«What about you?» Eve asked quickly, turning to the stranger.

Reno gave her an odd look. Slowly he began turning over his cards one at a time with his right hand. Beneath the table, his left hand lay relaxed and close to his gun.

«Ten of hearts,» Reno said. «Jack. King. Ace.»

As he turned over the last card, he watched Slater’s hands. The royal flush gleamed like blood on the table.

«Queen of hearts.»

For an instant there was only silence. Then Raleigh and Slater went for their guns. Slater was much faster than Raleigh, but it didn’t matter.

Reno moved with stunning speed. Before Slater could draw his gun, Reno upended the card table and slammed it into the other men with his right hand. With his left he reached for his own gun.

Eve scooped up the ring, the pearls, the journal, and the coins before any of it hit the floor. Instantly she sprinted for the back door of the saloon, racing past men who were too surprised to stop her. Just before she reached the door, she risked a fast glance over her shoulder, wondering why no one was shooting.

Slater had known immediately that he was no match for the stranger. Hands held away from his sides, he watched Reno with reptilian intensity.

Raleigh was neither as bright nor as fast as his friend. He believed he could draw and shoot quicker than Reno could. Raleigh died before he understood his mistake.

As the abrupt thunder of gunshots exploded in the room, a man called Steamer stepped partway between Eve and Reno. She watched, horrified, as Steamer drew his gun to shoot Reno in the back.

There was no time for Eve to pull her derringer free of its hidden pocket. She jammed her hand in the skirt pocket, grabbed the small pistol, and pulled the trigger. The layers of red silk didn’t slow the bullet one bit, but the hasty shot almost missed.

The bullet burned across Steamer’s thigh. He gave a startled cry, his arm jerked, and the shot he triggered went into the ceiling.

Before Steamer’s finger could squeeze the trigger again, Reno turned and shot him in a single fluid motion. As Steamer fell dead to the floor, Reno spun back around to face Slater.

Shocked by the stranger’s lethal speed, Eve stood and stared for a moment before common sense took over. She bolted for the nearby stable.

Eve had prepared well for this moment. She had traded the battered Gypsy wagon that belonged to the Lyons for an equally battered saddle and saddlebags. She had been surprised to discover that, once free of the traces, the gentle old gelding called Whitefoot was both fast and eager for the trail.

Whitefoot was saddled, bridled, and ready to go. All of Eve’s possessions were in the saddlebags and bedroll tied behind the saddle. Later she would take time to change into trail clothes. For now, speed was more important than modesty. She jammed the ring on her right hand, pulled the rope of pearls over her head, and stuffed the journal and gold coins into a saddlebag.

In a wild swirling of crimson silk, Eve threw herself into the saddle, spun Whitefoot on his hocks, and headed out of town at a dead run. By the time Whitefoot passed the saloon, the scarlet skirt had climbed to Eve’s thighs.

From the corner of his eye Reno glimpsed a flurry of crimson and a breathtaking length of leg clad in cotton pantalets so sheer, they were little better than going naked. The drumroll of horse’s hooves filled the ringing silence that had followed the crash of gunfire.

Slater smiled grimly at the man who was watching him over the barrel of a six-gun.

«Looks like she suckered both of us,» Slater said calmly.

«Looks that way,» Reno agreed.

«Friend of yours?»

«No.»

Slater grunted. «Just as well. Man would have to be crazy to turn his back on that bit of scarlet.»

Reno said nothing.

Slater fell silent. It was dealer’s choice, and the man with the six-gun was the dealer.

Without looking away from Slater, Reno assessed the men remaining in the saloon. Raleigh and Steamer were dead.

«Friends of yours?» Reno asked.

«Not particularly. I don’t cotton to stupid men.»

«But you ride with them.»

«No,» Slater corrected. «They ride withme.»

Reno’s smile was sardonic.

«Well, you’ll be riding a little light,» he said, «but not for long. God must have loved fools and horseflies. Sure to hell he made a lot of them.»

Reno’s ice green eyes counted the men remaining in the saloon. Three of them were drifters. The rest were part of Slater’s gang. All of them were being careful not to give Reno a reason to shoot.

«Might your name be Reno?» Slater asked.

«Some folks call me that.»

A sound went through the men in the saloon. As one, they eased backward, giving Reno all the room he might want and then a bit more just to be safe.

The only move Slater made was to nod as though a private guess had just been confirmed.

«Thought so,» he said. «Only a few men can move like that.»

Slater paused, then asked with real interest, «Is the Man from Yuma still hunting you?»

«No.»

«Too bad. Hear he’s fast. Really fast.»

Reno smiled. «You heard right.»

«Did you kill him?» Slater asked. «Is that why he isn’t hunting you anymore?»

«I had no reason to kill him.»

«I do.»

«So I hear. Pity you weren’t with your twin brother, Jed, when he died. Then Wolfe could have made it a clean sweep.»

Slater became very still. «You were the third one there that day. The one with a six-gun.»

Though it wasn’t a question, Reno nodded.

«I was there. Best piece of work I’ve done. Whole lot of folks are sleeping more easy now that Jed and his boys are pushing up daisies.»

Slater’s face went still and hard.

«Lie facedown on the floor, boys,» Reno said calmly. «I’m feeling a mite nervous right now, so don’t do anything to startle me while I take your guns.»

There was a muted surge of motion as the men in the saloon went facedown on the floor. Reno moved among them quickly, gathering guns. As he worked, he kept an eye on Slater, whose right hand was inching toward his belt.

«After I gather up all the loose iron,» Reno said casually, «I’m going to wait outside the door for a while before I ride on. Whenever you feel lucky, you just lift your head and see if I’m still around.»

None of the men seemed in a hurry to take Reno’s offer.

«Slater, I hear you keep a little hideout gun behind your buckle,» Reno continued. «Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Now, I’d hate to kill an unarmed man, but not as bad as I’d hate to be shot in the back by a coyote who beats women and cheats at cards enough to put Satan to shame.»

Slater’s hand stopped moving.

Reno went through the room, drawing guns and shucking bullets onto the saloon floor. His passage was marked by the sound of the bullets falling and bouncing across the uneven wooden boards.

When several minutes had passed without the noise of more ammunition falling, one of the men eased his face off the floor and looked around.

«He done left,» said the man.

«Check the street,» said Slater.

«Check it yourself.»

By the time one of Slater’s men got up the nerve to check the street, Reno was four miles away, riding at a dead run as he followed the trail of the girl called Evening Star.

2

After the first two miles of hard running, Eve pulled Whitefoot back to a slower pace and began looking for the landmark Donna Lyon had described with her dying words.

All Eve saw to the west was the steeply rising Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. No ravine or shadowed crease in the land looked more inviting or more passable than any other. In fact, had she not already known that there was a pass through the looming peaks, she would have thought none existed. The rugged stone summits thrust straight into the blue afternoon sky, with little more than a notch here or there to hint at possible ways through the ramparts.

Nobody rode nearby. There were no houses, no farms, no settlements. All Eve could hear above the sound of Whitefoot’s deep breathing was the long sigh of the wind from the granite peaks. Pearly clouds wreathed some mountaintops, hinting at the afternoon and evening storms that flashed through the Rockies in summertime.

Eve had hoped for a good hard rain to hide her tracks, but she wasn’t going to be that lucky. The clouds weren’t nearly thick enough to help her out.

«Sorry, Whitefoot. We’ll have to keep running,» she said aloud, stroking the horse’s hot brown shoulder.

Her eyes searched the landscape once more, hoping to see El Oso, the bear-shaped mound of boulders described by Donna and the old journal.

No such pile of stones lay within view. There was nothing to suggest which way Eve should go to find the entrance to the ravine that would ultimately lead to a pass through the massed peaks.

Anxiously she turned and looked over her back trail. Behind her the rumpled land fell away in shades of green until the horizon came down on the plains, blurring everything into a gauzy, glittering blue.

Abruptly Eve stiffened and shaded her eyes, peering over her back trail.

«Perdition,» she muttered. «I can’t tell whether that’s men or deer or wild horses or something else entirely.»

What Eve’s eyes couldn’t make out, her instincts did. With her heart wedging in her throat, she kicked Whitefoot into a canter. She wanted to go at a fast gallop, but the land was too steep. If she ran Whitefoot any harder, she would find herself afoot before sunset.

Earth spurted and rocks rolled as Whitefoot cantered along the vague trail that ran parallel to the Front Range. In some places the trail was wide enough for a wagon. In others it unraveled into footpaths leading to sheltered places where people could camp out of the endless wind.

Each time Whitefoot crested a rise, Eve looked back. Each time the men following her were closer. If she didn’t do something, they would catch her before dark. The thought was enough to chill her more deeply than the wind blowing down from icy peaks.

Finally Whitefoot came to a ravine that held an odd pile of boulders and a brawling little stream in its bottom. The boulders didn’t particularly look like a bear to Eve, but Donna had warned her that the Spaniards who drew the map had been alone in the wilderness so long that they saw fanciful things.

Eve urged Whitefoot around the mound that might or might not be El Oso. Once past the rocks, she turned her horse in to the stream and kept him in the water until the going got too rough. Only then did she allow the gelding to splash out across a swath of stony ground. Whitefoot’s hooves left small marks and scrapes across pebbles to mark his passage, but it was better than the clear trail he had left in softer ground.

Zigzagging, guiding the horse alongside or actually in the stream, heading ever deeper into the wild mountains, Eve rode into the thick gold light of afternoon. Her legs were chapped from the rubbing of the old saddle and cold from exposure to the wind, but she didn’t dare stop long enough to change into Don Lyon’s old clothes.

As soon as the way became less steep, Eve reined Whitefoot back into the stream. This time she kept him wading for more than a mile before she found stony ground that wouldn’t take hoofprints.

She checked the journal and looked around unhappily. She was at the limit of the countryside covered by the journal. Soon she must turn and take a long, winding valley westward, following the grass like a river to its source high in the peaks, a divide marking one side of the range from the other.

But before she crossed that divide, she had to lose the men who were following her.

SLATER stood in his stirrups and looked down his own back trail. Nothing moved but the wind. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being followed. Slater was a man accustomed to listening to his instincts, but he was getting tired of having his spine itch when there was nothing more to show for it than an empty back trail stretching all the way to Canyon City.

«Well?» he asked impatiently as his best Comanchero scout rode up.

Crooked Bear held his cupped right hand to his mouth and then brought his hand across to his right shoulder in the sign for river.

«Again?» Slater asked in disgust. «Her damned horse must be part fish.»