Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (25 page)

Five days since they’d left the Caron farmstead, and the ground was changing, hillocks and valleys making the riding more difficult. The pale, blue-shadowed shape of the Mother’s Knife was barely visible in the distance, if you knew how to look, and that meant nothing could be taken for granted.

“Do I get to ask questions now?” she asked.

He made a sweeping gesture with one arm, indicating that she had his full attention. He was curious to see what she felt important enough to ask, half a month into her first ride.

“How are we able to feel the road underneath us, or the buffalo herd, but it’s not dangerous the way crossroads are?”

“Ah.” He fell silent, thinking about how to answer her. “That’s a thing, Isobel.”

“A thing?”

“A thing I can’t tell you until you already understand.”

She kneed Uvnee sideways, then took off her hat and swatted his shoulder with it. “That’s not fair.”

“It’s not,” he agreed. “But it’s the truth. Never assume that the two will ride side by side.”

“All right.” She had clearly heard some variation of that before, from the twist of her mouth, and he could only imagine the look in her eyes. “But why do you refer to every road we’ve been on, every true road, I guess, as just the road? As though it’s only one, even though
they’re not? And is a road always a road? Or it’s a trail sometimes, like the one by the burned-out farm?”

“Ah.” He sorted through her words, determining that she was actually only asking the one question: what makes a road a road? It was a reasonable question and one that he could explain with what she already understood. “Remember what I told you before about saying good-bye?”

She frowned. “That you didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . the road curves around again.” She squinted, staring at the grass around them in a way that suggested she was seeing something else entire, and he could practically smell the thinking going on inside that handsome head. “But that don’t make sense. The boss’s map showed dozens of roads, all through the Territory. Most of ’em run straight unless they have to go around something they can’t get through or over. That’s how we get crossroads.”

Uvnee stumbled slightly in the road, and she steadied the mare with knee and rein without thinking, adjusting her weight as she did so. Another few weeks, and he thought she’d be able to sleep in the saddle without falling.

“You’re still thinking like a townsie stuck in one place,” he said, that observation triggering his response. “Think like a rider.” He’d actually expected this question earlier, but to be fair to the girl, other things had happened to distract her. And, likely, she was using this now to distract her from
that
.

“Roads go from one place to another,” she said slowly. “Sometimes, like the path from town to the river, it’s people walking, making a trail. Like an animal trail, ’cept it goes somewhere we want to go, so more and more people use it and it widens. Paths that don’t get used disappear. Paths that are used, they turn into roads?”

He could see her turning that idea over and over, handling it to find the flaws or see where a new piece went.

“And like . . . like the Law, once it becomes a road, because everyone
agrees
it’s a road. It’s . . . Once it’s a road, it’s like every other road . . . like water goes from the mountains down creeks, into lakes, but it’s all water?”

He raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Very like,” he agreed.

She was quiet for a while, then: “It doesn’t work that way outside the Territory, does it?”

“Not so much, no.” He thought of the roads in Philadelphia, cobbled over and dead under his boots. “Maybe they are elsewhere; I didn’t travel much. But not in the cities.”

“But why? And what makes a road safe and crossroads not?” She glared between Uvnee’s ears, as though that particular spot were to blame for her failure to understand.

“Don’t think so hard about it, Isobel. Let it come. It will.” He could see that she didn’t believe him at all. He took another glance at the road ahead of them, letting his awareness open to anything that might be moving. There was nothing but silence until he pointed to where the road led into the hills. “Clear Rock’s up ahead. Last one to the marker-post buys dinner tonight!”

It was a useless bet—Izzy didn’t have enough coin on her to pay for a meal, even if there’d been a saloon in town to offer one. But the road was clear, and the horses could use a leg stretch after a slow but steady walk all day. He dug his heels in and let Steady go, aware that the mare and her rider were hot on his heels.

Clear Rock was less a town than it was a stronghold. It sat in a cut on the side of a long hill, looking out over the rolling plains to the east, and was the last decent place to stop before you headed into the foothills proper and the western borders of the Territory. To reach it, riders had to pass by a massive trunk, wider than a man could reach around, hewn from somewhere else, stripped of its bark, and set into the ground just as the road curved around and up the hill.

Steady, with his longer legs, reached the post first, but Isobel managed
to stay on his heels the entire way. Reining the mare in, she wheeled around the post, her hat falling off her head until she caught it, jamming it back down over her braid. “Why is this in the middle of the road?”

“Border towns use ’em, especially when there’s only one way in and out of town. Slows people down if they’re looking to enter town in a hurry in a group. You ride through here in a group of four or more, you have to slow down and split up.” He frowned at the post, reading the marks carved there by recent travelers. None of the marks looked to be less than a month old. Not that Clear Rock got much traffic, but he’d have thought, with spring coming on, there might have been riders coming down from the mountains, or a marshal on their rounds. “Up here, supplies can get scarce, and folk aren’t always known for asking permission if they need something.”

Marshals didn’t keep a set route—they weren’t that predictable—but the last sigil carved into the post looked to be months old, maybe even a year past.

She reached out past where he was looking and touched the marshal’s motto burned into the wood just at eye level. “Act with ill intent and you will be found.”

“The marshal’s solemn vow,” he said.

“But sometimes, they don’t find them,” she said.

He looked at the year-old mark again. “Sometimes. And sometimes they’re just too late. The Territory’s wide, and horses can ride only so far, so fast. Even if we had a hundred more marshals, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“That’s why the boss has me.” Her voice wavered a little, as though she was only now starting to realize what she’d let herself in for.

“I doubt he expects you to be able to track down raiders or outlaw posses all by your lonesome,” he said, although for all he knew, that was exactly what the devil expected. The old man might look human, but anyone with a drop of Territory water in them knew he wasn’t, and what he thought and expected couldn’t be counted on to match what normal folk thought.

“Maybe” was all Isobel said. “But he . . .” She shut her mouth as the mule caught up with them, its ears more annoyed than usual. Whatever she was going to say, she didn’t share, and they started down the slight slope into the town proper.

Clear Rock hadn’t been built to be pretty. The first buildings were low structures: storehouses and pigpens. Then there was a corral, blocks of hay shoved in one corner, a horse-sized shed in the other. The houses, built of stone, not wood, were huddled in the center, eleven of them, their doors painted bright colors as though to make up for the ochre dullness of their walls. It was an odd way to build a town, until you remembered how isolated they were, prey to any posse that rode through.

“Where is everyone?” Isobel asked when no one came out to greet them.

“I don’t know.” The last time he’d been there, he’d been challenged just after the marker-post, by a young lookout sitting high up on a rock. The rock had been bare when they’d ridden past it.

There was a dog sitting in the corral, a lean, dun-colored beast, regarding the newcomers with calm curiosity. But that was it. There were no other animals in the pens, no people on the street or in doorways.

Gabriel removed his hat, letting it rest on the pommel of his saddle, and ruffled his sweat-streaked hair. “Hey, the town!”

There was no answer, no movement.

Unlike Widder Creek, there was no stench of illness or decay, and the silence was less ominous than simply . . . empty.

Isobel looked around, her gaze skimming from left to right, alert for any movement despite—or because of—the silence. She was a far cry from the girl who’d ridden out of Flood two weeks before, and he felt a touch of pride despite the situation. “They . . . all went somewhere?”

“Maybe. Stay on your horse and be ready.”

Isobel gave him a long look, then settled her backside more firmly
in the saddle and touched the long knife sheathed next to her leg. She still wasn’t as handy with it as she was her shorter blade, but the only guns they had were on Gabriel’s saddle, and he wasn’t inclined to pass her one. She was still as likely to shoot him as anything that attacked them.

He rested his handgun across his lap, half-hidden by the brim of his hat, and kept the reins in one hand. The mule shoved its way between the two horses as though it wanted to hide from something. Isobel reached out a hand and touched its neck lightly. “Easy, boy,” she said. “Whatever’s wrong, we’ll protect you.”

It snorted, judging her words and finding them wanting, and despite the tension, she laughed. That gentle sound seemed to fill the street, far louder than had come from her throat, bouncing off the stone walls and echoing as though more than one person were laughing, even after she had stopped, a hand clamped over her mouth.

“Oh, that’s not upsetting at all,” Gabriel said, listening to the lingering echoes. “Isobel, take the mule. Head out of town, back past the post.”

She didn’t argue.

There wasn’t a taint in this town as far as he could tell. It was just . . . empty.

Sometimes, he knew, towns went empty like that. Harvest failed one time too many, or illness left ’em too dispirited to go on, or they got into a foolish scuffle with the local tribe and lost. But Clear Rock had a purpose in being there, a
reason
for people to stay. And if they left . . . what had come through while they were gone?

Gabriel holstered the pistol and dismounted from Steady’s back, tying the horse’s reins loosely to the fence of the corral so that if anything happened, the gelding could break free on his own. The dog had disappeared, and Gabriel felt faint relief: a dog that’d gone feral or sick was a problem he didn’t need. He felt no worry leaving the horse
behind; if it returned, Steady—unencumbered by a rider—would dispatch it with his hooves if it were a threat.

Every inch of his body alert, he loaded the carbine and carried it easy in his arms. If anything were to attack, he’d have the one shot, but after that, the gun would be as much use as a club, and he’d have to drop it to use his knife, anyhow.

But nothing jumped out at him. Nothing moved inside the buildings, not on two legs or four. There weren’t even any vermin that he could see, and usually, they’d be the first to move in when a place was abandoned, right after the birds.

That made the dog’s presence even more unnerving.

He looked up into the sky, half expecting to see carrion birds wheeling overhead. Or raptors, the way they’d been in his dream . . .

He stilled, the memory of that dream coming back to him. The stillness as the water rushed past his legs, the fish swimming below and the hawks above, but nothing living save himself on the ground . . .

Mostly, Old Woman Who Never Dies left him be now that he’d come home. But he’d hitched himself to more powerful things, so it was pointless to complain now when they dragged him along behind. She and the devil could argue over him when this was done, but he wasn’t fool enough to ignore warnings, even if he didn’t know yet what they meant.

“All right,” he said out loud. “All right.”

He’d fought against this all his life, run from it, crossed the Mudwater, buried in the laws and rules of another country, and come home because he had no choice. But that didn’t mean he’d given in. He’d listen to warnings, but he’d do this his own way.