Rayna had no choice but to follow. “What’s wrong? I didn’t see anyplace where they could have hidden the horses or led them into the cliffs. Didn’t the prints resume?” she asked.

“Yes, but good old Cleft Shoe’s prints don’t look quite as deep as they did before.”

“You think his rider went up into the cliffs and the other one went ahead?”

Meade shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being an alarmist, but I don’t want to take any chances. You stay here while I check this out more thoroughly.”

It was a gallant sentiment, but Rayna didn’t care much for heroics. “Meade, how long have you known me?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. Just over three months, I suppose. Why?”

She smiled at him. “What do you think the chances are that I’m going let you leave me here with the horses?”

He sighed with disgust. “Damn poor, I presume.”

“That’s right.”

“Rayna . . .”

His stern look didn’t intimidate her. “Meade, we can argue, or we can get this over with.”

Her stubborn jaw was firmly set, and he knew it was pointless to try to reason with her. “If I go alone, you’ll just follow me, won’t you?”

She nodded.

“All right. I guess I’d rather have you where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Where we can keep an eye on each other,” she corrected.

Meade shook his head as he tethered Chicory to a stout scrub near the base of a cliff. “God, but you’re stubborn.” He replaced his rifle in its scabbard and advised Rayna to do the same. “If we have to climb, the rifles will only make it more difficult,” he explained, and she couldn’t argue with his logic. Once the canyon narrowed, they wouldn’t need long-range weapons, anyway.

Rayna just hoped they wouldn’t need them at all.

With the horses secured a good distance away, they returned to the rock shelf where Cleft Shoe’s tracks became shallower. They studied the ground and finally found a clear boot print near the east wall of the gorge. Loosened rocks showed them where someone had started climbing, and Meade abandoned all hope that his imagination had just been working overtime. They went up and found a ledge that ran parallel to the trail, then moved along it with as much stealth as they could manage.

A few feet after the canyon curved sharply to the left, the ledge ended and they began climbing again, following the trail of dislodged rocks and an occasional boot print in the soft red clay. Ahead, Rayna could finally see the 176

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mouth of Denning Pass, and she was grateful to be on the cliffs rather than trapped in the bowels of the narrow arroyo.

“Okay, this is as far as you go,” Meade whispered when they stopped to rest beneath a sheltered overhang that hid the mouth of the pass from view.

“Meade, we agreed—”

“We agreed that you wouldn’t stay with the horses. I’m going to follow our clumsy friend and see if I can get the drop on him from behind.”

“And what about his friend? You know . . . the one who went ahead through the pass. Remember him?”

“Of course I do. Unless I miss my guess, he’s already left the horses somewhere on the other side and has climbed into the cliffs, too.”

“Then we should both go.”

“No,” he said as adamantly as he could and still keep his voice low. “You stay here and keep an eye out. That’s an order.”

“But—”

“Rayna, for God’s sake, just shut up and for once do as you’re told,” he said, then ducked out of their little hidey-hole.

Concerned that she might stupidly follow him, Meade spent nearly as much time looking over his shoulder as he did concentrating on the shelf he was climbing. After a few minutes, though, it became obvious that she had done the sensible thing, and he devoted all his attention to following the difficult trail left by the brigand who was waiting somewhere ahead in Denning Pass.

Back in her hiding place, Rayna wasted very little time fuming over Meade’s dictatorial command. She could never have followed without him seeing her, but that wasn’t the logical thing to do, anyway. What they needed was a bird’s-eye view of the pass, and the only way to get it was to go straight up.

After backtracking to a likely spot, she began free-climbing with the same steady skill that she and Skylar had learned when they were thirteen years old and had been trapped in Diablo Canyon by a flash flood. It was a difficult but not impossible climb, and within thirty minutes she had reached the top, where a surprisingly flat mesa awaited her.

Keeping away from the edge, where she might have been spotted from the opposite side of the canyon, she hurried toward Denning Pass. When the opposing rock walls finally narrowed to a point where she could easily have tossed a stone across to the other side, she dropped to her stomach and crawled to the edge.

The rock face below her was by no means sheer or completely vertical, but she had a commanding view nonetheless. Unfortunately, she didn’t see any sign of the man she knew had to be lying in wait somewhere down there. She 177

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crawled on, ignoring the rocks that cut and bruised her elbows, until she finally caught a glimpse of Meade. He was less than a dozen yards below her, crouched on a ledge.

Rayna moved on, knowing that the would-be robber had to be somewhere ahead of Meade, and finally she saw him. He was stretched out as flat as a lizard, and Rayna might have assumed he was napping if she hadn’t seen the movement of the rifle he had trained on the mouth of the pass.

Obviously he expected his quarry to arrive at any second, and considering the length of time Meade and Rayna had spent stalking their assassins, he was probably even beginning to worry that something had gone awry.

She drew her Colt, and her assumption was confirmed when the man suddenly propped himself up and looked up at the cliff opposite him. Rayna followed the direction of his gaze, but saw nothing until the man called out,

“Damn it, Hobie, you seen anything from up there yet?”

The words echoed off the canyon walls, and a moment later a ragged gray hat popped up from behind a boulder on a wide ledge. “No, I ain’t,” came the barely discernible hushed reply. “And I won’t, neither, if you don’t shet up.”

Gray Hat ducked back down, and the Lizard stretched out again. Trying to figure out what to do next, Rayna glanced at Meade and saw him looking around, obviously trying to determine where the second voice had come from. He was well above Lizard’s hiding place, which led Rayna to conclude that he had probably gotten a glimpse of the bushwhacker and had been trying to get above him.

Unfortunately, Meade’s ledge had ended, and the only way off it was to go back or climb higher.

With so many crags and boulders, nooks and turns, it was hard for Rayna to judge whether or not Gray Hat would be able to see Meade when he began climbing. Calling out a warning to him would only betray both of them, so she remained quiet and worked her way along the mesa until she had a little better view of Gray Hat’s hiding place. His hat and part of his shoulder were all she could see, but it was enough for the time being.

But what should she do next? She knew she could easily kill the Lizard with one shot, but could she live with the knowledge that she’d murdered a man in cold blood? No, she couldn’t see herself as a back-shooter. In fact, she had to wonder if she could kill a man at all. Since she’d never been in a situation remotely similar to this one, it was a moral and ethical question she’d never been forced to face. She had always assumed that if a time came when she had to defend herself or someone she loved, she could do it without a second thought.

But principle was considerably different from reality, she discovered.

A clatter of rocks echoed loudly down the cliff, and Rayna’s heart leapt into her throat as she looked for Meade. He had gained solid footing on a 178

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shelf above the Lizard, but the cost was going to be too high. Lizard scrambled to his knees, raising his rifle as he frantically searched for the source of the disturbance, and Gray Hat cautiously peered over his boulder.

“Throw the rifle into the gorge!” Meade shouted, his revolver trained steadily on the man beneath him.

“Now, lookee here—” Lizard said indignantly, but Meade cut him off.

“Do it or you’re dead!”

“All right, all right.” Reluctantly the Lizard held the rifle out over the ledge and released it. It clattered on the rocks and then was silent.

“Now your gun belt,” Meade instructed.

“See here, mister, you ain’t got no call—”

“Do it!” he roared.

Considering the circumstances, Lizard’s protestations were laughable, but Rayna wasn’t amused. As soon as Meade had spoken, Gray Hat had disappeared. Assuming that he was crawling around the cluster of boulders to get a better shot at Meade, she scrambled back the way she’d come, frantically searching for a glimpse of him.

She heard Meade order Lizard to drop his gun belt, but there was no time to look to see if he would comply, because Gray Hat chose that moment to come out of hiding. He rose just enough to take careful aim at Meade, and Rayna discovered that her moment of truth was at hand.

Centering him steadily in the sight of her Colt, she shouted, “No! Over here,” hoping to startle him, and that was exactly what happened. Gray Hat instinctively swiveled the rifle toward the sound of her voice, clipping off one frantic shot that thundered through the canyon. Before he could draw the hammer of his repeater or even think about ducking, Rayna pulled the trigger and Gray Hat fell back heavily.