“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 pan
s.
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.
The tracks in the road gave her something solid to hold on to. Two of the mules had nicks in their shoes, and their progress was easily marked. The one thing she was glad of was having someone to travel with, even if he was the last person she expected to be with when she woke up yesterday.
Life wasn’t done throwing mountains in her path yet.
Chapter Four
After plodding along for three hours, Gideon regretted giving her back the pouch. The water in the tiny canteen was gone, and they hadn’t found much more than puddles long since turned to mud. He was thirsty, tired and knew they’d need to find water soon, or they would have to stop for the day.
It was early afternoon, and the late spring heat permeated the air. His shirt stuck to his back beneath the pack he wore. Trickles of sweat meandered down his cheeks and neck. He would pay good money for a bucket full of well water to dunk his head into, hell, to douse his whole body with.
Maybe they’d get lucky and find something around the next copse of trees. Of course, as a soldier, he didn’t believe in luck. He had to make his own, which meant they might have to change their plan.
Chloe looked as bad as he felt. Her hair was hanging in strings, her dress was in even worse shape than before and her expression was pinched. They needed water in the worst way. Much as she might not like it, he’d have to break off tracking the wagon.
“We need to find fresh water, or neither one of us is going to be any good.” He took off his hat, almost moaning as the small breeze caressed his sweat-soaked brow.
“There will be some along the way. This trail is well used, and folks ain’t gonna use it if they can’t find water.” She plodded along at a steady pace without turning in his direction.
Gideon silently agreed with her. “That might be so, but I’ve seen a couple of dry creek beds along the way. It’s also possible this trail hasn’t been used in a while because the water dried up.”
“It doesn’t matter if it did. We can keep going without it.”
“No, we can’t.” He took hold of her arm to stop her. “You look like you’re about to perish.”
Her lip curled. “You sure do know how to flatter a lady.”
“I’m sure I don’t look much better.” He didn’t have time to be thinking about her delicate sensibilities or whether his words offended her. It was time to make command decisions. “If we both get too weak to go on or too weak to fight for them, then we’ve defeated ourselves before we even got started.”
Chloe pulled out of his grasp. “I ain’t losing their trail because you’re thirsty.”
Gideon swallowed his angry retort before he spoke. “It’s hot, we’re sweating and we haven’t had a drink in hours. That means all the water we have in our bodies is leaving without putting more in. I’ve seen men drop dead after marching for days without fresh water.” He leaned in close and noticed just how long her lashes were. She was such a damn distraction. “The tracks should be easy to pick up again, but we are going to have to stop to find water. We also need to find something else to carry it in or make something.”
He didn’t mention the tobacco pouch and wasn’t going to. It was important to her, and he respected that. However he wasn’t about to let her kill herself because she didn’t want to listen to what he had to say.
“I ain’t stopping. You go ahead and find yourself a drink, but I’m moving on.” She walked on, heedless of the fact it was completely illogical, not to mention maddening.
“Chloe.” He started after her, then stopped and listened. The sound of wagon wheels echoed faintly in the afternoon air. He snatched her up by the waist, covering her mouth with one hand so she couldn’t scream, and dove into the brush.
The woman was like a wildcat in his arms, bucking and twisting, even biting his hand. He leaned down and whispered harshly in her ear, “Shut up and be still. There’s a wagon coming.”
She quieted, but the daggers shooting from her eyes got sharper.
“You ready to be good?” He wasn’t playing games with her, but damned if he didn’t have to treat her like a little kid.
She was anything but a little kid though. Her breasts pushed into his arm and stomach, and her body, honed by years of work, tucked into his like a key in a lock. Stupid dick noticed it all. It twitched against her hip, and her eyes opened wide, then narrowed again.
Gideon let her loose, momentarily flummoxed by his reaction to this spritely creature. She was a stranger, a woman he’d bedded because she had crawled in beside him offering herself. Chloe Ruskin meant nothing to him, yet his body disagreed. She was definitely more than nothing, perhaps bordering on something.
“You keep that stick in your pants, mister.” She scrambled a few feet away. “I ain’t got the time to please your inclinations right now.”
If they weren’t in such dire straits, he might have laughed at the notion he had to keep his “inclinations” to himself. It was absurd to consider that he would force himself on a woman, much less put their lives at risk to do so. Women didn’t quite understand how a man’s dick did the most outrageous things, whether or not he wanted it to. Sometimes it took control, however short-lived, until Gideon took it back, with force, if necessary.
“Take off your pack and leave it here until we know who is in the wagon. As for my inclinations, I don’t have the time or the desire to do anything to you right now.” He kept his voice barely audible. “Now shut up and listen.”
He was surprised to see something like hurt pass across her features as she turned away from him. There was no way she could be insulted because he wasn’t going to fuck her in the woods. For God’s sake, they were potentially waiting for the men who kidnapped her family and stole his horse. The very idea she’d been hurt was ridiculous. His words couldn’t hurt the thick-skinned Chloe.
She wanted to punch him. He’d been rude, bossy and insulting, not to mention the fact he’d manhandled her. For pity’s sake, the man had carried her like a sack of potatoes. Then when his cock had pushed against her, he’d acted annoyed. Gideon Blackwood was a mean son of a bitch, and she’d do best to forget ever having given him her virginity.
Chloe took a deep, slow breath and focused. If the wagon they heard was hers, she would need her wits about her, not stuck in a rut thinking about a stranger. She pulled the knife from her boot, and he found a sturdy branch to use as a club. Pitiful weapons to be sure, but Gideon and Chloe also had the element of surprise.
She gripped the handle so hard her knuckles popped. Blood whooshed through her veins, pumping her full of energy until she almost vibrated. Her legs tensed as the sounds grew closer, then closer still. The wagon was only about fifteen feet away. Her heart thumped hard, yet she retained her control, ready to do battle with those who would harm her family.
Gideon turned and pointed at her, then to her right. He pointed at himself, then to his left. She didn’t know exactly what he meant but surmised he was telling her to take the back of the wagon while he would go to the front. Chloe nodded and crept closer to the opening in the bushes as silently as she could. When she glanced back, she was surprised to see he was ten feet from her and nearly at the edge of the trail. For a big man, he moved like a shadow.
He stopped with a fist in the air, and she froze in place. Her breath came in short bursts as adrenaline surged through her. This wasn’t the first time Chloe had done something potentially dangerous. It was exciting to be doing something, to be fighting for what was hers, to take a stand and hold firm. Perhaps if she’d been a man, Chloe would have fought in the war with the same kind of excitement mixed with fear. She watched and waited until he glanced her wa
y and, with a nod, jumped out of the brush.
She ran to the back of the wagon and skidded to a stop. This was not her family’s wagon. It belonged to a peddler or something like that, covered with bits and pieces of things for sale. As she turned to find Gideon, a bloodcurdling cry split the air and a shiver raced down her spine. Chloe raced around to the front of the wagon to find Gideon with his hands up and a woman pointing a shotgun at him.
Ironically familiar sight.
“I shall not let ye steal my soul, ye devil!” The woman was dressed in a drab gray dress with a poke bonnet that had seen better days. She held the weapon with ease, telling Chloe she could easily kill Gideon if desired.
“I said I was sorry, ma’am. I thought you were someone else.” He spotted Chloe and gestured with his head. “There is my, ah, wife. She can tell you I meant no harm to you.”
The word wife made Chloe lose her balance for a second, but she kept on walking, strangely pleased to have the man at her mercy again. It was an inappropriate moment to be having such thoughts, but they persisted anyway. Things had been topsy-turvy since she’d lowered her own pistol the day before. Impossible to think it had been just over one day, but time didn’t lie.
The stranger turned to look at Chloe but kept her gun firmly pointed at Gideon.
“This your man here?”
Chloe’s gaze met Gideon’s, and she saw so much in that split second, it startled her. Partly because she wanted to have someone to call her man, and because she saw the same kind of longing in his eyes.
“Ah, yes, ma’am. This here is Gideon.” Chloe stumbled over her words just as much as she’d done with her feet moments earlier. Mr. Blackwood made her awkward inside and out.
“You best drop that knife, girlie, and come on over to your Gideon.”
The older woman’s voice was hard as granite. Chloe wasn’t taking any chances, so she scurried over to his side, hiding the knife in the folds of her skirt.
“Don’t think I don’t see that knife. Unless you want to be picking up your man’s brain offa the ground, you’d better throw it to me, so’s you can’t reach it.” The woman knew how to handle a weapon. She threw rope at them while keeping her bead on Chloe and Gideon.
Devils on Horseback: Gideon, Book 5 Page 6
