CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Man Who Stayed
The first thing Gideon felt was Jude’s hand.
It lay beneath his own on the edge of the mattress, palm turned upward, fingers loosely interlaced with his. The skin was warm. Calluses pressed against Gideon’s fingertips. A narrow band of healing flesh marked the wrist where the cuffs had rested over leather at the gallows.
There was no iron between them.
Gideon held to that fact while the rest of the world returned.
Pain came next. It lived beneath his right shoulder, deep and hot, spreading across his chest each time he breathed. His ribs felt bound in wire. Something tight encircled his torso, and the air carried the smells of boiled linen, carbolic, old wood, and the bitter medicinal odor of laudanum.
Sunlight entered through lace curtains and laid a pale rectangle across the floor.
He was in a bed.
The mattress sagged toward the center. A faded blue quilt covered him to the waist. His right arm rested in a sling across his body, while his left disappeared beneath the blanket except for the hand holding Jude’s.
Jude slept in a chair beside the bed.
He had folded his body into a piece of furniture too small for him.
One long leg stretched beneath the bed frame, while the other was bent awkwardly beneath the chair.
His head rested against the mattress near Gideon’s hip.
Dust and dried blood had been washed from his face, but his beard had grown dark along his jaw, and exhaustion had hollowed the skin beneath his eyes.
He wore the same shirt he had worn beneath the gallows.
Someone had cleaned it. The stain across the front remained.
Gideon recognized the shape of his own blood.
He tried to speak.
Only a dry sound emerged.
Jude woke instantly.
His head lifted. For half a second his face held no recognition, only the naked alarm of a man pulled from one nightmare directly into another.
Then he saw Gideon watching him.
Everything in Jude went still.
“Hello,” Gideon managed.
Jude stared.
Gideon tried to tighten his fingers around Jude’s. The movement barely disturbed their joined hands.
“You stayed,” he whispered.
Jude stood so quickly the chair struck the wall.
One hand remained locked around Gideon’s while the other found Gideon’s face, moving over his forehead, temple, cheek, and throat as if sight could not be trusted. His thumb rested beneath Gideon’s jaw, searching for the pulse there.
“You’re awake.”
“So it appears.”
Jude made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not broken halfway out of him.
He bent over the bed and pressed his forehead to Gideon’s. His shoulders trembled. Gideon felt each breath strike his mouth, warm and uneven.
“How long?” Gideon asked.
“Three days.”
The answer carried accusation, relief, and exhaustion in equal measure.
Gideon tried to lift his uninjured arm.
Pain cut through him before his hand had moved six inches.
Jude caught it and lowered it carefully to the mattress.
“Do not.”
“I was going to touch you.”
“Then ask me to come closer.”
“Come closer.”
Jude sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress shifted beneath his weight, drawing their bodies toward each other. He braced one hand beside Gideon’s hip so he would not jostle the wound, then leaned until Gideon could place his palm against the side of his neck.
Jude’s pulse beat beneath his fingers.
Alive.
Gideon closed his eyes.
Jude turned his face and kissed the inside of Gideon’s wrist.
“You frightened me,” he said.
“I am sorry.”
“No, you are not. You would fire the same shot again.”
“Yes.”
“You would step in front of the same bullet.”
“If it was coming for you.”
Jude lifted his head. “That was not the correct answer.”
“It remains the true one.”
“Then we will work on your character while you are too weak to escape.”
Gideon opened his eyes. “You said you wanted honesty.”
“I failed to consider how aggravating yours would be.”
The corner of Gideon’s mouth moved.
Jude watched it as if a smile were proof of life.
He lowered his face until their lips nearly touched, then stopped.
“May I?”
“Yes.”
The kiss was gentle enough to hurt.
Jude’s lips settled over Gideon’s without pressure. He did not deepen it or ask Gideon’s injured body to reach toward him. He simply remained there, mouth warm and still, sharing breath until Gideon felt the fear trapped beneath his ribs begin to loosen.
When Jude withdrew, Gideon followed by instinct.
Pain stopped him.
Jude’s hand immediately cupped the back of his neck.
“Easy.”
“I dislike that word.”
“You will hear it often.”
“I may recover out of spite.”
“I have built my entire plan around that.”
Gideon looked around the room. It was narrow but clean, with flowered paper curling from the walls and a washstand beneath the window.
A pitcher stood beside a basin. Medicine bottles crowded the bedside table along with a revolver, a folded newspaper, Gideon’s cleaned badge, and the brass button from Noah’s coat.
Jude had placed the button where Gideon could see it upon waking.
“Where are we?”
“Mrs. Bell’s boardinghouse. East side of Santa Reina. The doctor refused to let Judge Ainsley move you to the army infirmary.”
“Why?”
“Because the infirmary surgeon believed removing the bullet required sawing off your arm.”
Gideon glanced down at the sling.
“Did it?”
“No. Doctor Keane dug the bullet out through your back and spent two nights cursing every medical school east of the Mississippi.”
“Marisol?”
“Alive.”
The word left Gideon with his next breath.
“Her throat is bruised,” Jude continued. “Two ribs cracked when the trap opened. She has informed the doctor that neither injury excuses his coffee.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She is staying with her sister until she decides whether to rebuild Sundown House.”
“The square?”
“Still standing. Gallows came down yesterday.”
“Cutter?”
“In the courthouse cell he used for political prisoners. Judge Ainsley has four territorial marshals outside the door and one inside because Cutter attempted to purchase the first three.”
“Harrow?”
“Dead.”
Gideon remembered cream-colored cloth stained red. A derringer turning toward Jude’s back. The recoil of his last cartridge traveling through his wounded shoulder.
“And the ledger?”
“Safe.”
Jude reached for the folded newspaper and opened it across Gideon’s lap.
The front page of the Santa Reina Sentinel carried a column of names beneath an enormous headline:
HARROW RECORDS EXPOSE TERRITORIAL CONSPIRACY
Below it appeared a second:
JUDE CALDER EXONERATED
Gideon read the words twice.
His eyes moved to Jude.
“Fully?”
“Judge Ainsley vacated the warrant the night you were shot. Yesterday, the federal court entered a finding that Noah Calder and the four Dry Mercy settlers were murdered by men acting under Harrow’s orders.
Rusk’s private account books were found in Harrow’s house.
They record the payments for each killing. ”
Jude spoke steadily, but his hand tightened around the newspaper.
“Noah’s name is cleared,” Gideon said.
“Yes.”
“And yours.”
“Yes.”
The answer was almost inaudible.
Gideon wanted to rise. He wanted to take Jude into both arms and hold him with enough strength to answer for every year spent running beneath the weight of those accusations.
His body gave him no such strength.
He could only turn his left hand upward.
Jude placed his own into it.
Gideon brought their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Jude’s knuckles.
Jude looked toward the window.
“They found the San Diablo records,” he said.
“Not only the strongbox. Harrow kept ledgers at the ranch going back eleven years. Payments to judges, sheriffs, federal clerks, land assessors. Names of men he had beaten off their claims. Names of families whose houses he ordered burned. There are records of forty-three prisoners sent to the mine.”
“How many survived?”
“Seven that we know of.”
Gideon’s eyes closed.
“Judge Ainsley froze Harrow’s estate,” Jude continued. “Every stolen deed is being reviewed. The water claims return first because the ranchers cannot wait through another dry season. The Calder land has already been restored by emergency order.”
Gideon opened his eyes.
Jude was looking at him now.
“You own it again,” Gideon said.
“We own dust, a half-burned barn, one stubborn chimney, and a roof that has finally admitted defeat.”
“It lasted the season.”
“Barely.”
“You said it would.”
“I have confessed my dishonesty in that matter.”
Gideon let the newspaper fall against the blanket.
“What about the charges against me?”
“Dismissed. Rusk’s records prove Harrow ordered the murders at Red Mesa after we left.
Cutter’s route order proves you were marked for death before any deputy was killed.
Judge Ainsley says your actions preserved federal evidence, exposed a criminal conspiracy, saved two condemned prisoners, and prevented Harrow from murdering additional witnesses. ”
“Two prisoners?”
Jude’s expression changed. “He counted me.”
“You were no longer a prisoner.”
“Perhaps judges enjoy tidy language.”
“And my suspension?”
“Undone.”
“That easily?”
“No. There was a great deal of shouting. You missed it.”
“Did you contribute?”
“I offered several legal observations.”
“You threatened someone.”
“I did not threaten Judge Ainsley.”
“That was not my question.”
Jude gave him a careful smile.
Gideon studied the face he had feared never seeing again. Relief settled slowly, unable to find a place untouched by pain.
“You are free,” he said.
Jude’s thumb moved over his.
“So are you.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Jude stood immediately, releasing Gideon’s hand only long enough to reach the revolver on the bedside table.
“Who is it?”
“Doctor Keane,” a tired voice answered. “And if you point that gun at me a fourth time, Mr. Calder, I shall begin charging by the bullet.”
Jude opened the door without putting down the revolver.
Doctor Keane entered carrying a black case. He was a lean man with a graying beard and sleeves permanently rolled to his elbows. He looked at Gideon, then at Jude, then at their still-joined hands.