Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (14 page)

Gabriel didn’t seem inclined to talk once they were back in the saddle, and so Izzy kept her silence as Patch Junction slowly faded on the horizon behind them, the grassland unrolling ahead of them. The dirt road, cut by hundreds of hooves and wheels, was clearly visible underfoot, but when Izzy looked ahead or behind, it seemed to disappear below the grasses, as though they wandered without direction. She found herself looking down at the road more and more often, the pale brown dirt reassuring against the endless lines of the prairie grasses, and expanse of pale blue sky overhead, barely a cloud to break the color.

Gabriel had been right: she hadn’t known the prairie at all, not really. Not this terrifyingly wide expanse of same-same-same without the familiar, comforting silhouette of buildings grouped together. There was nothing to rest her eye on save the two of them and the mule, and the occasional wide-branched tree solitary in the distance, and the entire world seemed to undulate if she looked at it too long. Even the occasional bird circling far overhead only emphasized how insignificant they all were, horses and humans alike.

“Is it all like this?”

Her voice was so small against the vastness, she thought it might not carry past Uvnee’s twitching ears. But Gabriel slowed down enough that they could ride alongside each other, in response, and that helped, a little. “Not all, no,” he said. “Eastwards, there’s more hills, and north and west, there’re mountains, breaks it up some. You’ll see. But here . . .” He looked around as though seeing it all for the first time. “Pretty much like this. Hunting camps and farmsteads here and there, the occasional town where three or four families decided to make a go of it together and succeeded, but mostly . . . like this.
Junction and Flood are pretty rare. Mostly, the Territory’s . . . quiet.”

“You like it.” She didn’t mean to sound accusing, but he just laughed.

“I do. Not forever, not always, but there are times when a man just needs to remember he’s not all that important in the greater scheme of things, that whatever we do, this”—he waved a hand around them—“abides.”

She swallowed against a sudden, unexpected lump in her throat. “You must have hated it then, back East.”

“No.” That surprised her, how firm he sounded. “I couldn’t stay there, but I loved it the same way I love this. When you have so many people, Isobel, it’s almost the same as having no people at all.”

That made no sense to her, and she said so.

He only shook his head and handed her a tin flask filled with water. “Think about it. Maybe it will.”

He lapsed into silence again, and she did the same, taking a sip of the lukewarm water and letting it ease her throat and the thirst she hadn’t even noticed until then. When she offered it back to him, he shook his head, indicating that she should keep it, pointing out the slot in her mare’s saddle where the fist-sized flask would fit.

That discovery led her to consider the saddle more carefully, noting the loops and ties that she hadn’t noticed before, wondering what they might be used for. She suspected, like the flask, she would find out as they went.

Unfortunately, her thoughts soon circled away from the workmanship of the leather saddle and how the bag she’d packed hung so perfectly to how her back ached if she sat one way, her legs protested if she sat another, and how her arms ached from holding the reins, causing her entire body to feel as though Hiram the blacksmith had used his hammer on her, rather than his anvil.

But there was no point in complaining; it was what it was. She would simply have to accustom herself to it, toughen herself to it. Was that what the boss had wanted her to learn? No; she rejected that
thought almost immediately. Nothing so simple, she was certain. Her gaze was drawn again to the far horizon, and she felt a warm shiver move from scalp to spine.
This
, she thought,
maybe this
. How small she was, in such a larger world. Or simply, how large the Territory was.

The sun was midrise now, angled enough that Izzy was glad of her new hat, although it did nothing to keep the dust of the road from her mouth and nose. The mule plodded along at Uvnee’s shoulder, the mare periodically turning her head to nip at its ears, making it shake its head and snort at her. Izzy smiled and patted the mare’s neck, taking comfort in the warm feel of flesh under her fingers, the rise and fall of the mare’s flanks under her legs, even the occasional flatulence from the mule and the inevitable sight of Gabriel’s horse lifting its tail to relieve itself as it walked. Small, pungent things to bring her back to herself.

She studied the man riding in front of her as well, trying to let her shoulders soften, her backside relaxing into the sway of the saddle the way Gabriel’s did. It was harder than it seemed, but after a while, her hips and legs ached less, at least, although her arms and shoulders still burned.

To distract herself, Izzy thought over the confrontation she’d interrupted back in town that morning. She’d watched players stare each other down over the felt, seen Iktan and Marie calm enough fights before they happened to recognize the signs, like two dogs circling each other over a chunk of meat.

The marshal had seemed respectful enough when she introduced herself. And yet his eye on Gabriel had been strange, almost suspicious. Did he not know he was her mentor? Why hadn’t Gabriel told him? Or had he, and the marshal was still suspicious?

Izzy worried her upper lip between her teeth, realizing that she hadn’t tried to read the marshal. She hadn’t tried to read April, either, come to think of it. She’d been distracted, surprised—had assumed that both would speak truthfully to her, not hide anything.

“Presumption gets a body killed,” she said out loud, and Uvnee’s
ears twitched back, as though the mare thought she’d been speaking to her. “Iktan always says that,” she told the mare. “That you can’t presume someone wants to cause trouble, but you can’t presume they
don’t,
neither.”

If the boss had only told her what to do, what was expected . . . She felt a surge of indignation rise in her chest, just as quickly tamped down. If the boss didn’t tell her something, it was because she was supposed to learn it on her own. She’d pay better attention, read Gabriel, read everything she saw, and figure it out herself. Be like Marie, who didn’t go running to the boss every time there was a problem.

Huh.
Izzy caught her lower lip between her teeth again, her forehead creased at that thought. Had Marie been sent away, too? Or was the Right Hand kept close and only the Left sent away?

Caught up in those musings, Izzy barely noticed the faint rumble rising underneath the now-familiar sounds of horses and mule until she heard Gabriel call her name. “Isobel. Look up.”

Her head lifted and she saw he was pointing north, across the grasses. She squinted but could see nothing save a smudge on the horizon, a smear of black between the grey-green and pale blue.

Then the rumbling noise resolved into a mighty thumping, and the smudge became thicker, and her breath caught in her chest even as the thumping found its way into her bones, making her heart speed as though to catch up. “Oh.”

She had heard the stories, of course, about the great herds. She had seen the dark, shaggy pelts, thick enough to dig your fingers into, warm enough to laugh at a winter’s storm, but a pelt did not move, did not thunder, did not fill the world until there was nothing else but the immense, incalculable swarm of creatures moving across the land, dust raised for leagues in their wake.

They were too far away to pick out individual details, the long black smudge and golden dust behind spreading seemingly forever, and she thought that maybe the herd would never end, that it would
continue forever, even after they had ridden on, pouring from the horizon until the sun set again, thick hooves setting their medicine into the dirt and stone.

“Can you feel it?” Gabriel asked her, and she nodded, unable to speak. Like the river when it was in full flood, or the boss when he was angry, restrained but powerful, pressing against her until she couldn’t breathe and didn’t need to breathe. The thundering of their hooves
was
her heartbeat, the beat of the stone beneath their feet, the air heated by the snort of their breath, and the warmth of their shaggy hides the pulse of blood under her skin. . . .

And then the herd let go of her, so suddenly that she fell back into the saddle, not even aware that she’d risen in her stirrups, trying to see better.

“Breathe,” Gabriel said. “Your first time, it can be overwhelming.”

She nodded, her left hand pressed against her chest, watching as the herd shifted and moved away, fading again into a near-silent smudge in the distance. “Oh,” she said again, unable to find more words than that.

Gabriel rode close enough for their legs to brush against each other, reaching out to press his fingers around the silver band on her finger. “If you’re ever any closer, hold hard to any silver you’ve got. It should keep you safe.”

She wasn’t sure there was enough silver between the two of them to keep that much power at bay. “How does anyone manage to hunt them?” she wondered, feeling her heartbeat return to herself again.

“You don’t charge in and start shooting, that’s for certain, although some fools have tried. There are rituals. You speak of your hunger and your need, and ask the herd to give what is needed. I’ve never seen it performed myself.” He chuckled. “I’m a decent enough shot with the gun but hopeless with the bow, and you don’t have time to stop and reload when you’re in the middle of a hunt.”

Izzy touched the sheath of the knife strapped to her saddle and thought about the fact that she didn’t own a gun and had no idea how
to shoot a bow, and decided that she would rather observe buffalo from a distance as well.

“Ways to go yet,” he said, and moved his gelding back into motion. She pressed her knees into Uvnee’s side to get the mare to move, and they continued west, following the sun as it arched overhead and down. The road was well-traveled enough to be packed hard, and wide enough for them to ride alongside each other with room to spare, the mule bringing up the rear. A solitary hawk soared overhead, and the
wuffle
and snort of the horses was matched by the occasional yip of something hunting in the tall grasses around them.

“How far until the next town?” she asked finally.

“A ways.”

Izzy rolled her eyes, hard enough he must have felt it.

“I told you, places like Patch and Flood, they’re rare enough and mostly alongside rivers. Out here . . . Nothing’s permanent. Season changes, hunting camps move, villages shift when the soil gets tired. You’re town-bred, used to people about, things staying in one place. It will take a while to accustom yourself. But you will. Or you won’t.”

“Is that a challenge?” Her chin lifted, even though he couldn’t see it.

“A fact,” he said, and looked over his shoulder at her, eyes shaded under the brim of his hat, impossible to read. “Which in and of itself is enough of a challenge.”

Izzy tugged her own hat farther over her forehead and urged Uvnee to a slightly faster pace, passing Gabriel and Steady just enough to claim the lead. Never mind that she didn’t know where they were going; the road stretched ahead of them, and if he wanted her to stop, he could call out and say so.

Behind her, he began to sing softly, in a language she didn’t recognize, rolling syllables that weren’t quite nonsense, rising and falling more like a chant than a song.

They rode like that for another handful of hours, the sun glaring down from in front of them, and just as she was beginning to think
that the road would roll on forever without a single change, they came to a small stand of trees, stunted against the landscape but still taller than anything they’d seen all day. Gabriel took the lead again and turned them south just after, leaving the wide road for a narrow track, barely visible through the grass under the horses’ hooves. She could hear the mule behind her, muttering its own opinion about this turn of events. Old Elias at the livery stable used to claim that mules were wiser than horses, and most people, too. It was certainly opinionated enough.

“What’s it saying, Uvnee?” she asked the mare. “Does it think we should have stayed on the road?” One pointed ear flicked backward, as though to say, “I never listen to mules.” Izzy laughed and then looked around again, trying to understand why her mentor had chosen this route. The flowers she had noticed the day before, the tiny blue ones, were thicker here, competing with the taller grasses, and a low brush grew in almost a hedge to their right. She couldn’t identify anything, although she noted some bramble that might have been blackberry, and her mouth watered a little. If it were later in the season, she might have suggested they stop and pick some, bring them back for Ree to use.

That thought gave her pause. It would be a while before she tasted one of Ree’s pies again. She knew that, had known that, and yet the sense of loss struck her again, displacing any contentment she had found.

She looked at the brush, and then back at the stand of trees they’d turned at, thinking of the taller, thicker cottonwoods growing by the creek back home, the sagebrush they’d seen outside the town, and frowned, trying to see what made the difference here. Why had Gabriel turned there?

She needed to ask things, she reminded herself, even if it meant exposing her ignorance. “What happened here? Why does it look . . .” She stumbled for a word. “Different?”

“Good eye,” Gabriel said, not bothering to look back, and she felt
a flush of satisfaction at his approval. “Was a farmstead. Fire raged through here a few years back. Nobody’ll live here now, so the grass is taking it back.”

Once land’d been cleared and planted, it generally didn’t get abandoned, not if there wasn’t a strong reason. Izzy looked more carefully. She didn’t see the remains of a house anywhere, but there was a shape to their left as they rode by that might have been a well once. That would explain why nobody took the land once the original settlers were gone: easier to build closer to a creek, where there was fresh water, and not have to rely on a well year-round.