Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Ho-wa, riders.”

  The voice came from out of thin air, halting them in their tracks. Ahead of her, Steady was true to his name, planting all four hooves firm on the ground, not startling at all. Uvnee shifted uneasily, even as Izzy pulled the reins in and looked around, tightening her legs in case the mare bolted.

  Izzy would have panicked as well, save Gabriel seemed completely calm, as though he heard voices from nowhere every day. She forced her breathing to ease, her body to mimic his, as she’d done so often in the saloon, taking her cues from the older, more experienced women.

  “Who are you?” the voice asked.

  “I am Gabriel Kasun, also known to the Hochunk as Two Voices.” Gabriel wasn’t as calm as he seemed; she knew him well enough to pick up the faint tremor in his voice, even though his body was perfectly still. Too still, maybe. Gabriel normally sat loosely in the saddle, the same as he had in the chair in the saloon, his limbs relaxed but ready, not this close-held tension.

  “And the girl-child?”

  Izzy wanted to bristle at being called a child, but uncertainty and training kept her well-spoken when Gabriel nodded at her to respond. “Isobel née Lacoyo Távora of Flood.”

  A dry cough was the only response to that. She found herself trying to see where the voice came from without obviously searching. Gabriel was looking off to the left side of the road, but she couldn’t see anything there, save a single jut of stone rising hip-high and some scrub. Anything hiding behind it would have to be on their belly, coiled like a snake.

  “Have we crossed a barrier unknowing?” Her mentor shifted in his saddle and pushed his hat back, as if to give someone a better look at his face.

  The voice came from a different angle, as though the speaker had moved, though Izzy had seen nothing. “Riders always do.”

  Gabriel chuckled, low and amused, not alarmed. “I suppose we do. Have we given offense?”

  Izzy gasped as a man appeared at Uvnee’s side, a bone-handled knife held crosswise at her leg. She did not doubt that it could cut through cloth and flesh down to the bone if the wielder chose. She swallowed a squeak of protest, even as Gabriel turned his gelding slowly so he could keep both her and the road ahead in clear view.

  “If you had given offense, you would be dead, not speaking,” the stranger said, not the same voice that had stopped them. He was looking at Gabriel, not her, as though she were of no more importance than the horses or mule.

  Insulted, she brought her gaze up from the blade, refusing to let her fear rule her. The man holding the knife was clad in a sleeveless tunic made of tanned leather, what looked like black horsehair hanging in a fringe across his chest from shoulder to shoulder, a body no broader than her own, and smelling of something faintly acrid and sweet. The skin of his arm was lighter than she’d half expected, lighter than Ree’s skin, coppery-red rather than red-black, contrasting with the bone handle of the knife in his hand and the pale brown of the leather. His hair was long and clotted with stone-dust, but black as a crow underneath, darker even than hers, and when he lifted his face to look at her, his eyes were dark as well, deep-set in a wide-boned face. Older than her, she thought, but not by so very much. Once past the blade still held to her calf, he did not seem threatening at all—but then, he did not have to be, holding that knife.

  Natives find their own trouble, the boss’s voice echoed in her memory. They need nothing from me and want less.

  She remembered the story of her parents, and their dilemma was suddenly real to her for the very first time. If these warriors decided they did not belong here . . .

  “Two Voices, and the Old Man’s Hand,” came the second voice again. The boy eased the pressure off the blade but did not lift it from her leg. “Why does the Old Man walk our lands?”

  If he could have sworn without making matters worse, Gabriel would have. But there was nothing he could say: the question had not been asked of him but Isobel.

  He nodded at her again, telling her to respond.

  “The devil walks where he will,” and wasn’t she cool as midwinter rain, for all that she had to be terrified? “He does not challenge you, but he holds the Territory nonetheless. The first people ceded him that right.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek, waiting to see the reaction to that. No one knew how the devil had come to the Territory, or why he claimed it; nobody knew what accommodation he’d come to with the native tribes back then, or if it had been a negotiation or bloody battle. Even children and old drunks didn’t speculate, although if you’d asked anyone, they’d probably have suggested the devil’d won it in a card game. And you of certainty didn’t sass to a native about that, not if you valued your skin or your scalp.

  Except she wasn’t sassing, he realized. She was just saying what she’d always been told. And odds were, it was going to get them both killed, nothing he could do to stop it.

  “The Old Man protects the bones,” the invisible speaker said. “All know this. But can he protect from what he does not see?” It could have been a threat but wasn’t. “Bones may be cracked,” the voice went on, “and even one such as he should be wary.”

  Gabriel saw the glint of a blade off to the side and breath caught in his throat, but the visible warrior merely tapped Isobel’s leg with the flat of the knife before he stepped away, moving so smoothly they didn’t hear him disappear any more than they’d heard him come.

  “What—” Isobel started to ask, but Gabriel lifted all five fingers away from his palm, and she fell silent, her hand dropping to her leg where the knife had rested. The boy had counted coup on Isobel, letting them know he could have killed her had he wished to, but chose not to. Why? Why accost them at all?

  He breathed out and in three times, waiting. Niukonska, he thought, trying to place exactly where they were on the map he carried in his memory. The style of clothing, the hair: almost certainly Niukonska, or close cousins. And hard-learned senses told Gabriel that they hadn’t come alone. A hunting party, the same as had made the camp they saw earlier? The game here was sparse, but it was possible.

  The other explanations were either a scouting party, in which case they needed to rethink their path to avoid whatever might be brewing, or a religious ceremony, in which case both groups, having made suitable noises of respectful noninterest, could ignore each other here­after. That would explain why they were stopped with a warning rather than an arrow. But their interrogator had worn no ceremonial paint, had not worn robes nor a headdress. So, perhaps it was merely a hunting party, making sure they had no competition for whatever animals roamed here.

  But making assumptions was not only dangerous, it was often deadly. So, he waited, stretching his legs down into his heels, his spine up into his scalp, the gelding’s easy breathing matching his own.

  “Where do you go, riders?”

  The first voice again, now coming from ahead of them on the trail.

  “Riding,” he said. “This is a mentorship ride. J’enseigne cet enfant comment monter,” and then again in Hochunk. My companion is a child; I am her guardian, he’d said, more or less. The devil alone knew if it translated into whatever language the Niukonska spoke. He was Two Voices, not All Voices, and the only local tongue he spoke with any fluency was Hochunk. But a mentorship ride should be protected, just as he would steer clear of an initiation rite. That was customary law and tribal law.

  “You teach the Old Man to ride?” There was scorn and mockery in the boy’s voice now, and he felt an itch to reach for the gun ­slotted against the saddle leathers, even though he knew damn well the moment he went for it, he’d be holding arrows the ugly side in.

  “I am the Devil’s Hand.” Her voice was like church bells back east, high and fine, and rang out in the air just the same. “And every hand must learn to hold a knife, to wield a pen—or draw a bow. Is this not so, elder cousin? Have you not taught your own hands the same?”
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br />   Silence, and Gabriel wasn’t sure who was more taken aback by her brass, their unseen interrogator, himself, or Isobel herself.

  “This is not he who teaches you.” That was the second voice again, now coming from the left side. He was shifting to show he could, while remaining invisible to white eyes? Were there only two of them? No, at least one more, although Gabriel couldn’t locate them yet. Sweat dampened his back and arms, the flutter of blood in his veins still too fast for calm thinking, but he needed calm. Needed to find a way out of this before the girl got them both killed.

  But they’d called her the Hand first. They’d known she belonged to the Old Man. Would they really injure one close to the devil himself, or her guide, for a passing offense?

  When in doubt, be cautious. When cornered, be bold. When dealing with natives, be aware that likely whatever you do will be wrong.

  “I’ve taken the Old Man’s silver,” he said. “Taken oath to protect her.” He wet his lips with his tongue and went on. “We intend no offense and will not hunt if these are your grounds, but we are riding through.”

  It was a risk, adding insolence to her sass, but while they might allow a coward to live, they would not respect him, and he needed to ride these roads even after the girl was gone.

  There was silence, almost deep enough to hear the brush growing and the rocks cracking, before the sensation of being watched abruptly disappeared. Under his legs, Steady let out a groan, his sides expanding as though he’d been holding his breath too.

  “Are they gone?” Isobel’s voice shook, now.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But we should be.” He kicked Steady into movement, trusting her to follow.

  They rode the rest of the day without stopping, save to let the horses graze for a bit. When her stomach grumbled, Izzy ate a piece of charqui from her saddlebag, having stolen most of it from the mule’s pack days before. The dry-cured meat tasted like Ree’s kitchen smelled, slightly spicy and warm. It tasted like home. Today, though, that brought no comfort, and she put the strip back half-eaten.

  Occasionally, Gabriel would drop back a little, look at her like he was about to speak, and then reclaim the lead without saying anything. Izzy was thankful for that. She had questions—she had a hundred questions—but she didn’t know which ones to ask yet, or if she should even ask any of them. And she didn’t have answers to anything he might have asked.

  She’d never encountered a native before, not up close. Once or twice, a party had come to Flood, but they’d stood outside the town’s boundaries until the boss went out to treat with them. They never came inside, and she’d never been allowed to serve the meals he took with them, either; Marie and Rosa had done that.

  Why had they been stopped? How had they moved so quietly? And what had they meant about the devil being wary? What had they meant about bones cracking? Was this something she need warn the boss of? And if so . . . how? She had no carrier pigeons, no way to send a letter until they reached the next town with a carrier-box.

  Every shred of confidence she’d gathered since Patch Junction seemed scattered again, leaving her shivering with doubt. By the time the sun began to sink into the horizon, casting long red fingers across the sky, Izzy had convinced herself that she’d done something terrible, committed some awful mistake, and to speak of it to Gabriel, to ask any questions, would simply prove her failure further.

  “We’ll camp up ahead.” His voice was rough from a day’s disuse, and he coughed, then tried again. “There’s a spot that I’ve used before, assuming nothing has disturbed it.”

  Animals were known to get into caches, Izzy knew, or a winter storm. . . . Izzy could only imagine what might have happened during one of the storms that swept through the prairie during the winter months. But when they came to it, they found a cleared area just off the road, with a thin line of scrub trees behind, a charred circle where previous fires had been lit, and a small stone-built cache of dried chips for fuel. There was no source of fresh water, but it otherwise seemed near perfect.

  “Unpack the mule, pull what you need for the night, stash the rest of the packs there,” Gabriel said, pulling the saddle off Steady and placing it carefully on the ground, as though she hadn’t already learned to do just that. Before she could bristle at the reminder, he bent to retrieve something and then walked off without another word into the scrub.

  “Huh.” Izzy stared after him, then untacked Uvnee and placed her gear near Steady’s, then turned to deal with the mule, who was waiting patiently for its turn.

  “At least you don’t take moods,” she said, petting the smooth hide above its nose-whiskers. “Good boy. And do you even have a name? We just call you ‘boy’ or ‘mule’ all the time. That’s hardly polite.”

  The mule flipped one long ear and lipped her other hand, clearly wondering why she was asking about silly matters when there was a hungry mule to be unpacked and fed.

  Once the animals were cared for and the packs stacked where Gabriel had indicated, Izzy looked around, trying to find a good place for her kit. Not too far from the fire, for warmth, but not so close she risked sparks catching. . . . She frowned, trying to determine a proper distance, then set about clearing the area of as many rocks as she could find, pitching them away from where the horses were grazing with perhaps a bit more force than was necessary.

  Why had Gabriel just gone off like that? Was he was angry with her?

  She should have followed his lead, not sassed? But looking back, she thought that the knife the boy had been holding was for show. If the natives wanted her—them—dead, they would have been left on the trail for buzzards and crows, the horses and mule and all their belongings taken or abandoned. That had been . . . a warning? A test?

  A test she’d failed?

  “If someone would only tell me what I’m sup—” She broke off the complaint midway through, ashamed of herself. If the boss’d wanted her to know things, he would have told her. He’d had the training of her entire life, hadn’t he? She knew how he worked. And Gabriel seemed to go the same way. So, either she would learn what she needed or she already knew and just hadn’t figured it yet.

  “So, come on, Izzy,” she said to herself. “What do you know?”

  Gabriel wasn’t back yet. She found a flattish rock nearby large enough to sit on, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. The stone was cold through her skirt, but it warmed up, and the sun was warm on her arms and face, the faint scent of something spicy carrying over the dust and grass.

  They’d spoken English, at least a little, and Gabriel had spoken to them in what she thought’d been French. But he’d then said something else, the same language she’d heard him singing in before. Two Voices, he’d called himself, had mentioned a tribe who’d called him that.

  Natives who wanted to trade learned at least a little English, Spanish—or French if they were up north, she supposed. But what if she encountered natives who hadn’t learned? How could she make herself understood?

  “No. It’s not the words; it’s what he said. How he said it.” Gabriel had known how to speak to them, how to behave. Like playing faro or poker, there were good cards to hold and cards you folded on. That was what she needed to know.

  Izzy tried to recall the map the boss had set her to study, all brown lines and black lettering, sketching out the mountains and rivers, the borders where Spain pushed in and where the Americans and British lurked, and the names of the native tribes who lived within the Territory. Like she’d told Gabriel, the boss knew them all, the tribes and who they allied with, the treaties and bargains they came to among themselves. Who hunted where and who traded with whom.

  He’d shown them to her, and she’d not paid enough attention. She should have studied that map more closely, memorized more. She would, she promised herself, when she returned to Flood.

  Assuming she returned. Izzy felt the ghost of the kni
fe against her leg again and reached for the small blade that now hung at her belt, for reassurance. Gabriel had said he would teach her how to better use it, and the larger one strapped to her saddle, how to shoot the carbine, not just load and hold it. She needed to learn all that, and never mind how tired she was when they made camp. If the natives had taken exception to her, had decided they’d . . . What had the other voice said? Given offense? If they had, they’d be dead now.

  And if she’d had a gun? If she’d had a knife to hand? She’d probably still be dead. The only thing that protected her was who she was. What she was, whatever that was.

  The palm of her hand itched, and she rubbed it against the rough fabric of her skirt, frowning at the sensation. She could feel the sweat forming under the brim of her hat, the weight of it suddenly unfamiliar again. She removed it, wiping an arm across her forehead, and placed the hat carefully by her side. She must look a sight, nearly a week on the road since Patch Junction, but there was no mirror to check her hair, no extra water for even a sponge bath. She would go to bed coated in dust. This was her life, now.

  I am the Devil’s Hand. What had she expected to happen, that they would jump away, that a thunderclap would sound, or the boss himself would appear to scold them? Foolishness. He had sent her away to stand on her own, not to rest on his boots. The thought came for the first time, creeping on the heels of her doubts, that she was not worthy of his expectation.

  That she would fail.

  “Ho, the camp!”

  Izzy felt her heart near leap from her chest and found her hand resting on the blade she’d just been contemplating. She pulled it from its sheath slowly, tucking it against her forearm, the blade out of sight, and stood to greet the newcomer.

  “Easy, girl. If I’d meant harm, I wouldn’t have hailed, and I’d not still be standing outside your fire.” The woman gestured to the charred line in the grass around their campsite. Izzy had noted it when they rode in but not thought anything of it. Of course, and now Izzy felt even more a fool. The line was a fire-ring, to establish the boundaries of the campsite. And the woman stood outside it, not intruding—and not presuming on the hospitality required within that border. Either of them could pull weapons, break promises, without censure.