Well Traveled

by Margaret Mills

  “Indians not of my people. And your parents, your siblings… how will they feel when you show up with me—a man and a Lakota?” He shook his head, his face tightening into hard lines. “My people do not think as much of two-spirit people, but they would fear my love for a white man. Your kind is not known for—”

  “You love me?” Gideon interrupted, latching on to the words that mattered. “Do you love me, Jed?”

  Jed flinched like somebody had raised a hand to strike him, and shook his head hard enough to make his hair fly around his shoulders. When he crossed his arms over his chest, he looked… he looked exactly like Gideon’s mother did sometimes, when she got caught out by something she’d said herself. “It does not matter.”

  “It’s the only thing that matters!”

  Jed frowned, tilting his head to the side and staring at Gideon like he was watching some foreign animal he’d never seen before. “Being alive matters more. Being free….” He sighed and turned his face toward the rising sun. “Being free matters more.”

  “Being alive for what, Jed?” The very idea that Jed could walk away from what they felt for each other, that he would choose to live his life alone, with nothing good to hold on to, made Gideon ache for his lover—and brought back some of the fear he thought he’d put behind them. “If not for feelings like these, what the hell good is being alive for?”

  Jed swung his head around to glare over his shoulder at him. “There are other feelings besides these,” he said, slow and hard. “There are feelings no man should have to feel.”

  Gideon understood that. He truly did. For all the good fortune he’d had in his life, he’d still had plenty of folks look down on him—more if they learned his folks weren’t married, more still if they learned how his mother earned her pay—and his ma had certainly suffered more judgment and scorn than she had ever begun to deserve. “You think you can avoid feelin’ those feelings, just because you turn away from the better, higher ones?”

  “I….” Jed’s mouth worked for a second, and he blinked slowly, and Gideon felt like he’d just won the toughest, fastest horse race in the world.

  “See?” he said, pushing his point home. “I may be younger than you, but I’m twenty years old, Jed. I’m no kid, and I ain’t so dumb as you want to think. I ain’t gonna be the man to make you feel them bad feelings. And I’m not a man who’ll walk away and let us both live to old age full of regrets.”

  Jed sighed and dropped to a squat, pulling out his knife to gut the fish, and Gideon let him. He had his horse to tend to, checking her hooves now that he had daylight to see them, and setting her nearer a patch of tall grass. After a second he did the same for Jed’s pony, then he came back to the fire and laid a couple of heavier sticks on, now that the tinder was burning hot.

  Once Jed had stuck sticks through the fishes’ gills and propped them over the fire to cook, he started pacing, a behavior Gideon hadn’t seen in him this whole trip. Gideon opened his mouth more than once and then shut it, remembering more of his mother’s words: sometimes, honey, if you try and talk a man into something, you’ll end up talking him out of it. But if you let him work his way around to it himself, he’s more likely to stick to his decision. Of course, his ma had been talking about how to deal with his daddy and his brother, but Gideon had learned over the years that it was true of just about anybody. Seemed the older he got, the smarter his mama got.

  Jed stopped his pacing to tend to the fish while Gideon just watched the smoke swirl lazily eastward. The land was heating already, and sucking in more cool breeze off the bays. It just about killed Gideon to keep quiet, because the act was less natural to him than Jed’s pacing was to Jed. Or maybe than happiness was to Jed. Jed had a lot of peace in him, but at least early on, he hadn’t seemed to carry much joy.

  Hard as the silence was for Gideon, it paid off by the time Jed pulled the little trout off the fire and planted the sticks in the ground with a huff.

  “All of the reasons this is bad still exist.”

  Gideon nodded. “I can’t argue that. But Jed, you rode slow—hell, you had to have dragged your feet to take this long to get here. And I rode hard. And I always will, so you’re gonna have to work to shake me.”

  Jed dropped to a squat, hands hanging loosely between his knees, and glared. “So this is to be a war, then? I’ve seen too much war, and I want no part of it.”

  Gideon shook his head. “Last thing in the world I want is to fight you. I’d let you go, if you convinced me that fighting was all we’d be doing.” He stared at Jed, holding his breath as the other man opened his mouth as if he’d actually say it, as if he’d try.

  But after a time that seemed like forever, Jed merely sighed. “I still foresee a lot of fighting in our future,” he warned.

  Gideon wanted to take that news soberly. But all he had ears for was “our future.”

  He tried to pick the right words out of the million things he wanted to say. What came out wasn’t quite what he’d expected, but his mouth had its own ideas. “Long as we’ve got a future, Jed, I’m all right with that.” He let the grin settle on his face, feeling his skin draw tight, he was so happy. “You wait ’til you see New Orleans. Nobody there’s going to think anything of you or of us.”

  “I don’t care for cities,” Jed tried, a lame excuse at best, because as far as Gideon was concerned things were already decided.

  “You’ve never seen real cities,” he countered. “Nah,” he said, waving a hand, “don’t waste our fightin’ time on that. I know you’ve skirted plenty of towns, and I remember you lived in Laramie, but the really big cities? All kinds of men can get lost in those, and don’t nobody care a whit about them. That’s the way it will be for us—you just wait.”

  Jed sighed. “Gideon… why did you come here? Truly, think about your words before you answer, and tell me why you came.”

  He didn’t have to think. He knew. He’d thought about it ever since he’d walked out of that train station like a crazy man. He’d thought about it while he sat to Star’s trot for hours on end, worrying about her legs and his ass, her hooves and his heart. He knew. But he waited the space of a few breaths, counting seconds in his head to try and show some respect before saying, “’Cause this is where you are, Jed. And I’ve decided that that’s where I want to be—wherever you are.”

  The smile that touched Jed’s mouth and the affection in his eyes warmed Gideon—even the tug on fine black eyebrows and the clear effort Jed made to hide that smile and that affection.

  “You know so little,” Jed breathed.

  Gideon took the two steps he needed to get to where Jed knelt, and dropped to his ass on the ground beside him. He tugged a fish-loaded stick out of the ground and handed it Jed’s way, then grabbed another for himself, using his fingers to peel the skin back and expose the white, tender meat. Watching Jed’s eyes dart nervously from the fire to their hands to the fish—and every so often, up to his mouth, following the fish past his lips, Gideon chuckled softly and shook his head. Scooting over a little so that his boot almost touched Jed’s butt, he picked another flake of meat off the bones and held it out, waiting. Jed’s frown was fierce this time, but after a second he bent his head, tilting it sideways to keep his hair back, and took the meat off Gideon’s fingers. Gideon felt his cheeks start to ache, he was smiling so broadly. “Lucky for you I like learnin’, then.”

  THEY reached Walnut Creek near noontime, ambling along shoulder to shoulder and leading their horses behind them. Gideon pulled up by the telegraph office and wrapped Star’s reins around a hitching post. “Hold up. Need to send a message to my family.”

  Jed reached and grabbed his forearm in a firm grip. “To say what?” he asked, as wary now as he’d been in their first days of traveling together.

  Gideon grinned.

  After offering up a frown that Gideon was sure would work permanent lines into his face, Jed dropped his arm and tied off his horse. “Go on, then.”

  “Come with me, th
en,” Gideon teased, and he smiled wider when Jed narrowed his eyes, but he fell in beside him.

  Elizabeth Crowley, STOP

  c/o Bill Tourney, Grand Hotel, Sacramento. STOP

  Have met new friend and am seeing a whole new country. STOP

  See you in N. Orleans. STOP

  Am learning about telegrams. STOP

  LOVE.

  Read more about Gideon and Jed in

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  About the Author

  MARGARET MILLS is a professional technical writer and editor; branching into narrative fiction seemed like a natural extension of the pleasure that writing has always been for her. A California resident, Maggie enjoys hiking in the nearby hills, reading, walking the dog on the beach, and writing with her co-author, Tedy Ward. Maggie met Tedy in a writers’ group, and their personalities mix almost as well as their characters’ do; they enjoy writing the kinds of stories they love to read.

  Her most exciting adventure involved a brief but thrilling skydiving habit. Her next exciting adventure involves a trip to Yosemite National Park where she’ll be hiking Half Dome with her husband of twenty-five years.

  Visit her web site at http://sites.google.com/site/wordprocesses/home.

  TEDY WARD has been a technical writer in the legal and academic fields for many years. She lives in Georgia and enjoys reading, walking her dog, and writing with her co-author, Margaret Mills. Tedy met Maggie in a writers’ group, and their personalities mix almost as well as their characters’ do; they enjoy writing the kinds of stories they love to read.

  When time permits, Tedy enjoys hiking, cooking, and reading, using her commute to and from work to listen to audio books or the news if she’s feeling particularly mellow about the state of the world.

  Visit her web site at http://sites.google.com/site/wordprocesses/home.

  Western Romance from DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com