The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(78)

In truth, he had hoped that his not being there would give Isobel and LaFlesche a chance to talk openly, about . . . things.

He wasn’t sure what sort of things he meant, but there had to be things. There were questions Isobel was bound to have that he couldn’t answer—and would likely make a disaster of if he tried. Devorah had made a start at it when they’d shared a fire for the night, but the other rider was a dubious influence on anyone, much less a green rider. LaFlesche might not have been his first choice?—he knew nothing about her, and Isobel’d had rough brushes with marshals before?—but she was older in years and steadier, responsible. That had to count for something.

He hoped.

But when he rode back, having sighted what he presumed was their destination, his first thought was that he’d made a terrible mistake. On the surface, all looked calm: Isobel and the marshal were walking together, looking little different from when he had left, but Tousey had either gone back or been sent back to walk with Anderson, just far enough behind the women to make it clear that he was not part of their conversation, while not so far back that the marshal might consider it an attempt to escape.

By the time Gabriel’d reined Steady in, his assessment was that one of the women had said something that had irritated Tousey but not so much that he was fool enough to argue with them. Anderson, on the other hand, seemed much as how he’d been all along: bitterly unhappy and biting his tongue with it.

Scouts weren’t much for others’ company on their best days anyway; that was what made them good at their work. He’d heard of a few who occasionally came to the Territory, but they didn’t settle around the towns, instead disappearing into the hills, as far from people as they could get. Gabriel had no objections to that—there had been days he’d been tempted to do the same?—but they weren’t exactly quality company. Particularly when they felt they’d been hard done by.

Whatever had happened, he’d likely hear about it soon enough.

“Town’s up ahead,” he told Isobel as he swung down out of the saddle, feeling his boots hit ground with relief. He could spend days in the saddle if need be?—and preferred it that way—but after their experience riding blind, every time he connected with the ground again and felt the reassuring surge connecting him to the Road, it was as though someone’d lifted a weight off his shoulders. And if he felt that way, he could only imagine Isobel’s reaction.

Speaking of which . . . “All quiet here?” He glanced at the bodies slung over saddles but couldn’t tell if they’d moved at all.

“Marshal Tousey received a brief lesson in Territorial history,” Isobel said, “and Marshal LaFlesche is reasonably certain that not one but two different bands are following us at a polite distance, but other than that, it’s been peaceable.”

“Three,” Gabriel said. “There’s one that’s been ahead of us, a single rider. They know where we’re going and want to make sure we get there, I suppose?”

LaFlesche chewed over that news and his implicit question. Her face might be sharp with age, but he wasn’t fool enough to think that greying hair meant the mind was any less. Most marshals took to the road around the start of their third decade, so that meant she’d been riding for nearly as long as he’d been breathing. He might disagree with her, but he wasn’t going to underestimate anything she said.

“It’s not for me to pass judgment,” she said. “That’s not my call. But three times is trouble in anything. Your words earlier—you think these two were sent by someone else to cause trouble?”

Isobel flicked her gaze at Gabriel, then went back to studying the ground as they walked, leaving no doubt that she, too, was waiting on his answer. He grimaced, the flicker of guilt he’d felt earlier slashing back harder, twisting deeper.

Isobel should know about the letter. If Jefferson were planning a push into the Territory, however he couched it, it was relevant to her responsibilities. Likely relevant to the situation they were in now.

Her responsibilities, not his. He had been told a thing in confidence. Abner trusted him with things that should not have been said, particularly not to someone living in the Territories with the ear, however indirectly and unwanted, of the devil himself. And he didn’t know for a fact that the two were related.

Now you’re being a willful fool, a voice said, and it sounded too much like Old Woman for his comfort. And still his companions waited for him to speak.

“I think that the United States government looks over the Mudwater and sees only open space,” he said finally. “Open space and resources that they believe could be put to better use than ragtag settlers and savages. And the new President, Jefferson, is a man of . . .” He hesitated, thinking of what he knew and what he had heard. “Curiosity.”

He looked up and then looked away from Isobel’s expression, a thoughtful, wondering face that means she was hearing more than he’d said.

“Curiosity is always trouble,” LaFlesche grumbled, kicking at a rock in her way and watching as it landed in the dirt several paces ahead of them, dislodging a faint puff of dust. “Bad enough having folk stirring up the muck because it amuses them, but you get people with ideas handing them sticks, and it never ends well.”

She spoke as though from experience, and he noted for the first time that the butt of her pistol was braced low, barely a flick from her grasp at all times. She didn’t seem like the sort to hit first and ask questions later, but she was a road marshal, tasked to violence when it was needed, and he’d best not forget that.