The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(17)
It was too quiet, he realized, dragging himself into a sitting position, pushing the blanket down even as he reached for his boots. The faint clatter of metal and wood coming from the buildings, and the familiar sounds of the animals grazing nearby, the soft swish of tails and grumbles of flatulence, but there was no birdsong overhead telling him what the weather would be today.
Did quakes frighten birds the way they did other animals? Gabriel had no idea.
Isobel’s blankets had already been rolled up, and her pack was missing; he assumed she was taking advantage of the creek to wash up. The thought was tempting, but he’d already slept too late. He sniffed at his wrist and amended that thought. Maybe there would be time for a quick dip, once Isobel was done.
Isobel came back into the clearing just then, dressed for riding, her face shining with pleasure and the results of cold water as she toweled the ends of her hair dry. “Either go bathe or I’m going to throw you in,” she told him.
“You smell better.” Duck’s husband had wandered down to watch them loading the supplies, leading his observation with an ostentatious sniff of the air around Gabriel. Since it was nothing less than the truth, he signed “thank you” combined with a semi-rude gesture and continued loading the mule. The bark of laughter in response was followed by a thick-fingered clap on Gabriel’s shoulder that would likely leave bruises.
To his surprise, and Isobel’s pleasure, the “meager supplies” they’d acquired included not only smoke-dried meats, both deer and rabbit, but chuno?—wedges of dried potato?—and a packet of coarse yellow meal. Those were Nahua foods, not the sort to be found so far north, but Gabriel had seen stranger things pass through trading routes, and he wasn’t about to question any additions to their menu.
But the older man hadn’t come down here to comment only on his bath or the supplies. He lingered, resting a hand on the mule’s neck more gently than he’d clapped Gabriel, clearly gathering his thoughts.
Gabriel finished loading the new supplies, checking over his shoulder to see that Isobel was occupied sweeping their campsite clear and dousing the remains of the fire. The other man’s gaze followed his, then returned to study Gabriel’s face.
“If you die there.” The plural you, Gabriel noted, meaning both of them.
“We may,” Gabriel admitted when the other man didn’t seem inclined to go on, his harshly scarred voice obviously painful to use. Gabriel’s hands kept moving, checking the straps on the mule’s packs, adjusting the belly strap and making sure the halter wasn’t twisted, pausing to scrape part of Flatfoot’s coarse forelock out from under the strap, and scratching the base of one floppy ear.
“Will he blame us if she falls?”
“He” needed no clarification.
“If you had no part in it, no blame will fall on you.” There were many things one could say about the devil, some good, more bad, but he was methodical in discovery and more just in his judgments than most Gabriel had met.
The man didn’t look convinced. Gabriel could understand that: his family was alone here, for whatever reason, and seemingly had nowhere to fall back to, neither one side nor the other. The Master of the Territory’s wrath would seem terrifying under those conditions.
He thought of the Jack, doomed to wander at the devil’s tug, running errands the likes of which Gabriel could not imagine, even now.
“There is no safety on or off the Road,” Gabriel said. “Every rider knows that.” That was why they went armed with silver, salt, and bullets. “But we will do our utmost not to die.”
“She will ease the earth?”
“If she can.” He was not in a position to make promises for Isobel, and he would not allow her to make promises she could not be certain of. The quakes might be natural events, or the work of earth-spirits, or some other phenomena unrelated. “The devil isn’t our ni?era, to wipe our noses every time we sneeze.”
The man’s eyes narrowed at that, but Gabriel’s words seemed to have eased his mind, and he turned to go without a farewell.
Gabriel watched him walk away, wondering if he’d said enough or too much.
“What was that about?” Isobel asked, approaching him as he finished with the mule. Her hair, dry now, was braided again, wisps of it already escaping to frame her face, her battered, brimmed hat hanging from a leather thong. The clear, dark eyes that looked back at him from that sun-browned face were not the eyes of the girl he had met only months before in a crowded, noisy saloon.
He studied her now, deciding how much of the conversation to share. “He was telling us not to die.”
“Oh.” She thought about that, her expression serious, one hand reaching out to tug one of the mule’s ears in rough affection. “Good advice.”
Despite himself, despite the situation, despite the pain still digging at his ribs, and the scar on his face that would likely never heal, despite days of riding ahead of them to face the devil-knew-what, despite the niggling worry Abner’s letter had lodged in his brain, and the worries he carried with him day to day, there wasn’t a place he’d rather be just then than to ride into trouble?—again—at her side.
She gave him an odd look when he laughed. The devil might not take him for a fool, but he was assuredly a madman.
He slapped the mule once on the neck, letting it know it was done with humans fussing over it, and turned to Steady waiting patiently. He pulled the stirrups down and swung up into the saddle, reins comfortably settled in one hand. The gelding shifted under him, then rocked forward, ready to be gone again.