CHAPTER NINE Hands That Know #3
“My throat,” Jude continued. “Do not close your hand there unless I can see you.”
“I won’t.”
“You may.”
Gideon looked at him.
“Not today,” Jude said. “Someday. If you ask.”
Gideon touched his face. “What else?”
“Do not turn away afterward as if I have become evidence against you.”
“I won’t.”
Jude’s eyes sharpened. “Do not promise what you cannot know.”
Gideon considered the fear beneath the request.
“I will tell you if fear returns,” he said. “I will not make you guess.”
Jude lowered his forehead to Gideon’s.
“Agreed.”
“What do you fear?” Gideon asked.
“Being wanted until I become difficult.”
“You are already difficult.”
Jude laughed against his mouth.
Gideon’s arms enclosed him.
“I want you anyway.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
The honesty silenced them.
Gideon continued.
“I cannot promise forever while men are hunting us and a mine may collapse over our heads.”
“Good.”
“But this is not only the canyon. It is not the chain, thirst, or danger.”
“No.”
“It would remain if Harrow disappeared tomorrow.”
Jude searched his face.
“Yes,” he said. “It would.”
The admission became more intimate than a vow.
They did not name love.
They did not promise permanence.
They acknowledged the thing between them could survive the conditions that created it.
Jude kissed him.
Then he took Gideon beyond speech.
Their bodies moved together in the full daylight. Jude led, Gideon followed, and neither vanished inside the other’s desire.
When pleasure finally overtook them, Gideon’s hands were free.
He used them to hold Jude close.
They slept before sunset.
The bathwater cooled beside the bed. Their wet clothes lay scattered across the floor. One window remained open, allowing the smell of cottonwood and sun-warmed grass into the room.
Jude rested with his head over Gideon’s heart.
Gideon’s hand lay against the back of his neck.
No weapon remained within immediate reach.
The revolvers sat on the kitchen table.
The rifle rested beneath Noah’s papers.
For the first time in longer than Gideon could remember, he slept without touching a gun.
Jude’s pulse moved beneath his palm.
That became enough.
Morning entered quietly.
Jude remained asleep when Gideon woke.
The dangerous fantasy had not disappeared.
It had grown roots.
Jude’s boots beside his.
Two cups on the washstand.
The marks of spilled bathwater drying across the floor.
An ordinary room made extraordinary by the absence of fear.
Gideon watched Jude breathe.
He could imagine another morning.
Then another.
The imagining frightened him.
He did not stop.
Jude woke beneath his hand.
“What?” he murmured.
“Nothing.”
“You have never meant that word.”
“I was thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“About the mine.”
Jude opened one eye. “Liar.”
Gideon kissed his forehead.
Jude accepted the temporary evasion.
They dressed, cooked the remaining beans, and prepared to leave.
Gideon retrieved Noah’s papers from beneath the kitchen floor. Jude folded the blue quilt from his mother’s bed.
“We should take this,” Jude said.
“A quilt?”
“The nights near San Diablo are cold.”
“It is large enough to identify us from half a mile.”
“Only if Harrow knows my mother’s taste in fabric.”
Gideon took one end.
Something crackled inside.
He stopped.
“What?”
“This section is stiff.”
Jude laid the quilt across the table.
The stitching along one blue square differed from the rest. Smaller stitches. Newer thread.
Jude touched them.
“Noah repaired this after Mother died.”
“With a survey needle?”
Jude looked at Gideon.
He took Noah’s straight razor from its case and cut the thread.
Inside the quilt lay folded oilskin.
Jude drew it out.
The packet contained a map.
Not the regional survey from Dry Mercy.
A detailed engineering plan of San Diablo Mine.
Every drift, ventilation shaft, loading passage, and collapsed tunnel had been marked in Noah’s hand. A dotted line entered from the northern ridge through an abandoned air shaft and ended beside the assay chamber.
At the center of the map, Noah had drawn a black square.
IRON CHEST — COMPLETE LEDGER.
Beneath it, another note appeared.
EAST ENTRANCE SEALED BY HARROW.NORTH SHAFT PASSABLE ON FOOT.DO NOT USE MAIN TUNNEL.
Jude touched the handwriting.
“He knew someone would come here.”
“He hoped you would.”
“No.” Jude looked at the quilt. “He hoped both of us would.”
Gideon placed his hand over Jude’s.
The mine key hung against Jude’s chest. The map lay beneath their joined hands. Outside, two horses waited in the barn.
For one day, the Calder homestead had shown them the shape of an ordinary life.
Now it had given them the road back into danger.
Jude folded the map.
“When this is over,” he said, “I want to repair the rest of the roof.”
Gideon looked at him.
Not a promise.
Not forever.
A future task spoken as if both men might survive to complete it.
“I’ll chop the wood,” Gideon said.
Jude’s mouth curved.
“You were distracted last time.”
“I had poor supervision.”
“You had excellent supervision.”
Gideon kissed him once.
Then they wrapped Noah’s map in oilskin, saddled their horses, and rode north toward San Diablo Mine.