The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(3)
Isobel could not fix this, could not erase the insult given, and from the smell of the bodies, the killers were long gone, and she was no tracker, to follow and find them.
Gabriel could have done it, most likely. But Gabriel wasn’t with her. Five days back, they’d ridden into La Ramée, only to learn that a post rider had collapsed off his horse, near death with dysentery and not yet recovered, his post undelivered.
Gabriel had volunteered to take the packet on to the next waystation. “It’s good you be seen doing things like this,” he’d told her. “Solving problems that aren’t life-shaking, give ’em confidence the devil’s looking after them, even way out here.”
Isobel was reasonable certain that the Left Hand hadn’t been meant to ride as a post-rider, but she’d a letter of her own to send back to the boss, anyhow. Two birds with one stone, Marie would say, and Isobel was aware she’d a strong streak of the practical in her.
Practical, and aware of the burden of duty and obligations. Something had drawn her here, just as it had the Jack. Unlike him, she was not constrained to wait on specific orders.
Isobel slid off Uvnee’s back, her boots crunching lightly on the dry grass, and tucked the reins up, then walked closer, trusting the mare to stay where she was. Up close?—closer than Isobel had ever been to one of the beasts, living, and closer than she’d ever thought to be?—their size was even more impressive. She counted seven bodies, although the churned-up grass indicated that there had been a few more. Four were full-grown, three were calves, smaller than ponies, their pelts sparse and untouched, their thick skulls broken by the bullets that killed them.
Isobel had seen a great herd only once, but the wonder of it lingered in her own bones, the way it had caught at her, stilled her heart and breath with the drumming of thousands of hooves, holding her captive until the beasts had moved on. Buffalo did not merely live within the Territory; they were part of it, the power flowing from the earth into their hearts and returning through the pounding of their hooves, much as water found its way through stone.
That much power, he resents it being gone. “He” being the boss. But the buffalo were no part of him, no obligation of his, any more than the wind or the rain or . . . or magicians. Their medicine was not one the boss could touch or use. Why would it concern him?
The sigil in her palm pulsed again, the deep black lines stinging as though she’d grasped a handful of berry-bramble. She flexed her fingers, telling it to wait, to be patient.
Gabriel had told her that buffalo hunts began with offerings to appease the spirits of those killed, that every part of the animal was used, that waste would offer insult and ensure that none of the beasts gave of themselves to those hunters again. Buffalo pelts were prized, but so too were the meat, the horns, the tail, the bones . . . not left to bloat and rot under the sun.
This . . . this was nothing short of desecration. The word came from nowhere, the taste of it like ashes and dry bread on her tongue, and the bile churned again.
The ground needed to be cleansed.
Isobel went back to the mare and rummaged in her saddlebag, her questing fingers resting briefly on her journal, the leather binding worn soft at the corners now, before pulling out a winter apple, slightly mushy but still edible, and a handful of loose salt, crumbled from the stick no Rider went without. Almost an afterthought, she reached for the canteen slung over the saddle, hearing the water slosh inside, then went back to where the bodies lay.
The buzzards shifted as she approached, moving away but refusing to relinquish their meal entirely. She placed the apple on the ground, drawing a half-circle of salt around it, then splashed some of the water, soaking the grass where blood had dried. Salt to cleanse, and offerings of grazing and water to appease. There should be smoke, and a better offering, but this was all she had.
“I’m sorry,” she said to them, her gaze touching on each beast in turn, memorizing their shapes, even their smells. “You should have been better honored, in your death. I—” She hesitated, unwilling to promise a thing she was not certain she could perform. “I will carry your memory with me. I will honor your gifts, although they did not come to me.”
She couldn’t promise any more, not faithfully. But as the words left her mouth, one of the buzzards lifted its bald head and swiveled its neck to look directly at her, and a burning chill touched her face, even as the sting in her palm faded.
Something had heard her, and accepted her promise.
Isobel made camp that night soon after the sun fell below the horizon, stopping only when it became clear she would not reach the Road before full dark.
The stars were bright, the low moon waxing crescent, and Isobel paused while burying the remains of her dinner to appreciate the way their light echoed against the darkness, silent counterpoint to the occasional howls and hoots rising from the land.
She had been raised under a roof, and the first few nights on the Road, the vast open space had unnerved her beyond the telling, the sweep of stars brighter than any lamp, the sheer emptiness of the land a weight pressing her down into the ground until she could barely breathe.
Slowly, over weeks, that sensation had faded, until the open air became familiar as walls and windows, the light of the stars and the passage of the moon the only comfort she needed, the emptiness filled with the less-subtle noises of the night, the howl and barks of predators, the flutter of wings as soothing as the sound of slippers in the hallway.