CHAPTER ELEVEN A Marshal on His Knees #3
Jude drove the gelding toward the irrigation fields instead of the main gate. They jumped the narrow acequia, broke through a line of young cottonwoods, and entered the western pasture.
Gideon sagged against him.
Jude tightened both arms.
“Stay.”
“I’m here.”
“You once called that an answer.”
“It remains one.”
They reached the ridge before the pursuit organized.
Jude used the mine country to hide their trail, riding through stone washes and along the beds of shallow streams. The black gelding carried them until dawn.
Only then did they stop inside an abandoned shepherd’s hut near the Santa Reina road.
Jude lowered Gideon onto a wool pallet.
Morning light revealed the extent of his injuries.
A rib was cracked but not displaced. Brill’s fists had reopened the wound along Gideon’s side without tearing every stitch. The palms Gideon had destroyed in the mine were swollen and raw, and the rope burns around his wrists had begun bleeding again.
Jude cleaned each injury.
He asked before opening Gideon’s shirt.
Before touching his ribs.
Before washing the blood from his wrists.
Gideon answered every time.
“Yes.”
Jude’s touch remained tender despite his anger. He wrapped Gideon’s hands in clean linen, bandaged his side, and washed the blood from his face.
When he finished, Gideon caught Jude’s wrist between both bandaged palms.
“Sleep.”
“I need to watch the road.”
“I’ll take first.”
“You can barely sit.”
“Then lie beside me.”
Jude looked at him.
Gideon shifted on the pallet, creating space.
Jude lay down.
Gideon drew him close with one arm. Jude placed his head against Gideon’s chest and listened to the heartbeat beneath it.
No chain.
No barn.
No darkness they had not chosen.
“I love you,” Gideon said again.
Jude closed his eyes.
“I heard you.”
“You should become accustomed to it.”
“That sounds dangerously like a promise.”
“It is a warning.”
Jude’s mouth moved against Gideon’s shirt.
“Then I love you too.”
They slept until afternoon.
A stagecoach bell woke them.
The hut stood thirty yards from the old road. Through a crack in the wall, Jude watched a passenger coach traveling east toward Santa Reina.
Bright paper had been pasted to both doors.
As the coach passed, one sheet tore loose and tumbled across the road.
Jude retrieved it after the dust settled.
The heading filled half the page.
PUBLIC EXECUTIONJUDE CALDERSANTA REINA COURTHOUSETHREE DAYS HENCE AT SUNDOWN
Gideon read it twice.
“That is impossible,” Jude said.
The notice claimed Jude Calder had been recaptured at San Diablo Mine and would be hanged following an emergency order issued by the territorial court.
No trial date.
No judge’s signature.
Only Marshal Cutter’s authorization.
At the bottom appeared a smaller announcement.
MARISOL VEGA DETAINED AS MATERIAL WITNESS AND ACCOMPLICE.
Jude’s hand crushed the paper.
“They caught her.”
Gideon pushed himself upright.
“Read the reverse.”
A handwritten message appeared on the back.
CALDER—
THE PUBLIC WILL SEE A HOODED PRISONER HANG AT SUNDOWN. IF YOU ARE NOT INSIDE THE HOOD, MRS. VEGA WILL BE.
AFTERWARD, HER BODY WILL BE FOUND OUTSIDE TOWN. YOU WILL BE BLAMED FOR HER MURDER AND FOR ESCAPING CUSTODY BEFORE EXECUTION.
brING THE LEDGER TO SANTA REINA.
A.H.
Jude went still.
Gideon read the message again.
Harrow intended to create two lies from one body.
A hooded prisoner would fall before the crowd. Before anyone identified the corpse, Harrow’s men would remove it and claim Jude had escaped during the confusion. Marisol’s body would later be “discovered,” her death blamed on Jude.
Harrow would eliminate the final witness to Noah’s investigation while preserving Jude as a living fugitive responsible for every convenient murder that followed.
“He knew I would return for you,” Jude said.
“Harrow knows what he would do with someone he values.”
“Own them.”
“Use them.”
“And he knows we won’t let Marisol die.”
“No.”
Jude looked toward the southern road.
Mexico remained available.
No one stood between them and the border. Noah’s ledger could still be carried beyond Harrow’s reach. Gideon’s wounds would heal if they found shelter. They could send copies north from safety.
Marisol would hang in three days.
“We cannot flee,” Jude said.
“No.”
“We cannot enter Santa Reina as ourselves.”
“No.”
Jude walked to the corner of the hut where he had placed Gideon’s recovered gun belt, badge, and restraints.
He picked up the cuffs.
The same steel Gideon had closed around him in Red Mesa.
Jude carried them to the pallet.
“One of us has to enter as a prisoner,” he said.
Gideon looked at the iron in his hands.
Harrow controlled the roads.
Cutter controlled the jail.
Santa Reina expected to see Jude Calder delivered to a noose.
The only man who might walk openly through those gates was the deputy marshal credited with recapturing him.
Gideon took the badge from beside the cuffs.
“You understand what this requires?”
Jude looked at him.
“Trust.”
“More than before.”
“Then ask.”
Gideon held the badge in one bandaged hand and the open cuff in the other.
Jude extended his wrists.
“Put the irons back on me,” he said.