The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(66)
A tic in her cheek jumped once, twice, and she reached up to touch the two feathers in her braid, fingertips ghosting along their surface.
“You, you mean?”
“Or you.” She turned her head to look at him. “Any rider who can feel the road, any dowser, anyone with planting skills . . . Any dream-walker. White or native. They won’t care; they’ll just take.”
Gabriel drew a breath, considering the ramifications of a magician attacking a native encampment, trying to take the power of one of their elders, one of their medicine folk.
“Magicians are not bound by the Agreement,” he said, but they both knew that wouldn’t matter, not if a tribe were driven to anger by such an insult. Not if the magician were white-born. And hundreds of years of careful, cautious coexistence . . . shattered.
Where the Spanish spell had failed to undermine the devil’s hold on the Territory, that could succeed. The anger Gabriel felt didn’t surprise him, but the guilt did.
“We have no way to find them, save we hear of disaster after the fact. The Territory’s too large to go chasing after rumor, Isobel.”
The look she turned on him, full of a savage, quiet frustration, should not have made him want to laugh so badly.
“I should be able to find them. What use am I if I can’t?”
Something leapt out in front of the horses, causing Uvnee to shy—a brace of rabbits, startled by their approach. Then something swooped overhead, and Gabriel looked up, expecting to see a hawk or eagle looking to catch an easy dinner.
Instead, brown-and-white wings spread over them at an angle, an owl turning slow circles, two beats and soar, two beats and soar, and the faint, sharp sound of oooo-aw ooo-aw in the breeze.
“The poor bastard must be starving to be out during the day.”
Isobel heard Gabriel’s comment, but all of her attention was on the owl swooping overhead. It could not have been the same owl she saw in the trees that morning; there was no way it could have flown this far, no reason for it to have flown this far. Owls did not wander, particularly in daylight, and the likelihood of it following this track in search of prey seemed slim at best.
And yet.
Isobel reined Uvnee to follow the owl’s lead, angling away from the path they’d chosen. Every story she’d ever heard claimed that owls were bringers of bad news, of death, of sorrow. But that was what they’d been following all along, hadn’t it? And all those things . . . the boss always said they were what taught wisdom, too.
Wisdom isn’t knowledge. Knowledge teaches you it’s not wise to risk. Wisdom tells you why you should.
They’d been playing faro after hours. Molly and Jack and the boss, and . . . Suzette, it had been. Isobel had been freshening their drinks, listening to the conversation. They had been talking about death, and loss, something that had happened outside of Flood that Isobel hadn’t been privy to. And the boss had said that about knowledge and wisdom, and the conversation had paused, then moved on to something else.
She’d remembered that, even though she hadn’t understood it. She still wasn’t sure she did. But maybe . . . a Hand needed wisdom even more than knowledge.
“Isobel?” Gabriel’s voice was a question, but she knew he was already following her, the mule snorting its displeasure like an old man told to change chairs just as he got comfortable, as they picked up a slow trot, the horses showing pleasure at the chance to run, even for a bit.
The owl stayed just ahead of them, then dipped and with a fold of its wings, disappeared into a hollow, beyond which a stand of tall narrow pines rose. If it went into the trees, she would lose it. . . . Isobel felt her breath catch, something drawing her on with more urgency, and she dug her heels into Uvnee’s sides, startling the mare into a jouncing lope, Steady and the mule quickly left behind.
“Isobel, damn it!”
Gabriel’s shout was exasperated, and the drumming of hooves told her he’d kicked Steady into a gallop to catch up. But Uvnee was faster and Isobel was lighter, and they stayed in the lead until she suddenly pulled the mare up, hauling on the reins like the greenest rider afraid of falling off.
The mare kicked her hooves and bucked lightly in protest but seemed no more inclined to go forward than Isobel.
Her breath harsh and rattling in her chest, Isobel looked the way Gabriel had taught her, her gaze sweeping from left to right, never resting too long on any one thing, taking in the details without trying to understand them, finding everything that didn’t belong, anything that might be a potential threat.
The pale trunks of firestarter mixed with spindly pine along the far edge, hemming two sides of the meadow with green shadows. The third side, to their left, ended in pale, jagged-faced rock rising well over her head, sheer enough that not even the most ambitious goat or demon would try it.
But none of these were threats, none of those things held her attention past noting, because of what waited directly in front of her.
Tucked into the hollow was a wide, flat expanse of grass growing blue-green, a dream-perfect place to turn the horses loose and let them romp and graze for days, an entire herd of horses, lacking only a stream to make it perfect. But something other than horses had gotten there first.
Closer to the rock wall, the grass had been charred in two thick lines, maybe twenty paces each, black and sooty, not quite in the center of the meadow, and where the lines crossed, two figures paced around each other, snarling and snapping, their arms moving, shoulders shifting, legs stalking, until they seemed less human form than dust-dancer, swirling towers of dun-colored wind.