“Why would I?”
“Well,” Gideon shrugged, “all the noise you made about horses slowing a man down….”
Jed shrugged. “He is an Indian pony. I will return him to Montana and then decide.”
“You gonna keep him on your reservation?”
“No.”
The one word, harder than Gideon had expected, got Gideon thinking. “Do you live on a reservation?”
“No. But I do not believe a man or beast should be confined to a place not its own.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said, meaning it. Star’s place was with him. She’d been birthed into his hands and raised up from a wobbling colt with him teaching her right from wrong. Maybe this pony’s place would be with Jed, by the time Jed got it back to Montana. “You ought to give it a name.”
“I have,” Jed said, surprising him. “Sunkdudan.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Short-legged pony.”
Gideon snorted. “What you suffer from, Jed, is a lack of imagination.”
Jed shrugged. “That is what he is. Just like your horse. She is the star of your show.”
Gideon blinked. Those were pretty much his daddy’s words, that she’d be a star if he took proper care of her. He couldn’t recall having told Jed that story, which made the man’s assumption all the sweeter. “Sort of,” he said, without offering any more explanation. Jed didn’t ask for one.
The trees had thinned out a little as they came out of the mountains, but plenty of the north-facing hillsides in this rolling country were dotted with stands of oaks, the short and stubby kind that grew hardy and slow in this dryer climate, and whole crowds of them dotted rivers and streams. They stopped for lunch by a stand of willows, letting the horses feed on grass and drink water from the stream they’d been following. Gideon sat back in the sun, letting his mind drift as his body relaxed. The ache inside wasn’t so bad now, but it was nice to be still and to be warm. Nice to feel those aches that reminded him of Jed.
Movement beside him drew him out of a drowse and he looked up to see Jed openly watching him. The frown on Jed’s features made him think it was time to start moving again, but as he gathered himself to rise, Jed turned and dropped into a sit beside him, his legs bent at the knee and his ankles crossed almost under his butt.
“Time to move on?” he asked anyway.
Jed reached out a hand, patting his knee. “Not yet.”
Gideon tilted his head, listening for any sounds that shouldn’t be here, or the noise of horses or people, but all he could hear was the birds in the trees and the breeze in the grasses. “Time for something else?” he asked hopefully, and it looked like Jed was trying to frown at him for the suggestion, but couldn’t quite make his mouth do it.
“My father was a good storyteller, like you,” Jed said out of the blue. “He would tell us stories, when we were small, of the way the land was before the white men came. His father and his grandfather could walk the land for three days in almost any direction, if they wished, and never see sign of another Indian, much less a white man.”
“Feel like we did that, too,” Gideon said, “when we were east of the Sierra Nevada.”
Jed chuckled. “We walked white men’s trails, Gideon. We followed white men’s train tracks and crossed white men’s bridges. And we were rarely three days from some white settlement, even though they might have been difficult for you to find.”
Gideon shrugged, accepting. He was thirsty for details, for knowledge he could hold on to about this man who’d come to mean so much. “What else did your daddy do?”
“He was born on the reservation, but his father was not. My father learned the old ways, and he and my grandfather taught them to us. He taught us to hunt and fish, to be as one with the land, to honor all the creatures that Earth Mother created. Grandfather said that even white men had a place here, a reason for being.” Jed pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, staring so thoughtfully at Gideon that Gideon felt mesmerized by those night-blue eyes. “But my father told us never to trust them, that even with the best of intentions, white men cannot honor the ways of our people.”
“Reckon plenty of us are pretty ignorant,” Gideon said slowly. He didn’t like talking white folks down, but he wasn’t going to ignore the evidence of his own eyes, neither. Besides, his friends in the show like Harold Crowe had called folks like Bill and the troupe exceptions to the rule.
Jed nodded. “Even your teachers—at least the missionaries who taught us—are ignorant. They believed they were teaching us better ways, but really they only taught us white ways: whites believe the Earth has no soul, that she exists to be conquered and used and that she will always provide plenty. Yet through my father’s eyes I have seen the buffalo disappear, and the wolf, and the way your mining for metal can poison the rivers and kill the fish.”
Jed turned his face away, gaze rising toward the afternoon sky, but his hand returned to Gideon’s knee and rested there. “You asked me about my school.” He hugged his legs closer but his voice was even as he went on. “We learned many things from the white teachers, Gideon, but the thing I learned best is that my father was right. The white man is uncompromising and unforgiving. You may not intend to be, but it is in your nature. For my people, to trust in your kind is to die a little. Or a lot.”
The words were hard—not the tone, because Jed’s voice stayed as even and gentle as it had been through the entire telling. But Gideon knew that the story was more than a piece of Jed’s history. It was Jed’s explanation for why nothing could be between them.
He took a breath, wanting to say something, but he knew that telling the man he was flat-out wrong wouldn’t get him very far. Nobody liked hearing that, and it didn’t matter one whit what color their skin was.
Jed rose and turned to look down at him. “We should go. We are not far now, and you may find that your companions have waited for you.”
Gideon chuckled at that; Bill Tourney didn’t wait for anybody, not when money was on the line, and he sent advance teams up the road, men and women to put up posters and spread the word. Jed reached out a hand, offering to help Gideon up, and Gideon let him. But as he came to his feet, ignoring the protest of his muscles, he stepped in close to Jed, letting their bodies touch.
“I’m real sorry for the way things are between our peoples,” he said, slipping an arm around Jed’s waist. “But I’m not sorry for the way things are between you and me. I’m not looking forward to leaving you.”
Jed sighed again, but he squeezed Gideon’s hand before pulling away.
Gideon held the silence for a mile or more, chewing over what Jed had said. It wasn’t all wrong, but it wasn’t all right either. “Jed,” he started a ways down the road, “you’re making a mistake there.”
Jed looked around himself. “Where?”
Gideon waved an annoyed hand. It wasn’t like he’d ever been accused of waiting too long to talk. “That story you told me. You think that white folks are like the white God, that there’s only one of ’em and only one way they can be. But that’s like saying all Indians are the same, and I’ve already met enough of ’em, from enough different tribes, to know that ain’t true.”
“You are more the same than you are different.”
“Then how does that explain you and me?” he asked, dogged on that point. “You ain’t seen me disrespect you or your ways, have you?”
Jed frowned at him. “Every day, Gideon,” he said. “You are like a child, you do not even know what you do.”
“Then you’d best teach me fast,” Gideon said heartily, “if we ain’t got much time left together.”
Jed blinked surprise, like he’d never thought of that before, and Gideon smiled, reining Star close enough to Jed’s pony that he could lean over and pat Jed’s thigh. “See? Some of us are plenty teachable and happy to learn new ways.”
“Many of you seem to think so,” Jed said.
Gideon snorted, shaking his hea
d. And Jed called him stubborn.
Chapter 10
THEY traveled on, but as with the morning, the pace was slow and easy, a lot of walking mixed in with the riding. And talking. Gideon thought Jed must’ve said more words today than he had on the whole trip to date. To hear Jed actually talking, pointing out things about the land here in California, dredging up bits of Indian mysticism—it fascinated Gideon. He’d had little call to appreciate the “white God,” as Jed persisted in calling Him, but he’d heard other Indian legends, and enjoyed them.
He thought he could come to like most of the gods of Jed’s people, too. They reminded him of folks in the show, and there were enough of them that it seemed like they’d provide a merry old time around a campfire or interfering with the ways of mortal folks. The more Jed told him, the more he thought of the gods of Olympus, the myths and legends of an era before Jesus. The Sioux had their nature goddess, like the Greeks’ Artemis, and mother earth, and if he tried he felt like he could map most of the animal spirits onto other gods. Loki, a crafty fox, could easily have been Hermes. Haokah, their god of the hunt, could have been Artemis—or if they needed him to be a fella, her brother Ares, the Greek god of war. The stories made him wonder if them gods of old hadn’t been as real to the folks who lived in the old world as Jed’s gods were to him. He’d always thought of ’em as campfire tales, and that the God who was Jesus’s father had been around running things since before time began. Jed’s stories brought home to him in a way that Harold Crowe and his kin’s showmanship never had, just how deep an Indian’s faith in the land—and its spirits—could really run. Made him wonder about his own faith, or lack of it, that seemed to fit right well with many other members of the show.
Back when Gideon was a boy, Bill Tourney had told him that if you traveled for a living, you had to be more open-minded, and more forgiving of the ways folks learned when they’d been born, grew up, and planned to die all on the same patch of land. He’d taken that to heart and seen the different ways people worshiped God, heard the different ways they believed in Him, and he’d mostly been fine with all of it. This wealth of characters, and the awe Jed spoke of them with, they caught the storyteller in him, and it seemed like they tried to answer more questions about the world around them. He could see the appeal of them.
As they rode and walked and talked, they ran across more people, too. They weren’t on a wide road, but Gideon could tell it was leading up to one, just from the traffic. There were more houses around, too, more smoke swirling lazily from chimneys, and the sound of distant children’s laughter mixing in with the calls of the birds. It wasn’t constant. They could still go for long stretches with nothing but the sound of their own voices and the gurgle of a stream, but compared to the weeks they’d spent through Montana, Idaho, and Nevada, having folks around felt good to the people lover in Gideon. Bill’s words were close to mind, about being tolerant of people, and he wondered if these folk were the kind that would listen to Jed’s stories with pleasure, or skepticism, or outright disdain. If Jed would even tell them, which he probably wouldn’t.
They hit Stockton before lunch, but Gideon didn’t see that as a reason not to eat in a restaurant, and he paid this time. “I’ve been through here with the show,” he told Jed. “Played out near that stock yard we passed, not far from the railroad station.”
“Did the show play here on this trip?” Jed asked.
“Probably,” Gideon said. “Stockton always drew a big crowd, so I reckon they came inland before they headed on to San Francisco.” There might be a flyer around somewhere, or he could ask the waitress when she swung back by.
“No matter,” Jed said, even though he was clearly curious. “You will find them soon, now.”
They got back on the road before the sun reached its zenith, and turned west. The afternoon went as the morning had, and Gideon secretly worried that Jed would turn up hoarse, he was talking so much. But Gideon hung on every word, storing it away: the poverty of the reservation; his mother’s black eyes; the joy of his first hunt with his father, elder brother, and uncle; how his mother and aunt had taught him to cook; what he’d liked about Laramie—that took some teasing, to draw those details out of Jed. Gideon thought Jed might like a bigger city. Laramie was about the same size as Livingston, and towns that size were harder to get lost in. Gideon had always found big cities to be more cosmopolitan, where neighbors tended to leave their neighbors in peace.
“Tourist towns are good,” he volunteered, “but big cities are better.” He talked a little about Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, and other places he knew from his own experience. “They’re used to all kinds of folks visiting, and they’re real friendly.”
Jed looked dubious, but Gideon didn’t mind. He was used to that look after all this time, and it wasn’t like he was ever going to have a chance to prove his words.
That thought made him quiet, and when Jed finally ran down, he started singing, hyunh-hya-hyunh-huh, the familiar chorus mixed in with other words Gideon didn’t know. He let himself breathe to the rhythm of Jed’s chanting, and the practice soothed him some.
They stopped well before dusk at a place set back off the road and a good ways from the creek. Jed made up the camp, starting a fire and walking out a perimeter while Gideon unsaddled the horses and got them set for the evening. The Indian pony eyed him warily, but he didn’t try to pull free like he had the first night, and he didn’t try to bite. Maybe he was getting used to Gideon—or maybe he was getting used to Star. Whatever the case, he settled down well enough when Gideon brushed him down and tied him on a long lead near Star.
By the time he got back to the camp, Jed had a fire going, coffee brewing, and fish baking. The smell of it wasn’t particularly appetizing, but the sight of Jed bent over the fire was welcome and familiar… and there wouldn’t be many more of those sights. He looked away only to smile at the sight of their bedrolls lying side by side.
“It will be a cool night,” Jed said. “I thought we could share heat—but I think that is all.” He said the last softly, and when Gideon nodded, he seemed relieved.
Not that Gideon didn’t want what he’d given Jed that morning or what Jed had given him the night before. But he was happy with having Jed close. He’d figured it out, finally, that fucking, he could find. This thing with Jed, he hadn’t never found before. As he banked the fire and pulled off his boots, he watched Jed fussing with the covers of their shared bed before settling into it.
They wouldn’t have many more nights like this. Lonesomeness moved him over to the bedroll, and he eased onto it, watching Jed all the while. Jed had stretched out on his back, his hair spread out around his head like a dark, soft pillow. He had pulled the blankets up to his chin, and his eyes were closed, but his body was tense. “You cold?” Gideon asked.
“No. Yes,” Jed said.
Gideon smiled. Likely not, but likely, too, was the fact that Jed didn’t trust him one whit, not even after all this traveling together. “I’ll miss a repeat performance of last night or this mornin’,” he whispered, “but I like the idea of just holding on to you, too.”
That got Jed’s eyes open, and a wary look crossed his face.
Gideon had to wonder, really, which one of them Jed wasn’t trusting here. He lay there and let his eyes drift between Jed’s quiet face and the little fire Jed had built, and his mind drifted, too, back over the highlights and low points of this trip. Seeing Jed stumble into Livingston, burning up with fever… seeing the heart in the man as he licked that infection and stood on wobbly legs after long days on his back, sweating and in pain… that first night when Jed had let him know his secret desire wasn’t a secret at all—that made him pause to wonder just what else Jed had heard him say. More than most men, because when he’d thought Jed was at death’s door he’d shared some things he rarely told anybody. Right now, Gideon was glad of it. He was glad that Jed liked him, too, glad that Jed liked all that they got up to together on dark nights near empty roads.
Gideon sighed. His mother had always said she hoped he’d find someone he’d love half as much as she loved his daddy, but even she wouldn’t wish this on him. Not with somebody he could never keep. Not with a man at all. She’d whispered about grandchildren more than once in recent years, and he’d been grateful every time his daddy had shushed her. Maybe his daddy knew him better than he’d let on. Or maybe his daddy just believed that children ought to come from love, and not because a mother wanted grandbabies. Besides, his younger brother was married already, and his oldest sister was sixteen now, and when he’d left the show in Montana she’d been keeping company with Johnny Wilson, a nice young bronc rider who’d joined the show two years past. Grace and Johnny would give his mama them grandbabies, if Ronald and his new bride didn’t get ’round to it first.
Gideon might, too, one day. Maybe if he was lucky, he’d find a good woman to feel for the way he felt for Jedediah. If he was real lucky, she might love him back the way Jed seemed to, for all that the man tried to deny it.
He’d always been lucky, and he knew it. Even lying here, holding something he knew he’d be letting go of soon, he didn’t regret a minute of it. His ma had taught him that, never to waste time regretting the wonderful things life brought by you, even if they were brief.
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