Chapter 8

 

 

MAYBE because he’d slept so hard the night before, and maybe because he was worried Jed would slip off again, Gideon’s dreams were restless and dark, and he woke before the sun. Jed was barely stirring, making less noise than Star when she shifted her weight from hoof to hoof. Gideon coughed to clear his throat and pushed up onto an elbow. “Jed?”

“It is early yet.”

“You’re up,” Gideon reasoned, and forced himself to throw back his blanket. It was cold as hell this early in the morning, so he dragged on all his clothes and pulled his bedroll up over his shoulders for good measure before following Jed out to the fence for a piss. Night was just barely giving way to morning, the sky bluer than black and all but the brightest stars faded to nothing. He could see the cows standing together at the far side of the corral, and that more than anything else reminded him to wonder what Jed had really been doing out there in the wild, yesterday.

He tucked it in and buttoned back up, wishing they had a fire, or coffee, and wondering when Mrs. Hennessey and the kids would rise so he could go fetch some. They went back to the barn, bumbling around in the dark to get Star fed, and Gideon used the lantern to make his way along the path to the creek, rubbing his hands together and beating on his shoulders while she drank her fill. She was a good horse that way, and didn’t waste his time; mornings like this, he appreciated it especially.

By the time he got back to the barn, the sun was awake behind the mountains, casting a cold white glare over the lower peaks to the east and south. He couldn’t see it yet, but it gave off plenty of light for him to move by.

Jed leaned where Gideon had left him, at the fence just outside the barn. He was staring off toward the rising sun, and Gideon thought he might be chanting, but he couldn’t hear it.

He let Star loose with the cows and strode over to stand by him. “Jed?” he whispered. “You ready to talk now?”

“About what?” Jed asked. His voice was so placid and soft, all it made Gideon think of was how hard and angry it had been the day before last.

“About why you’re so peaceable today, for one,” he offered. “Two cows ain’t gonna do that, not after all we seen here.”

Jed looked out on the land and one thin shoulder lifted slightly. “I left after you fell asleep, to find them.”

“Find them.” Gideon knew he wasn’t talking about the cows.

“Yes. Do not worry,” he said, still so calm. “I killed them as a white man would. I left no tracks.”

Gideon realized his jaw had dropped open because his tongue was getting dry from the chill morning air. “Yeah,” he said blankly. “That was what was worryin’ me.” Shock and anger made his skin crawl—that Jed had just up and decided that, that Jed could do it, that Jed had done it without his help. He drew a slow breath before he spoke, because under it all, he knew he wasn’t really surprised. That maybe shocked him more than anything. “Jed,” he finally managed to start, “you can’t just—”

“It is already done,” Jed cut him off, his voice still calm. “Do not waste time trying to change my mind about something that is now in the past.”

Gideon swiped a hand over his face and looked around to be sure George hadn’t slipped up on them before he hissed, “Jed! It ain’t in the past, there’s bodies out there now! You got any idea how that’s gonna look?”

Jed nodded. “It will look like we find the bodies when we go to retrieve her cattle. When we run across them, we will tell your sheriff where they are.”

“When we find ’em….” Gideon’s throat was dry. He’d been traveling alone with this fella for weeks, fucking him for most of them, and… and he’d seen that woman, seen the pain and the shock in her, and the fear and the grief in her kids. Helped bury the bodies of her men. He swallowed and looked out toward the horizon. “How many were there?” he asked. “How many men did you kill?”

“I didn’t kill any men,” Jed said evenly. “I killed animals.”

Gideon let that sit a while, long enough that he decided it might even be true. He still wasn’t sure if it was right—but the thought of Mrs. Hennessey and the young’uns having to sit through a trial, having to face those bastards and tell what they’d done…. He sighed. “Long as you’re sure they won’t know it was you. And they might guess, just ’cause there ain’t no sign.”

Jed waved a hand. “Let them guess.”

They stood there in silence for a long, long while, long enough that Jed started chanting, low in his throat. “Okay,” Gideon said after a time. The disk of the sun edged over the mountaintops behind Jed, blinding, and the morning was shaping up clean and clear, as if Jed’s prayers were drawing it forward. “I’ll let ’em guess. Long as you tell me why you did it.” He couldn’t fault Jed for that kind of retribution; men like that were animals, and they deserved to be hunted down like one. The thing that was bothering him most wasn’t that someone had done that, but that it was Jed. It was nigh on impossible to reconcile the man who could hunt down and kill Lord knew how many men and walk away from it without a scratch with the man he’d seen in the house last night, laughing and telling stories to the children.

Jed’s head had been hanging low, his chin almost touching his chest, and he swiveled it now to look at Gideon. His hair spilled down, and Gideon watched him reach to pull it back over his shoulder, revealing his face. “Do you know of buffalo birds?” Jed asked.

Gideon frowned confusion at him. “I know they were birds that lived on buffaloes’ backs. I’ve seen pictures….”

“That is not the only thing they are known for. They travel with the herds, so they do not make their own nests. Instead, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, and leave their young for those other birds to raise. That is why I have my name.” His face hardened perceptibly, and he looked right into Gideon’s eyes, those night-blue eyes spearing Gideon with knowledge and anger. “A white animal, a raider, came to my people’s reservation. He and his kind did what these men did to Mrs. Hennessey, to many of the women of my mother’s day. I am his child. My real father—the man who raised me, not the animal who committed that crime against a woman—he claimed me as his own, raised me as his own. But my mother felt shame for a long time, Gideon, even though there was nothing she could have done to stop what happened. No man who forces another is a man. He is an animal.”

He turned back to the mountains then, to the sun, closing his eyes and picking up his chant. It was just as soft as it had been, but Gideon heard the strength behind it. Jed had told him it was in thanks, and he wondered now what Jed was being thankful for: finding those men, killing them, or not getting caught himself? Probably some of all of it.

“How come white folks are like this?” he asked after a time, and Jed startled him by laughing.

“It is not just the whites who are born with the badger spirits. Sometimes, they make great warriors. Sometimes, they hunt their own for sport.”

“Well….” Gideon frowned. Somehow, between Harold Crowe and the other Indians in Bill Tourney’s show, and Jed, he’d come to think that most of the strange tales about Indians, even Indian mysticism, were just bullshit. “What do you do with ’em?”

“Release them from their enchantments when we can,” Jed said. “Just as I did yesterday.”

 

 

THEY came upon the camp filled with dead men not long after they’d stopped for lunch, a cold meal the posse had packed out from a restaurant in Sutter Creek. The food turned to stone in Gideon’s belly as he stared at the bodies, and he put a hand to it to try and quell the nausea. Jedediah Buffalo Bird had done all this.

“Looks like they had a fight amongst themselves,” Sheriff Bishop said. He shook his big head, almost unseating his hat, which he’d pushed all the way back so he could see. He was a tall man, in his forties at least, broad-shouldered and handsome enough with too-long, wavy hair and a week’s worth of beard growth. When Gideon had asked, Rock had told him Sheriff Bishop had been riding hard lately, trying to find these bastards. Deputy Rock was a chatty man, the kind who made a good barber, and by the time they’d found this camp, Gideon knew that Bishop had lost his wife to childbirth a few years back. Just like Mrs. Hennessey had said, Bishop had a teenaged daughter, and two more nearer George’s age. His kids were back in Sutter Creek, caring for the house. “Smells like they had enough to drink.” The smell of alcohol was strong, but not strong enough to mask the smell of blood and death.

Gideon looked around, too, keeping his eyes off Jed despite the urge to be his friend’s shadow out here.

“We’ve eight dead here,” Deputy Rock said, pointing with the barrel of his revolver as he counted. “Most of ’em look shot.”

Five of the other men in the posse moved around the camp, calling out confirmations that there’d been a lot of drinking—empty liquor bottles littered the place, and some of the dead men held guns in their hands. 

“This one here got himself knifed,” one of the men called from the far edge of the clearing. He was bent over a body, his hat pushed back like Sheriff Bishop’s. “Reckon he was trying to get away when the blood loss got to him. Looks like he was headed toward the horses.”

They’d found the horses first, tied out together on long lines of rope by a creek near the clearing. The cows and two mules grazed together in a meadow past the edge of the trees. Jed had tracked them—it looked like he had, anyway—pointing out to Bishop and anyone else who asked how he knew where he was going. The men in the posse had been wary of the Indian at first, but since they were all on horses and Jed was on foot, and since Jed seemed to know what he was doing, the wariness had slowly given way to respect. They’d pretty much relegated Jed’s skin and hair to the land of nobody’s business, where it belonged, by the time they stumbled into the camp.

Gideon hadn’t once forgotten the things Jed had told him that morning. When he’d caught the first smell of death, and Jed’s body had stiffened in front of the group of riders, Gideon had registered the stillness that could only mean one thing, and his tension climbed so high that Star started sidestepping under him. Now, with Star well away with the other horses and nothing to do but stare at the mess, he just felt queasy.

The knot in his stomach pulled tighter when Bishop looked over to Jed, who was poking at the coals of the big fire in the center of the camp. “Good thing you found those cows when you did,” he called. “If you’d come much further along, we could be looking at your body, too.”

Jed didn’t look up from where he was spreading out the dying embers so they’d burn out faster. “I expect so,” he agreed. “These are the kind who kill for the sport of it.”

“Yeah,” Bishop agreed. “Probably why they killed each other.” He drew a deep breath but grimaced when the stench of lost blood and loosed bowels on the air caught at him. He spat on the ground before asking Jed, “Can you look around, make sure nobody got clear of this? If we’ve got somebody else to hunt down, I’d like to hire you on for the job.”

Jed nodded and walked the camp’s perimeter, and Gideon stood still and watched him, watched the way his hair fell forward when he knelt to look at something on the ground, and watched the way his mouth moved to chant a silent prayer each time he rose. Gideon swallowed down the knowledge that Jed wouldn’t find any sign because Jed hadn’t left this to chance. Nobody had gotten clear of this.

“He’s damned good,” Bishop said softly, startling Gideon.

“He got me and my horse from Montana to here in one piece,” Gideon replied. “Around mining camps and right through Indian country. He’s a good man.”

Bishop made a noncommittal sound and nodded, and Gideon let his eyes wander back to Jed. Jed finished his circuit and prowled back to the dying fire where Bishop stood waiting, and shook his head. “There are no tracks leading away from this.” He tilted his head toward the man who’d tried to crawl away. “And he was their leader. He is big. His guns are the nicest, and he wears finer clothes of any of these other men.”

Deputy Rock frowned and took long strides toward the corpse on its belly, but when he got there all he did was stare down at it. “Looks like he started something he couldn’t finish,” he called thoughtfully.

“Yes,” Jed said. “It does.”

Rock just stared at the dead man for the longest moment, before Bishop shook himself and called to his men, “Let’s get these sons of bitches buried, clear this place up.”

“Take him back with us,” Jed said to Bishop, inclining his head toward Rock and the man he’d knifed. That death hadn’t been quick or easy—not the kind of death a white man would have designed, Gideon decided—but he felt no remorse. If anything, he liked Jed all the more for this carnage, and that thought unsettled him some. He liked to think he was a modern, civilized man. For the most part.

“Why?” Bishop bristled. Clearly, he wasn’t liking the idea. 

“Let Mrs. Hennessey identify him. Let her know he is truly dead.”

“We can gather up their stuff, too,” Gideon offered, “give it to her to compensate her for all they took.”

Rock had walked over to join them while they talked. “I knew George Hennessey,” he said stiffly. “He was worth more than eight horses.”

Gideon held up his hands. “I didn’t mean no offense, Deputy,” he assured the man. “I could tell just by her kids that her husband was a good man. Brother-in-law, too, I reckon. Still, if anybody deserves this stuff, it’s her.”

Rock turned to look at him square on. “Hers ain’t the only farm these men rode through.”

Gideon squared his shoulders back and answered Rock with a glare of his own. “Hers is the only one I saw with my own eyes,” he said, hard.

Rock kept staring for a minute, then he shrugged and shot a look at Bishop. “Usually we sell things like this at auction, help pay the deputies and compensate the posses. I can’t make that decision.”

“What do you think, Earl?” Bishop asked. “You think there’s enough folks left on those other farms to warrant trying to parcel this out?”

Rock shrugged, diffident.

“You think anybody deserves it more than Moira?” he asked, harder now. “She survived what they done to her, Earl. Plenty of women wouldn’t have. I talked to her this morning, and she’s already putting her life back in order. If she wants any of this, I’m inclined to give it to her.”

Gideon heard the admiration in Bishop’s voice, and knew he had an ally here, a man who’d known the Hennesseys and respected them all. “I’m right there with you, Sheriff.”

Bishop looked at him and shrugged. “I’ve known her and her family since George was born. She’ll be looked after, I can promise you that.”

Gideon glanced around. “Fair enough,” he said, thinking anything but. He set it upon himself to check the horses and roll up the leader’s body in a bedroll. The big bay’s ears swiveled forward when Gideon dropped the body beside it, but other than that, it made no move. Good horse, he thought. Steady. Behind him, the deputized men had started digging two big graves, not nearly so deep or square as the ones he and Jed had dug for the Hennessey men, and it didn’t take long, not with the twelve of them working at it. By early afternoon, they had seven bodies dumped and covered, and most of the possessions gathered up and loaded onto the horses. Gideon had planned to throw the leader’s body on the bay, but Jed grabbed a hank of mane at its withers and swung up onto it before Gideon could get a saddle on its back.

“Jed, get down,” he snapped.

“I am fine,” Jed said serenely. “I will ride this horse back to the farm.”

“Unless you want to carry this damned saddle over your shoulder, get down and let me put it on the horse!”

Jed frowned, but he slid off the bay’s bare back and set a blanket carefully, then he took the saddle from Gideon and settled it with just as much care. Gideon stood back and crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Jed efficiently finished the job, picked up the lead line he’d used to collect the cattle they hoped belonged to Moira Hennessey, and swung right back up.

“You mind telling me where you want me to stow that body?” he asked dryly, looking up at Jed.

Jed glanced down at the ringleader’s corpse and shrugged. “I don’t care where you put it,” Jed said and reined out, wrapping the lead for the cows around the saddle’s pommel. “Sheriff,” he called quietly. “I will start ahead. The cows will be slower than the mules and horses.”

Bishop waved a hand, still intent on collecting the last of the dead men’s possessions, and somehow Gideon found himself stuck with a bunch of strangers, a pair of plow mules, and a corpse, while Jed disappeared into the trees. Bishop came to stand beside him for a moment, following his gaze in the direction Jed had gone. “He’s a bit of an odd one, ain’t he,” he observed mildly.

Gideon resisted a smile or a frown—he felt the urge to do both right now. “That, he is,” he agreed, heartily enough that Bishop gave him an odd look before he turned and walked away. Gideon watched him go. Bishop didn’t even know the half of it.

It didn’t take long to finish what they’d started, not with a dozen men combing the camp for any valuables missed or strewn around during the supposed fight. Men’s voices echoed quietly through the clearing, anxious deference to the dead most like, but they found another couple of handguns and two boxes of shotgun shells, and it seemed like half the posse needed to check the pack job Gideon had done before they could clear out of this place. The staples had all been tied onto the dead men’s horses, and somebody fashioned lead lines out of what rope remained, so that two of them led three and four packed horses respectively as they cleared the camp.

The ride out started quiet enough, but the farther away they got from the remains of the camp, the noisier and happier the men got. “Can’t believe we lucked out like that,” one fella, Bob, said, riding alongside Gideon with three horses trailing him.

“Yeah,” Gideon agreed, or tried to. “Seems like they got dealt just what they deserved.”

Bob kneed his horse closer to Gideon, speaking the quiet confidences most men were happy to share with strangers they knew they’d never see again. “I ain’t seen my wife in four days now,” he whispered. “We’ve been going off every Friday, scouring the countryside around here. I worried every time I left her it’d be the last time I did.”

“I c’n understand that,” Gideon said, letting him talk. Bob worked at the old lumber mill when he wasn’t deputized for law enforcement duties. Business, Gideon learned, had slowed a lot now that the gold had been cleaned out of this region. But mostly, Bob talked about his wife, about how fine she was and about how glad he was these men were dead, so he wouldn’t have to leave her again.

The subject nearest his heart pushed him to the subject of wives and women in general. “Mrs. Hennessey’s lucky,” Bob said at one point.

“You clearly ain’t seen her since them men ran through, then,” Gideon replied, harder than he’d meant to.

Bob’s shoulders hunched in a little, but he pressed on, “If it’d been my wife, I wouldn’t have wanted her to die and let them bastards win. Or leave our kids orphans.”

Gideon sighed and ground his teeth together. These were all decent people, and he didn’t know why he kept forgetting that. “Put like that,” Gideon allowed, “I reckon you’ve got a point.”

Bishop and the rest of his people relaxed more the further they got from the dead. The threat was gone without confrontation, and no blood of their own had been shed. Gideon tried to catch their spirit, and in a way, he did. He appreciated the turn of mood, as long as they didn’t visit it on Mrs. Hennessey who was still mourning her husband and coping with what had been done to her. Still, by the time they’d caught up with Jed, Gideon found himself answering questions and telling stories, but every so often he’d turn to look at Jed, riding quietly at the back of the group, and he’d worry.

The sun hung low in the western sky by the time they neared the house, and Bishop dropped back to ride beside Gideon, slowing them both until they’d put plenty of space between them and the others. “Earl told me the details that you gave him,” he said quietly, keeping his eyes on the hindquarters of a horse ahead of them. “About all that happened at the Hennesseys’ place.”

Gideon nodded, catching a glimpse of the man’s hard face before he turned his own eyes forward. “Me and Jed came on the farm not long after the raiders had left. I don’t reckon Mrs. Hennessey is going to feel safe there alone for a while, but we can’t stay on much longer—I’ve got to get on to San Francisco, catch up with my family.”

Bishop nodded, and his saddle creaked as he shifted. “We take care of our own, Mister Makepeace. Today was my regular day to ride out to that side of the county, so if you hadn’t come along, I’d have found Moira and her young’uns and what happened.” He sounded defensive, so Gideon turned his head and met his eyes squarely.

“That’s good to know, Sheriff,” he said, meaning it. “Just a coincidence that we stumbled along when we did. Glad we could be of some help, though. They’re good people, sure as hell didn’t deserve any of this.”

“No,” he agreed. “Earl’s wife, Rose, is coming out. They’re good friends. At a time like this, I reckon another woman’s the best help.”

Gideon nodded, but his mind got caught up in something Jed had said that morning, about his mother and the women of the reservation. He glanced over his shoulder to find Jed turned toward one of the cows he was leading, talking low to the animal in that gentle and kind way he used with Star. Gideon tried, but he couldn’t pull the image to mind of the anger on Jed’s face that first night here, of the man who could do what Jed had done in that camp.

Most of the posse split away before they reached the Hennessey farm, heading off to Sutter Creek or wherever each man called home. Bishop and Rock—Earl, as he told Gideon to call him—took over the leads of the dead men’s horses while Jed took the mules and kept the cows. As they neared the homestead, George and the kids ran out into the yard to meet them. Bishop and Rock stopped well away from the fences, and both of them dismounted to tie off the horses on leads. George followed Jed to settle the cows and mules, but Gideon walked on up to the house with Bishop, curious he supposed. He wasn’t proud of it.

Bishop did most of the talking, stepping up onto the porch and standing close to the widow, even though he didn’t touch her until she reached out a hand to him. When she did, he grabbed it and squeezed it tight, but eased his body back a half a step. If he had to bet, Mrs. Hennessey wouldn’t want for protection or affection when she was ready for it. Bishop wasn’t pushy, but it was clear he was worried about her and that he cared. And when Sarah fell on her butt and started crying, it was Bishop who swooped in to pick her up, tickling her until she squealed with laughter. Mrs. Hennessey smiled faintly, and Gideon nodded to himself. They’d be all right.

“I’ve got supper on—more than plenty for just you gentlemen,” Mrs. Hennessey said. “I thought—well,” she said, waving her hand, “I thought there’d be more people coming back than just you and Earl, Dale.”

“Well, Moira, this took a lot less time than we expected. We’ve buried every body except one. I’d appreciate you taking a look at him, confirming that we found the right men?”

Her body stiffened, but she nodded and reached for his hand again. He tucked it into the crook of his elbow and together with Deputy Rock and Gideon, escorted her back to the edge of the yard and the pack horses. She stopped a good ten feet away and waited while Rock walked over and lifted the oilskin away from the corpse’s face. Mrs. Hennessey didn’t gasp. She just pressed her lips closer together and nodded. “That was him, that was the leader,” she said, and if her voice was shrill, Gideon sure couldn’t blame her.

“The Indian, Jedediah, thought so. He’s the one suggested we bring him back here, so you could see for yourself that he wouldn’t be able to bother you or anyone, ever again.”

She blinked uncertainly around at all three of them. “Where did you find them, Dale? What…?”

“Come on, if you’ve got a big supper on, you need to see to it. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know before George gets back from milking. Fair enough?”

“Yes… yes.” Her eyes welled briefly, and she reached her free hand to swipe away the tears. “Thank you, Dale, for finding these men and for killing them!”

“Well now, I didn’t exactly do that.” He turned her gently and led her back to the house with a quiet order for Gideon and Rock to bring up the other six horses. Gideon all but left his string of horses for Rock. This was a story he couldn’t afford to miss. Pretty much, Bishop told it exactly like Jed had, finishing with, “like they got drunk and did it to themselves.”

“I—just like that?” she asked, like she couldn’t believe it. The way Bishop told it, it did sound too good to be true. Mrs. Hennessey’s voice hardened. “They couldn’t have got drunk five days ago and done away with themselves, before they ever caught sight of our home?”

“I wish to God they had, you know that. But the rest of ’em are dead, too, and planted in a shallow grave miles from here. This one, we’ll dump in a ravine somewhere for the coyotes.”

Her laugh was short and bitter. “Makes me feel bad for the coyotes.”

Bishop’s answering chuckle sounded hollow. “Guess so.” He patted her hand then looked back over his shoulder, frowning when he saw Gideon so close. He threw a glare that drew Gideon up short, and Rock, who’d finally caught up to them, too.

“We’ll, uh, get the staples unpacked,” Rock offered, “bring ’em around and set ’em on the back porch. That all right with you, Moira?”

“Yes,” she said vaguely. “Thank you, Earl.”

Gideon and Rock worked in silence, pulling only the dry goods and leaving the rest for Bishop to figure out. “Where’s George?” Rock asked him on their fourth trip around the house.

“I reckon he’s milking the cows we brought back,” Gideon said. “That’s what he did when Jed brought the first two home.”

“He’s a good boy,” Rock said approvingly, and Gideon nodded. “Let’s go help him. He won’t be able to carry all that by himself.”

They walked together across to the barn, where Jed was emptying a metal pail into two big wooden buckets attached to each end of a yoke.

“I got near nine gallons from ’em already, poor things,” George said, sitting on his stool beside the last cow with full udders.

Jed returned the pail to him, and he bent back to his work. “It is good that we found them, before they dried up.” Jed said it with such conviction that Gideon wondered where Jed had learned anything about keeping dairy cows. For a second, he had a vision of Jed sitting on a stool, his hair tied back while he pulled a cow’s teat. It made him smile.

“Yep,” George said, working away. Jed squeezed the boy’s shoulder and turned to face them. “I can take that up to the house,” he said, inclining his head to the buckets.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rock said. “I got it.” He bent carefully to the task and grunted as he hefted the yoke and steadied it on his shoulders. “The rest fit into this pail?”

“I got it, Mister Rock,” George said from under the cow. “Thank you kindly.”

Gideon wanted to linger, but he didn’t have a good excuse, and Jed was giving him a funny look anyway. “Go on, Gideon,” he ordered softly. “I will walk back with George and carry the pail.”

Gideon nodded and squeezed Jed’s arm before he followed Rock back up the path. Rock had the milk set on the porch by the time Gideon joined him, and he rubbed at his shoulder. “That’s no job for a boy his age.”

Gideon tested the waters a little. “You think it might be a job for Sheriff Bishop? Or his eldest?”

Rock looked like he was trying not to smile. “He’s always been fond of this whole family, Gideon,” he whispered, casting a quick look at the closed kitchen door. “He’ll make sure she’s took care of. If not by him, then by someone she approves of.”

Gideon nodded. “Good to hear. Come on, I smell more chicken, and that woman can cook like nobody’s business.”

“That, she can,” Rock agreed with a chuckle. “Better’n my wife, anyway—though I’ll deny that if you ever repeat it,” he said, a mock warning that made Gideon smile. He was doing that more today, and it felt strange after all that he’d learned. Strange, but good.

They tapped on the kitchen door before they entered and found Mrs. Hennessey in a rocking chair by the warm hearth, darning something, Gideon couldn’t tell what. Sheriff Bishop had Sarah parked against his hip while he stirred something in a big iron pot, and the scene was as domestic and comfortable as any Gideon could have hoped for, under the circumstances. Mrs. Hennessey asked a carefully vague question every minute or two, and Bishop answered promptly, without embellishment.

“We collected everything of value that they had on them, Moira,” he said eventually. “Gideon here thought you ought to have it, if you wanted it.”

She looked up at Gideon with a fierceness to her face that made him want to take a step back. He would have if he’d been standing, but he’d taken a seat with Earl near the fire, letting its heat bake away some of the tension of the day. “I thank you for the thought, Mister Makepeace,” she said, trying to be sincere but failing, “but I don’t want anything those men touched. I wouldn’t even take back our food if I didn’t have the children to think of.” Her hands clutched tight around her darning needles, and Gideon kept a watch on them, not wanting to find the point of one sticking into him.

“Think of the kids now, Moira,” Bishop said. “You could sell that stuff off, have a nice dowry for Sarah here, or for anything else you need.”

“You think of your kids, Dale,” she answered, dry, but her grip loosened, and her knuckles weren’t quite so white. “Don’t things like that usually get auctioned off to pay your salary?”

The way he twitched made Gideon hide a grin. This was a man caught out, no doubt about it. “Think about it,” he said gruffly, and finally set both spoon and child down.

A commotion outside heralded George’s noisy entry, and Jed followed right behind him. “The milk is covered,” he said. “George is very skilled.” He said the words soberly, but his eyes twinkled while George’s chest puffed up a little.

“Pa said I work real hard,” he said, earnest, smiling for a second before the words caught up with him.

Jed patted his head in passing as he headed toward his usual corner. He’d stand there and hold up the wall, or he’d slide down it, legs crossed in front of him, and just watch. “He was right,” Jed told the boy.

Mrs. Hennessey put her sewing aside and set the table, shooing away every man who tried to help her except George. She still held herself carefully away from everyone, and all of the men gave her a wide, respectful berth. Chairs were rounded up and toddlers balanced on familiar knees, and soon enough Gideon got to taste what had kept his mouth watering for the last half an hour. He was glad those dead chickens hadn’t gone to waste, but he didn’t say anything now, leaving compliments to the men she knew and trusted. Beside him, Jed did the same, even though the Indian’s table manners were better than Bishop’s and Earl’s, both of whom forgot about the napkins they had tucked in their shirtfronts.

As soon as the plates were cleared, Bishop gathered up Earl. “Take that horse with the body into town. Let the newspaper man take a picture, if he wants—it’ll be good news as far as it travels, that those bastards are done in. Leave the story to me, if you can bear to,” he added with a friendly grin.

“Don’t you worry about that, Dale,” Rock said fervently. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Gideon was glad of that. “Sheriff,” he said, though, before Rock could leave. “We’ll be staying on another night, if you want to ride back with Earl.”

“I’ll stay here, if it’s all right with Moira. Camp in the barn with you boys,” he said, most likely for Mrs. Hennessey’s sake. “Earl, you send Constance out with Rose in the morning, all right?” Constance was his eldest child, fifteen years old and a grown woman, to hear Bishop tell it. “If the boys can manage the house for a day on their own, I’d like Moira to have all the help she needs to set her house in order.”

“Will do, Dale.” He’d pulled his hat back on while they talked, and now he touched the brim. “Moira. You take care now. I’ll see you in church on Sunday.”

She nodded at him, giving another of her faint smiles, and the kids rushed to wave him off, with George leading the way. Jed set to helping with the cleaning, and Gideon would have as well if Bishop hadn’t caught his eye and tilted his head toward the back door.

“Gideon,” he said, “you mind giving me a hand with those other horses?”

Gideon shook his head, curious. “Glad to. We’ll need to find a way to hobble ’em, ’cause that corral sure ain’t gonna hold them all.”

“I’d appreciate your help then, working something out.” He picked up his hat from the back of his chair. “Moira, Jed. Back soon,” he said.

It was almost full dark by the time they left the house, but the fat crescent moon was up, and the lantern gave them enough light to work by, unloading valuables and stacking them inside the barn, then unsaddling and brushing down the horses. They were fine stock, and Gideon wondered if any of them had been rightfully owned by their riders. 

“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 cold 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 of 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.

Jed’s lips pursed and his fine brows drew together briefly, but he nodded and lifted his head. “You are very generous. I’m sure any man could have followed the trail they left.”

“Maybe,” Bishop shrugged, “but you’re the man who did.” He didn’t say anything else about it, and Gideon was grateful.

“Suppose we’d best get a move on,” Gideon said, because someone had to say it. “Mrs. Hennessey, I’ll remember your chicken for a long time to come.”

She looked startled then dimpled. “Good thing you said that,” she said, “because I cooked up some lunch for you boys when I made breakfast this morning. Nothing much, just bread and chicken, but it’ll keep you from having to buy a meal today. It’s in that sack on Jed’s horse,” she said, pointing.

Jed handed Gideon his new horse’s reins and stepped up onto the porch. “May I?” he asked, pointing to the little table where she’d laid the spatula. Other utensils, including a sharp butcher knife she or George had used to dress the chickens, sat on it.

She nodded, looking confused, but Jed just picked up the knife, tilted his head sideways, and cut off a hank of his hair, from underneath toward the back. He set the knife back down and held out the long lock to her. “Among my people, it is a sign of strength and honor. You are strong.”

Tears welled, making the green of her eyes shine in the morning sun, and she reached a tentative hand to take it from him. “That’s… I don’t know what to say.”

“Then say nothing,” Jed said, and smiled. He stepped off the porch with a nod for George and Sheriff Bishop, took his horse’s reins from Gideon, and led the way off the homestead.

They mounted up at the edge of the cleared land, and Gideon turned to wave a last goodbye from Star’s back. He leaned down close to her ear to give her a command, backing it up with a lift and touch of his knee to her withers, centering himself as she rose on her back legs and pawed the air with one hoof. He could hear George’s laughter all the way out here, and ahead of him, Jed shook his head.

“Always the showman, Gideon?” he chided.

Gideon smiled as they rode out.