Jed tilted his head up so that he was looking at Gideon’s face. “Tell me,” he said, as he often did. “Tell me about your family.”
Gideon smiled down at him and bent his knees a little to kiss him on the lips. He brushed their cheeks together, tickling Jed’s smooth face with his three-day growth of beard. “You know more than you want to about them already,” he said as he drew back.
“No, I don’t,” Jed said, and rested his hands on Gideon’s hips. “Tell me.”
Gideon smiled, all too happy to share a good story—to say anything, really, that made Jed’s eyes light up with interest, like he was making pictures out of Gideon’s words. “Let’s see. I ever tell you about Coaldale?”
Jed shook his head and eased out of Gideon’s arms to shake the frying pan, and Gideon sat back down to the warm hearthstones. “Big place, run mostly by the Panther Valley Mining Company, I think. Thing I remember most about the men in the audience was how pale they were, from working underground all the time; that was the first time I really put that together, I think. They had skin like little boys, and I remember thinking that they were prettier than the gals.” Jed cocked his head, a sure sign that he was listening intently. “I guess I was nine or ten, first time we rolled through there. Bill Tourney’s Traveling Western Show must have been the first of its kind to hit that there town, the way the audience acted. They were as excited by the horse-riding shows as they were by the peep show Mama was in.” He smiled fondly in memory and looked across to Jed, who watched him so intently, he didn’t even blink.
“Daddy was working these two white horses, one mare and one gelding. Theresa Miller, the costumer, had torn up some dancehall dress she’d run across and used the feathers for a shaft on the browband of each horse’s bridle, made ’em look all dandy, like circus horses. Daddy had schooled them real good so they’d lope easy and of a pace, and he’d jump from one to the other. Toward the end of his performance, he stood up on Brandy and stretched one foot out for Miller—he was gonna have one foot on each horse’s back, see. Well, I don’t know if it was somebody in the audience or what, but Miller shied away, and Daddy ended up straddling him but facing his ass-end, while Brandy danced sideways alongside them.” He laughed at the memory, at his own fear over something gone wrong and the cheers from an audience who thought he’d meant to do that. “So he saves it, right? He just goes with it, and still holding Brandy’s rein—which was damned dumb, if you want my opinion—he does a handstand on Miller’s hindquarters, whistles at them both to stop, and throws the reins off so he can somersault off the back to land on his feet. Brandy practically sat on her haunches to stop for him, and Miller did the same.” He chuckled a little, remembering. “That mare loved him almost as much as Mama and I did.”
He looked over to see how his story had landed, glad to find a soft smile on Jed’s face. His eyes were shining, too, a lot like Gideon’s daddy’s had when he’d gotten those two horses out of the ring. “The crowd went crazy, jumping up and stomping their feet on the boards, cheering like it was the second coming, and Daddy—” he paused, overcome by his own laughter. “Daddy was doing pretty much the same damned thing. Mama’s show was the last event of the evening, so she was there with me before she headed on over to the peep show tent, bundled up in one of Daddy’s raincoats with her show dress on underneath, her face painted so pretty...” He stopped to draw in a breath and get his own amusement under control. “I don’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry, but she wound up doing both.”
“That must have been a sight,” Jed agreed.
“It was,” Gideon said, remembering. “You know, that trick went over so well with the crowd, he worked on it for a month after, and he never could repeat it.”
“Why not?” Jed asked, near breathless, and the sound of pleasure in his lover’s voice made Gideon’s heart swell.
“Brandy wasn’t much for sideways running, for starters,” he said, trying to remember the details. “Mama said she figured Brandy’d done it that night just to save Daddy from looking like a fool out there. And Miller got to hating the feel of Daddy’s hands that near his tail when he was loping along, so he took to slowing down to a walk every time he felt any weight back there. Daddy fell ass over end a few times, landing in the dirt and staring up at Miller’s hindquarters, until he finally gave up trying.”
“Were you able to do it?”
Gideon blinked innocently at him, and for that he got a flash of white teeth, Jed’s smile stretched so big. “Yeah, all right,” he admitted, waving a hand as he came clean, “I tried it a few times too. Until Daddy caught me and took his belt to my backside. Told me I was lucky Mama hadn’t been the one to catch me and that Miller or Brandy hadn’t stomped me, and that a whipping was all I was gettin’.”
“Bob was a very wise man,” Jed commented quietly.
“He still is,” Gideon assured him. His daddy was only forty-four and still worked the horse arena.
Something in the frying pan sizzled over and made the coals hiss and spit, and Jed jumped to pull it away from the fire. Which ended a damned fine private moment, at least until Jed decided he was ready for another. Gideon had been thinking real hard on what Jed had told him, about taking risks with himself and with them. What had stood out the worst, though, was that he’d taken a risk with Jed, that his need had overpowered his good sense and he’d put Jed in danger, made Jed fear during a time when he should have only felt pleasure or love—like Jed had said, just to get his leg over. For that, his little stallion was going to stay in the pen for as long as it took for Jed to need him back.
They ate dinner soon after, the food as good as anything Gideon had had at a restaurant. Jed didn’t talk when he ate, something else Gideon suspected he’d learned growing up, but when he was finished and the dishes wiped and cleaned and stacked near the fire, he settled with his back against the mattress and his legs stretched out before him. Gideon studied him for a while before asking, “What you said earlier, about what would happen to us if we got caught. You weren’t guessing, were you, or just saying something to scare me?”
Jed looked across the short distance between them, his eyes shining in the firelight. “No,” he answered quietly. “I wasn’t guessing.” He stretched out a hand and caught up one of his saddle bags, digging in it until he found his pipe and tobacco pouch. As before, Gideon waited, knowing that Jed would tell him in his own time.
After Jed lit the pipe and the smoke was rising lazily toward the ceiling, Jed started slowly, “My ina’s people do not worry as much about what happens between people under the furs. I did not fully understand the way of things when we were taken from our parents to the school, and the nuns did not explain such things.”
Gideon smiled, amused by Jed’s understatement.
“I… they separated us in the school, boys in one dormitory, girls in another. Sioux children learn from each other, when our parents cannot teach us, and most of us thought it was the way of things, and like all things about our way of life was something that the nuns and the whites thought was bad and wrong. So we were careful, and even more careful when we could find time with girls.” He stopped to draw on the pipe, and Gideon wondered passingly at how much time his lover had spent in the arms of women. Surely if he found pleasure in them, it was a life that would be easier than the one he and Jed had chosen. But then, Gideon didn’t feel much like it was a choice, to him; he loved what he loved, and what he loved was Jed.
“By the time I left the reservation as a man, I knew that I was not to be married, not in good faith,” he went on. “I left with a friend, a good friend who was like me.”
Gideon frowned, letting the words tickle around in his head before asking, “Like you, as in half-white? Or…?”
Jed met his gaze. “Or,” he said. “He did not wish to take a wife, either. Not yet.”
His tone was even, but Gideon saw the sadness in his eyes. He moved over to sit next to Jed, taking the pipe first and drawing a smoke before stretching his
arm along Jed’s shoulders. “He at school with you?” Gideon asked as he passed the pipe back.
Jed nodded, once. “We… we were close. Not like I am with you,” he said, looking down at the pipe, “but in that way that young men are when it is all new and exciting. Heyoka was joyful, too much so. He laughed at everything, believed that nothing could touch him. Or hurt him. His father had seen a black bear run off an intruder the day before his birth, you see.” Gideon didn’t see, but he understood how important nature signs were to Jed and his people, so he nodded anyway.
“What happened?” he asked, even though he had a fair idea.
Jed sighed and drew once more on the pipe. He turned away to blow smoke before he answered, and his words were distant. “Nothing, at first. We traveled for a while, taking work where people would have us, mostly hard work for little pay. We enjoyed the world, enjoyed those women who would have us, and enjoyed each other. To Heyoka, everything was a joke, and he laughed even when people spat on us or took what was ours. His spirit totem was strong, and he rarely saw danger in men. We lived off the land as we knew how, and we did well, for the most part. But when we came to any new town, Heyoka could not resist the pull of white comforts. We would go in to get what we could afford, supplies, bullets for hunting, and to sell furs if we had them. No matter how hard I tried, Heyoka would always find a bottle of liquor. White men loved to get him drunk, loved to get us both drunk, if they could.”
That thought was worse, and Gideon tightened his hold on Jed. “Could they?” he asked.
Jed tilted his head, resting it against Gideon’s jaw as he answered, “Only once,” he said softly, “but that was enough. I never took their offers again after that, and I always tried to get Heyoka away too. But he… he wanted that, like too many of my people do. I tried to make him see that it wasn’t good for him, but he said I worried too much.” He drew away, squirming a little, and Gideon relaxed his grip.
“It was nothing more than a trading post,” he went on, setting the pipe aside carefully. “We had taken our furs in to the merchant, and we were talking price when another man, a trapper, saw them and came over. He asked where we found them and then told me he would pay me to show him. It wasn’t far, half a day, but Heyoka wanted to stay behind.”
He pushed away from Gideon, and crawled to the fire to add another log even though the blaze was already high and strong. “The trip took longer than I expected; when we arrived at the area, the trapper wanted to set traps. I helped him; it was worth more coin. But it was close to dark when we got back to the trading post and—and it was too late for me to stop it.” He was staring into the fire, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. “He was drunk, too drunk, I hope, to know what happened. He had been caught in bed with a woman, a whore, from what I heard. She had taken Heyoka to bed, but someone had come into the room, another man who fancied her. He’d claimed Heyoka had raped her, because, he said, ‘not even a whore would sleep with a dog, no matter how much he paid her’,” he said, distant like he was quoting. “She did not disagree.”
Gideon ached to go to his lover, but he knew Jed needed the distance between them. His voice was calm, carrying the peace of the pipe, Jed would say, but Gideon heard the pain in it—and the fear.
“They had lassoed his ankles and dragged him around behind a horse for… I don’t know how long. By the time I saw him, he was… I did not know his face. The trapper held me, made me stay back. He said they would do the same to me if I tried to stop it. He was kind, though, and kept me away from the hanging. Later, he helped me cut Heyoka down. I made a tent for him as far from that place as I could, cut his hair and held it for a year, to honor his spirit, but I wonder sometimes if his spirit still roams there.” He sighed and sat back on his haunches, wrapping his arms around his knees. “The trapper told me that many white men had no forgiveness. I knew that even before Heyoka was killed.”
Gideon swallowed, watching his lover and hearing the words and understanding. Heyoka had died a horrible death because he wanted to get a leg over. Because he had done something stupid—not even something as stupid as Gideon had tried to do last night. He’d never thought of his life as being blessed or good or anything other than what it was. Like most people he knew, he’d had good things happen, and bad.
But he’d never seen a friend of his or anyone he cared about get killed because of something as harmless as wanting a poke.
It was hard for him to understand, but he knew Jed wasn’t lying to him or even stretching the truth. This thing had happened. He remembered Jed looking at the whorehouse last night as they’d rushed past it, remembered his own comment about not letting him stay there, and Jed’s response. After what had happened to Heyoka, Gideon knew Jed had never walked into another one.
The distance between them was wider now, not just the physical divide but the past and all the things that it held.
“It won’t happen again,” he said softly, needing to touch Jed. He’d known Jed was older, had laughed at it when it suited, and been frustrated when, like last night in the loft, Jed had used it as an excuse. But it wasn’t an excuse. It was a hard-won knowledge that had come with a price Gideon hoped never to pay.
After a time, Jed shivered and pulled his legs closer. “In my dreams last night, it was your face I couldn’t see,” he whispered. “Your hair I cut while my spirit cried.” He lowered his head so that his forehead rested on his knees and his face was hidden.
Gideon moved before he thought, rising to his knees and reaching for Jed, but even as he did, the lesson of the tale exploded in his gut. He pushed to his feet and grabbed up his coat from the mattress and walked over to the window. Outside, the moon was up, casting light on the water and the ice, creating a glittering picture, like something made of glass. He draped the coat over the window, hanging it on several nails that someone had placed for just this thing. With a little more effort, he pushed the remains of a heavy wardrobe in front of the door, so that no one could get in without them hearing.
When he was satisfied that they were safe, he turned to find Jed looking at him, his face expressionless in the firelight. “I’ll never do that to you, not again,” he said taking several steps closer but stopping out of range. He dropped to his knees then, his hands in fists on his thighs. “I swear, Jed. And I sure as hell ain’t gonna risk putting myself through it.” He couldn’t rightly say if he thought Heyoka or Jed had the worse lot, in that mess. Least Heyoka didn’t have to hang around and remember it.
Jed looked past him at the covered window and the barricaded door. He looked back at Gideon and nodded once. Gideon couldn’t stop himself from moving closer, even though he still didn’t reach out. He waited until Jed offered, one slender hand touching his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone then up over his forehead, tracing his features. Memorizing them.
When Jed used both hands to touch, Gideon could stand the distance no more. He slid his arms under Jed’s, lifting him to his knees and drawing him in tight and hard. Jed trembled in his arms and then clung to him with a desperation that was as frightening as the story he had told. Gideon held him, breaking away only for as long as it took to stoke the fire and throw on a couple of big logs that would burn through the night. They shed boots but nothing more, and Gideon ignored all thought of sex as he held Jed through the night, keeping away the nightmares he’d invited in the night before.
* * *
He woke early, but not before Jed, who had gone out through the old kitchen and led the horses out without making enough noise to wake Gideon. Gideon found him outside, shirt off and undershirts sleeves pulled up as he washed in the icy water of the river. Jed looked better though, as if he’d slept, and he turned to Gideon and smiled just a little. “I ain’t never gonna be dirty enough to bathe in that, Jed,” he lied, shivering just from the sight of that chill water glistening on Jed’s arms and face. Jed just shook his head and smiled.
They spent the morning taking care of the basics, scrounging food for the horses
, cleaning the rest of the rabbits which Jed put on to cook, and scouting around. This abandoned camp had plenty of creature comforts, and he was thankful for it. By lunchtime, they had a big washtub pulled into their living room and another pot for water, and the horses had been watered and fed and brushed and were hobbled out back of the house where scrawny bits of grass grew. They settled near the fire for lunch, content with each other, the peace of the place, and the soothing sound of the river outside the open door.
Jed heard it first, because his head came up fast and he set his fork and tin plate carefully aside. “What?”
“Visitors,” Jed said, and he went to pick up his coat and pull it back on.
“You’re still presentable without your coat you know,” Gideon said dryly, but at Jed’s frown, he pulled his boots and coat off the hot hearthstones and had both on before he could hear the sound of voices over horses’ hooves.
“Yo the house!”
That was Clement for sure. “You want to go say howdy?” he asked Jed.
But Jed eased back a step. “No.”
He might be wary, but Gideon wasn’t going to do anything to make him more so after what he’d shared last night; he stood up and walked to the open door to find Clement and a man he didn’t recognize, but the star on his lapel spoke loudly enough. He stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door to behind him. “Howdy, Clement,” he said. “Right nice place you pointed out for me. I do thank you.”
“Welcome,” Clement said, as friendly as ever. Maybe more so.
“What can I do for you?”
Both men swung off their mounts and strolled over to stop just in front of the porch. “This here’s Michael Finch,” Clement said, making the introductions. “Sheriff, this is Gideon Makepeace, the trick rider I told you about. His Injun’s around here somewhere.”
Earth and Sun, Cedar and Sage Page 4