Devils on Horseback: Gideon, Book 5 (6 page)

He huffed out a breath. “No, I don’t. My rifle and my pistols were hanging on the saddle. The knife I normally keep on my back when I travel was in my bedroll, since I was doing heavy lifting. All I’ve got are my fists and my brain.”

“That’s not a whole lot if we come up against the ones who stole your guns.” She was only being practical. Even the strongest man could not stop a bullet with his fists alone.

“Thank you for the confidence in my ability to protect you.” His tone was anything but grateful.

Chloe was insulted by the inference. “I don’t need
you
to protect
me.
I’ve done right fine up until now. Besides, I’ve got a knife.”

The frown on his face could have cut glass. “Why do you have a knife, and where did you hide it?” He looked her up and down, pausing briefly on her chest.

She wanted to smack him. “Why wouldn’t I have a knife? I have need to protect myself too. I’ve got my fists, my brain and my knife. And it’s in my boot, not my tits.” She stuck her nose in the air and walked around him.

He cursed under his breath, but the wind carried it to her clearly. She smiled grimly and kept walking. He’d follow when he was ready.

Gideon wanted to strangle her. The little snip of a woman, barely more than a girl, was deliberately inciting his anger, didn’t listen to a word he said, and she had a knife. He’d been distracted by her from the moment he realized she was a woman, and things just got worse and worse. Now they appeared to be at rock bottom.

He was at a loss as to how to speak to her, much less be on the trail with her. If only he hadn’t stopped to help them, things wouldn’t be so incredibly wrong. He could have been closer to Grayton, to visiting with Nate and Elisa. Hell, for that matter, he could have been home in Tanger. Instead, he was horseless, weaponless and stuck with Chloe, who happened to possess the most amazing passion he’d ever seen.

She was driving him loco, and he’d known the woman only a day. Granted, if he’d kept his hands to himself in the wagon last night, things might have been a bit less tense. But no, he hadn’t kept any body part to himself.

Dammit to hell.

When he’d gotten his frustration tamped down, at least temporarily, Gideon finally started walking again. With her short legs, it didn’t take him long to catch up. She wouldn’t look at him, but she kept pace with him as they walked. Perversely he didn’t make his stride any shorter to be considerate of the difference in size between them. It was a childish thing to do, he knew that, but he did it anyway. She had to understand he was in charge, regardless of how much it annoyed her. There had to be a chain of command or their mission would fail.

Gideon didn’t like feeling out of sorts in any situation. As a captain in the army, he either controlled situations, or they controlled him. It didn’t matter how difficult things were; if he could figure things out, then he would find the place where he was comfortable, in control.

The Ruskins had yanked him from that safe, organized existence into their chaos. Now he had lost his horse, his pistols and the hard-won Yankee rifle he had kept by his side since the war. It was nearly everything he valued, aside from his friends, the Devils on Horseback, named because of their bloodcurdling yells as they performed midnight raids during the war. The five of them were closer than kin, brothers in heart and soul. If he’d lost one of them, he’d be devastated. The horse and his gear, well, that would cost him a year’s profit from the restaurant he co-owned just to replace them.

It took him another ten minutes to realize he was complaining, albeit to himself, about how hard it would be to lose his family, and Chloe had
lost hers
. He stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been a complete ass about the whole thing. The Ruskins didn’t lure him into a situation to steal his things or make him loco. They were a family too, as odd and unusual as his own. Now they were separated through no choice of their own.

The Devils all survived the war, near starvation afterward, and a very lean six months of running from an army captain who wanted to throw them in jail. They were all healthy, and aside from Gideon, happily married, still together in heart, if not physically. He had everything that was important to him; all he loved was safe and sound.

Not so for Chloe. Gideon felt a rush of shame at his behavior, at his petty reaction to what happened.

“Chloe.”

She stopped and swiveled to face him. With a speed and agility that surprised him, she looked around and reached toward her boot, as if to retrieve her knife. Small round sweat marks stained the underarms of her hideous potato-sack dress. It was hot, and they’d been walking at least an hour, taking only sips of water, heading into the unknown without a clear direction other than the tracks. Her face was tight with worry and a wariness he recognized well. He’d seen it on his own face many times.

She was obviously exhausted, worried and hot. Gideon had ignored what she’d been going through, and for his own selfish interests, to boot.

Another item on his ever-growing list of sins.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just, uh, wanted to say I’m sorry.” The words almost stuck in his throat, unwilling to exit the premises without a fight.

“For what?” Her brow furrowed.

How could he explain without sounding like a complete fool?

“I should have kept a better eye on all of you, especially the girls. And I didn’t get the repairs done quickly enough. I also didn’t make sure the fire stayed lit last night.” Gideon wanted to smack his own face for that last piece of nonsense that came out of his mouth. He hadn’t even been near the fire last night.

“Do you have a flask or something? Because you sound tipsy.” She shook her head. “What in tarnation are you talking about?”

Gideon approached her, stopping a few feet away. “I acted like a horse’s ass, worried about my plans to visit a friend, my horse and my things. I should have been more concerned about your family.”

Her mouth dropped open just a bit before she closed it, but he saw the surprise on her face. Perhaps even a bit of respect in her eyes.

“Well then, I accept your apology. Now let’s get moving. They’ve got wheels and four-legged critters to get them where they need to be. All we’ve got are two feet each and a whole lot of stubbornness.”

Gideon’s mouth twitched with a grin. She was all full of sass. “I’d have to agree with you, surprisingly. Can we call a truce?”

“Fine by me. Let’s just keep going.”

This time they began their journey in earnest as partners instead of at cross-purposes. Two strangers who had been intimate, yet were still worlds apart, on a quest to find that which had been taken from them. If it hadn’t been happening to him, Gideon might believe it was a book he’d read.

Chloe was more uncomfortable with him after he apologized than when they were fighting. He was being too nice, and she didn’t like it. People would probably wonder if she was loco for thinking that, but she couldn’t help the way she felt.

If he was annoying and bossy, she could give it right back to him. She didn’t know how to be nice to him, and she didn’t want to be stuck with him. Too late for that, though, since they were bonded at a different level—not only had they been rubbing on each other in the dark, but their lives were linked because of someone’s need to steal what wasn’t theirs.

Chloe likely would have never met Gideon before the war, even if they had lived in the same town. She could tell by the way he talked the man had been educated well. He used words she didn’t understand half the time. She wasn’t about to ask him what they meant and feel even stupider than she did. Then there was the way he walked, like he could just as well be at a fancy ball with a girl wearing a fluffy yellow dress on his arm. He was from money, whether he had any now or not.

On the other side of the coin, Chloe had come from a dirt farm in Virginia with nothing more than her granny and a brother. When she was little, her mother had been killed in a flood, and then her pa gambled himself to an early death when she was fifteen. If it weren’t for Granny, Chloe may have starved to death or worse. They scratched out a living trading eggs and vegetables for what they needed. Granny held on to what was left of her family’s things, the furniture built by her grandfather so long ago.

Now that piece of history was left out for anyone and anything to scavenge. If the rain didn’t destroy it, some settler or farmer would take it for what they could use. Chloe wouldn’t blame them; her family had certainly done the same when they’d found things on the side of the trail. What was important was getting the girls and Granny back, not the eighty-year-old cabinet sitting in the tall grass miles behind them.

The decision to travel to Texas hadn’t been an easy one. They had argued for weeks before Chloe relented and they started packing things into the wagon. After the war, many things were destroyed or nearly so. Moving to Texas was the only way to get a fresh start, away from the bloody battlefields around them.

Now Chloe wondered if they’d made the right choice. The journey had been rough on all of them, and now to have such a thing happen when they were close to their end goal… Why did God have to be such an ass? Why couldn’t he have just given the one thing the Ruskins needed? A chance.

“You’re very quiet.” His voice startled her. She’d been so deep in thought, she had forgotten he was beside her.

“I’m thinking.”

“I figured as much.”

“You’re not from Texas.” She could tell by his accent that he hailed from the south somewhere.

“Neither are you.” He slid her a sidelong glance.

A snort burst from her throat. “No, I’m not.” She shifted the pack on her shoulder. “Where are you from?”

Gideon blew out a breath. “Georgia.”

The one word held so much meaning, she could almost see it hanging in the air. It was full of longing, grief, pride and love.

“Sherman’s March?”

“Yeah.” This time the word was tight and sharp.

General Sherman had destroyed a great deal in his march through Georgia. She’d heard stories about the devastation. Her curiosity was almost as sharp as his answer, but she decided to hold her questions for another day. Or maybe never, but it wasn’t the time now. She changed the subject instead.

“Were you a soldier? My brother was.” She hadn’t thought about Adam for a long time. She searched her brain for a glimpse of a memory, to bring up a vision of what he looked like.

“Yes, I was.” He stared straight ahead, his face expressionless.

“I haven’t seen my brother in years, not since he marched off to war with my cousin, Tobias. Neither one of them ever returned, and they weren’t on any death notices either. They just vanished into the ranks of lost soldiers.” She closed her eyes and finally was able to picture them smiling as they shined the buttons on the coats Granny had made for them. They were barely eighteen, not even men yet. Boys with big ideas and more gumption than they could hold.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “Nothing for you to be sorry for. The war changed plenty of folks’ lives.”

“Truer words were never spoken.” Gideon glanced up at the sky. “With this sun beating down on us, the water won’t last long. I can turn that leather bag I found into a carrying bag and find another source of water.”

He apparently didn’t want to talk about the war anymore, which was fine with her. She’d seen plenty from the sidelines, considering the fighting was almost on her farm. Blood and violence abounded for years, becoming a part of her life she wanted desperately to forget.

They split up, walking twenty feet apart, looking and listening for a water source. She tried not to pay attention to him as she searched for water, but she caught herself watching his big frame in motion. For a large man, he was incredibly stealthy, his feet barely making a sound. He was a tracker, and she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. Chloe managed to push aside her obsession with Gideon and focus on her search.

“Here. There’s a small pond,” he called from a distance away.

She made her way through the trees to Gideon. He knelt by the edge of the pond, sniffing a handful of water. He took a small sip, then a larger one.

“Is it good water?”

“It isn’t the best, but it’s drinkable.” He tossed her the leather pouch. “Clean that as best you can, and let’s see if we can make a waterskin out of it.”

She caught the pouch and touched the soft leather. It had been her grandpappy’s tobacco pouch, stained by years of the leaf he’d tucked inside it. It could hold the water to keep her alive, which Granny would approve of. With a bit of wistfulness completely unlike her, she opened the pouch.

The sweet smell of tobacco wafted toward her, invoking memories she’d locked away, of good times with her grandparents and her brother, of a life she’d lost. She pressed her fist into her chest and tried to will away the ache that blossomed.

“Stop daydreaming and get moving. Every minute we stay here is a minute we lose.” Gideon’s voice was gruff and, no surprise, commanding. He was already filling the tiny canteen up again.

Instead of yelling, Chloe tossed the pouch at him and walked away without a word. It was too much to handle, too much loss to bear all at once. She missed those simple times on the farm, the normalness of a predictable life. Now she was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a stranger, more than a thousand miles from home.

Gideon was behind her in seconds. “What’s wrong now, Chloe?”

Chloe threw her hands in the air. “Everything. I’ve lost my family piece by piece until there’s nothing left but the pouch in your hand.” She snatched it from him and shook it. “This little pouch right here.”

He nodded, understanding in his eyes. “Then we’ll find something else to carry water in.”

Chloe slipped the pouch into her bag for safekeeping. Pitiful as it was, the pouch truly was all she had left, other than a couple blankets and pots and pans.

They drank their fill of water and started walking again, all conversation tucked away. The tension between them had dissipated. The tobacco pouch had established a hesitant truce for which Chloe was grateful. Theirs had been a strange relationship that only got odder as the hours passed.