CHAPTER TWO One Horse #4
Gideon felt the breath enter him. Felt his ribs expand beneath Gideon’s encircling arm. Felt the hard warmth of his body where Gideon’s forearm crossed his stomach.
“Comfortable?” Jude asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
They traveled south through the canyon.
Gideon kept Bishop to a walk. His right hand controlled the reins while his left arm stabilized Jude. Because their wrists were cuffed together, Jude’s right hand rested naturally over Gideon’s forearm.
At first Jude held himself away from Gideon, keeping his back rigid and his weight forward. The position could not last. Every uneven step drove him against the saddle horn, and each attempt to compensate twisted his injured ribs.
Gideon felt each flinch.
Without speaking, he lowered his left arm.
His palm moved from Jude’s bruised side to the center of his stomach, below the worst of the injuries. He spread his fingers there and drew Jude back, supporting his weight against Gideon’s chest.
Jude stopped breathing.
Gideon’s mouth was close to his ear. “Better?”
“You’ve put your hand on my stomach.”
“Your ribs are injured.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then answer the question.”
Jude shifted experimentally. The movement pressed him more securely into Gideon.
“Yes,” he said. “Better.”
The word vibrated through Gideon’s chest.
He kept his palm where it was.
They left the canyon after nightfall.
The desert opened around them beneath a rising field of stars. Heat fled the land with startling speed. The air turned cold enough that Gideon saw Bishop’s breath.
Jude began to shiver.
“You’re cold,” Gideon said.
“I’m overcome by your charm.”
Gideon stopped the horse.
With difficulty, he removed his coat while remaining mounted and cuffed to Jude. The chain forced Jude’s arm behind him as Gideon worked free of the sleeve, drawing their bodies into a series of awkward, intimate contortions.
Jude laughed under his breath.
“What?” Gideon asked.
“You’ve arrested me, undressed me, put me in your shirt, chained yourself to me, and climbed behind me on one horse. If this is how the United States administers justice, I understand why everyone keeps moving west.”
Gideon draped the coat around Jude’s shoulders.
The garment was broad enough to cover most of them both. He pulled the lapels around Jude and closed his arm again, trapping warmth between their bodies.
“Still cold?” he asked.
Jude’s amusement faded.
“No.”
They rode on.
The moon rose behind them, casting the desert in silver. Bishop’s pace slowed, but his stride remained steady. Gideon listened to every breath the horse took and every shift in the wounded shoulder.
Jude gradually surrendered his resistance.
It happened by degrees. His spine softened against Gideon’s chest. His head tilted slightly until the brim of his hat brushed Gideon’s temple. The free hand resting over Gideon’s forearm loosened.
Gideon became aware of him in pieces.
The weight of Jude’s body.
The dark scent of his hair.
The warmth gathered beneath the coat.
The slow movement of his stomach under Gideon’s palm.
He had held men before. Wounded soldiers. Dying partners. Prisoners dragged from danger or wrestled into submission.
He had never held a man like this.
Not with the man’s full weight gradually given to him. Not with Jude’s hand resting over his and their breaths falling into the same rhythm.
The steel cuff around Gideon’s wrist was cold. Everything else was unbearably warm.
Jude spoke without lifting his head.
“The route was changed this morning.”
Gideon tightened the reins slightly. “What?”
“Your route to Santa Reina. Cutter changed it.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard Rusk talking to one of Harrow’s men before you arrived. They thought I was unconscious.”
Gideon’s hand remained still against Jude’s stomach.
“What exactly did they say?”
“Rusk asked why Harrow’s riders were waiting at Cottonwood Wash when the original transfer order used the northern road. The other man said Cutter changed your instructions that morning.”
Gideon felt the night close around them.
Marshal Amos Cutter had sent the new route in a coded telegram received by Gideon at sunrise. Only Cutter, Gideon, and the Tucson telegraph operator should have known its contents.
Rusk had recommended the southern road before Gideon mentioned it.
The rider on the ridge had carried word when Gideon turned west.
Harrow’s men had reached Salt Knife ahead of them because someone had prepared for every possible route.
“You should have told me at the jail,” Gideon said.
“I didn’t know whether Cutter owned you too.”
“I removed you from Rusk’s custody.”
“Plenty of men prefer to damage their own property.”
Gideon’s arm tightened around him.
“I am not your owner.”
“No,” Jude said quietly. “I don’t think you are.”
The absence of mockery made the words more intimate than anything Jude had said all day.
Gideon looked over the empty country. “When did you decide?”
“That you weren’t bought?”
“Yes.”
“When you turned your back on Rusk.”
“That could have been foolishness.”
“It was. Honest men and foolish men resemble each other from a distance.”
“And now?”
Jude’s thumb moved once across the back of Gideon’s hand.
The touch was so small Gideon might have imagined it.
“Now I know the difference.”
They rode beneath the cold stars.
Jude’s head settled fully against Gideon’s shoulder. Gideon allowed it. His cheek nearly touched Jude’s hair, and when the horse stepped down a shallow slope, Gideon’s arm drew tighter around him.
Jude no longer teased him.
He simply let Gideon hold him.
Bishop stumbled.
Gideon immediately sat upright. “Easy.”
The horse recovered but shortened his stride.
Jude lifted his head. “He’s weakening.”
“I know.”
“We should get off.”
“There’s no shelter.”
“He can’t carry both of us much farther.”
A dark line crossed the ground ahead. Gideon recognized the shallow depression of an arroyo.
“We stop there.”
Bishop made another fifty yards.
Then his wounded leg folded.
Gideon pulled Jude from the saddle as the horse collapsed. They struck the ground together, rolling down the sandy incline into the dry arroyo.
Gideon landed on his back with Jude across him.
Their connected hands were pinned between their bodies. Gideon’s free arm encircled Jude’s waist, instinctively protecting his damaged ribs.
For several breaths they remained tangled together.
Jude’s face rested beside Gideon’s. Their legs were intertwined beneath the coat. The desert floor still held a trace of the day’s warmth.
“Are you hurt?” Gideon asked.
“Nothing new.”
Gideon moved his hand over Jude’s back, shoulders, and side.
Jude caught his wrist.
“Bishop,” he said.
They crawled up the bank.
The gelding lay on his side, breathing hard. Blood had soaked through the bandage. His wounded leg trembled but did not rise.
Gideon knelt beside his head.
Because of the cuff, Jude knelt with him.
Bishop’s eye found Gideon. The horse tried to lift his head and failed.
Gideon placed his right hand against the white mark between his eyes.
“I’m here,” he whispered.
Jude’s free hand settled against the horse’s neck.
For once, he had no clever remark.
They remained beside Bishop as his breathing slowed. Gideon felt each diminishing breath beneath his palm. When the last one left him, the horse’s body became suddenly, impossibly still.
Gideon bowed his head.
Jude did not tell him it was only an animal. He did not offer comfort made cheap by speed. He stayed close enough that their shoulders touched and kept his hand on Bishop’s neck until Gideon removed his own.
At last Gideon sat back.
The nearly empty canteen hung from the saddle. The canvas was dark where water had leaked around a bullet crease. He lifted it and shook it.
Perhaps two cups remained.
The dried beef was still inside his coat. They had one blanket, two revolvers, Gideon’s knife, and no horse.
Santa Reina lay more than seventy miles away.
Jude sat beside him in the sand, Gideon’s coat still wrapped around both their shoulders. Six inches of steel connected Jude’s wrist to Gideon’s.
“You should have taken the chestnut when you had the chance,” Gideon said.
Jude looked at him. “And left you?”
“You’re my prisoner.”
“So you keep reminding me.”
“Running would have been reasonable.”
“I’ve spent eight months running.” Jude’s voice was quiet. “It didn’t make me free.”
The chain shifted as he moved closer.
Their shoulders pressed together beneath the coat. Jude’s hand settled beside Gideon’s in the sand, near enough that their fingers almost touched.
Gideon looked at the dead horse, the empty arroyo, and the merciless spread of stars above them.
The desert had taken their animals, their supplies, their lead, and nearly all their water.
It had left Gideon chained to a man accused of five murders.
A man who had been offered freedom and chosen instead to save his life.
Somewhere behind them, Harrow’s surviving riders would already be searching.
Somewhere ahead, a federal courthouse waited beneath the authority of men who had sold their roads.
Gideon lifted the canteen.
He drank only enough to wet his mouth before offering it to Jude.
Jude accepted it, took the same small measure, and returned it without argument. Their fingers touched around the metal.
Neither pulled away immediately.
Then a distant howl traveled across the desert.
Another answered from somewhere beyond the arroyo.
Gideon drew the coat more securely around them and checked the revolver at his side.
Jude leaned against him, sharing the warmth without asking permission because Gideon’s arm had already opened to receive him.
They sat beside the fallen horse, cuffed wrist to cuffed wrist, listening to the predators gather in the darkness.
Seventy miles from help.
Almost without water.
And no longer certain which of them was keeping the other alive.