CHAPTER NINE Hands That Know
They reached the Calder homestead an hour before sunrise.
The house waited beneath a stand of cottonwoods at the end of a road almost reclaimed by grass. It was smaller than Gideon expected: one story, white paint burned nearly gray by the sun, a porch sagging at the western corner, and a stone chimney leaning away from the roof.
A barn stood behind it with both doors open.
Nothing moved inside.
Jude stopped the black gelding at the edge of the yard.
Gideon halted beside him on the bay.
“This is it?” he asked.
Jude nodded.
The answer appeared to cost him.
Moonlight silvered the empty windows. Weeds had grown through the porch steps. One shutter hung from a single hinge and moved gently whenever the wind crossed the yard.
“It has been abandoned since Dry Mercy?” Gideon asked.
“Since before.”
“What happened?”
“Our mother died four years ago. Noah moved into Santa Reina for his work. I stayed on long enough to discover one man cannot run cattle and argue with creditors at the same time.”
“So you left.”
“I took a foreman’s position north of Red Mesa.” Jude looked at the house. “Noah kept the property. Said we might want somewhere to come back to.”
He dismounted.
The yard contained no fresh tracks beyond those of coyotes and a single deer. Gideon circled the house before approaching the door. No disturbed dust. No cut wire. No sign Harrow’s men had visited recently.
Either they did not know Jude would come here or considered the place too obvious to require watching.
Both possibilities troubled Gideon.
Jude waited on the porch with one hand near the revolver Gideon had given him at Sundown House.
No chain connected them.
The absence had become its own presence. Gideon noticed it whenever Jude walked beyond arm’s reach, whenever their paths separated around a tree, whenever choice created distance and Jude closed it again.
Gideon mounted the steps.
Jude pushed the door open.
Dust and old memories breathed out.
The front room contained a stone fireplace, a scarred table, four chairs, and a woven rug faded by years of footsteps. White sheets covered a settee and two cabinets. A clay pitcher remained on the mantel beside a framed photograph turned facedown.
Jude entered first.
He set the revolver on the table and opened the shutters. Dawn entered slowly, revealing dust suspended in the air.
Gideon examined the remaining rooms.
Kitchen.
Pantry.
Two bedrooms.
No intruders.
No traps.
The rear door remained barred from the inside.
“Clear,” he said.
Jude stood beside the mantel holding the photograph.
Two boys faced the camera.
The older one was perhaps sixteen, solemn and narrow-shouldered, with a stiff collar and hair combed carefully away from his forehead. The younger stood beside him in a shirt too large for his frame, wearing an expression of profound irritation.
Gideon recognized Jude immediately.
“You looked dangerous,” he said.
“I was twelve.”
“Terrifying age.”
Jude glanced at him. “Noah insisted on the photograph. I had been ordered not to smile.”
“You followed the order.”
“I was angry because he wore the better shirt.”
Gideon looked at Noah.
The brothers shared the same eyes. Noah’s face was gentler, his expression more open, but the resemblance lived clearly in the line of his jaw and the shape of his brow.
“He looks kind,” Gideon said.
“He was infuriating.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
“No.”
Jude turned the photograph facedown again.
He left his hand resting over it.
Gideon did not touch him. Some grief required witness before comfort.
After a moment, Jude looked toward the windows.
“We should hide the horses.”
They led both animals into the barn, gave them water from the hand pump, and scattered hay over the saddles so anyone passing on the distant road would not see them.
Inside the house, Gideon secured Noah’s papers beneath a loose floorboard in the kitchen. The mine key remained around Jude’s neck on a leather cord.
They slept for three hours.
Not in the same bed.
The distinction amused Jude.
“You held me naked through a storm,” he said, standing between the two bedrooms. “Now you require separate rooms?”
“We need rest.”
“Does proximity interfere?”
“Yes.”
Jude smiled. “Honest answer.”
He chose Noah’s old room.
Gideon lay in the other beneath a faded blue quilt and listened through the wall until Jude’s breathing became slow and regular. Only then did he allow himself to sleep.
Heat woke him.
The sun had climbed high enough to strike the eastern windows. The bedroom smelled of dust, cotton, and the faint lavender scent of a woman long dead.
Gideon sat up.
His side had stiffened overnight. The bullet furrow was healing, but the stitches pulled whenever he turned too quickly. He checked the bandage and found no new blood.
Outside, something struck the roof.
Gideon reached for his revolver.
Another blow.
Then Jude cursed.
Gideon went to the window.
Jude stood on the roof wearing boots, trousers, and nothing else.
He had removed several rotten shingles. Sunlight moved over his bare back each time he swung the hammer. Sweat traced the scars across his shoulders and descended along his spine.
Gideon forgot the revolver in his hand.
Jude bent to retrieve another board.
The movement drew every muscle in his back into definition.
Gideon watched too long.
Jude turned.
Even at that distance, he appeared to know exactly where Gideon’s attention had settled.
“Enjoying the view?” he called.
“Your hammering woke me.”
“Then close your eyes.”
“You’ll fall through the roof.”
“Would that upset you?”
“It would damage the floor.”
Jude smiled and returned to work.
Gideon dressed.
He found an ax in the barn and began cutting deadfall beneath the cottonwoods. The house would need wood before night, and physical labor offered somewhere useful to put the heat Jude had stirred in him.
He removed his coat.
Then his vest.
After the first ten minutes, his shirt followed.
The sun warmed his shoulders. Sweat gathered across his chest and darkened the waistband of his trousers. The wound protested every full swing, but Gideon altered his stance rather than stopping.
Wood split beneath the ax.
Again.
Again.
On the roof, hammering ceased.
Gideon looked up.
Jude sat astride the ridge beam, openly watching him.
Gideon rested both hands on the ax handle. “Problem?”
“Your technique.”
“You were a ranch foreman, not a lumberjack.”
“I possess broad expertise.”
“In watching other men work?”
“In watching you.”
The direct answer entered Gideon with more force than flirtation should have possessed.
He lifted the ax again.
Jude continued watching.
The dangerous fantasy began without permission.
Not the fantasy of Jude’s body. Gideon had touched that. Kissed it. Slept beside it and learned how it changed beneath his hands.
This fantasy was quieter.
Jude repairing a roof.
Gideon chopping wood.
Two horses inside the barn.
Coffee waiting inside a kitchen.
No posse. No chains. No corpses given prices on wanted posters.
Ordinary life appeared around them with terrifying ease.
Gideon split another log.
The blade struck unevenly.
Jude laughed from the roof.
“Distracted?”
“Your workmanship concerns me.”
“Your trousers are slipping.”
Gideon looked down.
They were not.
When he looked up again, Jude’s grin had widened.
“You are unbearable,” Gideon said.
“Still watching.”
“Yes.”
The admission silenced Jude.
Only briefly.
Then he returned to the roof, smiling to himself.
By noon, Gideon had stacked enough wood for several nights. Jude repaired the worst section of roof and rehung the loose shutter.
Both men were covered in dust and sweat.
They cooked in the kitchen with the windows open.
The pantry yielded dried beans, salt, flour sealed inside a metal tin, and coffee old enough to qualify as an artifact.
Jude smelled the grounds.
“Still coffee.”
“That is not established.”
“It’s black and bitter.”
“So are you.”
Jude looked at him with approval. “Your humor is developing.”
“It is self-defense.”
They boiled the beans with jerky and made flatbread in a cast-iron skillet. Gideon prepared the coffee.
Jude watched him use four large spoonfuls.
“You intend to dissolve horseshoes?”
“Strong coffee has purpose.”
“So does turpentine.”
“You drank Rusk’s jail coffee.”
“I was a prisoner. We have covered the limitations of consent.”
Gideon poured one tin cup and tasted it.
Jude waited.
Gideon swallowed with effort.
“Well?” Jude asked.
“It has purpose.”
Jude took the cup and drank.
His face tightened.
Gideon almost smiled.
“You admit nothing,” Jude said.
“Neither do you.”
They shared the cup anyway.
It passed from Gideon’s mouth to Jude’s and back again. The domestic intimacy of it unsettled Gideon more than the heat had.
They ate across from each other at the Calder family table.
Jude placed his bare feet over Gideon’s boots beneath it.
“Accidental?” Gideon asked.
“No.”
“Permission?”
“You may leave your feet where they are.”
Gideon did.
Afterward they washed the dishes together. Jude dried while Gideon scrubbed, their shoulders touching whenever both reached for the towel.
No danger required it.
Neither moved apart.
Jude found Noah’s straight razor inside the cabinet above the washstand.
It rested in a cracked leather case beside a shaving brush and a bar of soap wrapped in yellowed paper. The bone handle had darkened with age, but the blade remained clean beneath a thin coating of oil.
“Noah shaved every morning,” Jude said. “Even while camping.”
“Surveyors demand standards.”
“He claimed a man mapped straighter lines with a clean face.”
Gideon looked at Jude’s beard.
Days on the road had darkened it from shadow to rough growth. It sharpened his features, making him resemble the wanted poster more closely than Gideon preferred.
“You need shaving.”
Jude opened the blade. “You volunteering?”
“Yes.”
The answer surprised them both.
Jude recovered first.
He placed the razor in Gideon’s palm.
Gideon heated water on the stove and worked soap into a lather. Jude dragged a chair into the sunlight near the kitchen window.
“Sit facing away,” Gideon said.
“Why?”
“So I can reach.”