The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(29)

The horses seemed calm, but the mule stayed close to the horses, its ears and tail twitching more nervously than its wont. That might be a reaction to its wounding—or it might be sensing something none of them could.

“Spaniards,” Isobel said, and her voice made it a curse.

“Are you certain, or is that a guess?” He would defer to her call, but he needed to hear her evidence before he would agree.

“A guess,” she admitted reluctantly. “It doesn’t . . . feel like what happened before, but . . .”

“But you don’t want to think about there being something else that could do this,” he suggested. “It may be purely natural. The ground shaking . . . I told you, it’s not so unusual, not up here.” He dragged through his memory, trying to find something else to tell her to ease her fears. “You didn’t like the story of drumming the mountains; another story says the He Sapa, the Black Hills, were born when the spirits underneath were so angered by the pride of those who dwelled on the surface, they thrust upward, killing all who made such prideful noise, and left the Hills behind as a reminder that we are not so powerful as we like to think.” He’d seen those mountains himself, felt the palpable sense of presence that lay on them like a mantle; he would not be the one to say the stories were untrue, however improbable. “So in the memory of the elders, it’s happened.”

Isobel was listening, but he wasn’t sure if that attentive pose was for him or something he couldn’t hear. “The boss said the same, only far west of here, that the land shook so terribly . . .” Her words trailed off, and she tilted her head and knelt down, her fingers plucking something from the ground. She twisted slightly to show it to him. Three long, narrow barbs lay flat across her palm, glinting a dull red in the sunlight.

“Quills,” he said, picking them up and rolling them between his fingers. “Dyed, flattened . . . That’s Apsáalooke, maybe Nakoda work? I didn’t think they were this far south.” He looked around, reevaluating the deserted campsite, still rolling the quills between his fingers. “Or we’re further north than I thought.”

“You don’t know?”

She was right; he should know. He carried a map of the Territory in his memory in addition to the ones he had rolled in his packs. But more than that, even without a Road here, an experienced rider should know where they were, have some sense of location.

But when he tried, there was nothing there for him to touch. Something blocked him the way Isobel had described earlier. Gabriel swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. Ground that shook, ghost cats that could freeze a human as easily as a hare, and something keeping him from reaching any sense of the Road itself . . . The Territory was an uncanny place on the best of days, but he was a betting man, and the odds kept shifting in a way that made him want to quit the game.

“The devil runs an honest game,” he said, almost to himself. “But that doesn’t mean someone else can’t cheat.”

“Gabriel?”

“Strange hills,” he repeated, twisting his mouth up in a smile for Isobel’s benefit. “Spell or natural, monster or man, you’ve been drawn to look, and so look we will.”

She didn’t seem reassured.

“Whatever’s hiding itself here, Isobel, it’s not able to block everything. I can still sense water; you still know when there’s danger. It can’t stop us.” He looked at the quills in his hand, then tucked them into a pocket of his jacket. “Mount up. Whatever happened here, they didn’t leave stories behind. We need to find someone who can talk to us.”

Assuming there was anyone left to speak.



The abandoned campsite was soon out of sight but not out of Isobel’s thoughts, keeping them shadowed and sharp. But the land around her tugged her back as the trail wound its way higher. The air felt thinner, dryer, but the scent of things warm and growing filled it, butterflies clustering around them whenever they paused, flitting through the air as they rode past, and Isobel thought that, under other circumstances, she might have enjoyed this ride.

Had she not been woken out of sleep and driven to a place where the land shook, the animals fled, and the bones went silent under her touch. If not for the fact that butterflies and insects were the only other life they now saw. If not for the fact that she felt the prickling against the back of her neck again.

“We’re being followed.”

“I’d be more surprised if someone wasn’t following,” Gabriel said, his gaze sweeping the surrounding hills without an outward show of concern. “We’re strangers, whites, and whoever lives here was spooked enough to abandon a hunting camp mid-summer.” There was a bite of something in his tone at odds with his outward calm. “If anyone’s remained in these hills, they’d be fools not to keep an eye on us.”

“Natives, you mean.”

“Likely, although I wouldn’t rule out a trapper or two, maybe done with civilization and looking to be left alone. If so, they’ll likely just watch us and not interfere. If we’re on tribe lands, though, they may take a greater interest.”

“Why don’t they ever just come out and say what they have to say, instead of stalking us like . . . like rabbits?” Her voice rose as she spoke, until the last words were more a challenge, thrown out into the landscape.