CHAPTER TWO One Horse #3
Gideon knelt. “Who sent you?”
The gunman smiled through blood. “Man who owns the road.”
“Harrow?”
The smile widened.
“Cutter?” Gideon asked.
Something flickered in the man’s eyes.
Then he stopped breathing.
Gideon searched the body. No letter. No identification. Only forty dollars, a brass match safe, and a silver button bearing the seal of the United States Marshal Service.
He closed his fist around the button.
When he returned, Jude was sitting against the boulder with the dead attacker’s revolver across his lap. Blood ran from beneath both wrist cuffs.
Gideon crouched before him.
“Give me the gun.”
“Afraid I’ll change my mind?”
“I need both hands to remove the irons.”
Jude surrendered the revolver.
Gideon unlocked the cuffs. The moment the steel released, Jude pulled his hands against his chest. Deep red grooves encircled both wrists, one reopened where the chain had tightened during the fight.
Gideon took a bandage from his coat pocket.
The medical supplies had been on the packhorse, but he always carried enough linen to stop one man from bleeding. Experience had taught him that trouble rarely respected the location of saddlebags.
He cleaned Jude’s wrists with water from his personal canteen.
Jude watched the precious liquid run pink over his hands and disappear into the earth.
“We may need that,” he said.
“We need it now.”
Gideon wrapped the right wrist first. His fingers moved carefully over Jude’s pulse, securing the bandage without cutting circulation. Jude’s hand rested in his, no longer forced there by rawhide or steel.
The difference troubled Gideon more than it should have.
“You could have left me,” he said.
Jude looked toward the canyon bend where the chestnut had vanished. “On foot, in ankle irons, with two riflemen above me?”
“You didn’t know there were two when you pulled me behind the rock.”
“I suspected.”
“You could have taken my horse.”
“Your horse had just been shot.”
“You could have taken my gun.”
“I did.”
“And then you gave it back.”
Jude’s gaze returned to him. “Would you prefer I hadn’t?”
Gideon tied off the bandage.
“No.”
“Then stop asking questions you don’t want answered.”
“I want the answer.”
The air between them became still.
Jude looked down at Gideon’s hands around his wrist. “I surrendered because I needed one honest man.”
“You don’t know I’m honest.”
“I know you could have let Rusk finish what he started. I know you put your body between us when he wanted me angry enough to hang. I know you asked permission before touching a man the law says you own.”
“The law does not say I own you.”
“Rusk believes it does.”
“I’m not Rusk.”
“I noticed.”
The quiet way Jude said it settled beneath Gideon’s breastbone.
He bandaged the other wrist and inspected the ankle irons. One had cut through Jude’s sock during the fall but had not broken the skin.
“I’m taking these off.”
Jude raised an eyebrow. “All of them?”
“No.”
Gideon removed the ankle restraints.
Jude stretched his legs slowly. The motion drew the fabric of his trousers tight along his thighs, revealing the strength held there. Gideon looked away before the observation became indulgence.
He opened the wrist cuffs. Instead of closing both around Jude again, he fastened one around Jude’s right wrist.
Then he closed the second around his own left.
The short chain settled between them.
Jude looked down.
Six inches of steel joined his arm to Gideon’s.
“This is new,” he said.
“You’ve demonstrated that securing you to a horse presents complications.”
“You could let me walk free.”
“You’ve also demonstrated that you know how to use a chain as a weapon.”
“Against a man trying to kill you.”
“Which is why you still have both hands.”
Jude lifted their connected wrists. Gideon’s arm rose with his.
“What happens when one of us needs privacy?”
“We develop trust quickly.”
A laugh escaped Jude before pain caught him. He pressed his free hand against his ribs.
Gideon moved closer. “Sit still.”
“I am sitting.”
“Poorly.”
He opened Jude’s shirt and examined the bruise. The fight had darkened it further, but nothing felt displaced. Gideon’s palm moved from Jude’s ribs to the firm plane of his stomach.
Jude’s breathing changed.
Gideon felt it beneath his hand.
Their cuffed wrists rested together between their bodies. Each small movement of Gideon’s fingers pulled gently against the chain.
“Cracked, not broken,” Gideon said.
“You told me that before.”
“I’m making certain.”
“Your hand is nowhere near my ribs now.”
Gideon looked down.
His palm had drifted lower than necessary, spread across Jude’s stomach just above the waistband of his trousers. Jude’s muscles were warm and hard beneath his touch.
Gideon removed his hand.
“You’re going to become unbearable,” he said.
“Become?”
A horse whinnied deeper in the canyon.
Gideon stood.
The sudden motion pulled Jude to his feet by the connecting chain. Jude collided with him, free hand gripping Gideon’s shoulder.
They steadied one another.
“Bishop,” Gideon said.
They followed the sound.
Walking cuffed together required immediate cooperation. Gideon’s stride was longer, while Jude’s injuries forced him to move carefully. The first time Gideon stepped too quickly, the chain jerked Jude forward. The second time Jude stopped without warning, Gideon nearly pulled him off his feet.
By the third attempt, they found a shared rhythm.
Their shoulders brushed as they moved along the canyon wall. Jude’s bound hand remained close to Gideon’s hip, while Gideon’s cuffed wrist rested beside Jude’s. The chain swung between them, sometimes touching Gideon’s coat, sometimes Jude’s thigh.
They found Bishop trapped between a fallen juniper and the canyon wall.
The gelding’s eyes were wild. Blood ran from the wound high in his shoulder, black in the failing light.
Gideon approached slowly.
“Easy,” he murmured. “Easy, boy.”
Bishop tried to pull away and stumbled.
Jude moved with Gideon because the cuff allowed no other choice. He did not crowd the horse. Instead, he turned his body sideways and lowered his voice.
“Let him smell you.”
Gideon extended his right hand.
Bishop’s nostrils flared. He touched Gideon’s palm, breathing hard.
“That’s it,” Jude whispered. “He knows you.”
Gideon reached the reins. Jude used his free hand to move the juniper branch while Gideon led Bishop clear.
The horse favored his front leg, but the bullet appeared to have passed through the muscle above the joint. No bone protruded. The bleeding had slowed.
“The medical roll is under the packhorse,” Gideon said.
“We can go back.”
“Not before dark.”
“He won’t carry us without the wound dressed.”
“He shouldn’t carry us at all.”
Jude examined the canyon walls. “Then we walk seventy miles with one canteen between us.”
Gideon looked at Bishop.
The horse had carried him across three territories, through dust storms, floods, and gunfire. Asking him to bear two men after taking a bullet felt like a betrayal.
Jude seemed to read the thought.
“Clean the wound,” he said. “We ride slowly until we find water. If he weakens, we get off.”
“You know horses?”
“I was a ranch foreman before Harrow turned me into a murderer.”
Gideon looked toward him.
Jude’s face had closed again.
Together, they returned to the dead packhorse. The animal had fallen partly into a narrow fissure, pinning the pannier containing the medical supplies beneath its body. Gideon cut away one blanket, a coil of rope, and a canvas water bag with a bullet hole near its base.
Most of the water had already escaped.
He poured what remained into his canteen.
Less than a quart.
The second pannier contained grain, coffee, and ammunition, but it had split during the fall. Supplies lay scattered beneath the carcass where neither man could reach them without moving more than a thousand pounds of dead horse.
Gideon retrieved two handfuls of cartridges, a small packet of dried beef, and one tin cup.
Everything else remained trapped.
They returned to Bishop.
With Jude holding the reins, Gideon cleaned the wound and packed it with folded linen. Their connected hands complicated every movement. When Gideon knelt, Jude had to stand close. When he reached around the horse’s shoulder, Jude’s cuffed wrist followed.
At one point, Jude placed his free hand over Gideon’s to steady the bandage.
Their fingers aligned.
“Pull here,” Gideon said.
Jude did.
Together, they wrapped the linen around Bishop’s shoulder.
By the time they finished, darkness had filled the canyon.
Gideon stood beside the saddle. “You ride in front.”
Jude looked at him. “Your trust continues to blossom.”
“You know the horse. You’ll feel if his stride changes.”
“And where will you be?”
“Behind you.”
Jude’s slow smile returned. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Gideon boosted him into the saddle.
Without ankle irons, Jude mounted more easily, but his ribs prevented him from pulling himself up. Gideon placed both hands around his waist and lifted.
Jude’s free arm settled over Gideon’s shoulders. Their cuffed hands rose between them. His body slid along Gideon’s chest, lingering for one breath before Gideon settled him into the saddle.
This time, neither pretended not to notice.
Gideon placed one boot in the stirrup and swung up behind him.
The saddle was built for one man.
There was no way to create respectable distance. Gideon’s thighs crowded along the outside of Jude’s, his knees bracketing the outlaw’s hips. Jude’s back rested against his chest. The saddle pushed them together from waist to thigh.
Gideon’s left wrist remained attached to Jude’s right. He passed the connected arm around Jude’s middle and took the reins in his right hand.
Jude went rigid.
“Your ribs?” Gideon asked.
“My dignity.”
“You’ll recover.”
“Not with a federal marshal climbing into my saddle.”
“It’s my saddle.”
“Then your dignity is in greater danger than mine.”
Gideon nudged Bishop forward.
The horse moved slowly. Every step rolled through the saddle, pressing Jude back against Gideon and Gideon forward against him.
Jude inhaled.