The stranger was gone.

Janna ran across the hollow and went into the pinons on her hands and knees. There was blood still fresh on the ground, as well as signs that the man had dragged himself deeper into cover. She followed his trail, wiping it out as she went, crumbling and scattering earth and the debris that piled up beneath the pinons. She found him in a dense thicket that crowded up against the cliff. Bloody handprints on the stone told her that he had tried to climb, only to fall. He lay where he had fallen, facedown in the dirt, his hands still reaching toward stone as though he would awaken at any moment and try to climb once more.

She bit her lip against unaccustomed tears, feeling as she had once when she had found a cougar with its paw wedged into a crack in the rocks. She hadn't been able to approach the cat until it was nearly dead with thirst. Only then had she been able to free it-but she would never forget the agony of waiting for the magnificent cat to weaken enough to allow her close.

"Pobrecito," Janna murmured, touching the man's arm as she settled into place beside him. Poor little one.

The swell of firm muscle beneath her fingers reminded Janna that the man was hardly little; he was as powerful as the cougar had been, and perhaps as dangerous. He had shown a frightening determination to survive, driving himself beyond all reason or hope. Perhaps he was like Casca-bel, whose ability to endure pain was legendary. As was his cruelty.

Was this man also cruel? Had it been savage cunning and coldness that had driven him to survive rather than unusual intelligence and courage and determination?

Shouts floated up from the canyon bottom as renegades called to one another, searching for the man who had run their gauntlet and then disappeared like a shaman into the air itself. Janna shrugged out of her pack, untied the rawhide thongs and spread the army blanket over the stranger. An instant later she removed it. The solid color was too noticeable in the dappled light and shadow of the pinons. As long as there was any chance of Cascabel finding the hollow, the man was better off camouflaged by random patterns of dirt and dried blood.