The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(13)

“What now, Uvnee?” she asked the mare, who merely flicked one reddish-brown ear at her and shifted her weight to lean against Isobel, gentle lips and teeth nipping at the flat of her braid.

For now, she would wait. The boss met those who’d ask him a thing across the card table, took their measure with the way they played. So would she. For what, Isobel wasn’t certain—another quake, she supposed; if the quiet told her nothing, then perhaps an outburst would tell her something.

Or the whispering voice might return and send her on. That thought made her palm twitch: she would happily spend her life without that sensation again. But she had given over control of her life when she made Contract with the devil, even if she hadn’t understood then what it would mean.

Never bargain more than you can afford to give. All she’d had was herself to offer.

And if she did ride on . . . Gabriel had no notion of where she’d gone, what had happened to her. Gabriel also had their supplies, their extra water, the ammunition—everything. All she had were her horse and weapons, trail rations, and an extra set of unmentionables packed in her kit.

And the packet that had been addressed to him and left in the waystation. Isobel allowed herself to admit that more than curiosity weighted the desire to open the letter; she was envious of the letter itself, the connection to someone who thought of him while he was not there.

Not that she expected Marie to write to her, or any of the others at the saloon, since she had not written to any of them. She wasn’t April, to compose long letters for reading out loud to everyone, after chores were done. What could she say to them; what was she allowed to say?

The Left Hand was the silent knife, not the garrulous one.

In the midst of what Isobel admitted was a bout of unadmirable self-pity, Uvnee suddenly snorted and bucked in alarm, nearly knocking Isobel off her feet.

“What now?” Isobel rested a hand on the mare’s neck to calm her, even as her own heart raced, glanced about for what spooked the mare. There were no trees close enough to hide a threat, nothing overhead in the sky save clouds, and the wind smelled of nothing except sage and?—her thoughts broke off abruptly as the ground underneath them . . .

Flexed was the only word she could think of. It flexed like a snake slithering sideways through the grass, a fish flipping through water, as though the very bones of the earth had gone soft like a pudding.

And then it stopped, leaving her feeling as though she were the one wobbling, not the ground below.

Her breath caught, the skin on her arms prickling in unease.

“That . . . was unpleasant,” she said to Uvnee, who rolled her eyes backward, the whites showing, and flicked her ears, this time as though to agree, but she hadn’t bolted. “Good girl.” Isobel leaned against the mare’s trembling flank, an arm over the crested neck as much for her own support as the mare’s, and tried to calm her breathing. If that had been what the others had felt when they described the ground moving below them, she could not blame them in the slightest for being upset.

Isobel had lived through storms before; she knew that wind and water were unpredictable. But stone and dirt were meant to be solid, dependable. They did not refuse to answer; they did not suddenly move.

Then Uvnee snorted again, half-turning toward the road as though in anticipation. Isobel braced for another quake before realizing that the sound the mare was responding to was hoofbeats.

Jumping-Up Duck’s people did not have horses, and the sound was too deep for it to be their goats returning. Panic turned to planning, and she turned, trying to gauge the distance between herself and her pack on the ground, the musket and knife still out of reach.

Then the sound came closer, and she recognized the shape of horse and rider, and the long-eared mule following close behind.



Isobel had been trained to stand back, to judge, to observe, but the moment Gabriel dismounted, she rushed at him, flinging her arms around his waist, knocking her jaw against his shoulder. There was a hesitation, his body jerking back, then his arms came over her shoulders and she was surrounded by the smell and feel of familiar.

He didn’t say anything, just let her rest her face against the rough fabric of his coat. She was sure the others had broken off from whatever they were doing, were watching, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. A warm, whiskered muzzle shoved against her leg, and she shifted one hand to dig into the mule’s rough coat, feeling its side shuddering as though they’d been running for too long.

“You were late,” Gabriel scolded her, finally, his voice dry as dust.

She wiggled free, indignant, then rubbed at her face, letting out a faint laugh. “You found me.”

“I found you,” he agreed. The skin around the scar on his face was stubbled, as though he’d had trouble shaving around it, and his dark blue eyes looked more tired than they had before, when she’d left him to rest. Guilt spiked through her, unfamiliar and unwelcome.

He pulled back a little, looking over her shoulder at something, then back at her carefully. “Something’s wrong.”

“I . . . No.” Yes. But she couldn’t explain it, couldn’t add to that exhaustion with things he couldn’t fix. Instead, she gripped him by the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him forward.

“Jumping-Up Duck. This is my mentor, Gabriel Kasun, known as Two Voices.”

The older woman gave Gabriel a thorough once-over, then lifted her gaze to meet his own. He took his hat off and stood quietly, his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders at ease. Isobel had become so accustomed to him wearing that battered, flat-crowned hat from morning to night, it was a shock to see the sunlight catch on his hair, picking up glints of gold in the dark brown, the edges of it curling over his collar. The claw mark was more visible from the side, where the scar tissue lifted from the tanned skin of his cheek, and she found herself staring at it, then had to shake herself to look away.