Free Deep Trouble by Mary Connealy Page B

around men. Her hardfisted pa taught her men didn’t like being bested by women, not even their own daughters. She decided then and there that she’d like very much to calmly cut out Randy’s liver. She’d deny herself that pleasure only until after they’d found the gold. “Can you show us where it is, Randy?”
    “Reckon I can.” Randy looked her right in the eye, and Lurene had the sudden sense that he knew exactly what she was thinking. And she thought for the first time he might be as hard to kill as Cutter. And if Randy stuck with his brother, then both of them might be hard to get rid of without sharing the gold.
    Lurene didn’t like any part of it.
    Getting slowly to his feet from where he crouched by his pile of broken twigs, Randy walked carefully, skirting the mesquite with their reaching, scratching branches, and vanished into what looked like a solid wall of scrub brush. The brush was high enough that she couldn’t even see the top of his head, but minutes later he came out carrying a ladder that looked almost as rickety as the one they’d used yesterday.
    “Let’s get up there and have it out with her.” Lurene remembered their struggle of yesterday to get the ladder to that top level.
    “You go on. You don’t need anyone else up there.” Randy laid the ladder on the ground and turned back to the fire. “And I don’t have much of a belly for watching you threaten a woman until she tells where to find something that doesn’t exist. Were it up to me, we’d worry about ransoming her and forget a buncha gold no more true at the end of her next map than it was at the end of this one.” Randy looked pointedly at the dull, dusty rock. No one could deny that Shannon’s first map had led them to this worthless stretch of ground. “Whatever you do to her, leave her alive.” Randy went back to his fire, turning his back to them as if he had no fear of a bullet crashing into his spine.
    Darrel stood on past Randy, though, facing Lurene and the others. Though Darrel was slow of thought, he was watchful. And Randy clearly trusted him.
    The whole thing gave Lurene reason to worry. She looked at Lobo. “Ready to fight with that ladder?”
    “Ready. We won’t use it until that last climb. No sense straining it more than we have to.”
    Lurene nodded and stepped back while Lobo went to work.

    “Can’t we ride any faster than this?” Shannon had promised she wouldn’t ask that question again, but it slipped out, about once every mile.
    “No, we can’t.” Gabe shifted as though he was irritated. “The horse is carrying a double load.”
    Shannon was riding behind Gabe, holding on with strength born in fear. She’d never done much riding in St. Louis since her family had a carriage. She’d thought she was learning the way of it, though they’d come a long way on the train before turning to horseback. But this wasn’t exactly riding. It was more clinging for dear life. And clinging to a strong, warm man, who shifted his weight and turned to look at her once in a while.
    She found holding Gabe very disturbing. Nothing like hanging on tight to the cold, solid saddle horn. She wanted it to be over badly. “He seems like a big strong horse. How far did you say it is to town?”
    “We’re gonna push hard all day, and we’ll spend the night with a family of Navajos who run a herd of sheep and have a small settlement near a waterhole. I spent the night there just yesterday.” There was an extended moment of silence. “No, two days ago.”
    Gabe shrugged, and Shannon clung.
    “As for a town, Tuba City is to the east. To the west, well, I’ve never been all that far west of here, not this far north. I’ll ask Doba Kinlichee.”
    “Doba what?”
    “That’s the father of the family of Navajos. Doba Kinlichee. They’re the first place east of here I know of. I was coming from that direction because I’ve been out to see my brother in California, so I stayed with them.”
    “I thought you