Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (22 page)

Gabriel wasn’t a fan of riding after full dark—too easy for a horse to misstep and break a leg, he said—but they didn’t reach a place both of them felt comfortable stopping at until well after the waning moon had risen. He’d kept the coalstone in one hand, urging more light out of it despite the discomfort, but there was a limit what it could do without causing actual flame.

“Not perfect, but it’ll do,” Gabriel said finally, looking at the starlit horizon rather than the patch of grass he’d indicated. “Saddle down.”

Since leaving Flood, Izzy has learned to ride all day without ache, identify a small animal in the underbrush as they rode, hit a target six times out of ten with Gabriel’s carbine, and sleep through the night no matter what rocks found their way underneath her bedroll. In short, despite being shaken by what they’d found at Widder Creek, she felt capable and competent. So, when she slid out of the saddle and felt her knees buckle when she hit the ground, forcing her to grab the stirrup to stay upright, Izzy let out a swear word she wasn’t supposed to know, humiliated at the way her body had failed her.

“Iz?”

Gabriel was there suddenly, holding her elbow.

“I’m all right. I just . . .”

The faint stomachache from earlier resettled low in her gut now that she was standing, a too-familiar sensation, and she let out a sudden, irritated huff of air. “I’m fine.” She removed her arm from his grip, pushed away from Uvnee, and went to pull her kit from the saddle. “I’m fine.”

She wanted to ask him to finish untacking Uvnee, but then he would ask what was wrong, and nothing was wrong. So, she finished the chore, making sure that the mare was settled and comfortable in her hobble, before settling her bedroll a few feet away from Gabriel’s, then picking up her pack and walking a safe distance away from the camp.

She’d gotten accustomed to doing her personal business by walking far enough away, maybe behind a rock or taller grasses for some privacy, but there was nothing here save grass and more grass, and a small hill too far away to be safe. She was uneasy going too far away from the camp, as though the illness might have followed them in the darkness, lurking like a wolf for stragglers. But she trusted he’d keep his attention on the camp, and anyone else who might be watching . . . well, there wasn’t a thing she could do about that.

“Idiot,” she told herself. “Losing track like that.” Back home—but back home, the days hadn’t melted into one another the same way. She remembered Devorah and how comfortable she had seemed in her trousers, and the woman in the restaurant back in Patch Junction, so dignified in her leathers, remembered thinking she might try the same some day. For now, however, she was just as pleased for the modesty of a skirt, as she removed a set of clean rags from her pack and folded them the way she’d been taught, placing them inside her drawers.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

Next to the rags in her pack was a fist-sized paper wrapper. She opened it and took a pinch of the crumbled yellow buds, keeping it
in her palm as she replaced everything, and returned to the campfire.

Gabriel had started a small fire already, despite the lateness of the house. He watched her but did not ask what she was doing as she pulled out a battered tin pot and set water to boil for a tisane.

Gabriel watched out of the corner of his eye as Isobel crumbled leaves into the pot of water, murmuring something under her breath. He’d been worried at first, thinking her collapse was a reaction to everything that had happened that day, and short of offering her a slug of whiskey, which she didn’t like, there wasn’t anything he could do to ease
that
. People died, sometimes badly, often unfairly, and that was just that. The tea suggested women’s medicine, though, which he could stay out of with clear conscience. She likely wouldn’t welcome any comment, no matter how kindly meant.

Nonetheless, he visualized the road in his head, trying to determine how far they could push tomorrow, and if he could call a halt earlier than usual without making it appear as though he were coddling her. By the time she’d poured the concoction into her mug and taken it back to her bedroll, where she’d curled up in a clear sign that she didn’t want to talk, he had a rough plan in mind. Originally, he’d thought to stay overnight at Widder Creek, then push through until they got to Clear Rock, a few days’ ride west. But now he thought they would swing north and stop at the Caron place instead. They weren’t always the friendliest of folk, but if Isobel were one of those women who became snappish during her time, she’d have a suitable foil with the missus, and if she needed coddling, well, they’d have a warm bed and another woman’s comfort to offer, without him being obviously complicit.

And it would be good for both of them to see living folk.

Satisfied, he pushed against the ground, meaning to get up and start preparing the evening meal, when something made him pause. A faint whisper from the stream deep belowground, the taste of rotted
meat and fouled water in the back of his throat, all gone as quickly as he’d noticed them, leaving the lingering weight of something behind him. He knew the clearing was bare, the lack of cover proof that no one was watching.

And yet he knew they were being followed. They were being watched.

He tried to convince himself that it could be anything—a big cat, curious about the smell of humans and horses, or even a bear, fool-hungry after a winter’s hibernation. Risks, but known ones, things you could deter and avoid, and run off with gunshot if needed. But none of that would have touched the water that way.

He looked over his shoulder at where the horses had been staked for the night. Steady had his head down, cropping at the grass, Uvnee already dozing, her weight on three legs. Only the mule was alert, looking up, but not even remotely spooked, the way he would be if an animal predator was around.

He hadn’t lied to Isobel. There wasn’t any point in worrying about what the snake had said; whatever was coming would come, and they could only hope being alert would be enough. But first the snake, then Widder Creek, and now this?

He thought that being alert might not be enough.

Those thoughts made him glance over to where she lay curled on her bedroll, the empty mug still clutched in one hand as though for comfort. He should tell her, warn her.

He reached down to touch the silver clasp on his boot, a habit he’d picked up when he was still green on the road himself. No, best not to alarm her, not when they were already spooked enough.

He wouldn’t coddle her, but he would measure out how much she had to carry and when.

“There’s still a potato or two left,” he said instead, raising his voice enough that she’d hear. “Common cheese and roasted potatoes sound good to you?” It wasn’t really a question; that was all they had left. He’d been counting on trading for fresh supplies in Widder
Creek, maybe convincing the old man to slaughter a lamb for them. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out so well.

Isobel lifted her head as though it was an effort, her legs curled up into her stomach, arms around her knees. “I’m not hungry.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“Potatoes and cheese sounds good.” She made a face, scrunching her mouth up and her nose down. “Mostly I just need the tea and to sleep.”

“Real bed tomorrow,” he told her. “And a bath.”

She smiled briefly at that. For a moment, the events of the morning were not forgotten but shifted somewhere out of sight.

“Eat something, then sleep,” he said, turning back to the fire to give her at least the illusion of privacy. “We’re back on the road at sunrise.”

Odds were, whatever he’d sensed had moved on by then. And if he was wrong, if whatever was watching them followed? Well, he’d deal with that then.

Justice Caron was exactly as mean-tempered as Gabriel had warned as they approached the homesteading. The man stared at them from the front of his house, a sod-and-timber shanty that looked as though the next strong wind would finish knocking it over, and lifted his bearded chin stubbornly.

“Why shouldn’t I fill the both of you full of lead?” His beard quivered with indignation, but the hands on his ancient blunderbuss were steady.

“Because you’re too cheap to waste shot on us,” Gabriel said, clearly exasperated. “Old man, we’re not here to rob you blind, just to ask for shelter for one night, and perhaps a few drops of human kindness, if you’ve any left in your bones.”

“Hrmph. You think there’s room for you here?”

Gabriel glared back. “I know for a fact that you’ve a shelter out
back that’s fit for your young ’uns as well as the occasional traveler. Seeing as how I’ve slept in it a time or three before.”

Izzy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from giggling at the expression on the old man’s face as he realized he was turning away someone he knew or at least had hosted before.

The old man squinted harder, as though that would improve his eyesight. “Gabriel Kasun, is it? You weren’t traveling with no flippit back then.”

“She’s hardly a flippit,” Gabriel said before Izzy could ask if she was supposed to be insulted by that or not. Apparently, yes. “This is Isobel née Lacoyo Távora, late of Flood.” His voice went dry as a summer creekbed. “You have, I presume, heard of Flood before?”

“’Z’at a place or a person I’m supposed to know about?”

Before all this, before she’d taken the road, Izzy would have assumed the old man was lying or mad. Anyone who survived more than year in the Territory knew about Flood and who lived there. But this man, his broad shoulders stooped, brown skin grizzled, blocking their way like an old bison facing off against wolves, nearly convinced her of his ignorance. Then she looked past the surface, and something in the old man’s face, or the minute way he shifted, was like a shout. He knew and was trying to get a rise out of her for some reason.

Izzy had been raised in a gaming house, and two could play that hand easily as one.

“It’s all right,” she said to Gabriel, making sure that her voice carried the distance between them and the shanty. “I would take no hospitality from the unwilling. If Master Justice wishes to shut his doors against travelers who have given no offense, that surely is his right. It takes a strong man to stand
entirely
alone against the Territory.”

Her words weren’t a threat and weren’t a promise, exactly—she didn’t have authority to do either thing, far as she was aware—but Izzy was pleased with the curl of curtness she put into the words, leaving the old man to wonder if there had been a threat or a promise made after all.

He sneered at her. “You Scratch’s kin? Scrawnly little chicken like you?”

“Don’t,” Gabriel said quietly, and she wasn’t sure if he was warning her or Caron. He needn’t have worried about her. A girl didn’t get to be a woman without running into his sort. A female wasn’t supposed to have an opinion, much less authority.

“I was raised in the devil’s house,” she said, “and I carry his sigil.” The papers in her kit had been enough for the marshal, although she strongly suspected Caron would be unable to read them. Still, the sigil would be enough. It wasn’t the sort of thing a person took on without they had reason. Sigils had power of their own, like crossroads.

“Hrmph.” The old man glared at her. Instinct told her to stare back; training warned her to let him have his bluster. She softened her gaze, not retreating but refusing to fight, as much a compromise as she could make.

“Old man, are you pretending that you have any say about anything that happens in this house?” The question came from Izzy’s right, and she turned to see a woman standing there, her fists on her hips, glaring at the old man. She had grey hair piled in a knot on top of her head, a gingham dress that had seen better years, with a dark blue apron tied around her waist and a glare that could set a tornado back on its heels. “Because if so, you’ve clearly lost what few wits you were given at birth.”

At her side, Gabriel coughed into his fist, and she suspected he was hiding a grin. “Miz Margaret. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Shush, boy. It’s no pleasure to see me; not even the angels could say that. But you’ll get your shelter for the night and a meal besides, because we do not turn away travelers who’ve offered us no harm, despite what that idiot old man likes to pretend.”