CHAPTER FOUR Rules After Dark #2
Gideon looked upstream. The flood was widening, but the bank narrowed twenty yards north where a fallen cottonwood stretched partway across.
They reached it together.
The trunk was slick, stripped of bark, and suspended above water moving fast enough to kill them.
“I go first,” Gideon said.
“We go together.”
“I can secure the rope.”
“We don’t have rope.”
Gideon had forgotten. The coil remained beside Bishop or somewhere inside Salt Knife Canyon.
The chain between their wrists was all they had.
Jude looked at it.
“So,” he said. “Your caution finally becomes useful.”
Gideon stepped onto the log.
The flood roared beneath him. Rain blinded him, and every movement pulled at his wound. He extended his right arm for balance while his left remained connected to Jude.
Jude followed.
The chain tightened.
Halfway across, Gideon’s boot slipped.
His injured side struck the trunk. Pain exploded through him. He fell to one knee, his right hand catching the slick wood before the water could take him.
Jude dropped behind him.
Their wrists jerked together.
“Gideon!”
“I’m here.”
“That was almost past tense.”
Jude straddled the trunk. His free hand closed around Gideon’s belt at the back.
“Move,” he said.
Gideon crawled.
The flood struck the underside of the cottonwood hard enough to make it tremble. Jude kept one hand on Gideon’s belt while their chained wrists advanced together, link by link.
They reached the opposite bank.
Gideon rolled into the mud and pulled Jude after him.
Jude landed across his body.
For a moment, both lay breathless beneath the rain.
Jude’s chest pressed to Gideon’s. One thigh had fallen between Gideon’s legs. Their joined hands were trapped beside Gideon’s head.
“You alive?” Jude asked.
“Presently.”
“Poetry at last.”
Gideon’s free hand had settled on Jude’s bare hip where the wet shirt had ridden above his trousers.
He felt the shape of bone and muscle beneath his palm. Rainwater moved over Jude’s skin and collected between Gideon’s fingers.
Jude became still.
His eyes moved to Gideon’s hand.
Gideon removed it.
“Necessary,” he said.
“Of course.”
Neither man sounded convinced.
They reached the shack moments before another surge carried the cottonwood away.
The door had swollen inside its frame. Gideon struck it with his shoulder once, then again.
The third impact tore it open.
They fell into darkness together.
The line shack contained one room, one narrow bunk, a three-legged table, and a rusted stove with its door hanging from a single hinge.
It smelled of mouse droppings, old ash, and wet earth. Wind entered through gaps in the walls. Rain hammered the warped roof, finding half a dozen places to drip onto the plank floor.
It was the most beautiful building Gideon had ever seen.
He forced the door closed and dragged the table against it.
Jude leaned against the wall, breathing hard. Water ran from his clothing and pooled around his boots.
“We need heat,” Gideon said.
“The stove’s broken.”
“It can hold fire.”
“The chimney?”
Gideon examined the rusted pipe. One section had separated near the wall. Smoke would enter the room, but they could leave the door cracked if necessary.
Several pieces of split wood lay beneath the bunk. They were dusty but dry.
Jude found a tin containing char cloth and three sulfur matches inside the stove. “Our luck is improving.”
“Our horses are dead, our water is nearly gone, and men are hunting us.”
“But we have matches.”
Gideon took one. “Stand back.”
His fingers had begun to shake again.
The first match broke.
The second failed to ignite.
Jude covered Gideon’s hand with his own.
“Let me.”
“I can strike a match.”
“You have repeatedly demonstrated otherwise.”
Gideon surrendered it.
Jude crouched beside the stove. Because of the cuff, Gideon had to kneel with him. Their shoulders pressed together as Jude struck the match against the underside of the table.
Sulfur flared.
He protected the tiny flame between both men’s hands until the char cloth caught. Gideon fed in splinters. Jude added the smallest pieces of wood.
Smoke curled into the room, but so did heat.
They sat before the stove until the first violent shivering began.
It seized Jude visibly. His shoulders jerked, and his teeth struck together. Gideon felt the trembling through their connected wrists.
“Wet clothes off,” Gideon said.
Jude looked at him.
“All of them?”
“If we stay wet, we freeze.”
“There’s a sentence I never expected to hear from you.”
“Hypothermia kills men in desert country.”
“Desire appears to be fighting for the same privilege.”
Gideon stood.
The room tilted.
Jude rose with him and caught his arm.
“Your stitches?”
“Intact.”
“Again, not what I asked.”
“They hurt.”
“Two honest answers in one day. The fever may be worsening.”
Gideon removed his revolver and placed it on the table. The gun belt followed. Jude watched but made no move toward either.
The coat had become heavy with water. They worked it from Gideon’s shoulders and hung it from a nail near the stove.
Their cuffed wrists made every article of clothing a puzzle.
Gideon began with Jude’s boots.
“Sit,” he said.
Jude lowered himself onto the bunk. The ropes beneath the thin mattress groaned.
Gideon crouched and pulled off Jude’s left boot. Mud and water spilled onto the floor. The right boot resisted.
“Hold my shoulder.”
“I thought you disliked being held.”
“Do you want the boot removed?”
Jude placed his free hand on Gideon’s shoulder.
The contact was careful at first. When Gideon pulled harder, Jude’s fingers tightened into the muscle near his neck. Gideon braced Jude’s calf between his knees and worked the soaked leather free.
The boot came off suddenly.
Jude slid forward on the bunk. Gideon caught him with one hand against his thigh and the other around his hip.
Jude’s wet trousers had molded themselves to every line of his legs. Gideon’s palm rested high on the inside of one thigh.
Both men looked down.
Rain battered the roof.
Gideon moved his hand to Jude’s knee.
“Your turn,” he said.
Jude knelt before him.
Gideon sat on the bunk and extended one boot. Jude gripped the heel, using his cuffed hand to brace Gideon’s ankle. He pulled.
Nothing happened.
“You’ll need more force,” Gideon said.
“Spread your knees.”
Gideon stared at him.
“For balance, Marshal.”
Gideon widened his stance.
Jude moved between his legs.
He wrapped one arm around Gideon’s calf and pulled the boot free. Gideon’s stockinged foot landed beside Jude’s hip. Jude removed the second boot more slowly, his palm sliding along Gideon’s calf to steady him.
When he finished, he remained kneeling there.
Gideon felt the warmth of the stove on one side and Jude’s body on the other.
“Shirts,” he said.
“Yours is already ruined.”
“It is also wet.”
Jude stood between Gideon’s knees.
He opened the buttons with numb fingers. The soaked cloth clung to Gideon’s chest. Jude peeled it aside, taking care around the bandage.
Gideon watched his face.
The flirtation vanished as it had in the cave. Jude’s attention settled on Gideon’s wounds: the old scars, the new bandage, the bruises earned in Salt Knife Canyon.
“May I check the stitches?”
“Yes.”
Jude lifted the edge of the bandage. His fingertips touched Gideon’s side. The contact was clinical, but his thumb moved once across uninjured skin in a gesture too gentle to be necessary.
“The bleeding stopped,” Jude said.
“Good.”
“You need the bandage dry.”
“We have no linen.”
“We have shirts.”
Jude finished pulling the shirt from Gideon’s right arm. The left sleeve caught at their cuffs.
They worked it across the chain as they had in the cave, but the wet fabric twisted around their joined wrists. Gideon reached across Jude; Jude ducked beneath Gideon’s arm; their hands crossed and recrossed while they tried to free the garment.
At last Jude used Gideon’s knife to cut the remaining seam.
The shirt fell to the floor.
Gideon sat bare-chested before him.
Jude’s gaze moved over him.
Slowly.
Not pretending to examine the wound this time.
Gideon felt the attention travel across his shoulders, chest, stomach, and the line of dark hair disappearing beneath his waistband.
“You’re staring,” he said.
Jude met his eyes. “You noticed.”
“Your shirt.”
Jude smiled faintly. “Afraid of being the only naked man in the room?”
“I am not naked.”
“Yet.”
The word settled between them.
Gideon stood.
His chest nearly touched Jude’s. The outlaw had to lift his face to hold Gideon’s gaze, though only by an inch or two.
“I need to remove your shirt,” Gideon said.
“You’re announcing yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You may.”
Gideon opened Jude’s shirt.
His fingers worked downward through rain-swollen buttonholes. Each opening revealed another strip of skin: Jude’s throat, the dark hair at the center of his chest, the tight plane of his stomach.
Water ran from Jude’s hair and traveled down the bare skin Gideon exposed.
At the bottom button, Gideon’s knuckles brushed Jude’s waistband.
Jude inhaled.
The sound was quiet but unmistakable.
Gideon pulled the shirt from his shoulders. Jude raised his free arm, and the fabric slid away. The cuffed sleeve required them to stand almost chest to chest while Gideon worked it across the steel.
Their wrists crossed between their bodies.
Jude’s bare chest touched Gideon’s.
Not fully.
Only a grazing contact as both men shifted.
Skin against skin.
Warm despite the cold.
Gideon’s breath stopped.
Jude looked at him.
The wet shirt remained tangled around their cuffed hands, forgotten.
A drop of water slid from Jude’s hair to his collarbone. Gideon watched it continue down the center of his chest.
Jude’s nipples had tightened in the cold. Bruises darkened his ribs. The bandage around his side had become soaked through.
Gideon forced his hands to resume moving.
He freed the shirt and threw it near the stove.
“Trousers,” Jude said.
The word sounded almost like a challenge.
Gideon looked toward the single-room shack.
There was nowhere private to turn. No screen. No second room. No distance beyond the six inches permitted by their chain.