The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(76)
“We have company.” Anderson’s voice, a low, unhappy growl, and Isobel twisted without standing up to see what he was talking of.
Three paint ponies, bare-backed and bareheaded, and three riders standing beside them, their hair long and loose, their bodies marked by colors in patterns too distant to determine.
“Scouts, likely,” LaFlesche said, matter-of-fact.
Tousey was less calm. “They were following us? Why?”
Isobel had spent most of her strength getting to her feet but was pleased to feel her knees remain steady. She made the clicking noise that got the mule’s attention, and while it was still reluctant to approach the horses too closely, it came to her side, allowing her to lean on it. “Like we were here for their entertainment,” she responded finally, recalling Gabriel’s words. “Though you were likely watched since you crossed the River, came into the Territory proper. By one tribe or another. Just because they allow us here doesn’t mean they trust us. Particularly not you. But they wouldn’t do anything unless you did something first. That’s the Agreement.”
“They knew better than to attack us,” Anderson spat, and LaFlesche didn’t quite roll her eyes skyward for patience, but Isobel could tell the marshal wanted to.
Isobel felt no such restraint. “You’re fair game now, if they want. Only thing that’s keeping them back is you’re with us.”
She nodded to LaFlesche, who got the horses moving again. Anderson, his arms crossed over his chest, his hat pulled low over his face, stomped after her, every line of his back showing what he thought of her, of their watchers, of the entire situation, while Tousey seemed to be considering her words, studying the silent figures next to their ponies.
“Like I said, you were of no interest to them,” she said to Tousey, gesturing for him to walk with her, ignoring the scout. “Not until you gave insult.”
He tilted his head sideways, looking at her through half-squinted eyes. “You keep saying that. I take it, it means something more here than back home.”
Isobel blinked and looked ahead at the other woman, who had turned to listen but simply raised eyebrows back at her. This was on her, then. Isobel sighed. “What do you understand about the Territory?”
“You are an autonomous territory comprising the lands from the Mississippi River, what you call the Mudwater, to where the Spanish claim their lands.” He jerked his head back, indicating the mountains rising in the distance behind them. “No known form of government or military, and yet you manage to keep peace with the Indian tribes. . . .”
LaFlesche laughed at that, a harsh bark of amusement.
“We don’t keep the peace,” Isobel said sharply. “We obey it. That’s what you don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me.” It was part command, part request, and Isobel would have bristled if it hadn’t been the same tone of voice Gabriel would use when he was testing her.
“The boss—the devil, you call him. He made an agreement with the tribes, long time ago. The Agreement. Boiled down, so long as settlers do right by the land, don’t go where they’re not allowed, and don’t give insult, we can make a home here. You—everyone who comes across the borders—you have to prove yourself.”
“To natives?”
“To the Territory.”
He didn’t understand, she could tell. “And what does the devil do in return?”
Isobel intentionally mimicked the boss’s thin-lipped smirk. “Keeps your military folk out, for one. Every soul here knows if it weren’t for the boss, you or the Spanish or maybe even the English would’ve marched in years ago. You’re afraid of him.”
“Not the French?”
She kept that smile on her face and shrugged. “The French, they like the Wilds better. They just send trappers and traders, then go home.”
“Or stay and make babies,” LaFlesche added, gesturing at herself.
“And you’re saying we . . . gave insult.” She could practically see his thoughts working behind that stern facade.
Anderson snorted again, now sullenly bringing up the rear of their group, but said nothing. Isobel ignored him. “You came into their lands without permission, you encouraged magicians—all mad as a bag of cats—to do things they should have known better than to do”—she shot a glare at the oblivious bodies being carried next to them—“and in doing so, you not only ran off all the game but set the ground to shake hard enough to unnerve even the elders.” What the magicians had done was Territory business, not for outsiders. “You think that doesn’t give insult?”
“I . . .”
“What did you think you were doing?” The marshal asked the question, and she seemed genuinely interested in the answer.
“It was . . . I was under orders . . .” He suddenly seemed to remember that he was in fact a prisoner, being carted off for judging, and slammed his jaw shut with a hard click.
Isobel pushed down the urge to shake him until understanding dropped in, and let him fall back to walk with Anderson. She watched them through narrowed eyes, but neither gave any indication of planning to bolt; she suspected they knew there was no point, there was nowhere they could run that would help them any.
She could have explained it to him until they died of old age, Isobel thought, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Understanding wasn’t being born here; the saloon had its share of folk who’d come to the Territory full-grown, and they understood. The old trapper couple she and Gabriel had stayed with, they’d come late to the Territory, and it had accepted them. But her parents hadn’t, at all, not from the story the boss told.