Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (33 page)

Isobel?

No. He refused to place her under scrutiny. She might lead him into danger, but it would not be a willful betrayal.

Warning aside, that still left the question: had it been the snake they both sensed or something else? But by now, anything that had been shadowing them would have moved on or hidden itself. And he needed to get moving as well, or he’d still be walking come nightfall to catch up with Isobel and the horses.

They made camp reluctantly, as the evening shadows made the trail’s footing more uncertain. Given his druthers, Gabriel would have kept walking all night rather than making camp where they might be vulnerable, but Isobel hadn’t quite mastered the art of sleeping in the saddle yet, and she needed to rest.

While she slept curled up under her blanket, he groomed the horses by moonlight, taking comfort in their soft breathing, aware that if anything were to approach, they would know before he did, but not so much comfort that he could bring himself to sleep as well. That finished, he sorted through their packs, redistributing the weight, and gauging how long their supplies could last. The result wasn’t encouraging.

The moment the sky began to lighten, he woke Isobel. Her eyes opened immediately when he touched her shoulder, and she sat up
without complaint, alert but aware that he’d not woken her to an emergency—a far cry from the sleepy-eyed girl who’d breakfasted with him in Patch Junction.

“No fire this morning,” he said, handing her a narrow strip of pemmican and a canteen, and laughing when she made a face. The fact that it didn’t taste as good as the salt-dried charqui was why it was still left when they were down to the very last of their supplies. “Drink all the water you want, though. We’ll be in De Plata by noon, and a hot meal for dinner.”

“De Plata.” She rinsed out her mouth with water, spitting out into the dirt, then repeated the name, imitating his accent. “That’s a Spanish name.”

“It was a Spanish outpost originally.”

He could feel his stomach rumbling, refusing to be distracted by his own strip of pemmican. While Flatfoot might feel better with lighter packs, even Steady, who could feed himself on two tufts of grass and stubbornness, kept trying to mouth at Isobel’s hair every time she passed within reach, as though the braid might somehow have become straw. She smacked his muzzle with a gentle reprimand and swung herself up into Uvnee’s saddle.

“Well, I don’t care if the town was originally settled by an entire pack of magicians and a dust storm, so long as they can provide a hot meal, a real bed, and enough water to wash myself and all my clothing.”

“All the comforts of home,” he promised. “A priest named Escalante built a church there and brought a few desperate families in, thinking that if he managed to establish a foothold, perhaps convert a few heathens, Spain would have a base from which to claim the rest of the mountains and work their way down into the plains.”

“What happened?”

“Natives put up with him for a few years, then tired of his foolery.”

Izzy rolled her eyes, unsurprised. “Gospel sharp used to ride through town every year, heading for the native hunting camps. Boss said they
got pleasure out of being told no. Never heard that they rode out with more followers than they rode in with.”

“A man has religion, takes something major to make him change it. There weren’t any plagues or disasters near De Plata, the crops didn’t fail, so the padre had nothing to work with. Anyway, once the priest was gone, the villagers he’d brought with him stayed because they’d discovered silver in the streams, and—”

“We’re going to a silver town?” Izzy reined Uvnee in hard enough to make Uvnee buck slightly in protest. “Sorry girl,” she said, patting the mare’s neck in apology. “Truly?”

He shook his head, amused at how her fear was so obviously competing with excitement.

“What do you think De Plata means? But don’t get too excited. No matter what stories they tell over campfires and in rag novels, silver mines are boring. Dark holes, grimy miners, and inert silver you wouldn’t even recognize in its rough form. But they have something better in De Plata.”

“Better than silver?” She was dubious.

“Much,” he said, but wouldn’t tell her more.

The road they were on soon became a steep slope, with even the normally sure-footed mule having difficulty. The trees grew taller and more thickly on either side, birch and alder supplanting cottonwood, and the ground underneath was a harsh red studded with rocks. The sense of being watched lingered, although Gabriel wasn’t sure if the feeling was true or simply the fear of it lingering.

“You’re sure they won’t fall?”

It took him a moment, lost in his own concerns, to remember what she was asking about. The mountains. “They haven’t so far as my father’s father knew; there’s no reason to think they will now.”

“Your grandfather was here to know?” She looked surprised and a little impressed.

“So he claimed.” He mounted up again before she could ask more. His family wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. Fortunately, from the frowning glances she kept shooting up at the peaks in front of them, Isobel had other things more important to worry about.

The hills didn’t fall, and they rode into De Plata midafternoon, the sun casting an oddly overcast light through the trees. The town wasn’t much: a shallow bowl between two peaks, consisting of a mercantile, a run-down-looking guesthouse that had seen better years, the longhouse where the miners ate their meals, and a ramshackle shack with a chirurgeon’s sigil overhead. At the other end of the single street, there was a small cluster of stone shacks, windowless and slumped, where the men slept. Farther past, visible more because he knew than being able to see it, were the entrance to the mine and the furnace where the silver ore was melted into usable form.

There was no stable; the horses and mule were left in a corral on the other side of the shacks, sharing space with a small herd of long-haired goats and a pair of particularly bedraggled donkeys who seemed disinclined to greet the newcomers.

“Where is everyone?” Isobel asked, and he couldn’t fault her nervousness, considering the lack of greeting they’d found at Clear Rock.

“Most of the locals will be in the mine,” he said. “It’s the only reason this town exists. Mine the silver, purify it, send it down into the Territory. That’s all they do here.”

“Everyone?”

“Most everyone. You don’t raise a family if you’re a miner, Iz. It’s a hard life.”

“Not everyone’s a miner.” Where a minute before they’d been alone, now an older man was leaning against the corral gate, watching them. “Some of us trade, some of us hunt. Some of us deal with the likes of you.”

“The likes of—” Isobel started to bristle, all the calm he’d managed to put back into her cracking and falling away with one ill-timed barb.

“Gabriel Kasun,” he said, offering his hand to the stranger, his other
resting on her arm, a silent warning. The old man didn’t take it, and Gabriel let it drop, refusing to take offense. He was white, blue-eyed, and younger than Gabriel’d thought at first, just hard-worn. “This is Isobel née Lacoyo Távora.” It seemed like months since he’d first heard that name, not a matter of weeks. He thought about mentioning where she hailed from, then thought about their shadow and decided against it. She either agreed or felt the glitter had worn off since Patch Junction, because she said nothing either.

“Marshal Itchins,” the stranger said, turning the inside of his lapel to show the silver sigil pinned there. “Your business in De Plata?”

“Supply run.” The fact that this man was a marshal changed things. Isobel
should
check in. But the paranoia that had been growing in him since the Caron farmstead kept him from saying anything. “Then on to see Graciendo.”

Itchins’s expression didn’t change. “You a friend of the old bear’s?”

“Not exactly. But he’s expecting me.” The marshal still looked dubious, so he added, “I’m carrying letters for him.”

“Didn’t know the old bear knew anyone outside, to be getting letters.” The marshal didn’t smile. “He expecting you, not her?”

“I’m mentoring her. Is there a problem?” He couldn’t remember ever getting this sort of questioning—then again, he’d never encountered a marshal in De Plata before. Had the unrest Devorah mentioned made its way west? Or was something else going on? Isobel had said the storm she’d seen came over the mountains. . . .

“Just cautious,” Itchins said. “We only get three, maybe four people here in a year. Seeing two show up at once . . .”

“It’s good to see that you are alert, marshal. Especially since there is no badgehouse affiliated with this town, despite the presence of a mine and its proximity to the border.” Isobel had stepped forward as she spoke, and Gabriel felt himself move back a pace instinctively. His hand itched to rest on his knife, but he kept it still, away from anything that might be considered a threat.

“I work the circuit through here, from Red Springs on down,” the
marshal said. “De Plata’s a regular stop along the way.” His eyes narrowed, studying her. “And you’ve an interest in my road . . . why?”

Her chin lifted, and Gabriel would swear he saw her grow a handspan taller, her eyes lit with a vigor he hadn’t seen in weeks. Being challenged seemed to bring out the fierce in her.

“My name is Isobel née Lacoyo Távora,” she repeated. “Of Flood.”

His gaze flicked over her, hat to boots, and his jaw tightened slightly. “Long way from home, aren’t you?”

“We travel the road we’re sent?” She smiled tightly, and it never reached her eyes.

“Hrmph.” He turned away, clearly dismissing her, and addressed Gabriel. “You’ll want to talk to Angpetu, get a bed for the night. Assume you’ll be heading out in the morning.”

Neither of them responded to his assumption, merely took their saddles and packs, and headed for the bunkhouse.

They could sense, without looking back, that the marshal watched them walk away.

“He’s an ass,” Gabriel said out of the corner of his mouth.

“What?”

“The marshal. He’s an ass. Don’t think that a sigil makes men somehow better. Sometimes it just means they’re an ass with a badge.”

Izzy scowled and scuffed her toe against the soft dirt of the road, watching puffs of dust form around her boot. It wasn’t only that the man had been rude. She could have gone into her pack and shown Itchins the papers she carried, the way she had at Patch Junction, but she could read him easily, could tell that the papers wouldn’t mean anything to him this far away from Flood, this far removed. Marshal Itchins didn’t care about papers she carried, assuming he could even read them.

She curled the fingers of her left hand into her palm, letting the nails dig into the flesh there, making a fist as though she were about to hit something.

“They’re still holding a badge,” she said. “And it wouldn’t make any difference, would it? If he respected me, it would only be because the papers told him to. I’m not anything more than . . .” She took a deep breath, feeling her eyes itching and her throat clog. She would not cry. She was Isobel of Flood, the devil’s Left Hand and a rider—and as such, more than any marshal’s equal, even if he could not see it. Even if she did not quite believe it; she knew the importance of a strong bluff. “Tell me about this person we’re going to see.”