CHAPTER TEN Buried Alive #3
Jude almost laughed.
Instead, he put Gideon’s arm over his shoulders.
“We climb together.”
They abandoned the chest only long enough to reach daylight.
Jude climbed first, using his body to create a brace. Gideon followed against him. Whenever Gideon’s strength failed, Jude pressed him to the wall and held both their weight.
Their bodies moved as they had while chained.
One man lifting when the other weakened.
Pressure and breath becoming instructions.
At the top, Jude rolled onto the sandstone shelf and reached back.
Gideon’s hand appeared.
Jude seized his wrist.
He pulled until Gideon emerged from the earth.
They collapsed together beneath the sun.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then Jude rolled over Gideon.
He straddled his hips and placed both hands against his chest.
“Breathe.”
Gideon drew in a breath.
“Again.”
He obeyed.
“Deeper.”
Pain crossed Gideon’s face, but his chest rose.
Jude’s terror transformed into fury.
He seized Gideon’s coat.
“You stopped breathing.”
“I resumed.”
“You stopped.”
“I noticed.”
Jude kissed his face.
Not his mouth at first.
Forehead.
Temple.
Closed eyelids.
Cheek.
Each kiss landed like an accusation.
“You impossible bastard.”
Another kiss.
“You stupid, honorable son of a bitch.”
Gideon lifted one torn hand toward him.
Jude caught it before the ruined palm touched his face.
“You tore yourself apart.”
“You were under a beam.”
“I told you to leave.”
“I declined.”
“I hate you.”
“No.”
Jude looked at him.
Gideon’s eyes had opened.
Even dazed, he saw through the lie.
“No,” Gideon repeated.
Jude kissed him.
The contact was desperate and bodily, charged by terror too large for tenderness alone. Jude held Gideon against the earth and kissed him as if breath could be forced between them through hunger.
Gideon answered weakly at first.
Then his free hand found the back of Jude’s neck.
He drew him closer.
Their mouths opened.
Dust, blood, and shared air became indistinguishable. Jude’s thighs tightened around Gideon’s hips. Gideon’s chest rose beneath him, proving life through every hard breath.
It was not gentleness.
It was need stripped to its oldest truth.
Skin seeking skin.
Mouth finding mouth.
Two bodies refusing separation after the mountain nearly made it permanent.
Jude lifted his head only when Gideon’s breathing became strained.
“Again,” he ordered.
Gideon inhaled.
Jude kept one palm over his heart.
“Again.”
Another breath.
The heartbeat beneath his hand remained strong.
“You said you love me.”
Gideon’s eyes stayed on his.
“Yes.”
“You were half buried.”
“I was entirely certain.”
Jude’s anger broke.
He lowered his forehead to Gideon’s.
“I love you too.”
The words came out like something torn free.
Gideon closed his eyes.
Jude kissed the corner of his mouth.
“You do not get to make me say it over your corpse.”
“Agreed.”
“You do not get to stop breathing again.”
“That may be beyond my authority.”
“Then expand it.”
A sound escaped Gideon.
Half cough.
Half laugh.
Jude pressed his face against Gideon’s shoulder and held him.
For one moment, the mountain, Harrow, Cutter, and every wanted poster ceased to exist.
Then metal clicked behind them.
A revolver being cocked.
“Touching,” a man said.
Jude raised his head.
Marshal Amos Cutter stood at the edge of the sandstone shelf.
He was taller than Gideon remembered from the wanted circulars and older than his voice suggested, with silver at his temples and a black coat unsuited to mine country. A federal marshal’s badge shone on his vest.
Eight armed men surrounded the shaft.
Harrow’s split-circle marked their belts and saddles.
Cutter aimed at Jude.
“Move away from him.”
Jude’s hand shifted toward his revolver.
Three rifles followed the motion.
Gideon caught his wrist.
“Don’t.”
Cutter smiled. “Shaw. I confess I expected better judgment.”
Gideon pushed himself upright.
The world tilted. Jude steadied him.
“You ordered federal prisoners sold to Harrow,” Gideon said.
“I authorized transfers.”
“To a slave mine.”
“To labor required by territorial development.”
“You sealed men inside.”
“Harrow’s foreman made operational decisions.”
Jude stood between Cutter and the mine entrance.
“The ledger exists,” he said.
Cutter’s attention sharpened. “Where?”
Jude said nothing.
One of Harrow’s men approached the ventilation shaft.
The ground beneath him shifted.
Stone collapsed inward, blocking the entrance completely.
Cutter’s face changed.
Gideon understood.
The strongbox remained below.
Buried beneath the ventilation shaft.
They had escaped without it.
No.
Jude looked toward the northern wall.
A narrow fissure split the sandstone thirty feet away.
Too small for Gideon.
Possibly large enough for Jude.
The chest had not remained below.
Jude must have brought it through the shaft before returning for Gideon.
Where had he placed it?
Gideon saw fresh drag marks leading toward the fissure.
Cutter saw Gideon see them.
“Calder,” he said.
Jude ran.
Gunfire struck the ground around him.
Gideon drew his revolver and fired toward Cutter’s men, forcing them behind the rocks.
“Go!”
Jude reached the fissure.
The strongbox lay hidden inside.
He turned.
Gideon remained exposed between him and the rifles.
“Gideon!”
“Take it!”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You are not abandoning me.”
Gideon fired again.
A Harrow rider fell behind cover.
“You are finishing what Noah began.”
Cutter moved along the shelf, searching for an angle.
Jude pulled the chest toward the opening.
It would barely fit.
Neither would move quickly.
Gideon stepped into the open and aimed directly at Cutter.
Every rifle turned toward him.
“Go,” he said.
Jude’s face broke with fury.
And love.
“I will come back.”
“I know.”
Jude shoved the strongbox into the fissure.
Then squeezed in after it.
One of Harrow’s men ran toward the opening.
Gideon shot the ground at his feet.
“Anyone enters that crack, Cutter dies first.”
Cutter looked at him.
“You won’t shoot a federal marshal.”
Gideon removed his badge and dropped it into the dust.
“I’m told I no longer qualify.”
The fissure swallowed Jude.
Gideon heard the scrape of the chest moving deeper into stone.
Safe from bullets.
Not safe from pursuit.
But alive.
Cutter waited until the sound faded.
Then he lowered his revolver toward Gideon’s reopened wound.
“You’ve become expensive, Shaw.”
“So I’ve read.”
Gideon’s ammunition was nearly gone.
His hands were torn open. Blood soaked his shirt. The strike to his skull turned the landscape in slow circles.
He could fire at Cutter.
One shot.
Possibly enough.
But Harrow’s men would pour bullets into the fissure. They might use dynamite. Jude would die beside Noah’s ledger.
Gideon lowered his revolver.
One of the riders approached and took it.
Another struck Gideon behind the knees.
He fell.
Cutter retrieved the badge from the dust and examined its smoke-blackened edge.
“You threw away a distinguished career for a murderer.”
Gideon looked toward the fissure.
No movement.
No sound.
Jude had escaped with the evidence.
Gideon smiled through the blood in his mouth.
“No,” he said. “I threw it away for the truth.”
The rifle stock descended.
Darkness took him before it struck.