The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(42)

She thought about arguing, then thought about the elk keeping guard in the shadows, the way it had, she was certain, winked at her, and she nodded, allowing Gabriel to wrap a blanket around her shoulders and fetch a plate. Nothing else would happen tonight, she thought. Not while the guardian stood watch.

She looked up and saw the old man observing her. His face fell in shadows, but there was something that made her tense again, then glance to where she thought the elk stood. If she’d learned anything from traveling with Farron Easterly, it was that someone could be an ally and not be trustworthy. And “friends not yet made” did not promise friendship would occur.

She lifted her chin and stared back at the old man, black gaze steady against brown, until Gabriel came back with her dinner and they both looked away.



There was no birdsong. Gabriel noted that before he was fully awake: more proof that something was wrong, that there was danger lurking, even if he couldn’t see it.

Caution prickling his skin, he slipped out from under his blanket, leaving the other two sleeping by the remains of the fire, and went down to the creek to wash his face. There was no sound to alert him, but when he looked up, the elk stood on the other bank, its antlers silhouetted by the pale dawn light rising behind them. He paused, half-bent to the creek, and watched the animal as it moved, placidly chewing at the grass, occasionally lifting its head to scent the air and then returning to the grass again.

The fact that it lingered was curious; that it had appeared not once but twice was both reassuring and worrisome. He had named it wapiti, but it had not spoken, had not offered unasked-for advice, and spirit-animals excelled at unwanted advice. And yet it was clearly more than an ordinary creature, no matter how it behaved now: it had acted with intelligence when it had let them pass, it had acted with intent the day before when it knocked Isobel away from whatever had been threatening her.

The thought drove him to pick up a stone and flip it, violently, down the creek, making two skips before sinking into the current. After knocking Isobel away, the wapiti had wheeled to face whatever had attacked her, placing itself as a barrier while grandfather darted forward to pull her to safety. An elk and an old man had been of more use than he’d managed, aware something was happening but blind to whatever it was. Useless.

And why is that, a voice asked him. Why was grandfather able to see, and you were blind? Hnnn?

The voice?—mocking, but not unkind?—was familiar. Old Woman had been the one to take a bedraggled, half-mad man out of the mud and teach him to breathe the Territory’s air again. Not that he’d wanted to at the time.

You are what you are and this is the place where you are that, the Hochunk woman had told him, sucking thoughtfully on the pipe she carried with her at all times. It smelled like aged skunk to him, but he was never fool enough to say so. The harder you ran from it, the harder it chased you. But it cannot catch you without you willing it so.

Gabriel’s back teeth ground against each other. He did not will it. He would not. He would not be owned.

The elk raised its head and looked at him, as though it had heard his thoughts. “Don’t you lecture me either, elder cousin,” he told it, and leant down to splash water on his face. When he looked up again, skin tingling from the cold, the elk was still staring at him.

“Do you want to be turned into pemmican?” he asked it, and it snorted once?—laughter, Gabriel was certain of it—and departed, its hooves kicking in a graceful, thudding lope that covered ground faster than anything that large should move, leaving the grass upright and uncrushed in its wake.

Gabriel reached down again to touch one hand to the surface of the water, letting its chill cool his own skin, the awareness of water filling him. This was real, physical. He could sense where this narrow creek led, could trace back to its source higher in the mountains, the thick packed snow that fed it, the tiny rivulets and deep-down springs that connected to it. Like the Road, it was all one. All connected.

It was also seductive, that feeling, coaxing him in until he would drown of it. Gabriel jerked his hand back as though the water had suddenly become steam-hot, wiping it against his pant leg.

“No.” He looked out where the elk had disappeared to, then up into the sky, wispy white clouds moving east to west, echoes of his dreams carried in their shapes. “No.”

He refilled the canteens he’d brought with him, carefully, not allowing his hands to linger in the water, and went back to rejoin the others.

Isobel was sitting next to the rebuilt fire, combing out her hair. In profile, the strong bones that had first drawn his eye were even more apparent now, the softness of saloon life worn to finer lines. She would never have been pretty, but something drew the eye and left it there to linger. Her hair was brighter than the old man’s, reddish highlights glinting in the black, and her flesh wasn’t the same copper, but with the two of them sitting together by the fire, for a moment he was all too aware of his paler skin and blue eyes. Never mind that he’d been born to the Territory same as she, that his father and grandfather had been hunters in the Wilds; in that instant, he was an outsider.

And who holds blame for that? Old Woman asked again in his thoughts before he shoved her out.

“You have water?” Isobel’s question broke the moment, and he nodded, handing her one of the canteens. She placed her comb down on her knee and poured the water into the battered tin pot, placing it on the tripod to bring the chicory-and-coffee mixture to a boil. Then she sifted her fingers into her hair, swiftly plaiting the long strands into a single braid.