The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(10)

And if the water’s rush felt like a quiet chuckle in his ear, mocking his thoughts, Gabriel’d had years to learn how to ignore it.

He looked up at the sky: a few stretched clouds overhead, scraping around the distant peaks and fading into pale blue. The ground was soft under his boots, the grass rough-edged, and the air smelled green and dry.

Good riding weather.

The sun warm on his shoulders, he slanted his hat so the brim cast shade over his eyes, then pointed Steady north and west. The ground was a series of sloping and rising hills, the footing firm, and he rested the reins against the gelding’s neck and sank deeper into the saddle, trusting the beast’s common sense to keep them at a slow, easy walk. The mule kept alongside, longer ears twitching, occasionally moving faster and then looking back with an almost-human impatience.

“I know you like her more’n you do me,” Gabriel told the mule. “No need to rub it in.”

Steady snorted and ducked his head, likely pure coincidence, but Gabriel slapped the solid flesh once, lightly, in mock reproach. “Don’t you sass me none neither. We rode for years without her or that mare; a few days apart won’t break your hearts.”

Now that they were moving again, the knot of tension that had gripped him eased somewhat. Isobel had common sense, a dependable sense of direction, and a solid mare who could outrun anything shy of a storm. And the skies were clear, so weather wasn’t a worry. She knew how to handle a demon, and to speak polite to a native, and if she ran into a bear or a ghost cat . . . well, she had become a better shot since he’d gotten her the buccaneer’s musket that fit her hands better, and this far into warmer weather, any predators would be well fed and lazy.

In all likelihood, she’d been delayed a bit dealing with the corpses, and they would cross paths soon enough.

And if not? If she had lost her way in the rising hills and narrow meadows, so unlike the wide-open plains she’d been raised on, despite having taught her how to find the Road underfoot?

Well, there was a reason he’d allowed her to ride off alone: he had a trick up his sleeve to find her.

It was difficult to relax entirely into the saddle with his ribs still sore, but he had enough trust in Steady’s nature that his body eased a little more and his breathing slowed until only years of experience kept him upright in the saddle. It wasn’t quite like sleeping, or even dozing, but his thoughts quieted and his eyes shut, letting other senses take over. First, feel. The sway of Steady underneath him, the feel of the reins through his fingers, leather worn smooth, and the press of his legs against the saddle, the weight of his bootheels in the stirrups.

Then sound. The syncopated clop of eight hooves on grass and dirt and occasional stone. The breath of wind against his skin, passing over the rise and fall of the folded hills. Birdsong, and the buzzing clatter of insects, and the distant wow-ooo-wow of a coyote pack greeting each other. Only coyote, no wolves, and his fingers eased away from the stock of his flintlock where it was strapped near his saddle. There wasn’t much risk of a coyote being fool enough to attack a man on horseback, not in summer, when easier prey abounded. In winter, it would have been a different story. But in winter, he’d never have let her go out on her own.

He hushed his own thoughts, blanking them under the quiet sound of water. Smell came last: First, the ever-present, soothingly familiar smell of horse and leather and human sweat. Then the tang of sagebrush and green pine, and the faint tickle of maidenflower. And under that, once his entire self lay open and waiting, came the scent of water, from the quicksilver lightness of the creeks to the slower, stone-wet deepness below. The ability to dowse: his medicine, his curse, the thing tying him to the Territory, marking him as one of its own, finding water as easily as he could find the Road.

And then, going deeper still, finding the feel of specific water. The water warmed by familiar scent, the warmth of her body shaping it, the exhale of her breath scenting it.

Years and lives ago, he had spent time with a band of Hochunk, regaining his health, regaining his strength, when all he could do was listen to stories. There had been an old man once among them, one story claimed, who could find a single person lost in the Underworlds by the scent of their spit. Gabriel, who mocked no story, did not believe such a thing was possible. But this . . . this he thought he could do, after months of sharing canteens and coffee and the dampness of morning air with her. Enough to ensure he could find her like a freshwater spring in a dry plain.

“Hey, Iz,” he said, pitching his voice as though to carry just a little ways away, as though she were still riding next to him. “Whatever trouble you’ve found, just hold tight. We’re coming.”



Isobel was flummoxed. Everything she had been taught, all the things she had learned, told her that it was not possible for the land to be barren of power. Water flowed, wind breathed, people moved, and therefore power was.

Kneeling by the table without explanation, she placed her left palm down on the ground, sinking inside herself in that way she never could explain to Gabriel, opening herself to whatever the Territory wanted to tell her.

Silence.

It went beyond the cleansing she had felt: this little settlement had no connections to anything. There was no well-trod Road here, no familiar pull of the bone-deep ribbon that connected the Territory. Nothing.

Three times she tried skin to dirt, sending herself as deep as she dared, opening as far as she dared without Gabriel to watch over her, among strangers, however kind.