish word meant. “Oh. Those holes in the rock where rainwater collected. Is the water good?”

“The mustangs liked it.”

“You didn’t drink any?”

“The horses needed it more than I did. Besides,” Reno admitted with a slight grin, “I wasn’t thirsty enough to strain all those little critters between my teeth.”

Eve’s laughter surprised Reno. She was dusty, worn-out, scuffed from crawling over rock…and he had never seen a woman who appealed to him more. He tucked a tawny lock behind her ear, ran his fingertip over the line of her jaw, and touched her lips with the ball of his thumb.

“Mount up,” he said softly. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Curious, Eve stepped into the stirrup and rode alongside Reno as far as the trail allowed. To her surprise, the shallow ravine didn’t get deeper right away as the others had. Instead, it got wider and wider, descending gently through piñons and cedar.

Gradually the slickrock became buried under dirt. More and more small gullies joined the ravine, widening it, until they were riding through a valley that was nearly surrounded by steep walls of stone.

Eve turned and looked at Reno with hope on her face and a question in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Reno said quietly. “But it looks good. I rode another mile and nothing changed.”

Eve closed her eyes and let out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding.

“No water, though,” Reno added reluctantly.

For several miles there were no sounds but that of an eagle keening on the wind, the creak of leather as the horses walked, and the muffled beat of hooves on the dry earth. Though it was late in the afternoon, the sunlight still held an amazing amount of heat.

Clouds gathered into groups high overhead. Their color ranged from white to a blue-black that promised rain. But not on the plateau. It wasn’t high enough to trap these clouds. Only the mountains were. Nowhere had Eve seen running water on the plateau.

“Reno?”

He made a rumbling sound that said he had heard.

“Does it rain here?”

He nodded.

“Where does it all go?” she asked.

“Downhill.”

“Yes, but where is it? We’re downhill from something, and there’s no water.

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