Well Traveled

by Margaret Mills

  “I’ve caught those riders’ trails more than once, but days cold,” Bishop said idly as they worked. “Lost ’em in a river or a creek crossing or to rains washing the tracks away.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yep. We been pretty sure there were eight of them for weeks now, the way the horses were loaded. You can tell, you know, if one’s carrying a man or pack gear, just from the way they plant their hooves.”

  “I’ve heard tell.” He was looking at a roan’s hoof right now, trying to examine the frog by lantern light. “It ain’t a skill of mine,” he said, and grinned to himself. “I’m more flash, trick shooting and riding, that kind of thing. Reckon Jed might know a thing about that sort of tracking, though.” He said it without thinking, and it was only as the words left his mouth that he thought maybe he shouldn’t be talking about the other man.

  “Trick shooting. Uh huh. You know what I’ve been thinking about that camp?” Bishop asked.

  “What?” he grunted.

  “That men who’ve been pillaging together for as long as that gang has don’t shoot each other.”

  Gideon almost dropped the horse’s leg. “Well, it’s clear that they did,” he said.

  Boots on hard pack thudded closer, and Gideon felt his heart start to race. “Not really,” Bishop said. “What’s clear is that it looked that way. And that nobody got away to tell a different story.”

  Gideon gave up and set the horse’s hoof down, turning so he could see the flecks of lantern light bounce off Bishop’s eyes. “What are you saying?”

  Bishop shrugged. “As the law? Nothin’. As a man who knows what’s what?” He tilted his head, then after a second he slowly extended his hand. “Thanks.”

  Gideon stiffened and looked down at the man’s hand. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he croaked.

  The hand hung in the air between them for a long moment, until eventually it dropped back by Bishop’s side. “Your Indian guide’s damned good. I looked for his boot prints on the way back, didn’t see a one, not in either direction. He stayed off the dirt or in the mud the horses turned up. And he walks toe to heel, so I’d have been able to spot it. If he took you there, and the two of you did them men in… if, I’m saying. Just speculating, all right? I’d understand that.”

  The tension between them felt like the tension before the chute opened at a show, a thousand pounds of horse or bull underneath you just ready to do its best to harm. Gideon stood there in the tight silence, watching Bishop watch him without the first idea what to say. This man was a hell of a lot more skilled at the back country than Gideon had given him credit for, and worse, George liked this guy. George probably couldn’t wait to confirm how Jed had been gone that first morning and brought the cows home late in the day.

  He felt his jaw work, but didn’t open his lips.

  Something his mother had told him years ago sprang to mind: Son, people can think all they want. Long as you don’t give ’em reasons to be sure, most folks will leave you be. He’d held the silence too long, though, because Bishop nodded his head once, sharply, like they’d reached some kind of agreement.

  “Tales like that get men killed, Mister Bishop,” Gideon said, carefully not using the man’s proper title. “Don’t do anybody any good to go spreadin’ ’em.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Bishop assured him. “I plan to report exactly what me and my men saw, and not one damned thing else.”

  Gideon stared at him for a long moment, watching the shadows of the lantern light play across the man’s still face. “Look,” Gideon said finally, “I got no opinion about what you think, except to say that there’s no way we’d have left that woman and her kids alone after what we seen had been done here, and to vouch for the fact that Jed was with us except for that little time he went off to find the cows. But don’t mention your theory to Jed, okay? He’s an Indian, and he’s heard all the things folks think about his kind. He won’t take kindly to someone calling him a murderer.”

  Bishop looked out toward the house, where the glow of fire and lamps gave the windows a cheerful glow. “I can do that,” he said. “You two won’t be hanging around here long, will you?”

  “Hell, no!” Gideon replied, thinking he’d be willing to ride out in the dark right now, after what Bishop had just laid out. He wanted to get the hell out of this county before the man changed his mind.

  Bishop chuckled, low. “I’d have done the same, if I’d been given the chance,” he said. “I swear that to you. Your friend, Jedediah. He’s decent.”

  “He is,” Gideon agreed, all too happy to agree to that. “Real decent.” The irony of it caught him, though, that this man, the law here, was calling Jed a decent man because he’d done something that at any other time could have started a massacre.

  Bishop waved a hand, cutting a dark shadow through the night. “Call me Dale.”

  They finished up quick after that. Dale filled in the silence mostly, chatting idly about life in Sutter Creek and how nice it was when they weren’t chasing down ‘damned animals like these bastards’.

  Gideon’s skin crawled the whole way back to the house, and it positively itched when they let themselves back inside, and Dale Bishop walked right over to the corner where Jed leaned and struck up a friendly conversation with him, like Jed was his long-lost cousin. Jed threw Gideon more than a few confused looks, but he nodded and paid attention, answering the innocent questions about where he was from and what he liked to do with his time—whenever Bishop paused long enough to let him.

  When the toddlers started making tired noises, Jed excused himself and helped Mrs. Hennessey settle them in her bed just like he’d done the night before. Gideon worried that it might give Bishop the wrong impression, but the man nodded to himself again, clearly approving.

  “Reckon it’s past my bedtime, too,” Gideon said, staring hard at Jed. “Jed, you want to share the lantern on the way out to the barn?”

  George jumped up and jumped in. “I can walk him out when he’s ready,” he offered, all man-of-the-house.

  “But I am ready now, George,” Jed said, “so there is no need. We will see you in the morning.” He nodded to Mrs. Hennessey and shook Bishop’s proffered hand, frowning again Gideon’s way. Gideon jerked his head toward the door to hurry him along.

  As soon as he got Jed out of the house, he told him the news. “Bishop’s figured you out,” he whispered tightly. “Said flat out that he reckoned you and I had gone out and done in them killers. George’ll tell him soon enough that I never left, so….”

  Jed’s eyes widened enough to catch a glint off the kerosene lamp, but he didn’t look upset. “So that is why he was so friendly,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah,” Gideon said, neither friendly nor thoughtful. He still wasn’t sure they shouldn’t ride off right now.

  Jed just looked at him. “Calm down, Gideon. I thought he was a good man, and I’m glad to know I was right.” Gideon blinked as his jaw dropped open, and he snapped it shut hard enough that his teeth clicked audibly. “What?” Jed prodded.

  Gideon shook his head. “Nothin’. It’s just—that’s pretty much exactly what he said about you.” A low chuckle from Jed, warm and rich, made Gideon’s skin itch again. “It ain’t funny!”

  Jed lifted the wooden latch on the barn door and pulled it open, stepping back to let Gideon and the lamp inside first. “No,” he said more soberly. “It is not. Still… irony and tragedy have a way of working together.”

  Gideon bit his lip to keep from being waspish. The only thing worse’n a spiritually sated Indian killer was one who found the humor in the situation. Instead, he said through clenched teeth, “We’re leaving at first light.”

  Jed snorted. “That is the way you’ll repay Mrs. Hennessey’s hospitality? And show George there are good men in the world, even strangers?”

  Gideon frowned as he set the lantern aside and laid out his bedroll, pulling up new hay to try and insulate his back through the co
ld night. When he turned around he almost tripped over Jed, who was right behind him, spreading his blankets out alongside. “You can’t sleep that close,” he groused.

  “In this weather?” Jed snorted again. “We could share blankets, now that Sheriff Bishop will be joining us.” Then he raised his eyebrows and said pointedly, “Because warmth is all we will share this night.”

  Gideon huffed out an annoyed breath. “You thought I thought any different? Hell,” he muttered, “I couldn’t get it up if I tried—I’m too damn scared to be thinking of things like that.”

  A hand ghosted over his backside, then cupped one of his ass cheeks and squeezed. “I’d wager you could,” Jed said, teasing him. The hand left, and Gideon figured he was grinding his molars down to nothing, at this rate.

  “You know,” Gideon finally whispered, “it’s damned perverse that killing them men puts you in such good spirits.”

  Jed froze, bent over to arrange his blankets more to his liking, and threw his head hard enough that his hair flew over his shoulder, showing Gideon his face. “They were not men,” he said, more forcefully this time. “I have never killed a man, and I never will, if I can help it.” He straightened and let his hands drop loosely to his sides, but there was nothing easy about him. “It was not the releasing of their spirits,” he breathed. “It was that we were able to help the woman. There was no one to help my mother for many days, outside her sisters and other women who had suffered the same fate. No one ever hunted down and punished the man who shamed her.”

  Just like that, Gideon’s anger ran off like snow melt, leaving him choked up and feeling all these damned emotions Jed didn’t want him to feel. How the hell was he not supposed to admire a man who cared so much? He reached out and caught Jed’s hand, holding it in his own. “Yeah,” he said softly. “We did help, didn’t we?”

  Jed’s gaze trailed from his face down to their joined hands. He didn’t say anything, but he tightened his hold on Gideon’s fingers for a few seconds before letting go. “We will leave in the morning,” he said. “But not at first light. We will wait until you’re awake.”

  Gideon shook his head, wanting desperately to be annoyed, but he couldn’t muster it up, so he turned his face away to hide his grin. They took off their boots and settled into their bedrolls, Jed on his back and Gideon rolled up on one side facing him.

  Gideon supposed he was watching Jed pretty hard in the lantern light, and he heard the noise a few seconds after Jed stiffened: footsteps and quiet voices. George wasn’t as quiet as he thought, Gideon noticed, irritated all over again. “They’ll be asleep, prob’ly, Dale,” he said. The barn door creaked open and a gust of cooler air slid in with the lantern George carried.

  “Boys?” Bishop called, quiet enough if they’d been sleeping, but Jed rolled away from Gideon and lifted up on one elbow.

  “Trouble?” Jed asked.

  “Nope,” Bishop said. “Just wanted to bed down and didn’t want to step on nobody.”

  Gideon squinted against the lantern light and watched, surprised when Bishop dropped his bedroll right in front of Jed. “You mind?” Bishop asked. “It gets damned cold at night.”

  In answer, Jed scooted back a little closer to Gideon, and Gideon felt his hand rise to rest on Jed’s waist almost before he could stop it. He forced it back down in front of him, into the warm space between Jed’s back and his front. Bishop rolled his bedroll out a foot in front of Jed, and Gideon worried the man was trying to box Jed in, but when George left with the lantern a minute later and Bishop blew out their lamp before stretching out with a groan, Jed settled right down and sighed.

  “Warm,” he muttered in the dark.

  “Good,” Bishop answered. “See you boys in the mornin’.” It seemed like no time at all before he was snoring softly, and Jed’s breaths evened out into deep and peaceful sleep.

  Gideon wanted to poke him. He restrained himself, barely, and glared at the back of Jed’s head—at least, where he imagined it was. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face in here. Star whuffed in her stall, ten feet away. Her hooves clomped as she shifted her weight in her sleep.

  He rolled over and closed his eyes, trying to fall asleep like everybody else had. But as he drifted toward it, Bishop’s words drifted through his mind—If he took you there and the two of you did them men in…. He jerked awake, but in the darkness, he saw Jed’s face as it had been in the barn that night, his lips pulled back in a primal snarl.

  I don’t kill men, Jed’s voice echoed in his head.

  They could have left at first light; Gideon was still awake from the night before.

  “YOU could stay on. We got lots of things that need to be done around here and—”

  “George.” Gideon reached out and dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, then crouched down so he could look George in the face. “It’s going to be all right. Sheriff Bishop is here. He’ll look out for you and your ma and the kids. I got to get on to San Francisco, see my own ma.”

  George stared for a few seconds, and when his chin started to quiver, Gideon almost gave ground.

  But just as the words came to his lips, Jed said quietly, “George, your mother is calling for you.” He stood in the barn doorway behind George, and Gideon could see the sadness in his eyes that George didn’t. By the time George had drawn a breath and swallowed down his tears, Jed’s face was unreadable. He nodded as George turned to him and held the door open as the boy trotted past.

  Gideon pushed himself back to his feet and shook his head. “You think we should stay another day or so? Just to be sure they’re all right?” he asked.

  Jed pushed the door closed and moved over to where his blanket and pack were sitting. “You meet so very many people in your travels,” Jed said slowly.

  Gideon shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Do so few affect you deeply?”

  Gideon frowned. “What?”

  Jed turned to stare back up toward the house. “Staying longer does not make leaving easier. We should go now, while there are others to distract the boy and his mother. They will be well, Gideon.”

  Gideon sighed loudly. Even though Jed was right, it still didn’t sit well.

  Jed chuckled low and tilted his head around. “And you have to meet your own mother.” He smirked as he quoted Gideon’s words back to him, as if a grown man needing his mother was the silliest thing he’d ever heard.

  Gideon frowned because Jed expected it of him and tightened Star’s girth.

  The family and Sheriff Bishop had congregated on the back porch to separate cream from milk when Jed and Gideon made their way across the yard, leading Star who was packed and ready. “Ma’am,” Gideon said, smiling to Mrs. Hennessey as she put down a big wooden spatula and stepped forward.

  “I want to thank you two again for what you’ve done for us,” she said, looking from Jed to Gideon and back. “I’ll never be able to repay you for it, for—well, for everything. Mostly for giving me back some peace of mind, and for… for burying my husband and his brother so nice. George always did like that stand of trees.”

  Gideon shifted uncomfortably and glanced to Bishop who was watching him with a slight smile on his face. Gideon knew what she was thinking—same thing Bishop was—but it didn’t make his skin crawl as bad as it had last night. Maybe he was getting used to it. “We didn’t do nothing any decent man wouldn’t do,” he said, meaning it, but parroting Bishop’s comment from last night. He wanted Bishop to remember that, that Jed was decent no matter what he’d done to those bastards in that clearing.

  “But you did it for me and mine,” she said, “and I’m grateful.” She swiped her hands down her apron front and looked toward the side of the house. I’d like for you to have something for your trouble—George?” she said and the boy nodded, grinning wide as he scampered off the porch and around to the front of the house.

  “We got all we need,” Gideon said, worried that she was giving up food. “Jed and I can find more than enough to take care o
f us—”

  “You can’t find this,” Mrs. Hennessey cut him off, waving one hand to silence him. At that point, George walked back around the corner of the house, dwarfed by the big bay gelding that Jed had ridden the day before. “Sheriff Bishop said that you two only had the one horse. Since you brought back our cows and mules,” she said, looking to Jed, “and since you found the men who—who did all this, then you should have a horse of your own.”

  Jed blinked, and Gideon had the pleasure of seeing him surprised. He looked at Gideon with a sort of ‘help me’ expression, and Gideon shook his head, grinning. This was going to be fun.

  “Thank you,” Jed said as George led the horse in close. “But you should—”

  “I don’t want one damned thing from those animals,” she said, her voice low and hard. It startled all of the men and George’s smile vanished as he turned to stare up at his mother. “And I don’t want anything by way of them.” Her hands were on her hips, and her eyes flared with anger, as if Jed had insulted her. “I only kept this because you need it—so you take it, Jedediah Buffalo Bird, you take it and let something good come from all this.”

  Frowning, Jed nodded his thanks, but turned his eyes to Bishop. “I doubt that this horse actually belonged to him….”

  “You got that right,” Bishop said fervently. “So I drew up a bill of sale—I carry county papers all the time, so I can make sure to handle things like this right and proper.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper, stepping down off the porch to hand it to Jed. “It says—”

  “I can read,” Jed interrupted mildly. He unfolded the paper, and Gideon edged in close to read over his shoulder. A big County of Amador seal was imprinted in red at the top, and Sheriff Bishop had carefully lettered the date, the legal transfer of ownership of the horse from the County to one Jedediah Buffalo Bird, and the reason for the sale: payment in kind for the services of a skilled tracker in the successful apprehension of wanted criminals.