IRONHEART

by Rachel Lee

  Bayard's Garage still wasn't open, so he continued his way to the center of town. The courthouse was visible now, towering over the surrounding buildings, a Victorian gothic structure built of rough-hewn granite.

  Maude's Diner was visible down a side street, busy even at this early hour, he noted. The coffee must be good. He'd stop there later. Right now he was too damn tense.

  The courthouse lawn was large, a small park full of flower beds and benches to sit on. He found a bench right across the street from the sheriff's office and settled down to wait.

  The sun rose higher and began to steal the night's chill from the air. A couple of old men, one of them leaning on a cane, took seats a little closer to the courthouse and began to read their newspapers. Pigeons strutted jerkily along the sidewalks, pecking at invisible morsels. A dog wandered by, pausing to sniff at Gideon's boots. Reaching out a hand, he stroked the dog's head absently, but he never took his eyes off the sheriff's office.

  And then the day began. The first to arrive was a scrawny, leathery-looking older woman who unlocked the office and disappeared within. Only seconds behind her a sheriff's vehicle arrived, a sand-colored Blazer just like the one Sara had driven the night before. The man who climbed out was somewhere in his forties, sunburned to a permanent red and thickening around the middle.

  Several much younger men arrived, all of them clearly deputies. Sara showed up but evidently didn't notice him sitting across the street. This morning she was wearing the mirrored aviator-style sunglasses that seemed to go with cop uniforms. Gideon almost smiled. Sara Yates wanted to be tough. He wondered if he would ever find out why.

  The sun rose higher, and finally one more Blazer pulled up into a reserved slot. And this time Gideon tensed and sat up straighter, squinting in an effort to miss nothing.

  A tall, powerfully built man climbed out. He, too, wore a deputy's khaki uniform, tan Stetson and mirrored glasses, but unlike the others, his dark hair flowed loose to his shoulders. He glanced toward the square, the quick, scanning glance common to men who never overlooked a detail of their surroundings, and then he turned to enter the office.

  Gideon felt the shock of recognition like a hot punch in his stomach. He'd expected to be able to identify the man the way he would have identified any stranger who had been described to him. He hadn't been prepared for this gut recognition. It wasn't as if he'd ever met the guy.

  The big man paused, scanning the square and streets again, as if he had sensed something. His eyes were hidden behind those mirrored glasses, but Gideon nonetheless felt the man's gaze scrape over him, felt it pass and then return briefly for another look.

  Damn, was the man psychic? But then the big deputy turned and entered the sheriff's office. Whatever he had seen had been dismissed as unimportant. Gideon released a long breath, realizing for the first time that he had been holding it.

  That was him, all right. No doubt of it. And now that he'd found Micah Parish, he had to figure out what he was going to do about it.

  * * *

  The sun rose a little higher and the street grew busier. The surrounding businesses opened; the courthouse parking lot filled with cars. Gideon couldn't have said why he continued to sit there. He had seen Parish, and that was what he had come here for, to identify the man. He could go down the street to the diner now and have some coffee and eggs. He could mosey on up to Bayard's Garage and arrange to get his truck fixed.

  But he sat on, strangely paralyzed, and let the warm sun and cool, dry Wyoming breeze caress him. It was nice here, he thought, and he was finally old enough to appreciate it. Even six months ago he would have been impatient with the quiet, relaxed, aimless atmosphere, with the positively bucolic scene.

  A battered old green pickup pulled into the last parking slot in front of the sheriff's department. Gideon watched absently as an old man with long, braided, raven-colored hair climbed out. Few full-blooded Native Americans turned gray with age, and the color of the old man's hair proclaimed the purity of his bloodline. Shoshone? Gideon wondered. Lakota? Such differences had once been critical, and to some they still were. In an Anglo world, though, they were kin.

  A tall, dark-haired youth climbed out the other side, and suddenly Gideon sat a little straighter. If that boy wasn't Sara's brother, he'd eat his hat, conchos and all. Curiosity almost brought him to his feet, and then he remembered himself. If that was indeed Joey Yates, it was none of his business, and not even natural curiosity could justify his going over to the office to gawk.

  Fifteen minutes later the old man came out alone and stood on the sidewalk, surveying the street as if he hadn't quite decided what he was going to do now. Then he saw Gideon.

  Much to Gideon's amazement, the old man crossed the street purposefully, as if Gideon were someone he had been looking for. He came right up to the younger man and halted, staring down at him as if taking his measure.

  Gideon returned the stare impassively. He knew that look. His grandfather had looked at him that way the day twelve-year-old Gideon had been brought to him from the orphanage. It had been a look that went past the surface and seemed to pry into the soul. It had made him uneasy then, but today he was a forty-one-year-old man who knew even the darkest corners of his soul. Having no secrets from himself, he didn't fear what others might see in him.

  "You're Ironheart," the old man said finally.

  Gideon nodded.

  "Sara mentioned you. That's not any Indian name I ever heard."

  "I chose it, old man."

  Zeke smiled. "I'm Zeke Jackson."

  "Funny name for an Indian."

  "A missionary chose it."

  Gideon felt a smile crease his face. "Yeah," he said.

  Zeke stared down at him for another ten or fifteen seconds, then sat beside him on the bench. "Nice morning."

  "Very. That boy who came in with you … Joey Yates?"

  "Sara mentioned him, did she?"

  "She was looking for him when we met."

  "He's going to spend the next couple of days, maybe more, in jail. It'll get his attention, maybe."

  Gideon looked at Zeke, and his smile broadened a little more. "Yeah. It can work that way."

  Zeke nodded, the road map of lines all over his face deepening a little. "Leaves me shorthanded, though. You looking to stay in Conard County awhile?"

  "Awhile. I'm not sure how long."

  "What do you do?"

  "I'm an ironworker."

  Zeke turned and looked at him, his black eyes bright with interest. "One of those guys who builds the steel frames for skyscrapers?"

  "That's right. I'm a connector."

  "What does that mean, exactly?"

  Gideon settled back and stared off into space, aware that his heart was picking up speed just a little. He didn't want to think about what he did. About what he had done. "A connector is the first guy up. He shinnies up the column from the floor below and hangs there like a monkey at the top until the derrick swings a ten- or twenty-ton beam his way. When it gets close enough, he grabs on to it, guides it into place and drives a couple of bolts home to hold it there."

  "Then you're one of those crazy guys I've seen walking on those narrow I-beams up there."

  "Yeah." Crazy was probably a good word for it.

  "Then you're not afraid of heights."

  Gideon turned his head and looked straight at him. "Old man, only a fool isn't afraid of heights."

  Zeke nodded. "How high have you worked?"

  "Ninety stories. My last job topped out at seventy."

  "How high is that?"

  "Around seven hundred feet."

  Zeke gave a low whistle. "Beats me why any man wants to walk on a six-inch-wide piece of steel at that kind of altitude."

  Gideon smiled. "It's almost as good as being a bird." Or had been.

  Zeke studied him a little longer. "Know anything about horses?"

  "A little. My uncle raises them, and when I was a kid I helped break them."

  "Well, Ironhe
art, if you're looking for work around here, I'm shorthanded for a few days, and I've got a herd of mustangs I need some help with."

  "Mustangs?"

  "I can't let them all go to the glue factory, can I?" He rose and gave a nod of farewell. "Anyone can tell you how to find the Double Y, if you're interested."

  * * *

  Gideon hadn't learned as much from his grandfather as he should have, but he had taken a few things with him that had given him strength over the years. One of those things was the morning silence. His grandfather had called it prayer, and most other people would have called it meditation. Since Gideon didn't consider himself conventionally religious, he refused to think of it as prayer, and "meditation" sounded too New Age for his taste.

  So he called it the morning silence, or going into the silence, when he called it anything at all. It was a place inside himself, an inner pool of stillness and peace, that he visited each morning before he began his day. It was like reaching inside and tapping some bottomless well full of serenity and strength. He always emerged from the silence refreshed, feeling centered in himself and ready for the day's trials. It didn't solve his problems or dull the edge of his pain, but it helped him endure.

  Two mornings later, sitting in the center of the motel room on the floor, cross-legged and straight-backed, he emerged from the silence with an almost aching sense of loss. His grandfather had been a medicine man, a great shaman of the old ways, and he wished now that he had listened more closely.

  "You have the power in you," the old man had told him once. "You have the gift, boy, and a responsibility. Learn to use it, and use it wisely."

  But what had a fourteen-year-old boy cared for such things? A forty-one year old man cared, but now it was too late. He could only sit there in a dingy motel room and wish to God he had something more than a feeling that he had somehow lost his way, could merely think that if only he had listened to the wisdom of an old man, he might have had somewhere to look for answers and direction.

  But he had only himself and the feeling that he hadn't done what he had been meant to do with the days of his life. Probably just midlife crisis, he told himself as he rose from the floor. It would sort itself out.

  In the last two days, though, he hadn't learned a damn thing about Micah Parish, and learning about Micah Parish had been the main reason he'd come to Conard County. The locals, who probably gossiped avidly among themselves, were proving to be remarkably tight-lipped with the outsider. He would mention Micah casually in conversation, and all he ever got was, "Yeah. Damn fine deputy."

  Two solid days, and he didn't know any more than the private detective had been able to tell him. Micah Parish had been with the Conard County Sheriff's Department for approximately five years, after retiring from the army, and just before Christmas he had married an old friend. It didn't tell Gideon a damn thing about the man. It did, however, explain why that expensive P.I. had been able to tell him so little. Judging by the way his neighbors closed their wagons in a circle around him, Micah must have made a good impression on them.

  And if Gideon hung around this town much longer without some obvious reason to remain, he would probably become the subject of local speculation himself. In fact, it wouldn't surprise him if a Conard County deputy showed up at his door and started asking questions about his business. He'd already realized that people around here looked out for one another, and a stranger might be someone the community needed protecting from. Neighborliness was a far sight more than a casual wave in these parts—it was serious business.

  That meant that if he wanted to stay around here without arousing all kinds of uncomfortable suspicion, he'd better take that job that Zeke Jackson had offered him out at the Double Y.

  Dirk Bayard, at the garage, gave him directions, and soon he was on the road, heading out toward the western end of Conard County, driving straight toward the mountains that still bore a winter mantle of snow on their highest shoulders. Except for the six years he had spent on his uncle's ranch on the Oklahoma prairie, and a year spent building missile silos in eastern Montana, Gideon had been a city dweller because his job had demanded it. He had lived in caverns of steel and glass, and had been aware of a faint dislocation when he left them behind to travel to another city and another job across the continent, or even just when he took a week to go fishing or hunting with his buddies.

  There was no way, he thought now as he drove down a long, empty county road, that you could overlook the isolation out here. Since leaving Conard City, he had passed two other vehicles, one a sheriff's unit, the other the mailman, who out here drove a white truck with the Postal Service emblem on the door. Different. It was different.

  It appealed to him. Especially that line of mountains to the west, blue in the bright morning light. Everything looked so damn clean and fresh, and the quiet called to him, promising peace.

  Being an ironworker had carried satisfactions that few people ever found. When Gideon had built something, he could look at it and see the actual fruits of his efforts. More, he could look at it and know it would still be there fifty years after he was gone.

  People out here probably found the same satisfaction, he thought now. The seasons might come and go, but the land remained, and they passed it on to their sons and grandsons.

  He could imagine making a life here, he realized. He could easily imagine it.

  The turnoff for the Double Y was marked, as Dirk Bayard had promised. Almost as soon as he turned off the county road, the terrain changed, growing more rugged. The dirt lane he traveled now rose steadily toward the mountains, and the air grew gradually chillier. One of the prettiest spots in the county, Dirk had told him, and one of the hardest to ranch. Too bad there was no market for mountain goats, he'd added.

  The road ended two miles later in a hard-packed yard between a house and a weathered barn. Behind the buildings lay a large meadow that rose gently toward the trees. Part of it had been fenced for pasture, and three horses grazed there now. An idyllic setting, he thought.

  In a corral behind the barn, Gideon saw the old man holding a restless stallion by his halter. The roan had the compact, sturdy build of a mustang and the temperament of a wild male. His eyes were rolling a little as Zeke Jackson tugged on the halter rope and moved closer.

  Damn old man, Gideon thought, climbing out of his truck. He wasn't big enough to hold that horse down, or strong enough. If that stallion reared…

  Suddenly, the stallion did just that, then pivoted in an abrupt, unexpected movement that knocked the old Shoshone to one side in the dirt. Pawing at the air with his front hooves, the horse screamed and then came down hard.

  * * *

  Joey wouldn't even speak to her. That glum thought had been the first one in Sara's mind that morning when she awoke, and it was still haunting her as she performed her weekly household chores. Today was her day off, so she needn't go into Conard City for that reason, and thinking of Joey's sullen silence, she told herself she wouldn't go in to see him, either. He could just sit there and sulk.

  Tough words, but they didn't do anything to ease the ache in her heart. Eleven years ago, when their mother had died, Sara had stood beside the raw dirt of the grave and hugged her weeping five-year-old brother. Two years later she had done it again when they buried their father. In all the ways that counted, she was Joey's mother, and like a mother, she suffered for him and with him. At least a dozen times a day she wanted to race into town and tell Nate Tate to let him out. Nate might even do it, but in the long run, it was Joey who would pay for the leniency. Somehow they had to get his attention.

  No, Nate probably wouldn't let him out. The sheriff had been preaching tough love for Joey for the last six months, and he wasn't likely to go all soft because Sara asked him to. When Zeke had brought Joey in the other morning, Nate had looked at the boy and said, "Well, it's about time." And maybe it was. Better a few days or weeks in the county jail than years in the penitentiary.

  Hearing the approach of a truck
engine, she set her dust mop aside and went onto the kitchen porch to see who it might be. Emma and Gage Dalton, maybe. Emma had been her good friend for many years, and since their marriage, Gage often joined her when she came out to visit Sara.

  She recognized Gideon Ironheart's truck immediately. What had brought him out here? she wondered, and then looked down in dismay at her worn jeans and the old khaki shirt she had put on for cleaning. She hadn't even done anything with her hair, had simply pulled it out of the way with a rubber band at the nape of her neck.

  And it didn't matter, she told herself sternly as she watched him pull to a stop in the yard. It didn't matter a damn what she was wearing or what she looked like. It hadn't mattered in nearly ten years, and it wasn't going to start mattering today.

  Just then the mustang shrieked, and Gideon leapt out of his truck as if propelled. Sara couldn't see the corral beyond the barn from the porch, but the sight of Gideon racing full steam in that direction told her that her grandfather was in trouble. Dropping the mop, she took off at a dead run.

  By the time she rounded the barn, Gideon was in the corral, holding the mustang tightly by its halter. The horse jerked his head back sharply and twisted, trying to get away, but muscles honed to steel by years of hard labor jerked right back, telling the animal who was boss.

  Sara climbed the rails and dropped to the dirt beside her grandfather.

  "Grandfather? Grandfather!"

  The old man's eyes opened, and he drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm okay, child. Just got the wind knocked out of me."

  "Oh, Grandfather…" Relief left her weak. When he sat up, she hugged him wordlessly as her throat tightened in reaction.

  He patted her shoulder. "It's all right, Sarey. It's all right."

  She helped the old man to his feet, wincing sympathetically when the pain of his arthritis flickered across his face. He was too old for this, she thought angrily. Joey should have been here helping. At that moment, she could have cheerfully boxed her brother's ears.