Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) (23 page)

Gabriel doffed his hat in a half bow and slid out of the saddle, giving Izzy a tap on the leg as he did so. She dropped down off Uvnee’s back, feeling the soles of her feet touch ground at the same moment her hips and knees began to ache from the change in position.

“And you, girl,” the older woman said as Izzy came to Uvnee’s shoulder, reaching up to ease the mare’s reins. “You got a name?”

“Isobel, ma’—Miz Margaret.”

“Hrmph.” She sounded so much like her husband, and yet not, Izzy felt a smile slip free. “You let your man take those beasts into the corral and shuck their gear. You look like you need a hot meal and a warm compress, and to get off your tail for a bit; am I right?”

She didn’t wait for a response but plowed up the stairs, past her dumbstruck husband, clearly expecting Izzy to follow.

So she did.

The inside of the shanty was one large room, with a brightly patterned blanket slung on a rope across the back end, hiding what Izzy assumed was the sleeping area. A long, narrow table took up half of the room, roughhewn stools pushed underneath. A stone fireplace was built into one wall, a cast-iron cooking stove set into it, and a pile of split wood beside. The fire was burning, but the air was surprisingly clear of smoke. Izzy must have looked puzzled, because the old woman—Margaret—tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the roof, where an open chimney let fresh air in—or, Izzy realized, excess smoke out.

“There’s a hatch for bad weather, but mostly, we leave it open. Learned that from the old man’s people.”

Izzy looked around again, this time noticing the dirt floor, hard-packed enough that no dust rose when they walked, and the sturdy, simple furniture that was draped not with the usual worn linens or wool blankets but deep brown and russet furs.

“You’re trappers?”

“We were, back north. Less to hunt here, but we still keep a hand in when a bear doesn’t know what’s good for him or too many badger start hanging around.” Margaret went to a chest against the far wall, lifting the lid and reaching inside. “You sit now, child. Something that won’t move under you, for a change, and let me fix up a warmer and some tea.”

Suddenly, nothing sounded better to Izzy than exactly that.

“Your time, is it?”

“Yes, ma’—Miz Margaret.” Izzy didn’t bother to ask how the other woman knew; the women at the saloon had always known, too. It must be a skill you learned as you got older, or maybe when you were young, it carried on your face as well as your gut.

“Men don’t never understand,” Margaret said under her breath. “Old man’s lived with me near forty years, and every month he was still surprised, like it’d never happened before. Don’t envy you being up on that beast. Good that your man thought to stop here ’stead of going on all day. Nonsense, that; nowhere you need to be so bad, it can’t wait.”

Izzy quickly determined that her hostess did not require responses, was just as happy to have someone not her husband to ramble on to about the tea they had to brew, the lambs they’d had born that spring, her useless children, half of whom’d run off and gotten married and never visited with their own children. . . . “And here you are; eat that up,” she said, handing Izzy a bowl filled with soup from the pot on the stove, placing the mug of tea on the table in front of her. Izzy couldn’t have said what was in the bowl if her life depended on it, but it smelled rich and meaty, and her mouth watered before she’d even lifted the spoon.

As though drawn by the smell, the men came in as well, trailed by another figure, who turned out to be the youngest of their sons, going by the name Esaias.

“Only one of my brood still home, though the next-youngest boy’s out with the flock,” Margaret said, ladling out more soup and placing the bowls on the table. “Sit, all of you; don’t gawp around like you were sheep yourselves. Sit!”

After they’d finished supper, Margaret shooed her son off to sleep in the shed, offering them his quarters for the night. Gabriel thanked
her politely, as did Izzy, although he would have been just as pleased to spend the night with the livestock rather than in that boy’s mess, given his druthers. Sheep would be cleaner, he suspected.

Also, there would be more room to sleep. He looked at the tiny space and made a face. They’d had more privacy on the road than they did here.

“I promise to leave your virtue alone,” Isobel said tartly, coming up in the doorway behind him, stripped down to her chemise and a dark blue shawl. Her hair was down and she was clutching what looked like a small . . . sheep?

Seeing where his gaze rested, she held it out for him to see better. “A hot water bottle wrapped in wool. It’s for . . .” She blushed slightly, ducking her head and cuddling the bundle back to her stomach. “I have stomach pain,” she said, and he nodded once, then turned back to the bed. Women’s issues were for women; he wanted no part of it, even in discussion.

He eyed the bed again as though it had teeth and an uncertain temper. “They assumed . . .”

“I know what they assumed,” she said, her tartness lost under her blush. “You’re not old enough to be my father, so you’re either my brother, my husband, or my pander. Either way, there is only the one bed and I’ll not be sleeping on the floor.”

A gentleman would take the floor without hesitation. But this was not the East, where society would raise an eyebrow and gossip, nor Spanish-held lands, where the Church judged women harshly. This was the Territory, where practicality ruled, and they would have a long ride ahead of them the next day.

He pulled off his boots, dropped his suspenders, unbuttoned his vest and overshirt, and lay down on the bed next to her. The mattress was thin but softer than the ground they had been sleeping on, and while he preferred the open sky above him, there was much to be said for walls and warmth.

“We used to bundle when we were younger,” she said quietly.
“During the winter. The young ’uns all shared a room, and it would get cold, so we’d pull the mattresses to the middle of the room and pile the blankets on, and bundle. The boys stopped before the girls did, though. Got so’s they’d rather be cold than too close.”

He didn’t think that she was looking for him to say anything in response, so he didn’t. Eventually, her breathing evened out, and he fell asleep listening to her faint snores.

He dreamed, knowing that it was a dream. That happened sometimes, usually when he had too much on his mind, so it wasn’t a surprise, even as he stood in the middle of a river and watched the blue-winged hawks turn and swoop. The sky was deep blue, but overhead hung the moon, not the sun.

None of this was real. And yet everything was.

Old Woman Who Never Dies delighted in dreams like that. But there was no dream-figure, no fellow traveler here, no message writ on the chalk cliffs along the river or the clear water around his ankles, fish swimming past him deeper below. Just the moment, cold clear air in his lungs and his heartbeat in his ears.

The world was never that silent.

Standing out in the open like that made his back itch, like there was a shotgun or bow lining up on him, but his feet wouldn’t move. The water rushed past, the hawks hunted, the clouds slid past, and the moon shifted phase, but he stayed locked in place.

“Mother, pity us,” he whispered, but no message came. He did not know what the blue-winged hawks meant, did not know what the fish at his ankles meant, did not know what the silence meant. He had no medicine more than his water-sense, and he could not interpret signs.

“All right,” he said. “All right.” He acknowledged Old Woman, acknowledged himself, acknowledged his helplessness and his willingness to learn, and he woke to the smell of grease and the sound of someone yelling at the chickens outside. Isobel was already awake and gone, the mattress next to him cool to the touch.

A rattlesnake, and now Old Woman.

“All right,” he said to the empty alcove, letting every pound of his unhappiness weigh down the words, then he got up to join the others.

It was Isobel he had heard, out in the packed-dirt yard between the house and the shed where they’d slept, trying to coax the chickens out of their coop. From the noise and fluster coming from within the sturdily built structure, they didn’t seem in the mood to cooperate.

He stood and watched her for a while until she stopped, her hands on her hips, and glared at the birds like they were the cause of every sorrow in the world. A single black-and-white banded feather was caught in the crown of her braid, while others floated gently around her.

“Something scared them last night,” he said finally.

“I know that,” she snapped. “But they need to get out so I can collect the eggs. Miz Margaret said they’re tetchy if you try to get under them.”

He watched as she tried again, bending nearly in two so she could reach inside the coop, then shifted his attention to the landscape around them. Chicken were easily frightened, but for them to still be flustered after the sun rose and the threat slunk away was a curious thing. He stepped out of the hard-packed dirt of the yard, beyond the low fence, and studied the ground there. In the near distance, the horses snorted and jostled each other, reaching for the fresh feed and water that had been laid out for them. They’d been in the stable all night with the sheep and the boy. Nothing had disturbed them. So, it had been after the chickens only. A fox, then, or ferret.

He turned again but saw no pawprints, no marks or disturbances where a creature might have slunk along the fence. A snake, maybe?

He felt a touch of unease, despite the fact that snakes were surely a common enough predator here, along with everything else that would find a penned hen or fresh egg tasty. He had no reason to assume malice where natural hunger could explain. And yet.

A rattler and Old Woman had come to warn him to be wary, to watch and be ready.

He looked up as though expecting to see the blue-winged hawks circling above, again. But the sky was bare even of clouds, the sun bright where the moon had been cool. Still, he felt caution creep over him like a second skin, and he moved closer to where his charge was coaxing the flustered, squawking hens out into the yard.

The Carons were doing well enough, but their homestead had nothing to appeal to a dream-dancer or demon . . . save themselves, him, and Isobel.

“Iz.”

She looked up at him, the chickens not so much abandoned as suddenly secondary. They’d progressed that far that she could read his tone: good.

“Are any of the chickens missing?”

She shook her head. “One per nest, and no stray feathers or blood. They’re merely upset.”

He wiped a hand over suddenly dry lips. “Stay alert. Something passed this way last night. And if it wasn’t here for fowl, it was here for something else.”

It might be nothing. It might be whatever had been watching them before. But there were limited protections to be made this far off a road, away from any town. And the dream had been too full of nothing not to disturb him.

Izzy wasn’t altogether surprised when, immediately after breakfast, Gabriel told her to pack up and be ready to go. He had been odd since he woke up: quieter, more cautious. And it hadn’t been the chickens that had him so; that had deepened his mood, not caused it. Every time he turned around, his forehead creased, his eyes distant and looking inside, she could feel herself worrying up, too.

Miz Margaret didn’t seem overly surprised, either, when they made
their farewells, only tucked the hot water bottle, now emptied, into her hands and told her to keep it. The boy had barely said a word to anyone over breakfast, disappearing immediately afterward, while the old man
hrmp
h
ed and grumped and muttered about strangers where they weren’t wanted. But she noticed that he, too, kept looking past the table, out the window, as though half expecting something to come up to the house.

Izzy knew that the old man and Gabriel were both uneasy, their bodies braced as though for a blow. But she couldn’t tell
why
. More, she could tell that they didn’t know why, exactly, and that made her feel worse, as though it were her responsibility to know, to suss out what they couldn’t.