CHAPTER THIRTEEN Chained at Sundown #4
Blood had covered Gideon’s badge. His breathing came shallowly, each inhale shuddering through his body. One hand remained pressed to his wound, but blood continued to escape between his fingers.
“Jude,” Gideon said.
It was not an order.
It was not permission.
Only his name.
Jude reached into the dust and picked up the empty handcuffs.
He looked at the steel for a moment. At the scars beneath his wrist guards. At the open cuffs Gideon had fitted only after asking.
Then he threw them.
They struck the scaffold at Harrow’s feet.
The chain coiled across the boards.
“You never understood freedom,” Jude said.
Harrow’s mouth tightened.
“You think it means having no one close enough to cost you anything.” Jude tightened his arm around Gideon’s waist. “Keep your road.”
Harrow raised the revolver.
Rifle shots thundered from the north end of town.
Every head in the square turned.
A line of mounted territorial marshals entered through the smoke, badges visible and rifles leveled. Behind them came a black carriage bearing the federal seal. Its driver reined the horses to a stop beside the courthouse.
Judge Elias Ainsley stepped down before the wheels had stopped moving.
He was a narrow man in his sixties, dressed in travel-stained black with silver spectacles low on his nose. Elena Ruiz ran down the courthouse steps carrying Cutter’s letter and several copied ledger pages.
“Amos Cutter!” Judge Ainsley shouted. “By authority of the federal court, you are ordered to surrender your weapon and submit to arrest pending charges of conspiracy, murder, unlawful imprisonment, and theft of federal land.”
Cutter stood at the edge of the square with his revolver aimed toward Gideon.
Two territorial marshals surrounded him.
“This county is outside your present jurisdiction,” Cutter said.
Judge Ainsley took the original payment letter from Elena and raised it.
“Your jurisdiction ended when you sold it.”
Cutter looked toward Harrow.
Harrow did not look back.
Slowly, Cutter lowered his revolver.
A marshal took it from his hand. Another removed Cutter’s badge.
The sound of the clasp opening seemed louder than the remaining gunfire.
Harrow’s men began surrendering. Some dropped weapons at once. Others looked toward the crowd and realized the ranchers they had terrorized now outnumbered them ten to one.
Harrow descended from the scaffold.
He allowed his revolver to fall.
A territorial marshal approached to take him into custody.
Jude’s body sagged with relief.
Gideon felt it. He leaned more heavily into Jude, his cheek nearly touching Jude’s temple.
“We did it,” Jude whispered.
“Not yet.”
Harrow moved behind them.
Gideon saw the derringer slide from Harrow’s sleeve.
Its small barrel turned toward Jude’s back.
Gideon had one cartridge left.
He drew Jude against him with his wounded arm and fired beneath it.
The shot exploded between their bodies.
Harrow stopped.
For an instant he looked merely surprised. Then the derringer slipped from his hand. A dark stain opened across his cream-colored vest.
He fell beside the empty cuffs.
Gideon’s revolver dropped from his fingers.
His legs folded.
Jude caught him before he struck the ground.
They went down together beneath the gallows, Jude kneeling in the dust with Gideon gathered against his chest. Gideon’s head fell onto his shoulder. Blood soaked through both their shirts and spread hot across Jude’s hands.
“No,” Jude said. “No, you look at me.”
Gideon tried.
His eyes would not focus.
Jude cupped his face. “You promised me mornings.”
“I remember.”
“Arguments.”
“Yes.”
“Boots beside the bed.”
“Yours are a hazard.”
Jude’s laugh broke into something raw.
He pressed his forehead to Gideon’s. Around them, the square blurred into movement—marshals binding prisoners, townspeople collecting evidence, Marisol calling for a doctor. None of it mattered as much as the weakening breath against Jude’s mouth.
“Stay,” Jude whispered.
Gideon’s hand found the back of his neck.
The grip was faint but deliberate.
“Here,” Gideon said.
Judge Ainsley approached through the dust.
He looked down at them: the blood-covered marshal wearing a federal badge and the accused murderer holding him as though the entire world depended upon the strength of his arms.
Cutter, already bound, shouted from across the square.
“Calder corrupted him! Shaw abandoned his duty for a criminal!”
The crowd turned.
Judge Ainsley’s gaze remained on Gideon.
“For the record,” he said, “who is Jude Calder to you, Marshal Shaw?”
Silence moved outward from beneath the gallows.
Gideon knew every answer that might protect him.
A prisoner.
A witness.
A federal informant.
A tracker assisting an investigation.
His partner, if the word were allowed to remain safely incomplete.
He thought of Samuel Orr beneath the cavalry sun, waiting for Gideon to speak. He thought of fifteen years spent believing silence could be repaid with suffering. He thought of Jude offering his hands at the mission and asking Gideon to bring him home.
Gideon opened his eyes.
He looked at the judge.
Then at Cutter.
Then at the crowd Harrow had gathered to frighten into obedience.
Finally, he looked at Jude.
“He is the man I love,” Gideon said.
The truth crossed the square without apology.
Jude’s face crumpled.
He bent over Gideon, one hand pressing the wound while the other held Gideon’s cheek. Their foreheads touched. Their blood mixed beneath Jude’s fingers, indistinguishable now.
Behind them, the sun reached the horizon.
The gallows cast its long shadow across the courthouse square, over Harrow’s body, the broken death warrant, and the empty cuffs lying open in the dust.
Jude held Gideon as the last light disappeared behind the scaffold.
And this time, with an entire town watching, Gideon did not let go.