Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (31 page)

She avoided thinking about her Bargain the way you avoided a pit in the ground: skirt around it, don’t fall in, and it might as well not be there. She knew it was foolishness, but she couldn’t do anything else, not just then.

They were riding through grasslands again, the shadow of the hills a constant companion to their right. Gabriel pointed out signs that buffalo had passed by, trampled and grazed-down grasses and drying chips, but the herd had clearly moved on. She watched a small herd of elk move slowly in the distance, saw fox kits tumbling about their mother at dusk and hawks glinting golden in the morning sun, waited while a sleepy-eyed brown bear lumbered past, nodded in cautious greeting when three native boys ghosted by, their bare skins painted, leading a horse equally daubed with color.

“What are they doing?” she asked, when they were alone again.

Gabriel merely shrugged, watching where they’d gone. “Doesn’t concern us.”

Although there was no defined trail under their hooves, if Izzy concentrated, she could feel the hum of the road underneath, barely enough to reassure. Every so often, Gabriel would rein Steady to a stop and tilt his head, listening, and then start on again.

The fourth or fifth time, Izzy asked, “Can you hear it all the time?”

“It’s like listening to a creek or the rain,” he said. “You hear it, and then you don’t hear it, but when it stops, you hear the not-hearing it.”

She thought about that as they rode on, turning more westerly, back toward the shadow of the hills. Overhead, a flock of smaller birds swooped and dipped in a black shadow, scattering when a larger predator dove into the ranks. They’d seen no hint of Reaper hawks
since that first, nor any other predator, although they heard coyote song in the early evening, and the coughing call of a ghost cat had kept them company the last night. She had woken several times to see Gabriel sitting upright, the silhouette of his carbine clearly visible in the moonlight.

There had been no hint of whatever had killed the magician, and her ring, freshly polished, stayed bright, as did the buckles on Gabriel’s boot and the inlay in the stock of his rifle.

They both stayed alert.

They broke camp before dawn each day, and when the sun reached its apex, they paused to let the horses rest while they stretched their legs and had a quick meal, then saddled up again. They were both sore sick of bean-bread and molasses, but she had to admit that it filled her stomach and cleared her head. Gabriel took to setting four quarters of a coin and a sprinkling of salt at the edges of their lunchtime camp: noon was a powerful time, and no matter that nothing ominous seemed to haunt them, the slight bit of protection made the meal go down more easily.

There was still a while to go yet before they would break that day. Izzy rubbed the palm of her right hand against her skirt, feeling the texture of the cloth scratch her skin, and frowned. She’d been able to rinse out her chemises and stockings two days ago, when they camped near a stream, but after nearly a month on the road, she felt the intense desire to dump her skirts and shirtwaists into a tub of warm, soapy water and give them a proper scrubbing.

She thought about Devorah and her words of advice, and wondered if the woman had made it safely north, and what she would say about all this. Likely “ride away as fast as you can.” Instead, they were riding into toward the mountains. Into the storm. Something twisted in her stomach as she raised her eyes to stare at the still-distant blur on the horizon.

Darkness came, sweeping low over the western horizon. Storm clouds spread too far, piled too deep, hiding something within. And the darkness
slid through the jagged mountain peaks, sliced into thick ribbons, still rushing forward, dispersing into the sky, soaring up and dipping down, down . . .

She dug her thumb into the palm of her left hand, pressing into the flesh without looking at the mark there, until the memory went away. Gabriel said he had a friend in the mountains, but he hadn’t told her more, and she hadn’t asked.

They were both waiting, silenced, still holding their breath against another blow.

Movement to the north caught her attention, and Izzy let her eyes rest quietly on the distance, thinking that maybe she’d seen a rabbit or a small deer, something they could catch for dinner, although the thought of butchering a carcass without water nearby was enough to make her lose any appetite. But she quickly realized that the source of the motion had been much farther away than she’d thought. “Is that a rider?”

It was, riding a splotched pony, white hindquarters clearly visible, heading east, away from them. Although the rider wore plain buckskin, the colors of the States were clearly visible fluttering from his saddle, red and white stripes and a field of blue.

“American?”

“Government rider,” Gabriel said. He was sitting straight and easy, his hand at the brim of his hat, shading his eyes to see better. There was something weirdly yearning about him, as though he wanted nothing more than to hail the rider, speak to him. But he did nothing.

Anyone could ride into the Territory, if they’d a mind to. Bearing colors gave a rider protection of a sort: nobody thought the Americans would start trouble, but nobody could say for sure they wouldn’t, not even the boss.

Easier to let them come and go, he’d said more than once. They’ll see what they see and say what they’ll say, and telling them they can’t is worse than saying they may.

And those that see, stay, Maria had said once, and laughed. But the boss hadn’t.

Izzy watched the rider lope away from them and thought of April back in Patch Junction, how she’d sounded, speaking of the American States as though they had some secret she needed to know, and Gabriel’s worries about what she’d said. And then she thought of the boss sitting at his table, flipping pasteboard cards in front of him, listening to the flow of conversation and gossip, and for the first time, she had the sense of him playing not cards but people, places, flipping them over and reading them, sorting them, sending them where they needed to be . . .

She clenched her fingers around the ache in her left hand, and wondered what card represented her.

They camped that night next to the bank of a tiny river snaking its way through the grasses. The horses and mule drank their fill, then wandered off, grazing contentedly. Izzy had meant to groom Uvnee, aware that the mare’s coat and forelocks were caked with dirt, but she stopped, midturn, and felt her jaw drop open.

“That’s . . .” She gained control of her voice again and said, louder, not looking away, “That’s the Knife?”

Gabriel looked over where she was staring, shading his eyes against the setting sun. “Yep.” He gave her a curious look. “Ah. Never seen ’em before this close, have you?”

“No. I . . . No.” Her chest felt tight, and she swallowed. “How . . . how far away are they?”

“’Nother two days’ ride, probably,” Gabriel said.

“Oh.” Her voice had gone faint again. The jagged smudge rising above the hills, lit from behind with the scarlet of the setting sun, was that far away? She tried to gauge how tall they must rise and failed utterly.

“We’ll be there soon enough,” he said. “Try not to worry about it until then, and come help me set traps for dinner, or we’ll be eating bean-bread again—and we’re near out of molasses.”

The thought of fresh meat made Izzy’s mouth water. Fortunately, they were lucky enough to catch a plump rabbit while making camp, mainly by dint of Gabriel stumbling over it, startling it into Izzy’s hands.

“Catches with Open Fists,” he teased her. “That’s what the Hochunk would call you.”

He kept mentioning that name. “Who are the Hochunk? How do you know them?”

He gutted the rabbit and dumped the remains into a hole she’d dug by the creeklet, and she put soil back on top to keep predators from it while they camped there. “I stayed with some of them when I came back,” he said. “They’re good people. They hunt up near the Great Lakes, near the border, do a lot of trade back and forth across the river. Smaller tribe, not like the Niukonska or Lakota.”

“You stayed with them a long time?”

“A year, more or less.” He tossed her the gutted, skinned rabbit and got up to wash his hands, ending the conversation.

The coalstone had spluttered and died several nights before, but they’d collected dried dung—
bois de vache,
Gabriel called it—and shoved it into one of the now-empty bags strapped to the mule’s back. He used a handful now to build a small, intense fire, and she set the meat to cook.

“Most folk don’t interact much with natives,” she said, picking up the conversation again as they ate.

“Most folk aren’t riders, Iz. You had the one poor experience, but you can’t judge from that. Mostly, we ignore each other unless we’ve cause; there’s room enough to do that.”

“Your old friend we’re going to see. He’s native?”

“He’s . . . something.” He cracked a bone and tossed it into the remains of the fire. “Not sure what tribe, though. Never asked. A man living alone like that—”

“You don’t ask where he came from or why,” she finished. “I know.”

“Just checking, greenie.”

She took the teasing as a warning to stop poking and pulled her blanket more closely over her shoulders, resting her head against the pack. “Good night, Gabriel.”

The sky was clouded that night, the stars hidden, and the faint flicker of their fire made the night seem even darker and more vast. For the first time in five days, with the mountains lurking in front of them, Izzy fell asleep wondering about the tribe Gabriel had spent a year with, rather than the magician, and Clear Rock’s fate.

Her dreams, if she had any, were washed away when the sky opened just before dawn, waking them with a sudden downpour, and they were quickly soaked and covered in mud, the grass beneath them now slick and slippery. There was a mad scramble in the dark to get their belongings under cover of the oiled tarp that protected the tack from dew, the animals setting themselves side by side and bearing with the deluge as best they could.

Once that was done, Izzy looked down at herself and started to laugh, swinging around wildly as the rain fell down, feeling her bare feet squelch in the mud, her hair sticking to her back, her chemise clinging to her limbs. Izzy had almost forgotten what rain felt like. She turned once again and had her hand caught up in Gabriel’s, his other hand settling at her waist, and they performed a slippery, messy reel of sorts, ending when one of them slipped and fell, dragging the other down to the ground with them. They lay there, the horses watching them, until the rain ended, and pale light began to creep into the eastern sky.

“We’re a right mess,” Gabriel said, slicking his hair back from his face, and looking at himself in dismay. “Into the creek with both of us, and hope there’s a towel still dry afterward.”

Izzy paused a moment, digging into her pack for a sliver of soap, then grabbed a reasonably dry cloth and joined her mentor by the water’s edge. She stopped and watched as he tried to dunk himself in the water, which even after the rain was barely deep enough for fish, much less a full-grown man, and laughed again before sitting down
at the edge and leaning back slowly, so that the water rushed over her, rinsing the mud from her hair and skin without effort.

“Smart girl,” she heard him say, and then he sat down in the water alongside her and did the same.

She reached out her hand and shared the soap, then rinsed her hair out and, leaving him there, picked her way carefully back to the tarp covering their packs. She found dry clothing to wear and stripped off the utterly soaked chemise, abandoning it on the grass. Her skin prickled from the damp cold, but any shyness she might have had once at being nearly bare like this had faded a long time since. She dressed, then shoved her stockinged feet into damp leather. Thankfully, the shelter had kept the tack safe, and the horses had dried out quickly once she’d brushed the worst of the mud off them, too.

“Too wet to even consider a fire this morning,” Gabriel said. “Think you can manage without coffee?”

“Can you?”

“Two more days’ hard push, and we’ll be there. Coffee and someone else’s cooking.”

That promise got her back into the saddle, although the slightly crazed relief of the rain slowly faded into a twitch of unease in the back of her head that only got worse as the day went on, and what had been a faint blue-grey smudge in the distance slowly rose up as they rode, until it seemed to block the sky.

She tried not to let her apprehension show, but eventually, Gabriel noticed. “You all right, Iz?”

“It won’t fall on us, will it?”

The bastard laughed at her, and she bridled, perfectly willing to burn off the feeling with anger.

“You’re plains-born,” he said. “I forgot that.” He reached over and touched her arm lightly. “They’re not going to fall on you, Isobel. The bones dig deep, and these mountains don’t move. And we’re only going into the foothills, really. No need for worry.”

She took a deep breath and then let it and the anger flow away.
Gabriel didn’t lie to her. If he said it was safe, it was safe enough. Then his words came clear, and she twisted in the saddle. “Wait, there are mountains that
do
move?”