“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.
Were there natives like that? Broken Tongue, he’d said his people ran when the ground shook, but he hadn’t. Why had he been different?
“The creek didn’t stop our watchdogs,” the marshal said, as dry as if they were discussing the weather, breaking into her increasingly troubled thinking. “One group’s been with us since I caught up with the boys; the other joined in after you came along. They’re ignoring each other, near as I can tell, but keeping us under observation.”
Isobel brought her attention back to the problem at hand. Was that second group the warriors who had been waiting for them when they came down the mountain, or someone else? “Do you know who?”
The marshal stretched her arms over her head, fingers laced, and arched her back until something cracked. Isobel envied the other woman her loose-tailored shirt and trou once again for the way they allowed her to move with less restriction. Next mercantile they came to, she was buying a pair with whatever coin they had left.
“No clue,” LaFlesche said. “Suspect one’s Sutaio, but they’ve not let me see them except to tell me they were there, never close enough for useful detail. Other might be . . . well, could be anyone, up here. These hills are where you settle if you don’t agree with how the elders are doing things back home.”
Isobel thought of Jumping-Up Duck and her village, hiding where no one might follow them, afraid to leave even when the ground shook, of the great deer and the Reaper hawk, the way the magicians had traveled to that particular place to do what they did. . . .
“Do you know any stories about the hills behind us, other than that?”
La Flesche cocked her head, thinking. “I’m not from these parts, so I’m not the best to ask. If you mean the tribal stories, I mean.”
“There are other kinds?”
The road marshal laughed. “I’m nearly sixty, Isobel. I’ve heard all sorts of stories, from all sorts of folk. Some truer’n others. But mostly, around here? There’s not much said. Which is odd, come to think of it.”
“Odd, yes,” Isobel said. But she thought she knew why. The great deer—what Gabriel called a wapiti—and the Reaper hawk had not come to her: they had already been there. For the land, not her. Or, not the land but what the land held.
Some places were more powerful than others. Flood was one of those places, either because of the boss or why he picked it. De Plata had been another; she’d felt it when she walked past the silver mines, something deep and strong in the mountains.
She had felt the power in these hills, too. And she had allowed that power to touch her, slip inside her, bind itself to her.
What had happened to her up there?
She reached for her canteen and took a swallow, having to force the water down a suddenly tight throat. “Do you think the magicians knew those hills were sacred? That that’s why they went there to do what they did?”
The marshal tilted her head, giving Isobel a sideways look. “I try not to think about the whys of what a magician does,” she said. “And I’d advise you don’t either. Good way to chase the moon, that.”
“But . . .” She bit her tongue and let the other woman think that she’d agreed. Magicians were none of their concern . . . and none of the boss’s either, he’d said. But they kept being tangled in her concerns, and that meant she needed to think about such things.
She’d trusted the whisper when it sent her into the hills, had led her deeper; she’d first assumed it came from the sigil, from the boss. But it wasn’t. What was it?
“Whatever you’re thinking, Hand, stow it.” The marshal’s voice was hard but not unkind, and Isobel nodded. There were more immediate worries to deal with. First, to deliver the marshal’s prisoners, preferably without anyone else dying.
“Our watchers. Do you think they’ll interfere before we reach your judge?”
“No.” LaFlesche sounded certain of that. “White men, army men, makes it our problem, just as you said. With luck, we remove the problem, maybe things will go back to as they should be.”
Things as they should be. Isobel thought of the destruction she’d seen already, the abandone
d homes, the slaughtered buffalo, the empty skies. The way the ground shuddered underfoot, so deeply disturbed by the sorrow and madness it was forced to contain. “That’s a fool’s dream, Marshal.”
That was enough to kill the conversation, and the four of them walked on, occasionally pausing to shift one of the sleeping bodies to keep them from falling, until Gabriel rode back with the news that the town was just up ahead.
PART FIVE
A COLD EYE
Under ordinary circumstances, Gabriel would never have ridden off, leaving only two to guard four, even if two of the four were unable to move, much less attempt escape. Under ordinary circumstances, Gabriel would have been useful if the prisoners attempted to escape. Here, the road marshal was more than competent to shoot Anderson in the knees, should that be required, and Tousey . . .
The American would honor his parole. At least for now.
And that left Gabriel feeling itchy and useless until LaFlesche had flat-out told him to scout ahead, ensure that the way was clear. She was humoring him, but it put him back in the saddle, where a rider belonged. And he felt only a little guilt at the look Isobel gave him as he picked up Steady’s reins.
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.
As though she’d just remembered it too, she made a graceful turnaround as she walked, the edges of her coat flaring out as she overtly rested her gun hand on her belt, and called out, “Gentlemen. As we’re about to enter what passes for civilized ground in these parts, and as you are, technically, in my custody, I’m going to have to ask you to submit your wrists to cuffs for a brief time.”
Cuffing someone meant if there was trouble, they couldn’t take care of themselves. Marshals and posses alike found it better to trust in parole, that they wouldn’t do anything foolish otherwise. Anyone born to the Territory would know being bound for an insult, a presumption they would not honor their word. Here, now, with what Gabriel had just told her . . . well, if Gabriel was wrong, he was wrong. And if he was even a sliver of right . . .
Better thought overcautious than proven a fool. And the distraction from his own words was welcome just then.
The scout scowled when she dangled the silver straps in one hand, his face scrunched like a porcupine in daylight, and Gabriel braced to take him down if there was trouble, but the American marshal sighed and stepped forward, his arms offered up in front of him.
“Be gentle; I bruise easily,” he said, and LaFlesche let out a huff that could have been a laugh as she clapped one of the straps over his wrists in
a twisted loop, tapping them once to wake the binding. He tilted his head, studying the seamless clasp, then strained a little, but Gabriel thought it more to see how the binding would react than any real attempt to break his wrists free.
“Comfortable enough?”
“Comfortable enough,” he agreed. “Lighter than the ones we carry, too. I don’t suppose that little trick’d work outside the Territory?”
“No idea,” LaFlesche said. “Hand?”
Isobel seem startled to be addressed. “I . . .” She paused, then reached out to touch the bands where they crossed Tousey’s wrists. “No. I’m not even sure it would continue to work if you were to get too far from Marshal LaFlesche —” Her cheeks flushed as she realized that might not have been the wisest thing to say.
“Too late,” Gabriel said cheerfully as LaFlesche stepped past them to cuff the scout as well, ignoring his quiet mutters. “And if you ran,” he said loud enough for the scout to hear, “I’m reasonably handy with a rope, been known to haul in a running calf at twenty paces.”
He was lying through his teeth, but it was worth it for the glare he got from Anderson and the chin-down smirk Isobel tried to hide, knowing full well that he was lying.
He suspected, with what waited for them ahead, that might be the last bit of amusement any of them had for a while.
When Gabriel said they were within striking distance of their destination, Isobel had felt the brief urge to burst into tears like a child, restraining herself only because she was aware both their prisoners and the marshal were watching, alert to any sign of weakness.
What she felt, most of all, was exhaustion. The magicians . . . To the outer eye, they did not seem to have moved, facedown over horseback like sacks of flour, but Isobel had felt an increased push on the wards that morning, and it was only growing worse. The shorter, square-shouldered magician was trying to wake, wind swirling within him like a dust storm gaining power, and her the single tree standing in its path.
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