CHAPTER FOUR Rules After Dark
Gideon woke with Jude’s hand resting over his heart.
For several quiet seconds, he did not move.
Dawn had entered the sandstone cave without warmth. Pale light filled the narrow opening and spread across the sand, revealing the dead fire, their scattered clothes, and the revolver Gideon had placed within reach before surrendering to exhaustion.
Jude slept behind him beneath the trail coat.
His chest rested against Gideon’s back. One arm curved around Gideon’s waist, positioned carefully above the bandage covering the bullet furrow. Their cuffed wrists lay together against Gideon’s stomach, the short chain warmed between their bodies.
The intimacy of the position struck Gideon slowly.
Jude’s breath moved across the nape of his neck. His knees rested behind Gideon’s legs. The hand over Gideon’s chest rose and fell with every breath, as if Jude had placed it there sometime during the night to make certain the heart beneath it continued beating.
Gideon had slept beside men before.
He had shared blankets with cavalry scouts during mountain winters, lain shoulder to shoulder with deputies waiting for fugitives, and held dying soldiers while their blood cooled between them.
Proximity was unavoidable on the frontier.
Men learned to sleep where they could, warmed by whatever body survival provided.
This did not feel like any of those nights.
Perhaps because Jude had been free to move away.
His ankles were no longer restrained. The cave mouth had remained open. Gideon’s revolver lay less than three feet from his hand.
Jude had stayed.
Gideon shifted.
The stitches along his right side pulled sharply. His breath caught.
Jude woke immediately.
His arm tightened around Gideon before consciousness fully entered him. The instinctive embrace drew their bodies closer, Jude’s chest fitting against Gideon’s back and his palm spreading more firmly over Gideon’s heart.
Then Jude became aware of what he was doing.
He released Gideon at once.
“Sorry.”
The word was rough with sleep.
Gideon stared toward the cave entrance. “For what?”
“I was holding you.”
“I noticed.”
“You didn’t object.”
“I was asleep.”
Jude withdrew his hand from Gideon’s chest. The short chain forced it to remain close.
“You objecting now?”
Gideon should have said yes.
Instead, he pushed himself upright.
The coat slipped from their shoulders. Cold air entered the space between their bodies, making Gideon immediately conscious of the warmth he had abandoned.
Jude sat beside him. His black hair was flattened on one side and unruly on the other. Sleep had softened the lines of his face and erased some of the guarded amusement that usually protected it.
The effect made him look younger.
Not innocent.
Gideon doubted Jude Calder had ever been innocent.
But young enough that the bruises on his face felt like a greater obscenity.
“How is your side?” Jude asked.
“Closed.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Gideon looked down at the bandage wrapped around his waist. A narrow line of blood had dried through the linen, but the stitches had held.
“It hurts.”
Jude’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“What?”
“I didn’t expect an honest answer.”
“You keep asking for them.”
“I had begun to suspect you were resisting out of principle.”
Gideon reached for the canteen.
Its weight told him how little remained before he removed the stopper. He poured a shallow measure into the tin cup and handed it to Jude.
Jude looked at the water.
“You first.”
“I’ve had enough.”
“You’re fevered.”
“You’re injured.”
“And accused of murder. Drink.”
Gideon held the cup between them. “That was not a request.”
Jude’s mouth curved. “There he is.”
He drank half and returned the cup.
Gideon finished it.
The water did nothing to satisfy his thirst. It merely reminded his body how desperately it wanted more.
They divided the last of the dried beef. Jude tore each piece into smaller strips and chewed slowly, forcing the meal to last. Gideon watched his throat move when he swallowed and disliked himself for noticing.
When they finished, Jude tipped the canteen.
A few mouthfuls remained.
“Enough for midday,” he said.
“If we find shelter before then.”
“If?”
Gideon looked toward the cave opening.
The eastern horizon should have been brightening toward gold. Instead, a dark bank of clouds had risen beneath the dawn. They towered over one another in bruised layers, purple at the base and nearly black above.
Lightning moved silently inside them.
A summer storm.
In open desert, rain could be salvation.
In broken canyon country, it could become a wall of water carrying trees, stone, animals, and men.
“We have to move,” Gideon said.
Jude followed his gaze. “Which direction?”
“Southwest.”
“Toward Santa Reina?”
“Toward a line shack marked on my route map.”
“You still have the map?”
“In my head.”
“Of course you do.”
“The shack should be eight or nine miles from here.”
“Should?”
“It was built for the Circle Bar riders twelve years ago.”
“And Harrow owns the Circle Bar.”
“Now he does.”
Jude’s expression sharpened. “Then his men know about it.”
“So do I.”
“That doesn’t make it safe.”
“It has a roof.”
Thunder rolled across the desert.
The sound entered the cave and vibrated through the sandstone.
Gideon collected the coat, revolver, knife, canteen, and remaining strips of bandage. The shirt Jude had cut the previous night hung loosely from his left arm, the sleeve tied around the cuff. He tightened his gun belt over the bandage and tried not to reveal how much the pressure hurt.
Jude noticed anyway.
He always noticed.
“You shouldn’t wear that over the stitches.”
“I need the weapon.”
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
“You trusted me with a revolver yesterday.”
“Men were shooting at us.”
Jude lifted their joined wrists. “You think our circumstances have improved?”
Gideon secured the final buckle. “If they start shooting again, I’ll reconsider.”
“How romantic.”
They left the cave.
The air had changed.
Wind swept across the desert in hot, violent gusts, carrying the mineral smell of rain before a single drop had fallen. Dust raced along the ground in twisting columns. The clouds had swallowed half the sky.
Gideon led them southwest.
Without ankle restraints, Jude matched his pace easily. Their cuffed wrists remained between them, swinging in rhythm with their strides. The first mile passed quickly despite their injuries.
The second did not.
The uneven ground pulled at Gideon’s stitches. Every step sent a dull throb through his right side. Jude favored his left, compensating for the bullet graze and cracked ribs until the imbalance reached his hip.
Neither man complained.
By the third mile, sweat had soaked their bandages.
The storm rolled after them.
Its shadow overtook the land before the rain did. Daylight vanished beneath the clouds, leaving the desert dim and strangely colorless. Lightning struck somewhere behind the ridge, followed almost immediately by thunder.
Jude looked back. “That’s close.”
“I know.”
“You say that often.”
“It saves time.”
A wall of dust rose ahead.
Gideon stopped.
The wind struck them an instant later.
Sand filled his mouth and eyes. His hat tore from his head, but the stampede string caught beneath his chin. Jude turned his face against Gideon’s shoulder, using his body as shelter.
The contact came without warning.
Jude’s free hand closed around Gideon’s coat. Their connected wrists pressed between them. Gideon placed his right arm around Jude’s back before the wind could separate them.
They stood locked together while the desert disappeared.
Sand hissed over their clothes. Gideon lowered his head, shielding Jude’s face with his chest and shoulder. Jude’s body fit inside the shape of his arms with unsettling ease.
“Can you see?” Jude shouted.
“No.”
“Excellent.”
“I can feel the ground.”
“More poetry.”
Gideon took one careful step.
Jude moved with him.
They crossed the storm blindly, one body divided into two sets of legs. The cuff forced them close, but it was Gideon’s arm around Jude’s back and Jude’s fist twisted into Gideon’s coat that kept them upright.
The first rain arrived as isolated drops large enough to sting.
Then the sky broke open.
Water struck them with a force that stole Gideon’s breath. Within seconds, his coat was saturated. Rain ran down his face, beneath his collar, and into the bandage around his waist.
The ground changed beneath their boots.
Dust became mud. Shallow depressions became streams. Water raced toward the low country, gathering speed with every yard.
“We need higher ground,” Gideon said.
“You said the shack was southwest.”
“It is.”
“That is downhill.”
“Not all of it.”
A bright line of lightning split the sky.
For one frozen instant, Gideon saw the country ahead with impossible clarity: a low ridge, a cluster of mesquite, and beyond them the square shadow of a building leaning beneath the storm.
The line shack.
“There,” he said.
Darkness returned.
They ran.
Their chained wrists made independent movement impossible. When Jude accelerated, Gideon was pulled after him. When Gideon leaped a widening stream, the chain dragged Jude across behind him.
The first crossing nearly tore Gideon’s stitches.
The second sent Jude to one knee.
Gideon turned, caught him beneath the arm, and hauled him upright. Rain streamed over Jude’s face. His shirt clung to his chest and stomach, outlining every hard plane beneath the fabric.
“Can you continue?” Gideon asked.
Jude pushed wet hair from his eyes. “Can you?”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“You enjoy saying that.”
“Answer.”
Jude looked toward the shack.
“Yes.”
They ran again.
Water filled the spaces between their fingers. Mud dragged at their boots. The desert that had denied them a drink hours earlier now tried to drown them.
A shallow wash opened ahead.
Gideon remembered it from the map as a dry tributary less than six feet across.
It had become a boiling brown river.
The shack stood on the far side.
“We go around,” Jude said.
“No time.”
“Gideon.”
A wall of water surged through the wash, carrying branches and pale stones.