The farther up she climbed, the more she allowed herself to believe that the stranger would make it to the top. Up there was water, cover, game, all that a man would need to survive. Up there she could hide him easily, care for his wounds, nurse him if he required it.

Hopes high, Janna levered herself over a rockfall, only to find a stone cliff cutting off all possibility of advance or escape. At the base of the cliff, pinon and rocks grew in equal profusion.

There was no one in sight.

But there was no way out of the rugged little canyon except the way he had come, and she certainly hadn't seen anything bigger than a rabbit. He had to be somewhere in the pinon- and rock-filled hollow behind the landslide- unless he had spread spectral wings and flown from this trap like a shaman.

A frisson went over Janna's skin at the thought. If any man could have flown like a pagan god, this one could have. He had taken a beating that would have killed most men, then he had run three miles and threaded his way to the head of a nameless rocky canyon over land that had tried even Janna's skill.

Don't be foolish, Janna told herself firmly. He's as human as you are. You've looked at enough of his blood in the last mile to swear to that on a stack of Bibles as tall as God.

Intently Janna stared at every foot of the sloping hollow. Despite her sharp eyes, it took two circuits of the ground before she spotted the stranger lying facedown amid the low, ragged pinon branches. She approached him cautiously, unwilling to make any unnecessary sound by calling out to him. Besides, he could be playing possum, waiting for her to get within reach of those powerful hands. He wouldn't expect to be followed by anyone but a renegade Indian out to kill him.

A few minutes of silent observation convinced Janna that the stranger wasn't lying in ambush. He was too still for too long. Janna began to fear that the man was dead. He lay utterly motionless, his limbs at very awkward angles, his skin covered by blood and dirt. In fact it was the slow welling of blood from his wounds that told her he was still alive. She crawled beneath pinon boughs until she was close enough to put her mouth next to his ear.