The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(73)
“She satisfies her promise,” he told them, casting a glance over his shoulder to where Isobel sat, still exhausted from whatever she had done. “Be at rest.”
He wasn’t sure if anything was listening, or if he wanted it to be listening to him. But it seemed to ease some of Isobel’s nerves.
“Rider.” The road marshal crooked a finger at him. “Come be useful.”
Wisely enough, she didn’t want her companions-turned-prisoners helping her tie the insensate magicians into the saddles. While Isobel held each animal’s halter, murmuring soothing words when they shifted or skittered, they slung each body facedown across a saddle, looping rope over their thighs and chests to keep them in place.
He studied the knots under his hand thoughtfully. “How long did you say it was to the judge?”
“Two, three days, at a steady walk,” LaFlesche said. “We switch out the horses, between yours and mine, and so long as everyone can keep up”—she shot a glare at her awake prisoners—“we should do fine.”
“You’ve done this often? Slinging people across saddles like sacks of meal?”
“Usually they’re awake enough to walk. Or I drag ’em.”
Isobel’s expression, overhearing that, was somewhere between horrified and thoughtful, and he gave her a stern look and a firm headshake until she rolled her eyes at him. He gave Steady a final pat, thanking him for putting up with the body slung across his saddle, and went to fetch his hat and pack.
“Boots up!” LaFlesche called. “Time to move.”
Gabriel did not enjoy walking. The moment they switched the body off Steady, he had to fight the urge to mount and ride on ahead of the rest of the party. He cast another sideways glance at Isobel walking alongside him, leading Uvnee, who was now carrying one of the magicians. The Hand was sweating, even though the day had been cool and overcast since they hit lower ground, her skin too ashen for comfort. He worried but said nothing. What was there to say? The magicians needed to remain insensible until such a time as they could contain them somewhere, ideally in a lockhouse. If there was a sitting judge in this town, it seemed likely that they would have one there.
Then he’d force Isobel to rest. Until then, she had no choice. So, he did the best he could: he gave her something else to bite at.
“Notice anything?”
She lifted her head at that, her nostrils flaring as though testing the air. “We’re being watched.”
“Of course we are.”
Isobel glared at his nonchalant tone, as though offended that he had noticed it before she had.
He felt his lips twitch. “Isobel. Two riders, a marshal, and two easterners, with two magicians slung over horseback like sacks of potatoes? The only wonder is that the entire Territory hasn’t lined up to watch us go past, complete with games and feasts.”
He wondered what stories would come of this, told to the children of those who’d been there to see it, if he’d live to hear any of them. He’d come back someday if he could, to listen.
Assuming he had the chance. His off hand touched his ribs; he couldn’t feel the scarring through his jacket and shirt, and the ache was absent save when he bent forward, but he knew they were there, a constant reminder that riding with the Devil’s Hand was not an easy—or safe?—road. And that was without lugging two wind-mad magicians three days to an unknown destination.
Or the risk of being tried for the crime of killing an unarmed man. Because after one day of their company, he was close to taking the carbine’s stock to the side of the younger American’s head simply to shut him up. Because apparently even the sulkiest of prisoners felt the need to speak after a while.
By the time evening came, he learned that he’d been right: the younger man was a scout, name of Anderson, and he had been hired to escort US Marshal Paul Tousey safely across the Territory and back again. Like every ex-Army scout Gabriel had ever met, Anderson was bitter, cranky, and not prone to taking orders from anyone graciously, much less a female. He grumbled about having to walk, he grumbled about being dragged off to “some jump-up,” and he particularly grumbled about being dragged off by, in his words, “two wimmin.” Gabriel’s laughter at that hadn’t helped his mood at all; he had clearly expected more sympathy.
LaFlesche solved the problem by shoving a rag into his mouth and affixing it with a cord so he couldn’t spit it out.
Tousey, on the other hand, seemed quietly resigned to the situation. He had offered nothing more than his name and occupation, but on the morning of the second day, Gabriel had handed him the badge he’d found. The marshal held it in his hand briefly, then pinned it to the inside of his lapel, his hands shaking only slightly.
“Thank you” was all he’d said, but there had been a wealth of meaning there. Gabriel didn’t hold with letting a thing define who he was, but he knew Isobel took comfort in her sigil, figured marshals would too, no matter what side of the river they were sworn to. Too, Tousey placed his feet with the careful consideration of a man who’d been surprised by snakes or gopher holes at least once, but without taking his attention off either the land around him or his companions. He slept that way as well, Gabriel had noted: quiet but alert. Without Jefferson’s intervention, the marshal might have found himself in the Territory anyway. Or not.
Their horses had fled when the magicians began their circle, Tousey admitted midway through the second day; they hadn’t thought to hobble the beasts. “I’d ridden that beast all the way from the Mississippi,” he said. “Territory-bred, they told me. Went the entire journey without spooking or startling. But the moment those two and their kind . . . did whatever it was they did, the fool beast lost what little mind it had.”