Well Traveled

Copyright

Published by Dreamspinner Press 4760 Preston Road Suite 244-149 Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author‟s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Well Traveled Copyright © 2010 by Margaret Mills and Tedy Ward Cover Art by Catt Ford All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ ISBN: 978-1-61581-602-6 Printed in the United States of America First Edition October, 2010 eBook edition available eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-603-3

Chapter 1

LIVINGSTON, Montana in the summer was hot and windy and green, nestled against a big bend in the Yellowstone River and bustling with the engine of progress. It was altogether a great place to visit, and Gideon Makepeace had been happy to do so. But he‟d heard from the local folk about just how hard Montana winters were—harder than any he‟d ever suffered through in Texas or Florida or Louisiana—so he was just as happy to be headed out today, in plenty of time to avoid one. Mister Landon had been a fair boss, paying him well for his horse skills and treating him with less awe or envy and more respect than most respectable men would treat a fella from a traveling show, but after three months here, butting heads with Landon‟s regular help, and seeing the futility of doing work that those horses‟ asses would as likely undo in weeks, Gideon was happy to be moving on, too. “Gonna miss you, Gideon,” Tommy, one of the youngest of Landon‟s hands, said as he came to stand next to Gideon. “Wish you didn‟t have to go.” Gideon smiled at him, slapping him on the back. At sixteen, Tommy was four years Gideon‟s junior and one of the best hands Landon had. Gideon felt a score of years older than the boy, most days, because he‟d known so much more about horses and life by the time he‟d reached sixteen. “Miss you, too, Tommy. If you decide to leave Livingston, look up the show—we can always use a good horse hand, and I‟ll be glad to put in a word for you with Bill and with my dad.” Gideon‟s daddy ran the horses for Bill Tourney‟s Wild West Show and had since before Gideon had been born, back when Bill still rode broncs and the show numbered no more than two dozen rowdy men

and women. Before Gideon was even old enough to reach a horse‟s withers without a stepstool, he had learned the trade from his pa. Tommy nodded, flushing a little with the compliment. “Thanks, but don‟t expect to see me anytime soon. Mister Landon wants me taking up your work with Boxer—he says he thinks I‟ve learned better than anyone else. That‟s a damned fine horse, Gideon. Always was, but now that we can handle him good….” Gideon smiled, feeling something in him ease a little. Landon clearly wanted the best out of his stock—just not enough to spend his days at the barn himself and keep an eye on the rougher men responsible for keeping his breeding farm running. Landon liked his wealth and his travel, and had only got back from another trip just five days past. The pair of them had spent the last three days talking about two studs Gideon had put most of his time into. Tall roans both of them, the studs were four and five years old, respectively, and while they‟d never be anything like his Star, they weren‟t bad animals at all. Boxer was the five-year-old, and while he was a little bit lazy, he listened to Tommy. Gideon watched the roans now, standing quiet in halter with their ears swiveled toward the noise of people on the street or the steam and clang of the smithy, back behind this livery. Three months ago they‟d have been bucking and rearing, panicked. Gideon cast a measuring eye to their stance and bit his lip as Landon walked toward them, calling out to the horses as if they were people. “Good to know you,” Tommy said, shaking Gideon‟s hand quickly then moving away. “I‟ll remember everything you said.” As he left, Landon walked over, his eyes still on his horses. “They‟re my best studs,” he said, like that was news after all this time. “They‟ve thrown over a dozen healthy foals off my own mares, but better yet, they‟re gonna fetch higher stud fees now when folks cotton to how smart they are.” The old man was probably right about that, Gideon thought with a smile. “I appreciate your work with ‟em, Gideon,” Landon said, and clearly the man did.

“I did my best, sir, but still—don‟t expect ‟em to be like Star, all right? Worse, you let your boys get impatient with ‟em, and they‟ll likely unlearn everything you and me have taught ‟em so far.” Landon laughed and shook his head. “You‟re as sentimental about horseflesh as most men are about their wives,” he said, and Gideon shrugged. The man was right, after all; a great horse could be ruined by a bad trainer, while a mediocre horse with a skilled trainer could surprise the hell out of a man. Gideon secretly thought Landon had the latter in most of his animals, but these two studs were all right. Good lines, good conformation, good lineage—tempers as hot and hard as their pricks, too, he thought with a frown. In the calm, low voice Gideon had taught him to use, Landon spoke to his horses. “Boxer. Square up.” Boxer‟s ears flicked forward, and he lifted his right forefoot, then set it down pretty much where he‟d had it before. “Square up,” Landon repeated. Boxer did a little better, shifting his weight and bringing his right foot into line with his left. “No anger in him either,” Landon said approvingly. “Don‟t know how you schooled that out of him.” “Like I told you, sir, you can cow a horse, or you can respect it.” More quietly, “And I still think your whole investment‟ll be better off if you send Johnson packing.” The man who ran the barn drank too much to make animals trust him. People, too, probably, but then folks could be a lot more gullible than horses. “I‟m thinking on it. Already talked to Tommy about taking over Boxer‟s handling—but I reckon you know that.” There was a smile in the man‟s voice. Gideon tilted his head to look sidelong at his companion. George Landon saw an investment on the hoof in horses, like cattle or hogs. Gideon couldn‟t even say the man was wrong. Landon was the man with the land and the money and the fine studs, after all. Landon had been down in Casper in May, to sell some yearlings and to catch Bill Tourney‟s Traveling Wild West Show. Landon had introduced himself to Robert Makepeace, Gideon‟s pa, with the idea of offering a yearling to the show and increasing his breeding farm‟s

reputation. After the trick riding events, though, the breeder had changed his mind. “Robert,” he‟d said, “I‟d like to hire you to teach my studs some schooling. They‟re already in high demand, but if I can show off how smart they are, too, I‟ll have folks coming from New York and California to get their mares covered.” His daddy had been no more willing to leave the show than Landon would have been to travel with it, but Gideon had loved the idea. “Setting up in somebody‟s nice guest house, sleeping late and bedding down early? Interfering with a local gal for longer than a few days‟ time?” He still remembered the look the elder Makepeace had given him for that one. “You‟d best remember what interfering with local gals can cost you,” his daddy had chastised him. “And more important, what it can cost them. You find better things to do with your time, son.” Gideon had shared the thoughtful silence, certain that his pa wasn‟t hinting at how he himself had been made, but equally sure the man was right. Eventually, he‟d nodded his head. “Yessir. Still, you‟ll put in a word for me, won‟t you? Make sure he knows I‟ve got the grit to tackle the job?” His daddy had grinned. “Yessir. Hell, that kind of money, I almost wish I‟d be willing to part from my horses or my woman and do it myself.” So Gideon had found himself here, enjoying easy work, fresh air, and the tourists who poured through on their way to Yellowstone National Park. He‟d spent his fair share of time trying to charm the birds out of the trees in this bustling city, and mostly avoiding the daddies who‟d want to geld him if they caught him too close to their daughters. Wives were safer. Men could be safer still, at least on the road. Gideon hadn‟t even found a feller really worth looking twice at around here, much less worth the risk of approaching, not when he couldn‟t move on right quick if things fell out wrong. It weren‟t no trouble to take matters in hand, so to speak, not with the private room Landon had given him. And when the need drove him too hard to ignore it, he‟d visited a very nice prostitute on B Street. Thin and

boyish, she‟d been worth every dollar he had paid her, for the more worldly company as much as for the fucks. “You all right with how we settled out, Gideon?” Landon asked, bringing Gideon out of his musings. “About my pay? Yessir.” Landon had an account at the Wells Fargo Bank and had had a letter sent to the branch in San Francisco, opening an account for Gideon into which Landon had deposited nearly all of the $400 Gideon had earned for his summer‟s work. The show would land in San Francisco sometime in September, and Gideon planned to meet it there. “You were right, sir, the best way to lose that money would‟ve been to carry it on me the whole trip.” “Especially since you‟re so determined to hop off and sightsee,” Landon agreed, nodding. One thing Gideon liked about the old man was that as a traveler himself, he seemed to understand the need to see new pieces of the world. Gideon had near five weeks, maybe more if the pickings in California were good for Bill, to get to San Francisco to meet up with Bill Tourney‟s Wild West Show, and he‟d already talked with a Northern Pacific ticket clerk and at length with Doctor MacCray, who had traveled across most of the Rockies in both America and Canada. In his wallet, folded flat and tucked carefully into the breast pocket of his traveling coat, he had the forty dollars he‟d accepted in cash and his train tickets—the one for himself and the one for his horse. Forty dollars was plenty to get him west in comfort. “Yessir,” he said again, and checked his pocket watch. “I‟ve got four more hours, sir. You want help taking these boys back to your spread?” Landon chuckled. “No, no. Boxer here‟s going to the Lazy R, fifteen miles downriver. I want to show him there while he‟s at his best—before my men ruin him again,” he said. Gideon was just glad that humor infused the man‟s voice. “Sorry, don‟t mean to talk so much or so bad about your employees.” Landon waved it away. “You probably aren‟t wrong, Gideon. I never thought much about it before, but to see how well you manage animals that Johnson swears shouldn‟t be handled without a gun and a

bullwhip… well, let‟s just say you‟re making me see things a little more clearly.” Gideon brought up his „aww shucks‟ smile, one he‟d practiced for audiences and pretty women alike. “Right kind of you to say, sir.” Landon turned to him and extended a hand to shake. “I‟m letting Bill and Tommy take Boxer downriver on the flatboat, not Johnson,” he said with a smile. “Reckon even an old dog can learn a few new tricks, eh?” Gideon felt his smile widen, a real one this time, and shook hands firmly with the old man. He‟d already said his goodbyes on Landon‟s stud farm, shaken hands with the other men who he‟d tried to teach the finer points of horse training, pretty sure that most of them wouldn‟t do any damage, but equally sure that few of them boys had the patience or the skill to work a horse past the basics of bending to halter, or cutting and roping. It was what they knew. “Tommy will do you well—and Boxer, too. You take care of yourself, sir,” he said sincerely. “You, too, Gideon.” Gideon stepped back into the shade of a tree and leaned against it, hiding his bare head from the noonday sun, and stuck his hands deep in his pockets as he watched Landon wave Tommy over. He waved again when Landon did and glanced over to the livery corral where Star dozed in the shade of the building. He and his horse were both at a loose end now. He‟d said his goodbyes to Lila at the whorehouse, to Doctor MacCray, to everybody who‟d come to mean anything to him in his long summer here. His bags were packed and held at the train depot, and only his tack, his hat and his horse still wanted collecting. He didn‟t have nothing to do now but get himself a drink, maybe saddle up Star and walk her along the banks of the Yellowstone River before he had to load her onto the train. He didn‟t know how long he‟d lingered, trying to decide how to kill the last of his time here, before a commotion on the other side of the livery caught his attention. Angry voices and a body hitting a wall, it sounded like, got him pushing off the trunk of the tree and moving fast. A couple of months back he might not have gotten involved—

these folks didn‟t take kindly to their Chinese or to their whores showing up in the wrong parts of town, and they didn‟t take kindly to interference either—but he was leaving today, so he could make the effort without much risk. He jogged around the corner of the big livery stable in time to see an Indian try to lever himself up off the ground, and to see a boy who worked at the stable put his foot to the man‟s chest and shove him back down. “Hey!” he yelled. He knew that kid and had thought he was a decent fellow. “What the hell are you doing?” It was clear even from here that the Indian had a problem with his leg; it was bound up and swollen, and when he‟d fallen back down and landed some weight on it, he‟d groaned and curled in on himself. Gideon didn‟t cotton to folks treating animals badly. He sure as hell wasn‟t going to stand by and let them do that to a man who hadn‟t done nothing to them. “We don‟t allow no Injuns in Livingston,” the boy, Jacob, said. Gideon was frankly shocked. He hadn‟t heard Jacob talk this bad even about the China men. “Who made you the boss around here, boy?” he snapped, stepping up and putting himself between Jacob and the man on the ground. He was a little worried about Tom the blacksmith. Tom was a big man, tall and burly and heavily muscled from his work, but Tom looked to be torn between Jacob‟s affront and his own decency. “You two,” he said, pointing to the other two men who‟d joined in the fray. Or started it, maybe. “I‟ve seen you both go into that church right on Callendar Street. That the way God tells you to treat the sick?” “God tells us how to treat heathens,” the bigger of the two, Bart Elston, said, and he spat on the ground near where the Indian lay. “These heathens drink and steal and kill honest, hard-working people.” Gideon resisted the urge to shift his weight to the balls of his feet and narrowed his eyes. He‟d met Bart in a saloon, known the man well enough to say howdy to him on the street, and Bart wasn‟t a man who went out of his way to work hard at anything. “Bart, you don‟t want to waste your energy on foolery like this,” he said with a frown.

“You‟re leaving today, ain‟t you, Gideon?” Tom asked, but his tone wasn‟t as hard as Bart‟s. “Why don‟t you just go on along and let us handle this?” He met Gideon‟s eyes, and even though he wasn‟t carrying the hatred Bart seemed to, Gideon saw the set of his shoulders and his jaw. Gideon couldn‟t take them on. Four of them, and at least three of them angry—that was a loser for sure. But he couldn‟t leave the Indian alone either; he had too many Indian friends to walk away from this stranger now. There was no denying that there was anger and even hate between many whites and redskins, but most of the Indians he knew were as good and decent as the best white man. His back was to the man on the ground, but he‟d gotten a good look before he‟d stepped past him: he was a small man, slender, with long black hair hanging loose around his face, and eyes that weren‟t the color a full-blooded Indian should have. Gideon relaxed his stance a little and stuck his hands into his pants pockets. “He ain‟t all Indian,” he said. “Maybe the white half of his soul ain‟t worth beating on just for the Indian half.” Bart Elston and his friend stiffened further, and Gideon felt his jaw tighten. No doubt they were thinking the worst on how a half-breed might have got made. But Tom looked hesitant about the idea of white blood on his hands, so Gideon figured he had a winning argument here. “I will go,” a faint voice called from behind him, the words almost too soft to hear. Elston took a step forward. “Get on out of here, Injun—before we take you out of town ourselves.” Gideon heard movement behind him, the rustle of hide clothes, the scraping of sand and rock as the Indian moved, trying to get to his feet. He was breathing hard, too hard. He needed a doctor bad enough that he‟d come into Livingston alone to look for one. “I‟ll help him,” Gideon said, taking a step back but still facing Tom. Tom was the closest he had to an ally here. He‟d cowed Jacob, but Elston and his friend could stir the kid up again, quick. “I‟m leaving anyway—may as well let him go with me.”

“Could just string him up,” Elston said, smiling in a way that made Gideon‟s blood run hot with anger. Without thinking, his hand drifted toward his revolver, but before it made contact, Tom spoke up. “For what, Bart? Falling down?” “He might have been eying the horses,” Elston said, his suspicion exactly the kind that someone who wanted to would believe. Tom turned sideways now, standing between Gideon and Elston. “He wasn‟t,” he said, a hard edge to his voice that relieved Gideon greatly and restored his faith in the man. More quietly Tom said, “No need in wasting good rope or good time,” and maybe he was glad of any excuse to avoid a hanging. Tom glanced back at Gideon. “Get him out of town.” His words weren‟t hate-filled, but his tone left no room for argument—either from Gideon or from the other men around them. He was the man in charge here, and when he turned around and walked back into the livery, Gideon felt the tension ease. He took another step back toward the Indian, glancing over his shoulder to find the man leaning heavily against the wall of the stable. He was trying to put weight on the leg that was injured, and Gideon saw the sheen of sweat on his skin and the lines of pain cut deep into his strong features. “Hey,” he said, pitching his voice low and slowly turning to where he could see the other man. “Let me give you a hand.” He reached out, intending to catch the Indian by the upper arm. But the man jerked back and away, stumbling and almost falling before he caught his balance. “No, thank you,” the Indian said stiffly, even though it was clear that he needed the help. Fever, Gideon could tell from the sweat and the brightness of his eyes. “What happened?” he asked, waving toward the man‟s leg even as he glanced back to find Elston and Jacob staring at them, waiting. Elston‟s friend had already faded away, probably to the sheriff‟s office to find some legal backing for his hate.

But the Indian either didn‟t hear him or ignored him, his attention on trying to stand up well enough to walk away. He was still using the barn for balance but moving slowly toward the road. He had bandaged the wound, but Gideon could see blood and pus staining the cloth. “Hey,” he said, moving closer without trying to touch him this time, “I‟m trying to help you.” It was about then that the Indian ran out of barn wall to lean on and started hobbling. On the third step, his bad leg gave way, and it was only Gideon‟s quick save that kept him from landing in the dirt again. “Come on,” he said, catching the man by the waist and taking his weight. It wasn‟t much, compared to many; he was slimmer than he looked, the buckskin clothes disguising his slightness, and Gideon had no trouble pulling the man upright and hauling him out of the livery yard and away. Definitely a fever, the Indian‟s body was hot where it touched Gideon‟s, and this close, Gideon could smell the infection. He led him down the road, ignoring the looks that strangers threw in their direction. The Indian didn‟t put up a fight, and Gideon could feel the man‟s will giving way. When they reached the alley between the general store and the hardware store, he guided the Indian into it, looking back to make sure they weren‟t being followed. “You came to town for the doctor?” he asked, pushing the guy back toward a bunch of empty wooden crates that were stacked against the hardware store‟s wall. “It does not matter,” the Indian panted. “It was a mistake—” “You need to see one,” Gideon said, putting a hand on a thin shoulder and pressing. “Sit down—dammit, sit down.” The Indian sat with a grunt of pain, and Gideon dropped down onto one knee beside him, trying to get a better look at the wound. “What happened?” he asked again, carefully touching the bandaging on the man‟s leg. It was clearly swollen, and heat fairly radiated off it. The man jerked and hissed, but he didn‟t pull free of Gideon‟s touch. When he spoke, his voice was low and flat. “Wild pigs,” he said. “They came in the night, a family of them. I woke to find them near my camp, and when I tried to leave, the boar attacked.”

Gideon winced, recalling tales he‟d heard about the dangers of wild pigs. If you came upon one without a gun, the best you could do was get out of the way or get stuck like this man had. “Lucky to be alive,” he said. “But you won‟t be much longer if you don‟t get a doctor to look at it, maybe drain it.” “I must leave,” the Indian said, “or those men will kill me faster than the wound will.” He pushed up, trying to stand. “Thank you for your help.” Gideon just stood and waited for him to fall back down, which didn‟t take but a second. “Just hold on a minute,” he urged and settled the man back on the crate. “Let me think about this.” The Indian bent over, his hands around his waist and his hair hanging forward to cover his face. He was sick, truly sick, and he knew it. “Did you know what kind of welcome you were likely to get here?” he asked. That got the man‟s head up, and a faint, faint smile touched his mouth. “You did not?” Gideon scowled. So the guy wouldn‟t have come into this city if he thought he had any other choice. Plenty didn‟t mind the natives anymore, but plenty more did. Gideon hadn‟t never been to Montana before this trip, but he knew there were reservations out here. Maybe the natives were just too close. Gideon had more than a passing acquaintance with Doctor Holt MacCray. He was a fine doctor, a good businessman, and a lousy gambler. Gideon knew that for the right price, the man would treat anyone. “You got any money?” he asked the Indian. The man raised his head, and for the first time, he looked Gideon square in the face. His eyes were blue all right, not dark as the night at the witching hour, but the deep blue of a clear mountain lake on a cloudy day. He had white blood in him, near.

“If you plan to steal from me, then just kill me now.” The words were flat, but there was weariness in them that made Gideon‟s belly knot up. He shook his head, protective of this defeated stranger and amused by his own soft heart. “It ain‟t for me,” he said kindly. “There‟s a doctor in town who will see you, long as you can pay.” The Indian held his gaze for several long seconds, and Gideon had the sense that he was being measured. Then, with a sigh, the man reached into his shirt and drew out a small leather bag held by a braided leather cord. He pulled it over his head and opened it with shaking hands, emptying the contents into one palm. Four dollars or more in mixed coins, Gideon saw. Not much, but plenty to get Doctor MacCray‟s attention. The Indian stared at the coins as if they were treasure—and maybe they were. But he said nothing as he held them out to Gideon. “I will repay you for your help,” he said softly. “But if you plan to take this and leave me, please, kill me. Do not leave me to suffer here.” Gideon took his hand, fine-boned and strong, holding it even after he had taken the coins. “I‟m taking you with me,” he said. “You can see where the money‟s going.” The Indian stared at him, frowning. “They said I must leave town,” he said, and Gideon realized that the man was only now beginning to accept that Gideon had no plans to rob him. “They said—” “Folks say a lotta things I don‟t pay any mind. You let me worry about them,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “Right now, we need to get you to a doctor, get that leg taken care of.” He waited until the dark blue eyes met his again, then, when the Indian gave a slight nod, he used the hand he was still holding to help the man back to his feet. “That way,” he said, pointing with this chin to the back of the alleyway. No use inviting trouble. “We can cut across to Second Street with no one the wiser.” The Indian had grit, Gideon had to give him that; even though he was weak and couldn‟t put much weight on his hurt leg at all, he kept his mouth shut and his head down, and held on tight round Gideon‟s shoulder. Maybe they‟d just look like a couple of drunks to the people

they passed. “What‟s your name, anyway?” he asked as they crossed Callendar Street. “Jedediah….” The Indian took a harsh breath. “Jedediah.” “Well, Jedediah Jedediah,” he smiled, “we‟re almost there. Doctor MacCray is a good friend of mine, and I‟m sure he‟s gonna fix you up, right as rain.” The Indian—Jedediah, now that he had a name, and one Gideon found he liked—let out a harsh, if quiet laugh. “You are… very optimistic.” Gideon felt his smile broaden, as much at the compliment as at the words the man was using. “Well, yes, you might say I am.” As they neared MacCray‟s office on Main Street, Gideon stayed to the shadows, sheltering the Indian as much as he could. MacCray kept his clinic rooms on the street level of a two-story building, and he lived in the rooms above. The clinic held regular hours, but that didn‟t always mean that the doctor was in. He had an assistant who stayed most days, handling the things he could, fetching and carrying and learning the trade, and allowing MacCray to come and go as he pleased. Gideon looked around as they drew near. A narrow stretch of dirt sat between Doctor MacCray‟s building and the next closest one on the right, and in that space, someone had a garden growing—mostly wildflowers and an apple tree, things that could grow untended. There were also some benches in the shade, near a water stand that the birds liked to play in, and it was to one of these that he led Jedediah. “Best let me see if the Doc‟s alone—no sense causing us trouble if he‟s got a room full of people waiting.” Jedediah didn‟t argue, settling with a low hiss onto one of the benches. Gideon had picked it intentionally. It was against the building and sheltered by a range of plants and tall flowers, so that the Indian would be mostly hidden from view. But before he turned to go inside, Gideon took Jed‟s hand and pressed the bag of coins into it. “You hold on to this until I get back,” he said, pleased when Jedediah blinked in surprise.

As it happened there was only one woman in the receiving room when Gideon walked in, and she was leaving. He took off his hat and waited patiently as she finished up with Elmer, MacCray‟s young apprentice, and he even smiled and nodded to her, opening the door for her to pass through so that he was alone with Elmer. “Gideon,” Elmer said with the friendly smile he used on everybody who passed through that door. “I thought you were leaving town.” “Well, I ran into someone who needs some help,” he said, smiling at the man. “Doc MacCray around?” Before Elmer could answer, a door from the back of the building opened, and the man in question appeared, pulling on his coat, his hat already on his head. “Gideon!” he called out as he drew near. Doctor Holt MacCray couldn‟t be a day under sixty, but he still had a spring in his step and plenty of strength in that thick body. “Thought you‟d be on your way west by now, son.” “Not just yet,” Gideon answered. “I ran into a friend who needs a little help—can I bother you for a minute or two?” MacCray frowned, his gray eyes sweeping around the receiving room. “Your friend invisible?” Gideon chuckled, more to show his good nature and humor the man. “Nah, he‟s just waiting outside.” Gideon chatted idly about a poker game they‟d been involved in three nights ago as they left the building. MacCray was jovial enough, but he looked at his watch enough times in their short walk to tell Gideon he was distracted. That might be good. As they rounded the corner of the building and moved into the garden area, MacCray slowed and frowned. When he saw Jedediah, he stopped. “This is your friend?” he asked, interrupting Gideon in midsentence. Gideon glanced to Jedediah who was hunched over but had his head tilted sideways, looking up at them with his hair pulled to one side to show his face. In the shade of the plants, his eyes were dark, still not the color you‟d expect to see on an Indian, but closer. He watched the doctor, but he didn‟t move, and Gideon guessed that it was taking a lot

of courage on his part to stay still and exposed this way. Or a lot of desperation. “Wild boar got him,” he said over his shoulder to MacCray. “In the leg.” MacCray didn‟t move, but Gideon looked back to see his eyes looking down to the bandage around Jed‟s left leg. “I think it‟s pretty bad,” Gideon went on, keeping his voice even. “He can‟t hardly put weight on it, and I don‟t reckon he‟d have come into town if it weren‟t. Bart Elston tried to run him off, and him with only one good leg to run with.” MacCray looked back up at Jed‟s face and his frown grew. He glanced around them and took a step back, as if expecting trouble. Gideon straightened and turned to face the man. He pitched his words low, just for MacCray. “We‟ll pay you, whatever it takes. It‟s bad, and it ain‟t gonna get better without help.” MacCray‟s face tightened, but Gideon saw the flicker of uncertainty. He was, at heart, a good man. Gideon had seen the little signs: the way he went into the poorer parts of town from time to time, to visit the homes of people who wouldn‟t come to see him and couldn‟t afford him, the way he visited the working girls during the day—not to sample their wares, even though some would have let him, but to help them with the kinds of problems they couldn‟t very well come to see him about. “Just take a look, Doc,” Gideon said, reaching into the pocket of his work pants. He pulled out a Liberty half-eagle that he‟d had every intention of saving in case of emergency, and held it out. “You can tell people he paid you in gold.” MacCray took the coin, shaking his head but the corners of his lips turned up. “This looks familiar—didn‟t I see this just the other night?” He tossed it up in the air and caught it before slipping it into the pocket of his vest, where it had been three nights past before he‟d lost a big pot to Gideon. This had been the first real money Gideon had won here in Livingston, as he played more for company than for the sport of it. Accordingly, he was no more than passing decent at the cards.

Gideon flashed a smile, as amused as he was relieved. MacCray was still wary, though. Before he‟d look at Jed, he moved them further into the garden, toward the back of the building. “More private,” he said, and it was. They seated Jed on another bench, this one lower so that it was easier for him to stretch out his leg. He‟d already carefully cut the stitching up the leg of his pants all the way to the knee, so MacCray had easy access to the bandage. As he unwound it, the smell of infection grew stronger and Jedediah‟s fingers tightened their grip on the edge of the bench, making the tendons in his hands stand out. The inner layers of the bandage were stuck together and to the leg itself, the cloth discolored and thick with blood and yellow pus. Gideon had seen enough injuries on horses and men to know what it meant. Even if MacCray could treat it, it was still going to be rough. It was a damned wonder the Indian had been able to stand, much less walk. “Gideon, go and tell Elmer I need a pan of clean water. And have him unlock the back door.” “Yessir.” Gideon took off at a jog, and waited impatiently as Elmer took down an enamel bowl and filled it from a cistern in the corner. “What‟s it for, Gideon?” Elmer asked, genial enough, but Gideon could almost see his ears swiveling, looking for gossip. “Reckon the Doc‟ll tell you as soon as he‟s ready for you to know,” Gideon replied, took the pan, and eased back outside. He held it while the doctor used a cleaner piece of the bandage to soak those parts stuck to Jedediah, who hissed as MacCray carefully worked the last layers of bandage away from the flesh. “Pretty bad,” MacCray said, more to himself than to them. He turned Jedediah‟s leg so he could see the wound from different angles, then he used the balled-up bandage to swipe at places. Jedediah caught his breath, and his eyes closed tightly. Gideon saw the beads of sweat pop out on his forehead and upper lip as MacCray continued to probe the wounds. “Bad infection,” he said, more loudly. “Best thing to do is stop if before it spreads—cut it off. Could do it today—”

But as he drew the tip of one finger across Jed‟s leg, above the wound but below the knee, Jed jerked back and twisted away, practically throwing himself to the ground and away from MacCray. “No,” he said as he scrabbled away from them, “no cutting. No cutting!” “Hey, now,” Gideon called, moving around MacCray without drawing too close to Jedediah, “hold on now, let‟s talk about this for a—” “No cutting,” the Indian repeated firmly. “It would be better to die quickly, less pain—” “Calm down,” Gideon said, holding out both hands as he dropped into a crouch close to the Indian. “Nobody‟s talking about dying. Nothing‟s been decided. Take a breath.” He nodded, trying to be reassuring. “It‟ll be all right.” “No, it won‟t,” MacCray said, his voice grim. He had risen to his feet, shaking his legs as if his knees were hurting him. “It‟s a serious situation you‟ve got there, and there are only so many ways for it to go. An infection that bad, well, it‟s rare to live through it if it spreads through your whole body.” Jedediah shook his head and pulled further away, getting his good leg up under him. “I‟ll die for sure if I lose it,” he said, glaring at MacCray. “It‟s hard enough to survive with two good legs around your kind.” “Slow down,” Gideon said, annoyed now, but with MacCray more than with the Indian. He‟d thought the man had some sympathy in him. “Let‟s talk about this—” “You speak pretty well,” MacCray said, talking over Gideon. “You grow up living with „our kind‟?” He was standing still now, his head tilted to one side as he watched Jedediah. The brim of his hat cast a shadow over his eyes, but Gideon knew his expressions well enough to see that he wasn‟t hostile or angry—if anything, he was curious. Jedediah looked at him, his eyes flashing. He was shaking, holding himself up but just barely, and Gideon had to stop himself from

reaching out to help. But the Indian‟s voice was ice cold as he replied, “Not by my choice or the choice of my people.” MacCray stared for another few seconds, watching as Jedediah finally rolled to one side, breathing heavily as he rested on his hip and arms, half-sitting, his bad leg resting on his good one. When Jedediah drew a deep breath, as if to get up, MacCray said, “There‟s another way. With infection like that, I can‟t promise it‟ll work at all, but if gangrene hasn‟t set in….” He sighed. “It‟ll take time and a lot more work, too.” He turned to Gideon. “He‟ll have to stay somewhere where I can see him two or three times a day—but not here, not at my place.” Gideon turned on him. “What the hell kind of doctor are you?” he started, but MacCray waved a hand in his direction. “Oh, shut up, Gideon. I‟m saying, he stays here and folks‟ll hear about it. They‟ll hold it against him. I could give two hoots about what they want to think of me, and you know it.” Here he smiled, shrewd, and his eyes moved briefly back to Jedediah. “When they‟re sick enough, they‟ll come running my way. But somebody like Bart Elston‟ll want to cause an Indian trouble just because he presumed. So check around, see if we can find him a room down on South B. All right?” Gideon blinked, looked from him back to Jedediah. Darned if MacCray wasn‟t right about that. “I could ask Lila. Lila Dumont,” he explained, as much for Jedediah as for MacCray. “I‟ve stayed over there a time or two. They‟ve got a room in back for a Mexican boy who took care of three of the whorehouses, ran errands and the like. They lost him two weeks back, haven‟t replaced him yet.” “Even better,” MacCray agreed. “I‟ve got reasons to go there, reasons nobody has the balls to question.” Almost to himself he added, “Josephine‟s big heart will be her undoing one day. But not today.” Louder he said, “Help me get him inside—through the back. I‟ve got to clean that leg up.” When Jedediah started shaking his head, he laughed, low. “It might hurt like I‟ve cut it off, but I won‟t. I want to see how this works.” Jed rolled over to sit on his butt, pulling his bad leg up. “Why?” he asked. “Why would you do this?”

MacCray frowned at him, bushy eyebrows drawing together. “Son, why the hell wouldn‟t I?” Jedediah blinked at that and looked toward Gideon, and Gideon had to admit, he liked already that this familiar fellow trusted him. But he had to shrug in reply, because Holt MacCray liked being an enigma—fancy dressed and schooled in the east, associates he corresponded with all the way over in Europe, and as like to swear and spit in public as he was to help a whore or an old crone cross a muddy street. “Don‟t ask me,” he said with a shrug. Jedediah frowned. “You are the one who brought me here. Who else should I ask?” That got MacCray‟s thick eyebrows rising and forced a bark of a laugh from the old man. “I think he‟s got you there, Gideon,” he chuckled. “You told Elmer to unlock the back?” “Yessir, I did,” Gideon said, grateful—for the help and for the distraction, because how was he supposed to answer a question like that? MacCray frowned toward the side of his building. “Elmer‟s probably trying to peek out the windows right now and catch a glimpse of something. I‟ll send him off to tell my two o‟clock that I‟ve had to reschedule. You get this man inside.” MacCray emptied the pan of water on the wildflowers, gathered up the dirty bandages, and headed back to the front of his office. “Come on, Jedediah.” Gideon moved closer, intending to help the Indian rise, but Jedediah drew more closely in on himself. “The money I gave you, it is all I have,” he said, looking up at Gideon. “I cannot pay for a room here. I left my pack out of town—I will go there—” “Hush, now,” Gideon said. “We‟ll figure something out. You let me worry on that for now, and you worry on getting better.” “Why are you helping me?” Jedediah asked. “Your doctor wants money—and I will pay him.” „If I live‟ hung in the air between them. “What will I have to do to repay you?”

Gideon shrugged. “I got Indian friends, real good people,” he said honestly, “and I don‟t have any trouble with them. Most of them are more decent than plenty of white folks I‟ve come up against. They‟d help a stranger out if he needed helping and didn‟t have a kind soul about to lend ‟em a hand. No more fussing, now. Let‟s get you inside.” This time, Jedediah didn‟t argue when Gideon moved to help him to his feet. It didn‟t take as much effort as Gideon had expected to get him standing, now that he was cooperating nicely, and by the time they got to the back door, MacCray was standing there with it open, looking impatient. “Best get this done,” he said, stepping aside for them to enter his private office. “Through the doors and into the side room,” he said, pointing. He‟d already taken his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves, and he was carrying an armful of bottles and tools that Gideon didn‟t want to think on overmuch. He‟d broken his leg when he was a kid, and that had hurt plenty. This… he knew just by looking how much worse this was. Jedediah sidled into the examining room, using the wall for support, and went where MacCray directed him, finally hopping across the floor and parking his narrow butt up on the end of the metal bed. “Help him get those pants off, Gideon,” MacCray ordered, and Gideon swallowed before stepping forward. “I can do it,” Jedediah started, so Gideon shrugged and watched him try, watched him work the leather laces on his buckskin pants, watched him stand on his good leg to ease them over his hips. The skin under the leather was almost as dark as the skin of his hands, all smooth and supple-looking, and his parts were covered by a leather undergarment Gideon had seen on plenty of Indians in Bill Tourney‟s show. The garment was spare, a triangle of a pouch that narrowed to a strap between his legs, and Gideon grit his teeth as he knelt down on one knee, trying to keep his hands from interfering with Jedediah‟s as he helped the man tug the pants on down. He hadn‟t seen this much bare skin since before he‟d left the show. He was as careful as he could be, working the loosened leg over the injury, but Jedediah still hissed in pain and hopped back on the

table so Gideon could get the one leather boot and trousers off Jedediah‟s good leg. He stepped back fast, placing the pile of buckskin near the head of the bed, and retreated to the wall by the door, covertly watching the Indian. Jedediah looked wary, he looked brave, and he looked good, slim, and strong… and Gideon turned his eyes away, looking for something else to stare at that might be even half as interesting. He might have unnatural interests, but he wasn‟t so low as to ogle a man who was sick and helpless. “Now here‟s what I‟m gonna do,” MacCray said, just like he always did. The man was a great doctor for that, in Gideon‟s opinion, never trying to hide nothing from his patient or gloss over the rough spots. “I‟m gonna clean out that wound, first with carbolic and then with a cloth and brush, maybe with a tool or two if there‟s something that can clearly be helped by scraping. Then I‟m gonna clean it again, kill all the infection we can see. After, we‟ll put a poultice on it to help drain the mess up inside the meat, and I‟ll wrap it back up in clean bandages. Then we‟ll see.” He paused and looked around, then headed purposely toward the cabinets along one wall. “I‟ve got some laudanum for you.” “I do not—” Jedediah started. MacCray cut him off with the same annoyed wave he‟d used on Gideon—that he used on most people. “Yes, you do.” He administered a tiny draught of the laudanum and sat back for a minute, watching. Gideon folded his arms across his chest and did the same, wondering what they were watching for. Well, he knew why he was watching, and the knowledge made him feel more than a little guilty. The Indian was unquestionably in pain and just as clearly in need of a friend. Gideon would have been that just because of the trouble Bart Elston had made. The fact that Jedediah was strong and fine-boned, with all that pretty hair and sober countenance, just made the doing easier, was all. “Good,” MacCray said after a couple of minutes. Gideon blinked; nothing had happened, as far as he could see. But MacCray knew more than Gideon did, because he stepped up and poured more laudanum into a spoon, and bade Jedediah take it, too. “All right.” He pulled a

tray forward and started organizing bottles and jars, clean cloths, and fresh water. “Gideon, why don‟t you go on down and see if you can arrange a room for him? There‟s nothing here you‟ll want to see.” Gideon wasn‟t squeamish. He‟d helped deliver foals and tended sick horses, cattle, dogs, and people for most of his life with the traveling show. But he figured Jedediah wouldn‟t want a witness, because there was no way this wouldn‟t hurt him like hell, laudanum or no laudanum. “All right.” Jedediah‟s eyes tracked him to the door, which gave Gideon pause. “I‟ll be back. One way or the other, I‟ll be back in under an hour, and let you know what I‟ve fixed up for you.” Jedediah said nothing, but something in his face eased. MacCray pretty much ignored him, already focused on his operation. Gideon let himself out the door.

Chapter 2

THE walk to Lila‟s house wasn‟t far, just a few blocks on this sunny day, but Gideon felt himself awash with frustration. That Indian was going to die just to save his leg, and there seemed no point in that. But maybe he wouldn‟t. MacCray would have said if there was no hope, and offered a bottle for the pain, maybe sat vigil. He wouldn‟t put himself or the Indian out for no reason at all. And not for that halfeagle, either. His spirits bolstered a bit, he reached Lila‟s and let himself in through the front door. The sitting room was empty, but that wasn‟t uncommon. With the passenger trains going through today, travelers would be here getting their urges met before they had to leave, so Lila and the others would be occupied. He sat down in a wingback chair and pulled a magazine off the end table, turning the pages absently and looking at photographs of the national park not far south. It was what brought the tourists through Livingston, though Gideon hadn‟t made the trip himself. Too expensive, and the tour took three days he hadn‟t had whilst he was working. A noise in the back hall brought his head up, but it wasn‟t Lila. Josephine Howard, the house‟s madame, strolled up the hall and into the room, welcoming him with a smile. “Gideon Makepeace, I didn‟t think we‟d be seeing you again! Lila‟s currently entertaining,” she started, “but—” “Thank you kindly, Miz Howard,” he cut in, “but I ain‟t looking for company today.”

Miz Howard dropped her ample frame into a chair across from him. “Then what can we do you for?” “I….” He paused, realizing just what he was doing. “It looks like I might be staying in town for a few more days,” he said. “I wondered if I might rent that back room for me and a friend, seeing as it‟s empty right now?” She shrugged. “I suppose we could save you a little money over a boarding house room,” she offered. “It‟s not just that, Miz Howard. The friend is hurt bad, and Doc MacCray‟s looking at him right now—he got gored by a wild pig, and his leg‟s infected.” Miz Howard frowned at him. “So why isn‟t he staying at the doctor‟s office? MacCray‟s got sick rooms.” Gideon glanced around to make sure no gentleman callers were within earshot—locals frequented this house, too, after all—and lowered his voice. “He‟s an Indian, ma‟am. Doc MacCray don‟t think it‟d be safe for him to be seen reaching above his station like that.” Miz Howard‟s face darkened by degrees. “And he thinks it‟d be safe for us, putting an Injun up?” Gideon leaned forward, earnest now. “I reckon that‟s for you to decide. I know you kept a Mexican here, and there weren‟t no trouble. Lila said you‟d actually kept a Chinese boy here for a time, and nobody gave you problems about him either.” “No problems we couldn‟t manage,” Miz Howard said slowly. “But Gideon, they were employees. And we did have to pay off the cops to leave ‟em alone, especially the Chinese boy. But we‟ve got no reason,” she said, talking herself out of any offer. “No reason to justify keeping an Injun here. I‟m sorry, but even your pretty face isn‟t enough.” Gideon snorted and tilted his head just so. He wasn‟t particularly vain about his looks, but he knew he had them. He‟d gotten the best parts of both his parents, and he knew it—in dirty blond hair that curled a little when he didn‟t tame it, in a long, lean frame honed from hard work, and in his mother‟s eyes.

Miz Howard glared at him. “Don‟t you go batting those blue eyes at me, mister. I‟ve seen ‟em all. I won‟t put my girls in danger. Couple of ‟em won‟t appreciate having a redskin on the property, anyway.” Gideon offered his most charming smile. “You telling me you can‟t handle your gals?” Miz Howard frowned. “I‟m telling you it ain‟t worth it for no benefit, Gideon. I‟m sorry.” “I don‟t want you to be sorry, ma‟am, I want you to help out a good customer and a hurt stranger—and Doc MacCray—for good pay. I‟ve got money. You just need to tell me what I‟ll owe you for your trouble.” He sighed and just put the truth all out there. “You know even if a boarding house would keep us, the locals‟d get wind of it and try to run him out of town. He can‟t walk. He‟s that bad off.” She chewed on her full bottom lip, thinking. “There‟s no guarantee folks won‟t try and run him off this place, too,” she said slowly. Gideon waved a hand. “The men won‟t cause you trouble for fear you‟ll reject ‟em when they come calling to satisfy their own needs.” He knew that much about the whoring business, and he‟d seen Miz Howard turn away fellas who‟d got too rowdy or who‟d tried to cause trouble for her girls up on Callendar Street, then slinked back here expecting their treats like nothing was changed. “The cops‟ll shut ‟em down even if they do try, because you already pay to keep ‟em out of your business.” “My whoring business, Gideon,” she said, but he knew already that she was giving in. So did she. Gideon looked down to hide his grin. “Doc MacCray thought it was a good idea,” he said, being delicate about the fact that she and the doctor had regular trysts. “MacCray doesn‟t run this house,” she said firmly, but then she sighed. “If I have to pay the cops extra, it won‟t be coming out of my pocket.” “No, ma‟am,” Gideon agreed. Transaction settled. All they needed to do now was iron out the details.

“You know it‟s no never mind to me what color a man‟s skin is—” she started, airy and sophisticated, and Gideon snorted loud enough to cause her to glare at him. “All right, fine,” she snapped, irritated. “The redskins… too many of ‟em like their liquor too much. And they smell funny.” She was right, about the smell at least. Indians did smell different—not funny, but woodsy and wild, and not at all like a sweaty white man or one who‟d washed with lye soap or used the perfumed waters and powders most city folks did. “This Indian just smells sick, ma‟am.” She frowned at him. “I expect we can keep him hid from the law for a bit, but the minute they start asking for their share, you or your Indian friend will be paying it.” Gideon nodded. He had forty dollars. Jedediah had four. Surely that would see this through, one way or the other.

“HE‟S got grit,” Holt MacCray announced when Gideon eased back into the office. “Barely made a sound while I cleaned that wound out— but he didn‟t turn me down on the third dose of laudanum either.” MacCray grinned as he rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the cuffs. He‟d tossed his apron to one side but not before Gideon saw the splotches of red and yellow. The room smelled of sickness, carbolic and other chemicals that Gideon couldn‟t put a name to, and under it, the bitterness of infection and the copper tang of blood. Jedediah lay stretched out on the room‟s long table, one arm over his eyes, the other one at his side. His injured leg was bent at the knee and raised up by a pillow, and Gideon looked at the clean bandage wrapped around it, the white of the cloth stark against the dark of Jedediah‟s brown skin. “He needs to stay off that leg,” MacCray went on. “Which won‟t be a problem for a while, as I doubt he can carry any weight on it right now. I cleaned it out as best I could, and soaked the bandage in carbolic too for good measure—read about a boy whose leg healed up fine by

keeping it wrapped in carbolic-soaked bandages, but that‟s just an article in a medical journal.” He frowned, thoughtful, his bushy eyebrows drawing down. “We‟re going to have to keep a close watch on it.” He pointed to three bottles on the counter near the door. “There‟s more carbolic and some rubbing alcohol—I‟ll want to check the wound again tonight, probably wash it out again. I‟ll come by again in the morning. The third bottle‟s laudanum, use it when you clean the wound—it‟ll hurt like a son of a bitch, but he knows that already.” MacCray walked to the counter and picked up a small bottle of white powder, holding it out to Gideon. “There‟s something else, too. Got this from a friend back East. It‟s called salicylic acid, and if it doesn‟t bother his stomach too much, ought to help his pain. I haven‟t tried it much, but I reckon your friend here is as good a place to start as any.” Gideon took the bottle and studied it. “Sally—sali—what?” Gideon asked, eying it warily. It reminded him too much of the coca he‟d seen some folks use that made ‟em high and twitchy. “It‟s distilled from willow bark,” MacCray said, impatient now. “White willow bark?” Jedediah asked from his bed, which got MacCray‟s attention even faster than Gideon‟s. “Yes.” “My people use that. We make tea from it, for aches in the joints.” MacCray cast Gideon a superior look. “See? If it‟s good for arthritis pain, it‟ll be good for his.” Gideon palmed the bottle, mollified. “What do I do? Mix it with water? Like a tincture?” MacCray nodded. “Just like, but not with the alcohol,” he agreed. “Half a teaspoon or so in warm water. If it works as well as I‟ve heard, it should ease the pain and help with the fever. Did Josephine give in?” “Yeah,” he answered. “Back room at her house.” MacCray smiled. “Good. I visit there regularly enough. It won‟t look out of the way for me to drop by.” He looked over Gideon‟s

shoulder to where Jedediah was trying to sit up on the table. He was weak and wobbly, and his eyes were wide and unfocused. Gideon didn‟t know if it was laudanum or fever. Gideon walked to the table in time to keep Jedediah from falling off it. Instead, the Indian fell against him, and his long hair spilled across the back of Gideon‟s hand, soft and smelling woodsy. How Miz Howard could think this was a bad smell was beyond Gideon. “Let‟s get you out of here,” he whispered, helping Jedediah first into his pants, then off the table, and holding him up when his knees buckled. “Good thing you‟re not heavy.” “Keep him away from strong drink,” MacCray said as he picked up his coat. “No, no alco… no,” Jedediah said, trying to form the words even as he swayed drunkenly in Gideon‟s hold. “No,” Gideon agreed, laughing. “Let‟s get you to bed.” MacCray led them out the back, promising to stop by that night. It was only seven blocks to the whorehouse, but Gideon came close to fetching Star and giving this man a lift. He was wobblier than a new colt, from pain or drugs or plain old exhaustion, at this point. But now that MacCray had locked up his office, Gideon couldn‟t conscience leaving Jedediah somewhere alone, not all vulnerable like this. “You up for a stroll? It‟s not far,” he said. “I am.” Jedediah shook his head, and blinked his eyes against the afternoon sun. “I feel drunk.” “That‟ll be the laudanum,” Gideon agreed. “It‟ll help you sleep, once we get you abed. And it‟s got to be cutting that pain some.” Jedediah nodded. “Yes.” “All right. Take it easy now,” Gideon ordered softly, wrapping Jedediah‟s arm around his shoulder and doing what he could to keep any weight off the injured leg. Jedediah carried more of his own weight than he probably should have, but it made getting through the streets easy enough. In this part of town, most of the people they met were tourists with their own agendas, men and women who didn‟t pay much

attention to Gideon or the slight figure hobbling along beside him. Jedediah paid more attention to walking than to any of the passersby. They went down an alley off Lewis Street, snuck along behind the Baptist church until they hit Clark Street, and turned onto B a block north of the whorehouse. “Almost there,” Gideon promised, because a sweat had broken out on Jedediah just from this short walk. Taking the little path between two buildings, they entered through the back of the house, as Miz Howard had asked Gideon to do. Jedediah gave no resistance until they were halfway into the back hallway, then he stopped abruptly, pulling away from Gideon. “This—it‟s a—there are women here,” he said, but his words were slurred enough that it took Gideon a second to understand him. When he did, he frowned. “You don‟t like women?” The very idea of it was strange to him. “Dangerous,” Jedediah mumbled, looking around. “Get a man killed.” Gideon smiled. “That, they can,” he agreed. “But not today. Besides, I don‟t reckon you‟ll be up for the dangers they offer. Not for a while. Come on, let‟s get to the room.” Jedediah frowned, but he offered no resistance as Gideon led him into the little room in the back corner of the house. Miz Howard had left linens, so Gideon sat Jedediah in the room‟s straight-backed chair and made up the bed, talking to ease things along. “I know a gal here, got to know her pretty good out of bed, too— she plays backgammon like you wouldn‟t believe. But the lady who runs this place, Josephine Howard, she‟s the one I made the deal with. You‟ll get to stay here until you get better, and I‟ll make up a pallet on the floor, help look after you between doctor‟s visits.” Jedediah blinked some more and looked around the little room. “This and your doctor… this is not four dollars and sixty-seven cents.” “No,” Gideon agreed genially. “But I‟ve got money, and when you get better, you can figure out how to pay me back.” Jedediah‟s lips turned up in a pained, if real, smile. “Optimist,” he said again.

Gideon grinned. “Come on,” he said once he‟d got the bed made to his satisfaction, “let‟s get you horizontal.” Jedediah rose on his own, using the wall for support, and practically fell onto the bed. Remembering how MacCray had propped up the leg, Gideon pulled the pillow out from under Jedediah‟s head and lifted the leg gently, sliding it underneath. “I have a pack, north of town,” Jedediah said, but his voice sounded willowy and faint, like he was falling asleep right this minute. “I can fetch it for ya.” “No, I….” Jedediah pushed up onto his elbows, and seemed to force alertness into his frame. “I will probably die,” he said, and while Gideon wanted to object, he‟d seen that wound. “If I do, you should take my things. Sell them for whatever you can get. It is all I have to repay your kindness.” “Less talk of dying,” Gideon frowned, and tried to ease him back down. “Less lying,” Jedediah argued, struggling against the pressure of Gideon‟s hands on his shoulders. He was stronger than he looked, and Gideon was just about at the end of his patience. “Make you a deal, Jedediah,” he said shortly. “You get the sleep your body‟s so clearly aching for. When you wake up, we c‟n talk about death all you want.” The Indian seemed to take comfort from the words, though, and nodded soberly. He fell back to the mattress and extended his hand. When Gideon made to take it, Jedediah slipped his own hand past Gideon‟s, grasping his wrist. It wasn‟t a surprise. The Indians he knew did the same thing when they were serious about something. “We have an agreement,” Jedediah said. “Yeah,” Gideon said softly, wondering at how quickly this man would have died if the townsfolk had run him off. Wondering how quick he might die anyway, as sick as he was. “You rest now. I‟ve got belongings at the depot, clothes and such. Reckon my jacket‟ll make a soft enough pillow until we find something better.”

“I do not need a pillow,” Jedediah said. His eyes were closed, and while his face glowed with fever, the tension in it had eased some. “As you said, I just….” He yawned, proving his point. “Need sleep.” “Best thing for ya,” Gideon agreed, though in fact he had no idea at all if it was. “I‟ll duck out and collect my things.” Maybe trade in his train ticket for a future date, or cash it out until he knew when he‟d be traveling. He had more than two weeks of sightseeing built into his schedule. Surely Jedediah would be better or dead by then. “Don‟t—” Jedediah started, then stopped with a sigh. “Please come back. It is not safe for Lakota to be alone in houses of prostitution.” Gideon knew he was being foolish, making promises, but it didn‟t keep him from doing it. “You‟ll be all right here. And I‟ll be looking after you. My guess is, you‟ll still be asleep when I get back.” He waited a few minutes more, watching as Jedediah‟s breathing evened out. His lips parted enough to show the glint of white teeth as he fell into the restless sleep of the sick. Gideon watched him for a time, watched the firm chest rise and fall gently under his linen shirt, watched how dark eyebrows twitched with dreams. He let himself out the door, to find Miz Howard and pay her, maybe give her a little extra for her silence. Gideon used the full hour he‟d promised and then some, because he‟d decided not to put his horse up at Tom‟s livery. He‟d taken Star and her tack to a stable west of the depot. No sense inviting gossip about why he was still hanging around, and while Tom would hear about it eventually, Gideon didn‟t want to hurry the news along. Tom himself might not do anything rough, but Gideon was suspicious of Jacob now and didn‟t want that boy anywhere near his horse. Loaded with his suitcase and saddlebags, Gideon let himself in through the front door of Miz Howard‟s house and bumped straight into Lila, who was sitting wait in the parlor. “Gideon!” she said with some surprise. “I thought you‟d done said your goodbyes, darlin‟.” “Well, I did, Miss Lila, but plans changed on me.”

“Well,” she said, eying him up and down in a way that warmed his belly, “I‟m free at the moment….” He grinned. “And I‟d love the opportunity to take advantage of that, but I‟m kind of stuck on sick duty. Met a feller who got himself gored by a wild boar and needs looking after. Miz Howard let me rent the back room that used to be Jose‟s, and I reckon my time‟s gonna be et up looking after the man.” Lila‟s frown cleared as fast as it came. “Josephine‟ll be glad for the rent, no two ways about that.” She rose gracefully and sidled up against him, resting her hand on his hip just above his gun belt. “So, how long will you be staying?” Lila had been a powerful temptation these past months, but Gideon found his mind drifting toward Jed already, and resisted a grimace. “Can‟t rightly say. The man‟s bad off. Doc MacCray don‟t even know if he‟s gonna live to tell the tale.” The thought saddened him, but he was glad, too, that Jedediah wouldn‟t be dying alone in the woods somewhere. “So, could just be a short while.” “Aww, ain‟t that sad?” Lila said, and he could tell she meant it. Part of the reason he‟d chosen her was because when they weren‟t fucking, she liked to chat about the world and asked him often for stories of his travels. She genuinely cared about people, at least when she wasn‟t actively doing her job, and Gideon understood that well enough. In smaller towns his mother did trick shooting, but she was no Annie Oakley. In the cities big enough to tolerate one, his mama worked the peep show, and she was much the same—distant when working, professional—but when the clothes went back on, she could be as friendly and warm with the men who‟d watched her as she was with her own family. Gideon reckoned a woman had to do that, separate herself a little from all that false intimacy and lust. But the good ones, like his ma and Lila, they could spot the difference in folks who wanted nothing more of them, and folks who did. “Yes‟m, it is.” He hefted his suitcase a little higher. “I‟d best get back there, see how he‟s doing.” “You come out and visit, if you‟re of a mind, Gideon.” “I‟ll do that, Lila. Thank you kindly.”

He tiptoed through the house and knocked quietly at the door, not wanting to wake Jedediah if he was asleep, but not wanting to startle him if he wasn‟t. He was, his face as flushed as a dark-skinned man‟s could get, and he‟d caught another fever, looked like. Gideon set his suitcase down and reached in the side pocket for a book, thinking to while away the time a little, but Jedediah twisted on the bed and woke with a start when the movement jostled his leg. “Ahh!” he groaned, before setting his teeth against any further sound. “I‟m back,” Gideon called from the chair. Jedediah‟s gaze flew right to him. “I wasn‟t sure you would be,” he said, panting. Gideon frowned at him. “I‟ve done proved myself to you, Jedediah. I don‟t like thinkin‟ I‟ll need to do it over and over again.” Jedediah looked flustered, but he dropped his head back down to the mattress, his sweat-sheened face turned Gideon‟s way. “I‟ve slept,” he said simply. “How do you feel?” “Close to death,” Jedediah mumbled, “and very cold. But grateful for your efforts, and your doctor‟s.” “Leg hurt bad?” Jedediah nodded. “I‟ve got some of that saly—sallyci—” “Willow bark,” Jedediah corrected. “Please. My stomach has never minded the tea.” “Well, that‟s good to hear,” Gideon said just to fill the silence with cheerfulness, and bustled around, poking for a spoon until he found one in a drawer, along with a single knife and fork and tin cup. “Be right back, I‟m gonna get some warm water.” The kitchen sat just across the hall from this room, and its twoburner Franklin stove had a little fire banked in it, not enough to boil water but plenty to heat the enamel kettle, so Gideon sat to wait for it.

When the kettle was hot to the touch, he half-filled the cup and made his quiet way back to Jedediah‟s room. He guessed the measurement of the powder, used the spoon to stir it in, and pressed the cup into Jedediah‟s hands. “Here you go. This‟ll fix you right up.” Again, that ghost of a smile that Gideon had figured out already was the man‟s way of laughing at him, but Gideon didn‟t mind. It warmed him that this Indian thought he could. He sat on the bedside and reached under Jedediah‟s shoulders, helping him into a half-sit to make sipping the water tincture easier, watching his face pucker up in distaste. “My people make this taste better than your people do,” Jedediah said. Gideon had found that the Indians traveling with Bill Tourney‟s show could make quite a few things taste better than their chuckwagon cook could, so he just nodded agreement. Holt MacCray, on the other hand, could burn water; Gideon had seen him boil a pan dry when he got distracted with some medical task or other. When the cup was empty, Gideon helped settle Jedediah back on the mattress and laid the back of his hand to the sweaty forehead. Hot. Very hot. And the dark blue eyes looked glassy. “Feel like I ought to have the Doc check on you again.” “For what?” Jedediah asked. “I am wounded. Sickness is in the wound. I will probably die.” Gideon pursed his lips, but he couldn‟t argue, not just yet. Still, “Less talk of dying, huh? You‟re gonna depress me after I‟ve gone to all this trouble to help you stay alive.” “You have gone to this trouble because you have a brave heart,” Jedediah said, his words melodic, measured like the quiet, steady beat of a drum. “And you said, after I slept, we could speak of death.” Tarnation. “How about, after Doc MacCray comes by tonight? Let him tell us what your chances are before you start planning your burial.” It seemed like just the wrong thing to say, because Jedediah stiffened and carefully used his hands to push himself up, leaning

against the bed‟s headboard. “No burial,” he said, anxious. “We do not bury our dead.” Gideon frowned. “Well what the hell do you do with ‟em? Leave ‟em for the coyotes?” Jedediah grimaced, and his whole demeanor changed. “I do not want to die. I have things left undone, family left who should know….” His eyes got glassier, and Gideon realized it was tears now, not fever, in them. “Hey, now,” he said gently, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed again. “Doc MacCray wouldn‟t have made the effort if he thought there was no hope.” “Hope is not belief,” Jedediah said tiredly, as clearly taken by the fever as he was by his feelings. “Hope is what you have when there is no belief.” Gideon reached and took one of the over-warm hands in his, holding it gently. “All right then,” he said, feeling a little choked up himself, “where‟s your family? Who ought to know, if you don‟t…?” Jedediah sighed, and the tears spilled down across his expressionless face. “If my brothers or sisters still live… they‟re likely surviving on the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. Under the watchful eye of your United States military.” He blinked and a shudder went through him. “I do not wish to die alone.” “You‟re not alone,” Gideon said firmly. “If this takes you, I can promise you that. You ain‟t gonna die alone.” Jedediah‟s eyes seemed to pierce him, and Gideon withstood the scrutiny. The Indians in Bill Tourney‟s show had a way of doing that, of making him feel like they were staring at his soul instead of his face, so it wasn‟t so foreign to him. “I still have no one to carry my hair.” Gideon had learned something about Indian ritual from the Indians in the show, and he knew the men let their hair grow longer than plenty of women did, but he‟d never heard nothing about the why of it. “What?”

“When one of my people dies, we honor him or her. We cut their hair, and braid it, and tie the ends with leather. We carry it on our bodies for a year, to give them a life to follow, if need be, before they finish their journey.” The words sounded so serious, so important, Gideon couldn‟t help but feel them to his soul. The practice sounded a bit like carrying a picture in a locket, and he knew how important that kind of thing was to his mama. She had a picture of her daddy, a man who‟d died when she was just a baby, and she treasured it more than the gold locket that held it. Gideon swallowed. “I—would it be all right, having a white man do it?” Jed studied him, his features crinkled in pain or worry. “To follow a white man‟s spirit?” He frowned slightly. “I would ask you to try to find some of my family. I know the reservation is far from you, but perhaps, if you know of someone near to it….” Gideon nodded, even though he wasn‟t sure. The show‟s route was similar from year to year, but not always the same. No use worrying on that now, though. “I‟ll look for someone of your blood to give it to—but if that don‟t work, I‟ll ask my Indian friends to do what‟s right by you. I promise, Jed.” Jedediah blinked then frowned. “Jed?” “Short for your whole name, like—” Jed tugged his hand from Gideon‟s and waved the words away. “I know what it is. I have not been called that since….” He turned his head away. “In many years.” “You mind me callin‟ you that?” No words, but Jed shook his head, and Gideon nodded, glad. “Can we stop talkin‟ about dying now?” “No,” Jed said stubbornly. Already, in just this short time, Gideon had a sense of how stubborn the man could be. “If I die,” he went on, and Gideon took secret pleasure in the fact that Jed was saying „if‟ now, even as he listened intently to the burial customs Jed was trying to teach him. He‟d never burned a body, and the thought sounded

gruesome to him, but Jed‟s people seemed to think that the spirit got lifted out of the body in the smoke, and carried up to heaven. After listening to the whole ritual, Gideon had to admit that it didn‟t seem so much worse than planting a corpse in the ground for the worms to eat. “All right now, we‟ve done covered it all, right? I take your body into the woods, find me a clearing, and build the pyre out of pine boughs. Put your body in the middle, set the wood afire, and—it all right if I say some words?” Jed nodded, somber, and Gideon nodded back. “So I say some words, and then I wait for the fire to burn out good. Scatter the ashes and the remains. If I haven‟t found one of your kin, I‟ll talk to my other Indian friends, or I‟ll keep your hair in my coat pocket for a year, then set it loose in the wind someplace wild. That about it?” “Yes.” “Then no more talk of dying, Jed,” Gideon ordered, determined. “Talking about it‟s as like to bring it on as that infection in your leg.” “That is….” Jed frowned. “Your people believe that? I never learned that from the nuns.” Gideon didn‟t know nothing about nuns, but then, he didn‟t have much in the way of religious practice, himself, other than what he‟d heard from the tent preacher who‟d traveled a while with Bill Tourney‟s show. Jed clearly knew more about the Christian Bible than Gideon did. “Don‟t know what regular church folk believe,” he admitted. “I just know my pa says that talking about trouble is like to bring it home. So no more talk of dying.” “What do you talk about?” “My family, my friends, the animals we work with in the traveling show….” Jed frowned. “Traveling show?” Gideon nodded. “That‟s right. My folks both work in Bill Tourney‟s Traveling Wild West Show,” he said proudly. “Bill, the owner, says his was the biggest and the best, before Buffalo Bill came along, and me, I was born into it. My daddy works with horses, trick riding and roping, and he did some bronc riding back when I was a kid.

More circus-type stuff now. My ma works a—” he cleared his throat, “a ladies‟ show, when she ain‟t trick shooting.” His mother wasn‟t ashamed of her job, and neither was Gideon or his daddy, but you never knew how some men might take it. Jed nodded, interested. “I know of these shows. Many of my people have traveled with them. Talk of that, Gideon,” he said, his eyes still fever-bright. “Tell me of your life.” That was as easy as breathing for Gideon Makepeace. He smiled and started in, telling tales of when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, scrambling underneath horses‟ bellies to, as his pa had said, cause as much consternation as he could, watching the performances and learning to ride before he could even climb up on a horse without a boost from his pa. Jed‟s eyelids started drooping just a few minutes into the tale, but Gideon kept talking until he was sure the man was asleep, glad he could offer him a little peace. Gideon returned to his book, but kept an eye on the rise and fall of Jed‟s chest, anxious that he‟d slip away if Gideon didn‟t keep watch and annoyed at his own fancy. As if staring at the man would keep him breathing. His pa would have all sorts of things to say about that, when he told him this tale. A quiet rap on the door drew him away, but it was just Miz Howard. “We‟ll be sitting to supper soon, Gideon,” she said with barely a glance past him to the sleeping Indian. “Ten cents each if you want to partake here.” “Much obliged, ma‟am.” It was cheap, less than half the price of a restaurant meal, and he was proud of her for only covering her expenses on it. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Don‟t reckon he‟ll be eating, but I might try and get some broth down him later.” She nodded. “Dining room, few minutes from now. You‟re welcome to sit down with us, but he‟d best eat in here.” “Sounds like a good idea,” Gideon agreed, meaning it even. Eight women worked this house. There was no way at least a couple of them wouldn‟t hate to see an Indian in their home, and Gideon didn‟t want to start trouble any sooner than he had to. “Doc MacCray said he‟d be stopping by tonight to check on Jedediah.”

Miz Howard frowned. “Jedediah? That‟s an awfully white name.” Gideon thought about the nuns. “Guess he was brought up in a boarding school, like most these days,” he offered. “Jedediah‟s Biblical. Don‟t know what it means, but it ain‟t Indian.” “„Blessed of the Lord‟,” she quoted, not quite scoffing at the idea, but Gideon smiled. “I don‟t know. I kind of like it.”

HE RETURNED from dinner with the broth of a stew Miz Howard had made, and he managed to get Jed awake enough to take some of it. His fever was down a little, but after a few swallows, Gideon was afraid Jed might lose what he had in his stomach. He set the rest of it aside. MacCray came by as promised, peeled off the bandages and poked at the leg, and Gideon kept his face turned away until the doctor was done. “What are his chances?” Gideon asked MacCray as the man was finishing up his visit. Jed was almost but not quite unconscious, his arm once more over his eyes and his breathing fast and shallow. When called to assist, Gideon had helped MacCray wash out the wound again, and it looked to be about as bad as it had been that afternoon. The towel they‟d put down during the procedure, as MacCray called it, was wadded up on the floor, ruined with blood and pus, and Gideon had already started thinking about the cost of replacing the linens, too. MacCray shrugged. “Depends on how the night goes. Reckon you‟re in the worst of it now—fever‟s climbing and the infection‟s deep, but I don‟t see that it‟s spread any more than it was this afternoon. That‟s good news,” he said, but he was frowning. “Every couple of hours, you need to soak that bandage with carbolic and wash it out, just like we did. Keep him dosed up with laudanum if he‟ll let you, otherwise keep him on the salicylic. And get as many fluids into him as you can. I‟ll stop by first thing in the morning, before I open up my office.” He grinned then and added, “If I don‟t spend the night here, anyway.”

It was the first time he‟d hinted at the relationship he carried on with Miz Howard, which was common-enough knowledge but not something said to either of their faces. Gideon wondered if it was because he was asking for MacCray that she had given in about this room. It was a long night, one of the longest Gideon had had in years. He spent part of it, when he was trying to stay awake so he could change the bandage and doctor the leg, thinking on the last time he‟d had a night like this. Maybe the time his ma had been so sick. She‟d taken a fever one winter, when they were in Abilene, and he and his pa had tended to her three long days and nights, taking turns staying at her bedside and minding his younger siblings. By the time her fever had broken, he wasn‟t sure who had been in worse shape, her from the illness or them from the tending. It was like that now, with Jed. He changed the bandage regularly, washing it out in a bowl of carbolic and then suffering through Jed‟s pained hisses as he gently wiped out the wound before putting the bandage back on. Each time, the wound looked a little better—or little less bad—or maybe Gideon was just getting used to seeing it. Each time Jed‟s pain seemed to be worse. Around two in the morning, Jed‟s fever rose, and he sweated so heavily that the sheets were soaked with it. Gideon turned him to his side and pushed a blanket beneath him to help absorb some of it up and keep him from lying in it, and put his hand to Jed‟s head a time or two, just checking: he was burning up. Jed mumbled things, words that Gideon couldn‟t make sense of, most of them in a language that must be his native tongue. Jed didn‟t get loud, but that was almost worse, and Gideon thought about having to perform those burial rituals. He knew the Indians in Bill Tourney‟s show real good. They took their rites seriously, and all Gideon could think now was how he might fuck it up and fail this fragile, lonesome stranger. If he couldn‟t find Jed‟s kin, he‟d do as he‟d promised, but it seemed a big thing now, too close. What would a Sioux god think of a white man doing Jed this favor? What would He do if Gideon did something wrong? He slept in fits and starts, curled up on the floor, waking up fast whenever Jed called out, but the man seemed in the thick of his

delirium, and never asked for anything. So Gideon would just hold his head and try to get him to drink water or broth, and sometimes sit on the edge of the mattress with a hand on Jed‟s arm. That seemed to soothe him as much as the salicylic or the laudanum—maybe more than. Toward dawn, Gideon was tending to the wound when he heard a soft knock on the door. He turned in time to see MacCray slip in, looking tired and rumpled. “Fever‟s up,” he said without preamble. Gideon could‟ve told him that. “It‟s been up for a couple of hours,” he said. “Doc, he‟s burning up.” MacCray nodded and tugged the sheet away. “Need to cool him down.” He wasn‟t wearing his coat or vest and his shirtsleeves were already rolled up. “Get me some clean water—the cooler, the better. Use the well outside, there should be a bucket near the door.” By the time Gideon got back, MacCray had managed to get Jed out of most of his clothes. The sight of him—all that brown flesh, dark against the white linens—gave Gideon pause. Slender and long-limbed, all lean muscle and sharp bone, Jed was a pretty thing. “Get over here with that water,” the doctor said, bringing Gideon out of his distraction. “Need to get this fever down—when did you give him the salicylic last?” “It‟s been a while,” he answered, setting the bucket down beside MacCray. “Want me to make up another tea?” “I want you to start washing him down,” MacCray shot back. “Try to cool him off—and keep him that way. I‟ll make up the tea.” “Me?” Gideon asked, hoping that his voice didn‟t squeak quite as much as it sounded like from inside his own head. MacCray frowned at him as he made his way to the door, picking up the vial of salicylic from the dresser along the way. “Just cool him off, Gideon.” Cool him off, Gideon told himself and tried to stay focused on that. But he was tired, and his mind wandered as he wiped a wet cloth over the hot, smooth skin. Jed startled easily, but he was barely aware. His body would arch toward Gideon‟s hand, but it had to be the

coolness of the cloth. Sick folk just wanted to stop hurting, and this Indian couldn‟t be no different. He still mumbled in his own language, but every now and then his eyes would focus on Gideon, and he‟d stammer out things in a mixture of English and the unknown tongue, things that sounded like “thank you,” and “don‟t cut off my leg,” and “no women, not here.” MacCray walked back into the room carrying a cup, and already talking before he‟d closed the door. “Let‟s try this. It‟s stronger, but I don‟t think it‟s going to matter at this point.” Gideon ended up sitting behind Jed, resting the heavy head against his shoulder while MacCray forced him to drink. Jed resisted at first, but Gideon whispered calmly to him, promising that it was all right, that nothing was going to happen to his leg, that he was going to feel better. All the while, he rubbed the wet cloth over Jed‟s chest and belly, trying not to pay any attention to the firm body under his hands. “Hopefully, that will do the trick,” MacCray said, drawing the tea cup away empty and wiping at Jed‟s chin with a rag. “Try to keep him cool and quiet. He seems to trust you.” Gideon wondered about that as he eased out from behind Jed and settled him back into the bed. Jed tried to catch his hand, holding on to it until Gideon had him still and quiet. MacCray nodded. “See? Says something good about you, Gideon, that you gain the trust of wounded animals and people alike.” Gideon grinned over his shoulder at MacCray‟s fancy. “That‟s me, Doc, animal tamer.” MacCray let himself out the door, and Gideon just sat there on the edge of the bed. After a time, the tea did its job; the flush of fever faded a little, Jed‟s breathing evened out, and the grip on Gideon‟s hand relaxed.

Chapter 3

THREE long, hard days went by, three days spent sponging Jed down when the fever spiked, reading himself hoarse when he ran out of stories to tell—which he wasn‟t sure Jed could hear anyway—and trying not to think about the things he‟d promised. Or about the feel of Jed‟s smooth skin or the tickle of his black hair as his head rested against Gideon‟s shoulder. Or about those quiet, clear moments that would come over Jed when he seemed almost fine, when he put all of his considerable attention and interest on Gideon. It was easy not to think about those things when he had to reach into his wallet to pay out for their room, board, and protection. It hadn‟t taken but two days for word about Jed to get around, and Gideon, tired and irritable, had coughed up the extra dollar when Miz Howard had come to him with a frowning sheriff‟s deputy at her shoulder. “He‟s like to make all kinds of trouble for us,” the deputy had said. Gideon produced a dollar and flipped it across the room to him. “Hope that‟ll help cover any extra work, Deputy,” he said. He even meant it. Deputies had a tough job even in a railroad town like this one, keeping the peace between locals and tourists, and more between locals and other locals, with so many Negroes and Irish and Chinese in this here town. It was worth the extra dollar to know no one would bother them here. Lila checked in on him from time to time, usually bringing food or something for him to drink as the days wore on. She came and sat

with him, listening as he talked to Jed and adding stories of her own, soft and lilting. He was glad of her company, between her clients, and he told her so. By end of the third day, Gideon was ready to have it over, willing to perform those death rituals if it meant Jed‟s suffering would end. The room stank of both of them, of sweat and fever, even though he kept the two tiny windows open all the time. He had come to value the time he got to spend outside, washing out the linens and cloths they were using. “He‟s one hell of a fighter,” MacCray said the next morning. “I expect today will settle it one way or the other.” He smoothed the hair from Jed‟s face in a manner that was surprisingly gentle. “Any guesses which way it‟ll go, Doc?” Gideon asked. Jed had been awake for a long part of last night, making quiet chanting noises, like a song with just a few notes, and Gideon had sat there listening, mesmerized by it, like his heart started to beat to that tune. MacCray shrugged. “He‟s gotten this far, and that leg looks better than I imagined it could when I first saw it. I‟d say he‟s got a good chance.” He stroked Jed‟s forehead again. Gideon felt a lick of jealousy at the overly familiar touch, which made him curse himself in the privacy of his head. That feeling told him plenty about his less than pure motives here. Damn it. “He‟ll make it,” Gideon said grimly. “He better—I‟ve put too much into this for him not to.” MacCray snorted but stood up and stepped away from the bed. “I hope you‟re right,” he said. Just in case he wasn‟t, Gideon decided he‟d best lay it all out, for himself if not for the insensible Indian. He waited until the middle of the day when Jed was asleep again and the ladies were otherwise occupied. He sat on the bed but held his hands tight together between his knees. “Guess I ain‟t the nicest of men,” he whispered, tilting his head to watch a face he‟d become all too familiar with. “Got some habits decent folk don‟t cotton to, and taking care of you, listenin‟ to you talk, washin‟ you down especially—they reminded me, powerful strong. Reckon you deserve to know that I ain‟t all bad, though. I didn‟t

take advantage or nothin‟. Reckon you deserve to know that if I have to do them rituals, I‟ll do ‟em as best I can, ‟cause you‟ve got me feeling right protective of you, Jed, and worried.” He chuckled a little, low. “Maybe if you make it through and get well, you‟ll rub me the wrong way, and that‟ll take care of these feelings,” he whispered. “That optimistic enough for ya?” he asked with a smile for the sleeping man. There. He‟d said it, said what he‟d thought and wanted not to say. The fact that Jedediah was still too caught up in his sickness to hear it was neither here nor there. It turned out, Gideon was right about Jed getting better. Just about dusk, his fever finally broke for good. It took Gideon a while to realize it. He thought at first that the Indian was dead, his body barely moving as he breathed so slowly that it was hard to see his chest rise at all. But while Gideon was working up the courage to touch him, to see for sure, Jed stirred, a slight twitch of his fist against the pillow, then a shift of his leg—the injured one. He made a low noise in his throat, not quite a moan. His eyes slowly blinked open. For the first time in days, they were clear—swollen and tired, but not fever bright or unfocused. He looked around the room, his gaze drifting past Gideon before coming back to settle on him. “How long?” he asked, or tried to. The words were mushy, like his mouth didn‟t want to work just yet. “Four days,” he said, smiling. “And three very long nights.” Jed frowned, his fine eyebrows drawing together and putting a furrow above his nose. “You stayed? The whole time?” Gideon pushed himself out of the chair he‟d been living in and picked up a cup of water. He sat down on the side of the bed and held the cup to Jed, helping him drink. “Didn‟t have much else to do. And I didn‟t stay the whole time. Had to see to my horse, make sure she was faring well at the place I moved her to. But mostly, yeah, I stayed,” he said, diffident. He didn‟t add that every time he‟d left, he‟d asked Lila to keep an eye on Jed, just in case. Jed‟s eyes widened, and Gideon saw a flash of doubt, so he went on more softly, “Told you, I have good friends who are Indians. I

wouldn‟t have left any of them to go through this alone.” He held up the cup again, pleased when Jed drank down more. When the cup was empty, Jed lay back in the pillows. “You are a good man. Better than I deserve to call friend. I thank you.” Gideon patted him on the shoulder, flattered at the words and sure they were sincere. “Let‟s see about getting you back on your feet now.” Getting Jed back on his feet took a little longer than the three days he‟d been at his worst. The Indian had had little weight to spare when he‟d first come to them. After three days of fever and virtually no food, he was weak as a kitten and bony as a mongrel dog. Miz Howard and Elsie were good about keeping a broth or a soup available for him, but it was slow going. The first day, Jed could barely manage to stay awake long enough to eat, and solid foods were still out of his reach. After that though, his appetite picked up and so did his energy. For Gideon, it was both a relief and another curse. He didn‟t have to be around as much—Jed spent almost all his time sleeping, more peacefully as each day went by—but Gideon couldn‟t leave yet, not with the Indian under his protection, as he‟d come to think of it. And not with the hole in his wallet. Between the four dollars a day for MacCray‟s visits and medicines and the two-fifty for room and board, his forty dollars disappeared fast. He‟d had to cash in the train tickets he‟d bought for the trip to San Francisco to meet up with the show, and while he still had enough money for one for him, he didn‟t have enough on him now for passage for Star. Boarding his horse had added up, too, and making sure Star was comfortable there. That meant short, fast rides and apples, which came cheap but still added up with everything else. He‟d had more than his share of needs to satisfy, sharing a room with Jed, and Lila had made a fine profit off his little stallion‟s wants, too. But his mama hadn‟t raised no cold-hearted son, and Gideon had held on to his charitable nature as he‟d passed into manhood. He could make the money again—hell, he had money in the bank in San Francisco, just waiting for him to get there. He thought he might ask Landon for a loan, something he could pay back once he got to his bank account in San Francisco, but he hated

having to beg for a handout. He reckoned Landon wouldn‟t think he‟d spent his money wisely, no matter the color of the stranger‟s skin. Which meant going overland—a long trip, but one that he could make in time to catch up with the show in San Francisco, maybe, if he got going soon. Very soon. It was late night of the eighth day—fourth day since Jed‟s fever had broken, that Gideon returned to the room to find Jed up and about. He‟d asked for his clothes as soon as the fever had broken, and while Gideon missed the sight of that bare skin, it had been a relief to find Jed well enough to be worried about appearances. Now, though, when he stepped into the little room, he found Jed standing in only his leather loincloth, his hair wet and water trailing down his bare shoulders as he washed himself from the bucket of well water Gideon had left in the room earlier. He stood awkwardly, using his injured leg more for balance than to hold his weight, but he was up and moving well under his own steam. It was a good thing Gideon had just left Lila, or he might have embarrassed himself. As it was, he looked away as Jed used a towel to dry his hair. “Good to see you up,” he said, closing the door. “You feeling better?” “I will be ready to travel tomorrow,” Jed answered, his voice muffled under the cloth. “This has cost you much—I know this. Far more than what little I had to give you.” Gideon hesitated, not sure how he wanted to say this. His silence must have been enough, though, because Jed nodded and the corners of his thin lips twitched, as if he would smile. “I heard you talking to the woman,” Jed said, filling in the silence. “You sold your train tickets back for the money to stay here. I would like to repay you.” Gideon stared for a few seconds, thinking, before he asked, “Do you know how to get to San Francisco from here? Overland, I mean? And fast?” Jed‟s expression tightened into a frown. “The fastest way is the train,” he said slowly.

Gideon shrugged. “Reckon so, but only if you can afford the tickets. I can‟t, not for me and my horse, and I sure as hell ain‟t leaving her behind.” Jed tilted his head to one side, and Gideon wondered how much he remembered from the day they‟d met. Enough, it seemed, for the Indian said quietly, “I can get you to San Francisco.” He nodded, clearly thinking. “We can leave tomorrow—” “Not that soon,” Gideon said with a smile. “You need another couple of days to get your strength back, and we‟ll need to get you a horse—” “Why?” Jed cut him off. “I thought you wanted this to be fast. A horse would slow me down—your horse will slow us down.” Gideon stared at him, wondering if the fever had come back or if it had been so high that it‟d cooked his brain some—he‟d heard tell of fevers doing that. “Horses need more rest and time to graze that a man does not. My people can make twice the distance in a day on foot, if they move fast, than on horseback. We always freed our horses, if our need was urgent enough. Your need is not that urgent?” The first words Gideon could find were the ones closest to his heart. “I ain‟t never had a need urgent enough to think about leaving Star,” he said, harder than he‟d intended. “She‟s my horse.” Jed drew a deep breath and nodded before he ducked his head back under the towel, rubbing the ropes of his hair in it. Freed to look, Gideon eyed the trim waist and narrow hips, the trim curve of his ass and the way the skin folded as Jed bent forward to dry his hair. “Tomorrow, I will get my pack,” he said, his voice muffled under the damp cloth. “Then we can leave.” Gideon watched as Jed draped the towel over the back of a wooden chair, then ran his fingers through his hair, combing it out as best he could. That had him arching back, his chest thrust out. Gideon turned his head away… for all of two seconds. It was hard not to appreciate the long black strands that seemed to flow between his slender fingers. In the soft light of the room‟s lamps, it gleamed, dark,

blending into the shadows around Jed but shining where it caught the light. Lila‟s hair was long, but not as long as Jed‟s, nor was it as thick or as black or as— He ducked his head, taking a deep breath and staving off the comparison. He scrubbed his fingers through his own hair, but it was more to clear his head than to do any cleaning. He sat down on the far side of the bed, toeing off his boots. They‟d been sharing the bed since Jed‟s fever had broken. It was big enough, and he was paying for the damned thing, anyway. Tomorrow? Damned Indian was foolish, crazy, maybe. Just what he needed. But the next morning, Jed was up and gone before Gideon opened his eyes. At first he thought the Indian had run out on him. That was a shock. That after all he‟d done, Jed would run off without a word. But as he dressed and packed up his things, he settled on anger. He‟d done all of this, and now he‟d been left to get himself out of it. He could do it, no problem, but it vexed him that he‟d have to. There would be someone headed to California soon enough, someone needing to get there before winter started setting in. He just had to get the word out that he wanted to go—at the liveries and at the restaurants and saloons, here with Miz Howard‟s girls; travelers moving West always liked to relieve an itch when they had the chance. He stripped the linens off the beds and left them by the door, knowing the house girl would pick them up along with all the others that were due for changing and get them to the Chinese laundry. He‟d paid extra for this, too, and for the towels he tossed on top of the pile. He cleared away the water bucket and all the things they‟d used before doing one last check of the room for his stuff and anything Jed might have left behind. The weather was pretty enough, and warm enough to sleep out in the open tonight—no sense paying to stay here anymore. Lila and most of the ladies were still sleeping, but he left word with Elsie, who was in the kitchen and the one picking up the slack now that they were fresh out of house boys, that he was done with the room and he‟d be by later to thank them all for the help. He grabbed up a biscuit on his way out the door—he‟d paid for that already, and it was

hot—so his mouth was full and his eyes half-closed as he made his way through the door and onto the back stoop to find Jed standing to one side, his pack on his back, his eyes closed as he shifted from one side to the other, testing his bad leg. Without opening his eyes, the Indian said, “If we leave now, we can make it a good way before night falls.” Gideon stood for several seconds, collecting his thoughts and getting past the surprise, hiding behind his mouthful of biscuit. When his mouth was empty, he said, “How the hell did you get out there and back?” He was thinking about the injury, watching the way Jed was still favoring the leg. The Indian looked over his shoulder at Gideon. “I was careful,” he said. “No one saw me. And now that you are finally up,” he said with a frown of disapproval, “we can get started. I will meet you on the road out of town. I do not think you need to be seen with me when you retrieve your horse.” There was more disapproval in his tone, but Gideon let it slide by like creek water. “You sure you‟re ready to go?” He looked down at Jed‟s bad leg. “I have been ready,” Jed answered. “I was afraid you had taken ill, you were in bed so long. If we are to make good time, we must move while it is daylight. We left the solstice behind months ago, and each day grows shorter.” “It‟s only August, Jed,” he said, amused. “Days are still longer than I‟d want to be hiking.” Jedediah raised an eyebrow. “White people speak of hurry, but they do not know what it means.” Gideon grinned and held up a hand when Jed started walking toward the alley, limping on the bad leg but using it anyway. “I paid for breakfast, we might as well eat it.” Jed looked warily back at the house, but Gideon just shrugged and set his bag down, darted back in, and found a scrap of cloth to wrap four biscuits and some bacon in. It would be a nice lunch on the road, and he‟d need to stop by a store, stock up on supplies for the trail. Jed hadn‟t seen Star yet, either. When he did, he‟d appreciate why Gideon cared.

As soon as the screen door banged shut behind Gideon, Jed started walking. “We‟re gonna be in real trouble if you get out there and that leg acts up,” he said, jogging to catch up. Jed paused when he reached B Street and met Gideon‟s eyes. In the morning sun the blue was still night-dark, but nobody with eyes could miss it, that one thing about him that was so completely not Indian. “You and your doctor have done very good work. I understand how close I was to having my hair cut. I will not waste your efforts by doing anything I am not ready to do. The worst of it was the infection, as your doctor said, not the wound itself.” Gideon frowned at him. “You sure?” Jed nodded. “The muscle is still healing, as is the wound, but if I do not use it now, it will heal weak and be harder to use later. We can walk—and if you are taking the horse, we will be walking slowly enough.” Gideon rolled his eyes, thinking that Star would be carrying Jed more than she would be carrying Gideon. He tried one more time, or started to, but Jed cut him off. “I am well enough to do this. Go and get your horse and head out of town. I will meet you on the road.” He glanced back once more, and the stormy blue of his eyes shone brightly in the morning sun. Gideon smiled at him and nodded. “I‟ll trust ya. Okay, I‟m going to get Star and some food for the trail. Won‟t be more‟n an hour. I‟ll meet you on Front Street, across the tracks and a little ways out of town. Deal?” Jed extended his hand, and Gideon grasped his wrist in the Indian way, then he took off up B Street at a jog. The memory of those shining eyes hurried him along. He ducked into Doctor MacCray‟s place long enough to find that MacCray was out on a house call and to ask that Elmer pass on word that he was moving on. “Old Holt, he‟s been in a darned good mood the past few days,” Elmer volunteered. “Yeah?” Gideon hadn‟t really noticed.

“Yep,” Elmer said. “I think he‟s feeling like he can perform miracles.” Gideon grinned; he‟d been thinking the same thing, once Jed had turned the corner. “Well, he did a good job with my friend, that‟s for sure.” “I thought it might be him,” Elmer said. “Doctor MacCray was awful close-mouthed….” Elmer trailed off, inviting Gideon to open his own, but Gideon wasn‟t stupid. “The poor fella had a bad infection, but the Doc got him through it. Tell him my thanks again, and that I‟ll write him a letter when I get to San Francisco.” He left before Elmer could try and pump him for more information, ducked into a dry goods store for hardtack, coffee, and a tin pan to cook in, then headed for the livery, and Star. He found her trotting around in the corral by the stable when he arrived, kicking up her heels and looking all kinds of frisky. Bobby, the eldest of the stable boys, strolled out of the barn‟s interior, wiping his hands on a rag. “Hey there, Gideon,” he called. “Howdy, Bobby. I came by to take this one off your hands,” he said, and whistled for her. She threw her head and trotted over, reaching her long neck over the top of the corral fence to nibble at his hair. “She weren‟t no trouble. Lots of energy, but docile as a lamb,” Bobby said. “That‟s what makes her special,” he said fondly. To his horse he said, “Time to go, girl,” and led her by a haft of mane over to the gate. “You mind finding Mitch so him and me can settle my account?” Bobby ran off and came back a minute later, carrying Gideon‟s blanket and saddle, bridle and bags. Gideon filled the saddlebags, weighting them carefully before he threw on the blanket and saddle, adjusted the saddlebags once more and tied on his carpetbag suitcase behind the cantle carefully so it wouldn‟t bounce around. When he fed Star the bit she stomped a foreleg, clearly ready for a run that Gideon would be all too happy to give her.

As Gideon tightened the leather at her cheek, Mitchell Freeman strolled up. He handed over two quarters and said, “That makes us square.” Gideon didn‟t complain. He was surprised to get anything back, since Bobby‟d told him Star had had her oats this morning. “Where you headed?” Mitch asked. “San Francisco,” he said, swinging up into the saddle. Star threw her head and tried to work the bit forward, a bad habit she developed when she didn‟t get enough exercise, and Gideon felt a little bad for neglecting her this past week. “You‟re riding?” Mitch asked. “Yep. Spent too much of my travel money to get Star a stall on the train.” “Long trip alone,” Mitch said. Gideon smiled again. It would be, if he were traveling alone. He reined out with a wave for both men and put the late morning sun to his back, let Star pick her way across the train tracks and onto Front Street. The buildings on this side of the tracks were more ramshackle, shacks and tired storefronts that petered out fast. He started looking for Jed almost immediately, but was maybe half a mile out of town before he spotted him, standing just off the edge of the road, his belongings in the big leather sack that hung from one shoulder. A Winchester rifle was tied to the side of it, surprising for an Indian—it was probably good he‟d left it hid out of town. “Didn‟t think you‟d carry a gun,” Gideon said as he came alongside. Jed shrugged. “Easier hunting than bows and arrows.” He frowned up at Gideon as he started walking, his limp pronounced, but it didn‟t seem to be giving him much trouble. “I could sell it. Maybe make you enough for a space for your horse.” “Not hardly,” Gideon said. “It‟s old enough, I doubt it‟d fetch ten dollars.” “How much do you need?” Gideon spurred Star forward without answering, and Jed set up an easy pace beside him, pulling ahead briefly then looking over his

shoulder and slowing his pace accordingly. “Don‟t matter none, I reckon it‟s decided. Hey, I bought a map.” “Why?” “To tell where we‟re goin‟,” he said, amused. “I know where we‟re going,” Jed said. “We are going to San Francisco, as quickly as possible.” At that he narrowed his eyes, and then rolled his shoulders. Gideon was fast learning that both were signs of derision. “In a hurry, but with a horse.” White men, the narrow look and the shoulders seemed to say. Gideon shook his head, but he smiled. At least he was going to have interesting company. They walked for a lot longer than Gideon expected, Jed keeping pace—setting it, more like—until Gideon got tired of sitting and Star started reaching her nose toward the grasses that grew alongside the road. “Jed,” he called. He‟d let himself get lulled by tall forest pines and a wide, well-kept road, and a hum Jed started not long after they‟d started, not so much sounds but words: hyunh-hya-hyunh-huh. Native songs, they didn‟t sound much like the chants of his friends in Bill Tourney‟s show, and they were so quiet Gideon had to strain to hear them, but he‟d learned that there were more kinds of Indians than there were different breeds of whites. The chanting came to a natural end point, and Jed looked over his shoulder. “Star needs water and I want to stretch my legs,” he said. Jed nodded. “Stream up ahead. Good water. Cold.” “How far up ahead?” he asked, suspicious. He‟d already noticed that Jed had a way of leading him by the nose, and they‟d only been on the road a few hours. “Ten, fifteen minutes?” He pointed downhill, in the general direction the road was traveling. “There, in the fold of the land. This road will cross the stream.” Gideon wondered if he ought to pull out his pocket watch, but he let it lie, and sure enough they came upon a brook, not wide enough to need a bridge. He could see the heavy ruts of stage wagons where their metal wheels had scarred the stones. The clear water burbled happily, and Jed found a rock, levered down carefully in deference to his hurt leg, and after a few seconds of

eying the creek, he stuck his mouth in the water just like Star did. It tickled Gideon to no end to see them both like that not three feet from each other. Did something else to him to watch that long throat work, sucking water down, but it was worse when he looked away, and his gaze landed on Jed‟s rump, sticking out at him and stretching the buckskin tight. Gideon cleared his throat and moved further upstream to get his own mouth wet. He used the pan he‟d bought for cooking, though, scooping water out and gulping it down more civilized. “You mind if we eat lunch, since we‟re stopped anyway?” “Oh, since we‟re stopped anyway….” Amusement rang clear as a bell in Jed‟s voice, and Gideon grinned at him. “Well, there‟s grass along this here creek for Star to munch on, and I‟ve got those biscuits I grabbed this morning. They‟ll sure taste good about now.” He took Jed‟s shrug and squat as assent, loosened Star‟s girth, grabbed the biscuits out of a saddle bag, and pulled off her bridle. “Don‟t wander, now,” he told her. “You talk to your horse?” “I give her commands,” Gideon said. “„Don‟t wander‟ is one of a lot of ‟em she knows.” Jed raised his eyebrows, impressed. Most folks were impressed by Star and the horses like her that he and his daddy had trained up. Gideon handed across the biscuits and bacon. Jed nodded his thanks as he took his share, eating silently as he stared out at the woods around them. Gideon found himself watching the Indian, puzzling over the sense he had that something was different about Jed now, but he couldn‟t quite put his hand on it. After a time, Jed rose up from his squat and said, “With all of this around us, I cannot understand why you are watching me—unless you don‟t trust me.” It was more a question than a statement, but it brought Gideon up short. The truth was on his tongue and almost out of his mouth before he caught hold of it, but his good sense won the race and managed to stammer out, “Just feels kinda like a miracle that you‟re still with us.

Guess I have to remind myself from time to time that I‟m not watching a ghost.” Jed blinked at that, and his lips twitched just a little before the ends turned up in a quick smile. “Need to get back on the road, if you can get your horse to move.” Gideon shook his head, but he was less skeptical than he had been that morning. When they got back on the road, Jed went back to the pace he‟d set that morning. Gideon, resting astride his horse, was of a mind to talk, but he couldn‟t think about what. “You raised up around here?” he finally asked. “Yes. And no.” Gideon frowned; that cleared that up. Jed went on after a minute without prompting, though. “My people were moved to a reservation in northern Montana when I was very young. I was moved away when I was still a boy, but near manhood. To a boarding school. I learned your language, and while I was there, whites found gold in Montana, and my people were moved again. North and west. I learned of your god, too. I was….” He paused and glanced up, pushing his loose hair back over one shoulder, “not very impressed.” “Well, there‟s lots of views on God,” Gideon said, happy to enter into this kind of talk. “I‟ve met folks back East who think the Bible‟s all about peace and the light of God inside each man. And woman,” he added. Catholics didn‟t seem very generous to women, but the Quakers he‟d met were downright egalitarian. “There‟s Baptists and Adventists, tent preachers with all the hellfire and brimstone you‟d ever want, and—” “But there is no Hell.” Gideon blinked. “Your people don‟t think there‟s a place of damnation?” Most Indians he knew didn‟t, unless they‟d been converted, and even those could have their doubts about the concept. Jed waved a hand, taking in the pines that towered above them and the mountains that stretched taller than that. “Your people dig into

the earth for precious metals. I‟ve been told that most of the time, it‟s cooler underground than up here. They say they‟ve dug as deep into the earth as that mountain stands tall,” he said, pointing again. “No Hell.” Gideon chewed on that for a moment, and frankly he liked the sound of it. For sure, his inclinations would damn him even if his absence from church pews didn‟t. “Maybe it‟s deeper than man can dig.” “Maybe it doesn‟t exist,” Jed countered. “Why would your god create a place solely for suffering, when a man‟s spirit can cause all the suffering it wants for without any help from the divine?” Gideon grinned. He was liking this man, this peaceful Indian brave, more with each passing minute. He leaned over his saddle horn, stretching his back—and giving himself a finer view of the lean form in profile under the guise of checking the man‟s gait. Each step seemed surer than the last, so maybe Jed was right about giving that leg some exercise. “This is beautiful country,” he said after a time. “Lots of folks call it God‟s country—looks like we‟ll be camping in it tonight.” “I expect we‟ll reach Bozeman first.” “Hell, no, we won‟t,” Gideon said, rejecting that idea firmly. Bozeman was over 35 miles away, across hilly land and curvy roads; he‟d checked on his map before folding it up and stuffing it into a pocket of his suitcase. “An eight-horse team wouldn‟t make it from Livingston to Bozeman in a day, and that‟s with a stop and a change for fresh horses.” Jed glanced over his shoulder again, sly. “Yes. Horses,” he said, but he was smiling. Gideon patted Star‟s neck. He knew she couldn‟t understand the slight, but he still gave her a pat just in case. After another hour, when it looked to Gideon‟s eye like maybe Jed was starting to limp, he reined in Star and slid off her. “Here, you ride for a while.” “No, thank you. She is yours.” “And I‟m offering to share her,” he said, annoyed. “You come up lame, and it‟ll slow us down more than the horse.” He wasn‟t at all

above using a little manipulation to get his way, and if he was the one walking, he could set a slower pace. Jed eyed the horse with a frown, and Gideon frowned back. “She‟s plenty docile, Jed,” he said. Jed shook his head, and his long hair fluttered back and forth. “It is not that. I learned to ride long before I became a man. Just….” He waved a hand. “Not on your saddles.” Gideon shrugged. “I ain‟t carrying it, so I reckon you‟re stuck with that.” He waited patiently while Jed looked at the stirrups and the height of Star‟s withers, and eased up alongside her right shoulder. “You mount horses from the left,” he said. “Not with this leg, I don‟t,” Jed replied. He gripped the pommel and swung his weight up and over, smooth as could be, ignoring the stirrups and letting his booted feet hang down past them. Star didn‟t shy, didn‟t even shift her feet under the new, slighter weight Jed‟s body offered her, and Gideon hesitated before handing up the reins. He set to walking and heard a quiet word from Jed, then Star‟s hooves clomping in the dirt behind him. A piece of him—the wrong piece—kind of wanted Jed to take the lead, because he‟d gotten a glimpse of Jed‟s ass spread across the saddle and liked it. Instead, he remonstrated himself for wishful thinking and kept his eyes front, taking in the scenery. It was worth taking in: tall mountains that looked sheared away on some sides, huge, ancient stands of virgin timber climbing almost to their tops—with the train through here, he knew this would all change soon, so he was glad to enjoy it while he could. Logging in the West had changed Seattle and San Francisco from the drawings of when men had first settled the areas, but lady luck smiled on this part of the country, or had until the Northern Pacific had pushed through; before the train, there weren‟t no way to get these trees back to the folks that needed them. “The clear cutting has already begun,” Jed said, almost like he was reading Gideon‟s thoughts. Far from being uncomfortable, Gideon liked that feeling. “Can‟t see it from here.”

“No. But further west, across the Continental Divide, and in all those places where they move the mountains for their coal and their metals, the forest is all but gone.” “Can‟t slow progress,” he said, quoting some old fool he‟d met along the many roads Bill Tourney‟s show had traveled. “It is not progress. It is….” When Jed paused, it was Gideon‟s turn to look up over his shoulder and wait. Jed was frowning now, his narrow mouth turned down at the corners and his fine brows drawn together again. He looked almost like he had those first days, when he‟d been hurting so bad. “They kill the land.” “Trees‟ll grow back,” he reasoned. “Maybe,” Jed said. He didn‟t sound hopeful, and Gideon could understand that. White folks had taken a lot from the Indians in the name of progress, and there weren‟t that many folks, white or not, fighting to hold on to any of it. He‟d heard the braves in Bill Tourney‟s show talk about the buffalo, seen photographs and nature drawings of the Great Plains to the south, covered with more buffalo down there than there were trees on these mountains. The only live buffalo he‟d ever seen, though, were the ones they kept for the show—huge animals, but mostly docile, and fascinating to folks who‟d only ever see them when the show, or one like it, traveled through their town. “Let‟s hope so,” he said, aiming for a lighter mood. They had a long trip ahead of them, and he hoped he‟d have more than impure thoughts to keep him entertained on the trail. “Yes. This is a fine horse,” Jed said. “You raised her from a foal?” Gideon felt like maybe he was being handled, but he didn‟t mind. He threw an appreciative smile Jed‟s way and nodded, then told the tale of Star‟s birth and of her unlikely name. She had a blaze on her face, not a star, but his daddy had told him she‟d be one, if he took proper care of her. “So that‟s how she got her name,” he finished. He looked back when Jed didn‟t reply, and caught the man smiling at him, looking both fond and amused. Mostly, he decided, fond, and felt his pulse beat a little faster. Down boy, he warned his prick. Not that it was showing signs of life at the moment, but he knew it well. It wouldn‟t take much

to stir it, and then he‟d be thinking cold thoughts and walking funny to hide it for the rest of the afternoon. They didn‟t make Bozeman, which caused Jed to grumble just once, but when they did finally stop for the night, he pulled a rolled blanket off the side of his pack and spread it out, and proceeded to gather up wood and build a fire while Gideon brushed Star down with the curry comb he carried, and loosed her in a patch of tall green grass. Talk was as spare as the fire, until Jed announced that he‟d fetch dinner before they lost the last of the sun, and Gideon listened to his rifle crack twice, heard the rustle as he returned with a wild turkey carcass trailing behind him. “Supper tonight, breakfast tomorrow,” he announced. “I‟ll take care of that from now on, you don‟t mind,” he offered. He was a skilled shootist, and he couldn‟t see how Jed needed to be on that leg any more than he had to be. Jed set to burning off the feathers with no more than a nod. That made a powerful stench, so Gideon pulled his own bedroll upwind and just watched. Jed didn‟t look like he needed any help tending, and it was soothing, watching the man‟s quiet efficiency as he skinned and spitted the big bird, propping it high above the hottest of the coals. “Gonna get chilly tonight,” Gideon said, already feeling it. This high up, the days were warm and the nights cool, not unbearably so but he was already planning to tug his bedroll nearer the fire and throw a little extra wood on it before he bedded down for the night. In answer, Jed stood, stretched his leg carefully, then picked up his own blanket and spread it behind Gideon‟s. “Warmer with two,” Jed said. Down boy, Gideon thought again. This was gonna be a challenge.

Chapter 4

TWO glorious days of travel later, plenty of which Gideon had decided to spend on foot strolling along beside Jed because darned if Jed wasn‟t right, Star was the slowest of the three of them over a long, hard day. She was plenty fit, but she traveled as much by train as any other means of transportation, and didn‟t have the stamina she ought to have. She‟d earn that stamina on the road, though, and until then, he was glad to have an excuse to keep Jed from pushing too hard. The sun was blinding by the time Gideon thought he could smell Virginia City coming up. They topped a rise, and he saw brick smokestacks. Coke and coal burned hot, smelting the metal right out of the ore and throwing thick black smoke into the air. The city was twice as big as Livingston, at least, and Gideon perked up right off even though they clearly had three or more miles of walking and one more valley to cross before they reached the city limits. “Hot bath, hot meal waitin‟ for us,” he said, feeling his mouth water. “For you,” Jed said. “I will wait here.” “Come on! We‟ve been out here for three days!” “I live out here,” Jed said, harder than he‟d said most anything else since they‟d met. “Still,” Gideon argued, “that‟s no reason not to visit.” Gideon looked at him and frowned. “Not everywhere is like Livingston,” he

said, hoping that was Jed‟s worry. “There are good white people—we didn‟t have trouble in Bozeman.” Jed met his gaze as he answered, “No, we did not have trouble there, but we barely entered it.” They had come across it in the midmorning and, by agreement, skirted around it, to keep moving. Jed‟s expression softened a little as he went on, “I know there are good white people. You are one of them, as was that doctor, and the woman who let us stay in her house—let me stay there. But I do not crave the company you do. Cities….” He looked back toward Virginia City, and Gideon thought he might have shivered a little. “Cities have little to offer me—work, sometimes, more at the forts than at the mining communities. I do not visit them unless I have need of a white man‟s town.” “Baths are a need, in my book,” Gideon said, testing. He‟d seen Jed strip down to his pants to wash—hell, he hadn‟t been able to tear his eyes away, those times—in just about every creek they‟d camped by, using handfuls of fine, clean sand to scrub at his skin then bending precariously over the water to rinse it away. Gideon had caught himself once hoping Jed would fall in, just so he‟d peel off those buckskin pants. “I agree. Which is why I‟ve bathed,” Jed said, quirking an eyebrow at him and purposely wrinkling his nose. Gideon grinned. “Hey, that water‟s cold. It could do damage to important parts of me.” Jed smiled and shook his head. “Then go into the city, if you will. I prefer it out here, where I can think.” “Sounds awful lonely,” Gideon said, because it did. “I am not always alone. There are many reservations between here and the great ocean. I have visited some of them. We may visit some of them on our trip.” That sounded right exciting. Gideon had never been to a reservation, though Bill Tourney‟s show had played close enough that they‟d had Indians in their audiences. Stone-faced and quiet, a little bit like the Chinese, they weren‟t the most easily impressed audiences, but they still came, and usually they warmed up real good once the show

was underway. “Still,” Gideon tried, “you don‟t think a nice, hot bath is reason to wander into town?” “Not yet, no,” he said, slowly, like he was thinking about it. “But you are free to go.” Gideon frowned. “Won‟t be as much fun without you,” he admitted. It was a small admission, one Jed must surely have figured out by now. Gideon wasn‟t exactly hiding his friendly feelings toward the man. That earned him another frown, though. “Your choice. I will camp south and west of the city.” That decided him. “Aww, come on, Jed, at least let‟s camp east of town. Give ourselves a little daylight to hunt up supper.” Jed‟s face didn‟t twitch, but Gideon could still tell his friend was surprised. Maybe even pleased. “There is a pond just west of the city. The water will be warmer for the bath you crave.” “Warm enough not to make me look like a boy when I come out of it?” he asked. Jed‟s laughter was low and soft, a little like his chanting. “Not that warm.” Gideon tried to hide his disappointment, because he really had been looking forward to friendly company and a hot meal somebody else cooked—butter, bread… his mouth started to water, so he dragged his brain off what it wasn‟t gonna get—he‟d had some practice at that all his adult life, and plenty in just the past few days. “You‟re cooking,” he said. Jed didn‟t even shrug. “Can your horse lope for a few miles?” “She c‟n trot, anyway. Why?” Jed didn‟t answer, just picked up his pace until he was jogging along, so Gideon eased Star into a trot. His suitcase rattled a little, so he tilted sideways as he settled into her pace and put one hand atop it to keep it from bouncing. They turned south when they hit a creek, and Gideon let Star splash through the water beneath the short trestle bridge Jed jogged across—no way would Star like to pick her way across that.

Cutting along the bottom of a hill that had been stripped bald for mining timbers, he was glad he‟d used some of the time in Livingston to get Star new shoes—they were good on the scree. She was surefooted, as sure as Jed at least, and when they crossed a set of tracks that ran south, Gideon saw the pond Jed must‟ve been talking about and reined her in. Her sides worked, her breath coming heavy but not hard, so he stopped only long enough to pull off her saddle and gear, then walked her around for a bit, cooling her down while Jed set up camp. The sun was low over the mountains now but still bright enough to blind him, and he was glad to turn his back on it and head to the fire Jed had burning. “I never did learn how to start a fire with flint,” he admitted easily. Jed looked up from where he was adding sticks to the fire to build it up, curious brows raised. “How does one grow to manhood without learning that?” “Their daddies know where to buy matches,” Gideon replied. Jed nodded. “Flint is almost as easy and more reliable. Even if it is wet, flint still strikes a spark.” Gideon hadn‟t camped much since he‟d become a man, preferring the familiar comforts of tent or train car or hotel room. Still, he and his daddy had gone off now and then when he was a kid, and his shooting made him a damned good hunter. Problem was, it was a lot more convenient to buy the bird in the store with its feathers already plucked off. “Most of what I know, I learned from my folks,” he said as he dug in his bags for the curry comb. “My parents used flint,” Jed replied, a fairer trade of information than Gideon usually got. He had the impression Jed was glad of his company tonight, and even if that was just fanciful imagination, he liked the idea of it in his head. “Build up the fire,” Jed said, rolling to his feet and reaching for his rifle. “I will find meat for dinner.” “Ain‟t really that hungry,” Gideon said, thinking about bathing in the pond. He kind of wanted sunlight for that, so he could see what he was doing. See what Jed was doing, too. “You‟ll be hungry at breakfast,” Jed replied.

Gideon shrugged and held his hand out for Jed‟s rifle. Everything but Gideon‟s handgun was packed in trunks and traveling with the show, but he had no trouble with Jed‟s Winchester. “I‟ll see to supper and breakfast, you see to the fire.” Jed looked doubtful enough that Gideon rolled his eyes. “I shoot for a living, Jed,” he said, exasperated. “I haven‟t had any trouble scaring up food yet, have I?” Jed‟s doubt cleared, but he still shook his head. “I will leave you to future hunts then,” he said easily. “I know this area. I will be faster at flushing out game.” Gideon wanted to argue so Jed would relax and get off his leg, but they‟d traded off hunting since that first night, and Jed was walking well by now. “Fine,” he said, and set to pulling out his gear while Jed walked into the shadows. He laid out his bedroll and plopped down on it, tugging off his boots and socks and wiggling his bare toes in the grass. Maybe Jed was right, he thought, looking at how his socks wanted to stand up on their own. Maybe he needed a bath more than he‟d thought. He got up and found himself a creosote bush and used his pocketknife to cut a long, scraggly branch, then shucked off his pants and shirt and, after a brief hesitation, his underdrawers, and threaded everything onto the branch. With a piece of string he tied it off and dropped the whole pile of laundry into the fast-moving part of the creek, the better to kill any fleas that had hopped on for a ride west. Then he sat back down to feed the fire, dressed only in his hat and his oilskin coat. He felt half a fool, but the picture made him smile, too, a naked cowboy catching the last of the evening sun while he waited for his buddy to bring home dinner. He never heard the rifle crack though, and after a time Jed returned empty-handed. Gideon earned himself a surprised look for his dress, no doubt, and Jed launched into an explanation without being provoked. “I saw ducks in the reeds along the pond,” he said. “Too small to waste bullets on though. I set snares.” “Don‟t seem like many folks have camped here before us,” Gideon said, just making conversation. He‟d seen no charred ground

from older fires, and as pretty as this spot was, that was a bit of a surprise. “Indians, mostly,” Jed said. He tilted his shoulder and started walking, so Gideon followed, to a circle of stones some hundred feet out from the pond and well away from the train tracks. Enough boots had traveled across this ground that he‟d first mistaken it for a game trail. But it widened around a cold fire pit, with trampled grasses and even some marks on the charred stones. Gideon had little talent for tracking, so he shot Jed a surprised look. “You knew this was here? You‟ve—what, been through here before?” “Yes. Many of my people travel this route east or west.” “On foot,” he said, testing. “Mostly. Horses….” He paused, clearly looking for words that wouldn‟t offend, “Indian ponies tempt white men.” Gideon couldn‟t fault the logic of that. White people‟s horses tempted thieves, too. If Star weren‟t plenty fast, and he‟d been traveling alone, he might have been looking over his shoulder more, himself. “Why didn‟t we camp here, then, if there‟s a fire pit already?” Jed led the way back to the flickering light and shadows of their fire, much nearer the pond with its tall grasses and stubby trees. “Bath,” he said shortly, then after a brief pause added, “More private. And the snares, now. We‟ll likely have duck or rabbit for breakfast.” “What about supper?” “Thought you weren‟t hungry,” Jed replied easily, then started stripping off his clothes. Gideon cleared his throat and pretended not to watch, not even when the buckskins came off, revealing a narrow ass and lean legs… and the long scar that Doctor MacCray had worsened when he‟d dug out the infection in Jed‟s wound. But the wound looked a lot better now. Jed had been right about the infection being the worst of it. “What?” Jed asked. “What, what?” Gideon countered, tearing his eyes away.

Jed said nothing more, just moved to the creek and started scrubbing his body down with coarse sand. Gideon, who‟d packed no soap, decided to try it, too, and knelt a few feet from Jed to copy his movements. His efforts brought a smile to Jed‟s mouth, so Gideon quirked an eyebrow at him. “What?” “You are learning the way Lakota children learn,” he said quietly, scrubbing a hand full of sand up his arm and into his armpit. “They watch their elders and copy them, only asking questions when they do not understand.” Gideon chuckled at the thought of that and at the image of Jed, a rail-thin kid, rarely wasting words as he mimicked what his daddy must have done. He cleared his throat. “That the way Indian kids learn most things?” he asked. Jed nodded. “Most things,” he said. Was there a certain weightiness to his voice, or was Gideon just being fanciful? He shrugged off the thought and followed when Jed stood and moved to the pond, wading in waist-deep then bending backward to duck his head under the water. The water was cold, but Jed was right; it wasn‟t nearly as bad as some of the creeks they‟d crossed that were mostly fed by the snow on the mountains. Still, it was cold enough to shrivel his prick and bring goose flesh up everywhere else. By the time he hurried out he was past ready to drag his bedroll almost into the coals of the fire and plop down, wrapping his coat back around him and watching Jed, who still stood by the pond, naked as a jaybird, wringing out his long, glossy hair. That got blood pumping south, reaffirming his manly parts and annoying the crap out of him. They were only three days into this trip, with at least three weeks in front of them, and already, Jed‟s form was driving him right round the bend. He slid his arms into his coat and his bare feet into his boots and dug out the pemmican he had bought back in Livingston, handing across a strip when Jed came over and wrapped his blanket around his hips like a woman‟s skirt. Rock-hard nipples stood out from the flat chest, casting tiny pointed shadows. Gideon sighed and dragged his eyes away before he invited a scalping. “Coffee?” he offered. Jed nodded. “Warm.”

Gideon filled the pan in the creek and set it near the coals, poured in a measure of coffee grounds, and sat back to wait. The silence preyed on him, just the sounds of running water and birds calling, not even cattle lowing on this barren ground. He watched the sun slide behind the western hills and sighed, disgusted at himself. Seemed he‟d be taking matters in hand when it was dark enough, and picturing that flat butt and those perky nipples while he did. He tried to recall Miss Lila‟s body—he‟d seen her naked a couple of times—but he was hard pressed to hold the image, not with this living, breathing, pretty man beside him. When the water boiled, he pulled the pan off and filled two cups, passing one to Jed and watching him grimace at the bitter taste, then cup his hands around the tin, soaking up the warmth. “You burned it again,” Jed told him. “You were as near the fire as I was,” Gideon groused, moody now. “You could‟ve pulled it off.” Jed sighed and nodded, and Gideon watched the light from the fire glint off runnels of water that dripped off his hair and down his bare back. “I could have.” Then he glanced over at Gideon and grinned. “So could you.” Gideon huffed out a breath and took a deep gulp of bitter coffee, feeling the warmth of it spread through him and pretending it didn‟t taste as bad as Jed said. It did; he couldn‟t make coffee worth a damn, never had been able to. Seemed like the more complex a thing was, the more likely he was to do it well. “Reckon we might as well put our heads down,” he said after a time. “Fetch your clothes from the water,” Jed reminded. Gideon huffed again, as annoyed at the way Jed made the words an order as he was by the fact that he‟d plumb forgotten about them, but he got up anyway and tromped creek side to fetch back his stick and his clothes. He threw them over a bush to start them drying before he rifled through his suitcase in the dark for a fresh change. Behind him, Jed pulled a clean, if rumpled, cotton shirt from his bag and slid it over his shoulders, but the man made no move to button it. Gideon sat back down on his bedroll, pulled off his boots and put on clean socks,

and he was reaching for his drawers when Jed knelt beside him and put his hands on Gideon‟s bare shoulders, gentle pressure encouraging him to lie back on his bedroll. He stiffened against the pressure. “What are you doin‟?” The pressure on his shoulders eased, and Jed knelt back on his haunches. “Men sometimes say things they don‟t mean, when they think another is dying,” he said, sounding uncertain. Gideon‟s mouth dried, and his throat tried to close up on him. “I… what?” “I heard you, when you said your words. That you wanted things… that you did not take advantage.” Jed frowned, hard enough that even with only firelight and stars to see by, the hard lines of it were drawn clearly on his face. “„Take advantage‟…” he said, as if he were testing the words in his mouth. “You may take advantage now.” “I….” He resisted the urge to shove Jed away for the insult and growled, “A man don‟t take advantage of nobody.” He knew what was being offered, knew the brave knew he wanted it, and it made him feel smaller than an ant on the ground to be thinking about accepting. Jed didn‟t react to the harsh words, though. He just tilted his head and nodded as if to himself. “As I thought. Still, if you want me, I am yours.” Gideon swallowed again, powerfully tempted. “You… you go for men?” Jed nodded. “You ain‟t just trying to pay me back?” Not that he might not still accept, but he‟d sure as hell feel bad about it, after. A shrug this time, and Gideon felt the weight of Jed‟s eyes on him. “Perhaps a little. But no, I would not trade something I was not willing to give. Not even for my life.” He leaned forward again, and water from the strands of his hair dripped down onto Gideon‟s bare thigh. “Now. Did you think you were speaking to a dead man or a living man, all those days ago in that room?”

Gideon‟s body responded so quick, he thought he might sprain something. He reached, pushing his fingers into the cold hanks of Jed‟s long hair, and pulled him forward. Jed hesitated at that, and kept his mouth closed for the kiss Gideon urged on him, even when Gideon used his tongue against the seal of his lips. “What?” he asked, drawing back a little and trying to see in the firelight. “Lakota do not….” Jed touched his own mouth with a fingertip, rubbing his lips before he reached to touch Gideon‟s. He bent forward, though, and pressed his closed lips to Gideon‟s. Gideon didn‟t try to open his mouth again. He just stretched back on his bedroll and grunted his pleasure when Jed‟s weight stretched out atop him. It was good, better than it had any right to be with long wet hair drawing chill fingers over his shoulders and chest. Better than last night when he‟d lain awake thinking about Jed‟s mouth and things that had nothing at all to do with kissing. A rush of heat swept him at the thought, and he buried his face against the join of Jed‟s shoulder and neck and breathed in the clean, cold, earthy smell of the man. “Lakota do other things with their mouths?” he asked, hopeful as hell. Jed had tucked his arms in along Gideon‟s ribs and levered himself above Gideon on his elbows. His hair hung down, screening his face from the weak light of the fire. “Like what?” he asked, and rolled his hips, brushing his smooth, hard cock against Gideon‟s. Gideon had to grind up against that, it felt so good. “Like sucking private parts,” he panted. He heard a short laugh, warm and amused, before Jed‟s weight settled more fully on him, and Jed‟s hands cupped his face, holding him still for another quick, close-mouthed kiss to his lips. “I know how to do that.” Good Lord, did Jed know how to do that. Gideon propped up on his bent arms and watched, shivering as that cold, wet hair trailed fast down his body, and shivering some more when Jed‟s warm, wet mouth engulfed the head of his prick with no hesitation at all. He felt the chill of air when that sweet hot mouth opened around the head of his shaft, and worried for a second about something Miz Howard had said about

how redskins smelled funny. He didn‟t want to smell funny or taste bad, because this felt too good to give up after one time, and they had weeks on the trail to do it again and again. Whatever Jed thought of the taste of him, the man‟s mouth drew off only for a second before the heat was back, and Jed was sucking down more of him. He grunted at the pleasure of it, that mouth doing more to him than his imagination had allowed for. Jed‟s tongue was wide and wet as it licked up the length of his shaft before catching on the flare near the tip, and despite himself, Gideon let his eyes fall closed and his head fall back to hang limp between his scrunched-up shoulders. He was caught up in the space where his thoughts and hopes from the night before met the reality of this minute. Dropping flat on his back he reached with both hands for that wealth of hair, but as soon as he touched it, Jed‟s head jerked off him and away. “Don‟t—” Jed started, and Gideon leaned up on his elbow, trying to peer through the darkness. The fire was close enough to cast bright glints of light down Jed‟s side, to show Gideon the length of one thigh outside his own, to show the shadow of Jed‟s cock where it jutted out from his groin and the lean line of his body, even the ribs that showed after fever had eaten all the fat off the man. But there wasn‟t near enough light to penetrate the screen of hair and show him whatever was hiding on Jedediah‟s face. “Jed?” he tried. “I wasn‟t—” He didn‟t know what he was or wasn‟t, so he started over. “I like your hair. Wet like that, it feels like water flowing through my fingers.” After a second‟s silence, Jed‟s hand returned to his cock and stripped it once, forcing Gideon‟s belly muscles to ripple in want and his hips to thrust up into the touch. “All right,” Jed said, and bent back down. Gideon accepted the offer but carefully, gathering up the hanging hair and clutching at it and doing his best not to try and guide Jed‟s movements. He‟d had a man or two who liked to take over the show, and didn‟t particularly appreciate it himself unless he was real, real overheated, so he reckoned he could understand the hesitation. Still,

there wasn‟t any hesitation in Jed‟s work down there, not in the firm suction or the flat stroke of his tongue, not in the hand that gripped his shaft and slid the skin up and down it, working him fast and sure. It seemed like seconds before he was on the edge, and just like he would with a gal, he grunted out, “Gonna come!” in time to let his partner pull away. Jed did, sitting upright astride his thighs and using both hands now, one pulling strong and sure, the other polishing over the head as his cock spat jism, slick and warm, that Jed swiped over the head and down the shaft, making it feel even better. Gideon lay there shuddering until he couldn‟t take no more, then he reached, grasping Jed‟s wrists to tug the hands off him. “Too much?” Jed asked, letting his hands be drawn away and up to Gideon‟s chest. Both were sticky-warm, and Gideon figured that meant another bath before they broke camp tomorrow, but he chuckled at the question. “Real good,” he praised. “Just enough.” He panted, letting his fingers play with the backs of Jed‟s hands, feeling sharp bone and lean tendon as his breath slowly began to settle. “You like it, too?” he asked. “Getting your prick sucked?” Jed‟s answer, like many of his answers, wasn‟t in words at all. He just climbed off Gideon and stretched out beside him, on the edge of Jed‟s bedroll furthest from the fire, turned his head Gideon‟s way, and waited. Gideon didn‟t have any trouble returning that favor, not even just in his socks and raincoat, which he knew he‟d find funny when he thought about this in the future. Jed didn‟t touch him, didn‟t guide him at all, not with hands or words, but his body was taut with the need for release, and Gideon ran his hands around the narrow waist, measured the curve of his hip, and sucked the smooth, dark cock all the way down. Like his smell, the taste of Jed was different, woodsy and with a hint of musk, but clean and cool. Gideon had been with other men whose smell put him off long before he got this close, but Jed‟s taste was new and different and easy on his tongue, and rich enough for him to want more. His cock wasn‟t the biggest Gideon had ever seen, but it

was big enough, filling his mouth just right. Polite, too, not struggling to get down his throat or bang against the top of his mouth, but letting Gideon do the entertaining. Jed didn‟t grunt or groan, which disappointed Gideon some but didn‟t surprise him. Jed wasn‟t what he could call an overly vocal man. Jed was more what he could call practically mute, he thought, his lips stretching tighter as his mouth tried to smile. Still, it weren‟t but a couple of minutes before Jed‟s hand touched his forehead, pushing his head away, and he sat back, watching as Jed grasped his shaft and milked it the last of the way, watched it spit and surge, white droplets turned gold by firelight arcing onto his concave belly. On his back, his hair didn‟t get in the way, and Gideon greedily watched the way pleasure drew itself on Jed‟s face, the way his teeth pressed together, and his lips pulled back almost in a grimace that Gideon knew didn‟t have nothing at all to do with pain. He grinned, fonder than he ought to feel, and grasped the tight balls, tugging them gently and watching how Jed handled his manhood, storing away the speed of the stroke for future reference. This trip had been entertaining enough already, but it had just now got a whole hell of a lot better. He reached to tweak a dark nipple that had kept him so fascinated even when Jed was abed and sick with fever, and he grinned more broadly when that smooth chest arched toward the touch. “Can I kiss it?” he asked, not wanting to make a wrong move that might scare this brave off, not after this. Jed blinked his dark eyes open and frowned. “What?” Gideon flicked the nipple again. “There. Y‟all don‟t kiss on the mouth, I didn‟t know if….” In answer, Jed just reached up and slid his hand around the back of Gideon‟s neck, drawing him down. Gideon fell forward, catching his weight on his hands, and suckled that little teat like a hungry kitten, feeling a thrill run through him at the tiny sounds Jed made. So that gets him going. Gideon admitted to himself that it did plenty for him. His prick twitched violently, but that was a lost cause, at least for a little bit, so he eased off the suction and fell down beside Jed, his back

to the fire, wrapped his hand around that lean waist and pressed right up against him, relaxed and sated to his bones. “We should dress,” Jed whispered. “We should do that again first,” he countered. “We are off the trail, but not so far that our fire can‟t be seen or smelled by passersby,” Jed said, and Gideon felt a chill run down him that dampened his lust effectively. “Uh… yeah,” he said, and took one last, hungry look. He didn‟t want Jed covered up yet, loved the way his shirt hanging open made him look more naked, more appealing than if he were stripped bare. But he sure as hell didn‟t want to get caught at unnatural practices with a man, neither. Jed was right, darn it all. Still, Gideon nuzzled the long neck one last time, smelling that fresh wild scent of the man before he rolled to his hip and reached for the clothes he‟d pulled out. He shook out his union suit and tugged it up his legs, sliding the sleeves up over his shoulders and buttoning slowly. Nobody‟d make a thing out of a man sleeping in his underwear. Nobody‟d make a thing out of Jed now either, his buckskins pulled up but loose at his waist, his dark feet bare, his shirt buttoned. “That was….” Gideon swallowed and chuckled a little. “That‟s sure as hell gonna make nights in the wild more appealing,” he admitted. Then it struck him to ask. “Why now?” “Why now, what?” Jed asked, and Gideon remembered all those times women frowned at a man for answering questions with „what‟. “If you heard what I said all the way back in that whorehouse in Livingston, why‟d you wait til tonight to mention it?” “Because you respected my wishes,” Jed said. Gideon frowned his confusion, even though Jed wouldn‟t be able to see it. “Huh?” “About entering the town. You could have tried to press me to go with you into the city. You could have gone in alone. You chose to stay with me.” Gideon‟s heart warmed at the thought that it was just that simple kindness of friendship already grown between them that had pushed

Jed toward this. He rolled on top of Jed, settling comfortably and holding his weight off the man with knees and elbows. “Have to say, I‟m damned glad I did,” he said, and leered. If Jed understood the look, he ignored it. “Dawn will come early, and I‟ll have snares to empty.” He stared up at Gideon for a long moment, though, before using his hips to nudge Gideon off. He rose easily to his feet, the leg not giving him any trouble at all that Gideon could see, threw a few more sticks they‟d collected onto the fire, and tugged his blanket around until it made a little angle with Gideon‟s. They slept head to head, their bodies stretched away from each other, as innocent a picture as two men could make if someone came upon them in the night. “„Night, Jed,” Gideon said, watching the fire and listening to night birds, scarce insects, and Jed‟s even breaths. “And… well, thanks.” “Good night, Gideon,” Jed replied. Gideon smiled. It sure had been.

WHEN he woke the next morning, Jed was gone. He‟d become accustomed to it since they‟d left Livingston, but this morning, after what had happened between them last night, Gideon had a few seconds‟ frustration that the man had risen and run off so quick. Morning wood was clearly pointed in the direction of Jed‟s blanket—or where Jed‟s blanket had been. When he‟d blinked himself a little more awake and smelled the coffee on the fire, he sat up and looked around. Jed‟s blanket was tied off on the back of his traveling pack, which sat on the other side of the fire. The coffee was good—not scorched—and he drank it down gratefully, wondering where his Indian had learned how to make coffee. His Indian. The idea stirred a fire in his belly, plenty of which was lust, but he knew some of it was friendly affection, warmer than just the idea of a poke and something more like he‟d felt for Miss Lila

after they‟d spent some time getting to know each other. Before he could study on it for long, he heard the soft tread of feet coming near and looked up to find Jed making his way through the tall grass, carrying a duck in each hand. Jed frowned when he saw Gideon and shook his head. “Morning,” Jed said, and Gideon raised his coffee cup, still a little bleary-eyed in the pre-dawn light. “Good coffee, thanks,” he offered after he‟d swallowed down a few more sips. His prick, which had started to settle down like a gentleman, was reacting to Jed working purposefully around their camp, to the way Jed‟s hip showed so clearly through that soft buckskin as he knelt down to start the hard work of plucking the feathers off the birds. “I don‟t know how you white men sleep so hard,” Jed said. “I woke, I loaded the fire, I made coffee, put up my bedroll, and left to get these,” he said, shaking the birds for emphasis. “If I had been someone else, you could have been injured or worse,” he added, right chatty, for him. “You could have been killed half-dressed.” He waved his free hand, indicating Gideon in his union suit and socks, so Gideon looked around for his pants—which Jed had moved, draping them over his suitcase instead of that creosote bush where he‟d hung them last night. Gideon grinned. “You‟re no better. Hell, night before last I got up to relieve myself and you didn‟t even blink an eye.” “It was very early, just before the moon set,” Jed said, surprising the hell out of Gideon. Gideon remembered that, seeing the waxing crescent just touching the horizon and giving him barely enough light to point his prick. “I was quiet!” Jed snorted. “I suppose you thought you were. You should be more alert.” He shrugged off the admonition. Indians got raised for a whole different set of skills then citified folks like himself, and Harold Crowe, the star brave in Bill Tourney‟s show, had the same kinds of talents Jed seemed to. “Good to know you‟re worried about me,” he said and laughed as Jed rolled his eyes.

The morning light was bright enough for him to see the flush that stained the Indian‟s high cheekbones, and it brought back that warm feeling he was enjoying so much. Gideon finally forced himself up and into his clothes and pitched in with the birds, pretty mallards, and they had them cooking about the time the sun crested the hills to the east. The ducks cooked quickly, fat sizzling and melting into the fire until Jed emptied the pan of coffee, rinsed it in the creek, and set it under the birds to catch the drips. They were on their way soon after, skirting around Virginia City and heading south. Jed set the pace as he had the three days before, and they made good time. They were quiet at first, and Gideon wondered if he had misjudged Jed‟s attitudes about last night. But as the sun climbed and the day warmed up, Gideon found himself caught up in the rhythm of Jed‟s chanting. Gideon wasn‟t chanting along, but he was humming to it, softly and without thought. About the time he realized it, he found Jed looking over at him, a smile on his thin lips. Looking at those lips reminded him of other things they could do, and Gideon smiled in recollection, wriggling a little in the saddle. Got an answering smile in return, so he was looking forward to stopping tonight. Definitely. The further they got from Virginia City, the wilder and rougher the country became, and Gideon slid off Star and loosened her saddle‟s girth, leading her along as he walked shoulder to shoulder with Jed. By the time the sun reached its zenith they were wandering through a flat valley floor covered in dry brown grasses and not much else, with treecovered hills sticking up on both sides. They were moving a mite slower, too, over the rockier ground. Jed had been doing well for the past three days, but Gideon noticed that he was limping a little now. “You all right?” he asked as they made their way more slowly down a hillside into the ravine they‟d been following. “You could ride for a little, if you like.” Jed frowned, but nodded, and Gideon was pleased that Jed wasn‟t about to let manly pride slow him down. Gideon still kept the reins though, mostly because Jed didn‟t reach down for them, and when Jed

started chanting again, Gideon listened to the guttural sounds, hynuhhyah hyah hyah. “What do the words mean?” he asked. Jed seemed startled by the question, and his answer was accordingly spare. “Words of thanks,” he said after a long hesitation. Gideon shrugged acceptance of that, and kept his mouth shut when Jed started up again a few minutes later. The chant was quieter this time, but Gideon ignored it, or pretended to anyway, and they walked along in companionable silence, both in their hats to ward off the hard afternoon sun. Just about the time Gideon was getting ready to complain about being parched—he‟d emptied his canteen an hour back—he heard water running up ahead. They skirted around a small hill to find a wide, shallow river burbling along and a wider ribbon of green grass and trees that relieved the dull browns they‟d been walking through the past few hours. The grass gave Star her own reasons to want to stop, and Gideon wondered if maybe he and Jed couldn‟t enjoy a little break, too. Still, he set to business after Jed slid off Star, watering his horse and himself, refilling his canteen, and then pulling off her bridle with a command for her to stay close, and then sitting back on his butt to let her munch on the tall grass for a bit. Jed seemed content with the break—he even broke out some of the leftover duck, and they munched on it happily, supplementing it with wild onions picked along the way, green tops wilting in the heat. But damn, they tasted good. “Ready?” Jed asked a few minutes later. Gideon was ready for plenty, but he kept his mouth shut for once and called Star with a whistle, scratching her behind the ears and giving her a kind word, since he‟d run out of apples and hadn‟t found another tree yet. Jed didn‟t mount up this time, so again they walked side by side on a road that ran just beyond the trees, whose roots fed off the nearby river. Gideon found himself dragging, not to slow them down but just so he could watch Jed‟s butt move, a tiny sway to his hips that spurred more than Gideon‟s imagination. He had to adjust himself in his pants. “We ought to stop for the night,” he suggested, “maybe get to bed early.”

He hadn‟t meant to be lewd, exactly—even though it had been hard not to think of Jed and the pleasure they‟d shared last night as he‟d followed that buckskin-clad butt over the course of the day—but Jed looked back over his shoulder, frowning. “The trail slows us enough,” he said. “We should go as far as we can. We still have enough duck for tonight and tomorrow so there is no need to hunt.” “How‟s your leg?” Gideon asked just before he slid over loose rock and sand and nearly landed on his ass. “Better than yours,” Jed answered with a snort. The next time they turned toward the river, the game trail they‟d followed dumped them in a little glen of aspens. Late afternoon sunlight dappled the grassy earth and sparkled off the river, and Gideon was about to put his foot down about stopping, the place was so pretty. Before he could ask, though, Jed set about making camp, clearing a spot for a cook fire and scouting around the glen, checking for— Gideon hadn‟t asked what Jed checked for, had just assumed it was any hints of cougars or bears, maybe signs of other travelers nearby. “Hey, what are you lookin‟ for?” he called as he took off Star‟s saddle and bridle and left her to eat and drink and rest. “Boar scat,” Jed said, sounding irate. Gideon chuckled and shook his head. It sure did vex Jed that he‟d gotten himself caught by that wild pig. “You ain‟t more worried about bears out here?” They‟d seen some sign, but hadn‟t run across any live ones yet. Jed patted his rifle and untied his blanket. “Bears are shy creatures,” he said, working as he talked. “They are no more interested in us than that tree over there,” he said, pointing. Gideon frowned at the idea, because he‟d heard plenty of stories about bears showing plenty of interest in the larders of folks‟ homes. But he wasn‟t going to argue, not as long as Jed kept his rifle close. “That duck‟s sure gonna be good,” Gideon said, changing the subject. It would be. He was hungry enough, and he still had a little hardtack left, but he was wishing for a stove-cooked meal, biscuits or cornbread, stewed tomatoes and greens.

“The river has trout,” Jed countered, and looked his way. “You like fish? Save the duck for tomorrow?” Gideon nodded eagerly. “Fine by me.” Jed dragged two flat rocks from the riverbed and set them by the kindling Gideon had piled up nicely. “Start the fire,” he said, so Gideon did. Jed hadn‟t had much success at tickling trout to the surface in the shallows, so Gideon knelt down with him to help, doing the luring with his fingers so Jed could stab them with a sharpened stick. Once they‟d pulled up a few, he pulled out his knife and gutted each fish, and Jed laid the cleaned fish on the flat rocks to roast. Gideon wasn‟t surprised that while the fish cooked and the sun slid toward the western hills, Jed stripped down and bathed in the water, again ducking his head into it and cleaning his long hair. He was less surprised when his manhood hardened at the sight, looking forward to more of what it had got last night. Gideon was torn between two hungers—the smell of cooking fish making him salivate, and the sight of Jed‟s naked body, knee-deep in cold water and arched back as Jed wrung out his hair, making his prick twitch almost painfully. He was a little surprised when Jed waded out of the river and walked naked to Gideon‟s gear, untied the pan from the saddle bag, and turned straight for him. Jed pushed Gideon‟s knees apart and settled between his legs, opening his pants with a familiarity that made Gideon forget all about the fish. In fact, as Jed deftly unbuttoned first Gideon‟s shirt, then the tiny buttons on the fly of his union suit and reached inside to draw him out, Gideon forgot about pretty much everything. “Yeah,” he panted—not the most brilliant sex talk, but it earned him a grin from Jed anyway. He watched Jed‟s dark hands on him, handling his balls and his cock, and sucked in a breath when Jed dipped his fingers into the duck fat he‟d saved from last night, stroking it down Gideon‟s rigid shaft. “Hell, yeah,” Gideon hissed this time. The feel of the fat, making his prick slick like a woman‟s juices would, eased the friction and increased the pleasure tenfold. That was before Jed reached back into the pan and then behind himself, and when Gideon realized what Jed was doing to his own backside, he didn‟t have any words left. He dropped flat to his back and grabbed Jed by the waist, urgent to bury

himself in that skinny little ass. Jed didn‟t hesitate, just slid his knees up beside Gideon‟s hips and squeezed them tight, like he was holding on to the barrel of a galloping horse, and Gideon tried not to smile at the image because there was sure to be some bucking involved in the next little bit. He peeled one hand free of Jed‟s waist and used it to hold his shaft, slid the other hand back over a neat little butt cheek and tugged it open, feeling with his shaft, lining it up and tilting his hips up to get the head in. Jed groaned at that, and Gideon couldn‟t tell if the look on his face was pain or pleasure. He knew what he was feeling, though, and that tight heat, slick with goose fat, felt like a little slice of heaven to him. “You, uh… you okay?” he asked, resisting the urge to just pull Jed all the way down onto him. As much as Jed had resisted the idea of Gideon‟s hands on his head last night, he didn‟t seem to mind Gideon‟s hands at his waist now, even though Jed had to know what Gideon wanted to do with ‟em. “I….” Jed‟s muscles squeezed his manhood almost painfully tight, then relaxed some, and Gideon gave into his need as gently as he could, urging Jed‟s hips down with his hands. Jed went, slower than Gideon might‟ve wanted but quick enough, his face still caught in that grimace that could mean pain or pleasure or both, but Gideon had been on the other side of this more than a few times. He was pretty sure he knew what he was seeing. Jed had gone quiet again, but Gideon wasn‟t nearly so reserved. He gasped and groaned, he cursed, “Aww fuck, aww fuck,” over and over again, and set to the slowest motions he could manage until Jed‟s lips parted and the intense concentration on his face eased some. “Aww fuck,” Gideon said again. “Jed, I—can I—” Jed dropped his weight fully down, closing that last bit of distance between their bodies, and Gideon felt Jed‟s tight-drawn balls press against his pelvis, rubbed up a little to feel his own balls touch the tiny curve of Jed‟s butt cheek. His hands kneaded compulsively on those cheeks, fingers burrowing into the crease and tugging them gently wider. Jed opened his eyes and looked down at him, and when Jed

smiled, Gideon learned he‟d never really seen Jed smile before. Tiny grins, looks of amusement he‟d seen, sure, but not this full-hearted smile of pleasure, of joy even, white teeth glinting in the early evening light. “Yes, go on,” Jed said simply, and leaned forward a bit, grasping Gideon by the shoulders, setting himself as surely and confidently as any bronc rider ever did. Gideon didn‟t need no more permission than that, and he started the ride for them both, pushing up and in, watching the little bursts of pleasure cross Jed‟s face with each thrust, watching that pleasure get bigger and better when he peeled a hand off a butt cheek and grasped Jed‟s rock-hard shaft, stripping it in time with his thrusts. It was fast. It was hard. It was so fucking good Gideon saw stars when he came, his hips arched up off the ground hard and high enough that he was holding Jed‟s weight, letting it put him as deep inside Jed‟s body as he could go, clearly as deep as Jed wanted him from the way his eyes shone and his mouth parted and his hands clamped like talons on Gideon‟s shoulders. Fingernails bit into his skin when Jed grunted and came all over him, and those little crests of pain just made the come better, made the bursts of pleasure harder, and Gideon sank back to the ground with Jed atop him, gasping, his body wanting to just explode with the feel-good of it. Jed looked to be no better off, and his ribs moved like a bellows as he dragged in great gulps of air. “That—” Jed swallowed and coughed, still panting. “Very good.” Gideon might have preened at the compliment if he‟d had an ounce of energy left in his body. As it was he felt limp as a wet rope. He cupped Jed‟s cheeks again, fondly now and less urgent, and nudged Jed up to let his softening prick pull free. He didn‟t know what he‟d expected Jed to do once their bodies separated, but it sure wasn‟t what Jed did, dropping heavily against him and pinning him to the ground, legs squeezing his hips and thighs, arms pressing hard against his ribs, mouth buried at his throat pouring hot wet gusts of air over the skin there. Still panting, Gideon let his arms wrap naturally around Jed and held him while their bodies quieted, while the dusk finally faded and

the stars came out over Jed‟s back, peeking through breaks in the leaves on the trees that stretched above them. “Can‟t believe you‟re a brave who rides backwards,” he said softly, feeling like lady luck, who had always followed him, had outdone herself tonight. A huff of laughter tickled his throat. “„Brave who rides backwards?‟ Where do you learn these phrases?” Gideon grinned and used his fingers to pull all of Jed‟s hair to one side where it tickled his shoulder. “The Indians I know in Bill Tourney‟s show. It sorta came up one night that I had me an unnatural interest in men, and they said it weren‟t unnatural, just different, like there‟s different kinds of snakes and different colors of skin. They said that to their people, I was just a brave who rode backwards.” “Hmm, I understand,” Jed said lazily. “My people say a man or woman is a two-spirit person, if they desire others of their own kind.” Gideon blinked at that. Somehow he hadn‟t considered that women could get on with their own, but it made sense to him. Finally Jed rolled to the side and stretched out, still naked where Gideon was still almost fully dressed. He looked down at the spatters of come on his union suit and wondered whether he should wash them out now. He wouldn‟t; he liked the idea of them stains being there, hid under his shirt while they trekked on tomorrow. Jed‟s skin was spattered from his belly to his throat, the drying seed shining in the soft light of the fire. It looked oddly pretty, the droplets sparkling on his smooth skin. Jed‟s eyes were closed, one arm pillowing his head, the other thrown back, and Gideon thought Jed might be sleeping, or at least on his way there. He took the opportunity to stare, soaking up the strange beauty of the man beside him. Working in the traveling show, he‟d met all kinds of men, some with the show, but more often in the towns they passed through, and he‟d been with a few. He was good-looking and charming, and he didn‟t have trouble attracting people who appealed to him, if they were of that bent. But this was the first time he‟d been with an Indian. The ones he knew, while more tolerant of the attraction some men might

feel for each other, weren‟t themselves given to taking their pleasure with other men. Looking at Jed now, in the aftermath of what they‟d shared, was as different from seeing him naked in that sick bed as a fuck was from getting poked in the foot with a stick. Back then, his appreciation had been tempered by the expectation that Jed was going to die and the struggle to keep him cool and calm. Now, resting easily with come drying on him, Jed was beautiful, his long hair thicker than most women‟s Gideon knew, and his features were strong but oddly delicate. High cheekbones, a long, slender nose, and finely-arched eyebrows gave him an almost feminine beauty that was tempered by the thin lips, sharp chin, and flat chest. His body was slim and almost hairless, his nipples not large but not small, and a darker brown that made Gideon think of molasses cookies. Below the waist just as above it, there was no doubt that Jed was all man. Even now, his cock worn out, it curled soft and slim along the crease of a thigh, surrounded by a thin bed of hair as black and straight as the hair on his head. Gideon‟s hand rose of its own accord, wanting to touch, but before his fingers found the warm flesh, Jed started, his eyes opening and his body jerking. He stared up at Gideon for a second before he caught himself, then he smiled. “You shouldn‟t have let me sleep,” he said, pushing himself up. “I should be dressed—” “I like looking at you,” Gideon said quietly, letting his fingers drift down Jed‟s arm. Jed blinked, his eyebrows drawing together. “You have simple tastes,” he said. But he held Gideon‟s gaze for several seconds before leaning forward and putting his lips gently against Gideon‟s. When Jed drew back, Gideon felt that pull in his belly, the one that wasn‟t about fucking, but something else entirely. It stayed with him as Jed rose and stretched, flinching as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Gideon reached, worried, and touched Jed‟s nearest leg. “I go too hard on you?” “Yes,” Jed said dryly, “you are a stallion.”

Gideon whapped the leg he‟d just been tender to. “I‟m serious, darn it.” Jed edged out of reach, still moving like he was reacquainting himself with his body. After a minute he said, “You were there. You know I desired it.” “Don‟t mean I wasn‟t a little rough,” Gideon groused, not quite sure why he was arguing about it. Jed looked at him, and after a moment he knelt into a careful squat. “You were eager. It was very good. There is no need to be concerned.” “Yeah, but if you‟ve got the leg and your ass slowing you down tomorrow….” “It will be a shorter day, just like you‟ve been whining for since we left Livingston.” Gideon‟s ire rose until he realized Jed was teasing him, so he laid back flat on his bedroll and tucked his prick back into his pants. “You are such a pain in the ass.” But he said it fondly. Jed snorted as he headed back to the water‟s edge to wash off. “Not yet, but possibly. Eventually.”

Chapter 5

THE next couple of days passed much the same, their trip slower because of the rougher ground they were covering and because by late afternoon when the sun was in his eyes anyway, it was all Gideon could do not to grab Jed around the waist and just throw him into the brush alongside the trail. No, he didn‟t mind the pace at all. He was enjoying his time with Jed, not just the relations, which were damned good and more than he could have dreamed for, but the company, too. Jed was quiet mostly, and sometimes Gideon missed having someone else talking, especially when he tired of hearing his own voice, but he was coming to think of the sounds around them—birds, coyotes, insects, wind in the dry grass, the burble of an unexpected stream—as the voice of his companion. He was coming to realize that Jed thought the same of himself. They passed through Dubois, a small settlement that was hardly more than a couple of buildings and a stable. Gideon stopped at the trading post long enough to resupply them with some hard tack, jerky, coffee, and bullets for Jed‟s gun, while Jed waited outside in the shade of the building. No one seemed to give Jed a second glance—but then, there was pretty much no one around to be glancing. Two days out of Dubois, Jed walking ahead and Gideon enjoying the view as he led Star along, Gideon got his first adventure of the trip. He‟d borrowed Jed‟s rifle and shot five big geese the last time they‟d camped near any water to speak of, and they had three left with their feathers still on, tied across the skirt of Star‟s saddle, plus most of a cooked one from supper last night. That had been the last game to

speak of that they‟d seen, but Canada geese were big birds, fifteen or more pounds apiece. It was plenty to last them all the way to California, if it didn‟t go off first, what with the crabapple tree Star had sniffed out and some kind of pine nuts Jed found that they‟d harvested. Gideon munched on a handful of those nuts as he half-listened to Jed‟s chanting, but mostly he was caught up in the memory of what they had done the night before, when Jed had stretched out on his back and invited Gideon into him. He‟d relished the feel of Jed‟s lean legs wrapped around his waist, and the sight of all that jet-black hair spread out like a blanket beneath them. It had been the best yet, not just because he liked being on top like that, but because when it was over, as he stretched over Jed, they‟d kissed—and Jed had opened his mouth for him. He was thinking of that kiss, of Jed‟s curious tongue touching his, of the taste of coffee and jerky and the wild mint that Jed had found along the way and liked to chew on, when Jed slowed and then stopped altogether, his head lifting and one hand going to his rifle. Gideon‟s hand went to the gun at his hip in a mirror action as he looked around for whatever had spooked Jed. It didn‟t take long to find it. They were coming across the plateau from the right, a small group of Indians. Like Jed, they carried long rifles, but they had theirs out and pointed toward the ground. Jed glanced back over his shoulder, but he waited until Gideon came up beside him to speak. “We are on the lands of the Newe,” he said quietly. “Your people call them—” he paused then said slowly, “Shoshone.” Gideon felt a little thrill of excitement—he‟d liked Indians before Jed, and he liked them a whole lot more now, but Jed‟s face was stiff and still, and his eyes were trained on the men coming toward them. Gideon squinted against the afternoon sun and looked as well, counting five men, one older and four younger, somewhere between his age and Jed‟s maybe. “They have no love for my people,” Jed went on after a few seconds, “but I can speak to them. I have traveled these lands before, and I have no quarrel with them, nor they with me.”

Jed seemed like he was just going to stand there and wait for them to approach, so Gideon did the same. “Shouldn‟t we, uh, go up and say howdy?” Jed shrugged, and Gideon grimaced at the back of his head. Now wasn‟t the best time for the man to go mute on him. For the moment, he kept his mouth shut and watched the new Indians approach. They were dressed similar to Jed, in native buckskin, white folks‟ shirts, and leather boots, and they all wore their hair in long braids with feathers caught in the weave. The Shoshone slowed as they came near, the four younger ones fanning out around the older man when he stopped about fifteen feet away. The oldest wore a headdress that reminded Gideon of one that Harold Crowe wore for performances, and Gideon couldn‟t help but smile. One of the younger braves glared at him, and he worked to wipe the smile off his face right quick. It was then that Gideon realized that he might be the one to cause the problem here, him and his white skin. Jed handed his rifle back to Gideon and held up one hand, indicating for Gideon to stay still while Jed stepped forward to greet the locals. Jed stood still before them, straight and proud, his pack on his back and his hands forward and spread open. Jed was the one who spoke first, his words sounding a little like the ones from his chants— but only a little. He spoke slowly, as if the words were difficult for him, and his eyes never left the older man. The older man replied in the same language and without nearly so much difficulty as Jed seemed to have, and Gideon watched them all intently, curious as hell about what they were saying but smart enough to keep his damned mouth shut. After a couple of minutes, one of the younger braves broke out of the loose half-circle and walked up to Gideon with his hand out. Gideon thought at first it was for a shake, like most folks greeted one another, but when he extended his free hand, the brave frowned at him and reached right past it, grabbing the barrel of Jed‟s rifle. “Hey, now!” Gideon protested, tightening his grip on the stock. “Let loose your hold, Gideon,” Jed snapped impatiently, and Gideon reluctantly did as he was told. He tightened his mouth to keep

any words from slipping out when the Indian took his pistol out of its holster, too, examining it carefully before returning to his party. The old man looked at Gideon square on for the first time, and said something to him in that new language they were all using. Gideon looked to Jed, hoping for a translation but at this point, not expecting it. Jed didn‟t even look back, but he did say in English, “He does not speak the tongue.” The old man‟s English was heavily accented, but Gideon still understood when he said, “He speaks for you,” and waved his hand toward Jed. Gideon crossed his arms over his chest, clutching tight to Star‟s reins and forcing down his frustration about the brave stealing their guns. “Yeah,” he agreed. He pointed to the man who‟d taken their weapons. “That‟s my Colt, and the rifle‟s Jed‟s,” he said. “I didn‟t expect no thieving.” “Shut up, Gideon!” Jed snapped at him, harder than any words he‟d ever said. To the old man he added, “He does not understand that you are holding them in trust.” “You have entered our lands,” the old man said. “You may not hunt here. We have precious little game for our own people.” “Oh.” Gideon stepped forward enough to get a glimpse of Jed‟s profile, loosening the reins and letting the leather slide through his fingers so Star wouldn‟t follow. Jed‟s face looked just about chiseled in stone. “Sorry about the misunderstanding,” he said to the Indian holding their weapons. “You could‟ve just told us. We ain‟t gonna disrespect your rules.” The brave holding the guns frowned at him. “White men say that often. Then they graze their cattle on our lands, kill our grasses, and try to settle within our borders.” Gideon nodded, warming to the subject because he‟d heard Harold tell stories like it many a night, to folks interested in listening before the shows. “I‟ve heard that happens a lot, yeah. A friend I work with—he‟s one of quite a few Indians I know—he says lots of us white folk are pains in your sides, so I can‟t blame ya for being suspicious.

But some folks like me, we just want to get along. I could tell you stories….” Jed had turned at some point during his speech to stare at him, mouth agape, and when Gideon noticed he trailed off. “What?” The younger Indians said something to each other in their own language, and Jed turned back to follow the conversation. His face softened into a brief grin, and he nodded. “He does have the fox spirit in him, and he has many stories.” In the other tongue he added something that made all five of the new Indians chuckle. Gideon thought about frowning at Jed, who was clearly making fun at his expense, but he shrugged instead. Men who were laughing weren‟t usually men who were readying for a fight, so he uncrossed his arms and extended his free hand. “Y‟all shake?” The older man stepped forward and gripped his hand firmly, just like a white man would, and while Gideon sorely wanted his Colt back, he figured he‟d see it before they moved on or Jed would have made more noise about it. This was the first time on the whole trip that Gideon had been glad all his guns were in a trunk and waiting for him with Bill‟s show. The old man didn‟t let go of his hand. “You will not hunt here. You will not fight here. You will bring no harm to our people. You agree?” Gideon shrugged. “Sure.” The old man looked toward Jed again, who shrugged, too, and let go of Gideon‟s hand. “We are returning to our camp,” the old man said, looking back and up, toward the sun. “We will travel together for now.” It wasn‟t a suggestion, Gideon realized as the braves moved to flank him and Star. The Shoshone leader nodded to Jed, who fell into step beside him as they led the procession. To Gideon‟s left, the guy with their guns nodded to Gideon, and Gideon nodded back and tried a smile. The four younger braves veered off to a stand of stubby trees to pick up carcasses they‟d clearly hidden when they‟d seen him and Jed coming: two mule deer, each with its legs tied to a carrying pole, long, flat ears still just dragging the ground after each pair of hunters had hoisted their pole to their shoulders.

They walked an hour or more at a pace that made Gideon and Star sweat, but the Indians seemed to have no trouble, not even the ones carrying the loads. Jed stepped in to take one end of a pole, freeing up the brave who carried their guns. There was no conversation—or nothing that Gideon would call conversation. Every so often, the old man would say something, and Jed would answer, or the younger men would exchange a word or two, but no one really talked—not even when Gideon tried asking questions. All he got for his efforts were annoyed frowns from the Shoshone and a hushed, “Walk now, talk later,” from Jed. So he spent the walk trying not to think about what the Shoshone wanted and trying not to watch Jed‟s butt and trying not to let himself get so damned bored he‟d start an argument just for the hell of it. He hadn‟t thought much before about how his idle chat entertained him as much as his listeners. After a time he felt his tension ease a little and realized he‟d started humming like Jed often did. He wasn‟t using any words—he didn‟t know how to say spit in Sioux—but the rhythms came to him easily after all these days and nights with Jed. The braves looked at him now with more curiosity than suspicion, so he figured he‟d lucked on to something right, and either way, the humming kept him from going stir crazy. Now that he was thinking about it, his mind naturally supplied more familiar songs and he hummed those, too, but quietly. He went through all of “You‟ll Miss Lots of Fun When You‟re Married,” twice, then hummed “I‟ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” before he jumped around a little through reels and dance songs, which didn‟t seem to impress the Indians nearly so much. But nobody complained, either, and careful observation of Jed revealed no more than the man‟s regular amount of irritation with his white ways, so he figured he was all right. Besides, it was something to do to while away the hard-walking hours. He was halfway through the songs he knew from H.M.S. Pinafore—the little musical troupe that traveled with Bill Tourney‟s show had been performing parts of it for a couple of years now—when they topped a rise, and he caught sight of the camp. For some reason he‟d expected a fire pit and some pulled-up logs, the kind of camp he and Jed had been making every night for almost two weeks now.

He hadn‟t expected a home. Clearly though, that was what this was, a native town tucked up along yet another winding bend in the Snake River. Tall teepees stood in a loose half-circle around what could only be called the public square. Well… public circle. He grinned, amused at his own wit. Permanent buildings ambled away from the teepees, some as familiar to Gideon as any settler‟s cabin. Other buildings looked like workshops, all of them made of wood and earth, and two big barns stood a little away from the rest. Wagons, a few of which looked brand, spanking new, were lined up beside the barn. Ponies dozed in a fenced corral, and Gideon couldn‟t wait to get a look at them. Indian ponies were captured or bred from the wild mustangs that roamed the prairies out here, and he‟d heard tell they were fine horseflesh, some of them. The last thing in the world he wanted to do, though, was gawk like so many paying customers did at Bill Tourney‟s show, eyes wide and mouths open, dumbstruck and looking like ignorant hicks for it. So he set his jaw firmly, concentrating on keeping his teeth together, tugged his hat a little lower down on his head, and shut up with his singing as they all approached the town. A rutted wagon path led up from the south, and when the braves reached it they turned onto it, picking up their pace like horses to stables the closer they got to home. Gideon was jogging along and Star had kicked into a trot by the time the eight of them—well, the seven men plus Star—reached the square. People came out to meet their party, women and kids mostly, and an old man who must be the chief, the way the hunting party collected around him. Lots of words, not in any language he could understand— apparently not in any language Jed did either, because he came back to stand beside Gideon with the one brave who Gideon guessed had been assigned to watch them. After a time, the old man raised a hand, and Jed stepped forward. Gideon was still holding Star, so he figured he could just keep being useful like that and stay out of Jed‟s way until somebody asked him to do something. The chief nodded at Jed and asked something in that tongue both tribes knew. Jed answered it, his voice smooth and low even if he did go slowly with the words. Whatever he said seemed to satisfy the chief, who nodded once more and turned back to the man who had been leading the hunt. Jed came

back to stand beside him while the locals talked on, gesturing to each other and to the deer that the braves had laid down, pointing at the sky and the hills to the east. Gideon wished like hell they‟d talk English, because this was the longest and most animated conversation anybody‟d had around him since—damn, he thought, resisting a low whistle, since Livingston. Gideon looked around the village, silently doing the math. There must be a couple of hundred people here, and most of them looked thin and tired. Five young men sat back, away from the milling crowd, and their hair was all cut short, shorter than Gideon‟s was now. “They get in trouble?” Gideon asked Jed. He pointed to the men with the short hair. They looked sullen enough, maybe hair cutting was some kind of punishment in these here parts. Jed sighed, shook his head, and turned to the brave who still carried their guns. After a brief exchange, Jed went back to using English. “They traded their hair for supplies,” he said flatly. “Those two new wagons, bags of flour for winter. The government….” He sighed again. “Your people, they do not understand. They think if they make us look white and dress white, we will become white.” “Huh.” Gideon had actually seen a lot of pictures, conversion pictures they were called, of Indians who he‟d always thought had taken up the Christian religion, or white society. It hadn‟t occurred to him that the government had been bribing them to do it. “So, what? They‟ll grow their hair back out now?” “Of course,” Jed said, and shot him an annoyed look. “Would you not?” It was Gideon‟s turn to shrug, because while he understood a little more about Indians and their hair than most folks did, he clearly still didn‟t understand enough. “So why did they cut their hair for supplies?” This time, Jed actually turned and looked at him, his eyes wide and his face showing more distress than it had since they‟d met up with the Shoshone. “Look around,” he hissed before drawing a deep breath and schooling his features back to stoniness. But his eyes were still wide and angry, and Gideon felt guilty without knowing why.

So he looked around, paying closer attention than he had before. Thin and tired, he thought again as he looked at the people, but more— thin to the bone, some of them, with the dark circles under their eyes and deep shadows in them. More than tired, they looked exhausted, and weary of the world. He looked closer at their surroundings and saw the way the hide on the teepees was worn and patched, as was the clothing the Indians wore. The buildings were rough and more than a few had holes between the boards that needed filling in, and gaps in the wood itself. “Jed?” he asked in a whisper. “What‟s… why are they so…?” Jed‟s face tightened. “Because they are Indians. Because your people think it is better to confine us to land that is dying, that you have robbed of game and forests and fish, so that we might die as well.” Gideon frowned, looking back at these Shoshone. The chief and the older man who had led the hunting party here were moving away from each other, and the group around them was shifting as well. “His name is Tendoy,” Jed said as the older man came toward them, followed by the braves who had traveled with them earlier and a larger crowd of stone-faced onlookers. Gideon was used to being looked at, so he just smiled and nodded at those people who met his eyes, mostly the women, and waited on Jed to finish filling him in. “Tendoy is honored here. We are his guests. We will be treated well.” Tendoy came close, holding up a hand to Jed. He spoke again in the tongue that Jed understood, and Jed answered. Then Tendoy turned and spoke in a loud voice to the braves who‟d walked them to this village. Jed whispered, “He is telling them that we are to eat well and to sleep on furs as warm as their own. They killed two deer today.” Gideon frowned as he looked at his companion. “They got no call to feed us. Tendy here already told us they didn‟t have enough game on their land for us to be huntin‟ on it.” “„Tendoy‟,” Jed corrected. “It is the way of the Newe, Gideon. If they have welcomed us as guests, then that is how they will treat us.”

“Well, I‟ve got some white ways I‟m pretty fond of, too,” Gideon said stubbornly. “And one of ‟em is not taking from folk who can‟t afford to give it. Hell, Bill Tourney lowers the price on tickets a little when we run across a town that‟s hard up, and he loves money more than he loves his wife.” Jed didn‟t have a chance to answer him, because Tendoy took that moment to call to Jed, drawing him away. Gideon stepped back, rubbing Star‟s neck as she nudged him with her nose looking for treats, but Gideon quieted her with a word while he watched the village folks going about their day. Tanning racks lay on the ground not far from the road they‟d walked in on, but there weren‟t many hides tied to them. An old woman with two little kids, a girl and a boy it looked like, skillfully scraped one hide that they‟d laid out in the sand by the river‟s bank. From this distance he couldn‟t tell what the hide was from, but it sure was bigger than a deer. Still, it was only one. The low building that was clearly a smokehouse, he‟d expect to see sides of carcasses hanging, drying meat to get ready for winter, but to Gideon‟s eye, too many of them hooks were empty. Some of these men had cut their hair for supplies. Gideon felt his mouth tighten, thinking on how important it had been to Jed that somebody carried his hair for him. Whatever barber had cut those braves‟ hair wouldn‟t know nothing about that, would have just swept it out with the rest of the trash at the end of his work day. There must be a couple of hundred people here, but the garden down by the river didn‟t cover more than an acre, and it had damned little in the way of row crops, mostly corn and beans. Mule deer were big enough animals, but them two were going to go fast. He eyed the geese still tied behind his saddle, and hoped Jed wouldn‟t mind. “Star, you be still now,” he said quietly, and dropped her reins to the ground. Sliding a hand over her flank, he reached to untie the cord that they‟d used to tie all three birds‟ necks together from the saddle strings. Tendoy was still walking to Jed, and Gideon thought maybe it wasn‟t proper for him to just go up and interrupt one of the old folks, so he looked for and found the brave who‟d carried his Colt and Jed‟s rifle

on the walk back here. “My name‟s Gideon Makepeace,” he said as he walked up to the brave. “What‟s yours?” The man looked at him for so long, Gideon thought maybe he wasn‟t going to answer. But then he said, “Cowhatocowait.” Gideon wanted to groan. Why didn‟t these folks have white names, too, like Harold Crowe and the other Indians in the show? Hell, maybe they did and just weren‟t inclined to tell him. “Ka-ha-do…” he tried and frowned. “Beg pardon?” That actually brought a smile to the brave‟s face, and he repeated his name, slow and careful: it sounded like Cowhad-to-cowait to him, so he said it back, just to be sure. The brave nodded, then raised his hand, palm to the ground, and waggled it side to side. Gideon grinned, reckoning that “close enough” translated fine for just about every kind of person he‟d ever run across. “We appreciate you having us as company. My folks taught me that we should always have a gift to give when we visit.” He held out the three geese. “Don‟t know if I‟m s‟posed to speak to the older feller over there. It okay if I give ‟em to you? You could maybe pass ‟em on from Jed and me?” Cowhatocowait‟s face softened some, and he nodded. “I do not give them for you. You give.” He pointed to where Jed and the old man stood, so Gideon squared his shoulders and prepared to do this all over again. He came up behind Jed, trying to be quiet enough but failing, because Jed turned to glance at him before he got within ten feet of the pair. “Here,” he said, taking a step past Jed and holding the geese out to Tendoy. The older man drew back, maybe in surprise, and a couple of men from the camp moved fast, coming in close like Gideon was gonna—what, knock him in the head with three dead geese? Still, he held them out and waited, looking away only long enough to check that Star was minding, ground-tied right where he‟d left her. Her ears were swiveled toward the corral and the other horses, but she stayed put, and when he turned his head back around, Tendoy was frowning at the geese, then up to his face.

As Tendoy met his eyes, he said, “I got us five of these Canada geese a few days from here. My family and I, we bring something when we come visiting. Specially seeing as how y‟all weren‟t expecting us, and you‟re still doing us the kindness of letting us stay here tonight.” Tendoy stared at him before his eyes went to the geese. Then, he turned slowly to look at Jed. “You took them,” he said, tilting his head toward the geese. Gideon frowned in confusion until Jed nodded and said, “Gideon did, with my rifle and his bullets. He speaks for us both. There is another, also, cooked. We will share that as well.” Tendoy looked back to Gideon, but Gideon was watching Jed. The corners of those thin lips twitched just a little, not a smile, but the start of one. Gideon smiled for both of them and held the geese closer to Tendoy, glad when the old man took them because they‟d been getting damned heavy. Fifty pounds of gooseflesh wasn‟t as good as a mule deer, but it was more than these people‟d had before, and Gideon was glad to do it—glad Jed was, too, after what Tendoy had said. From there, everything went easier. He and Jed were ushered away, surrounded by men who wanted to share their tobacco and company. Gideon had to explain three times that he needed to take care of his horse before Cowhatocowait understood that he wasn‟t gonna let nobody else do it for him, and had two teenaged girls walk him over to the corral. “Any stallions in there?” he asked, peering around the corral for balls beneath long, bushy tails. He wasn‟t willing to take the chance that she might be amenable to company. The girls frowned at each other and at him, until Cowhatcowait caught up to him, and he could ask again. “Need my mare to be ready to perform when we get to San Francisco. Last thing I need from her right now‟s a foal growing inside her. Just wanted to make sure you didn‟t have any studs mixed in here.” Cowhatcowait smiled and pointed up the river, where a lean-to and a much smaller corral had been built right into the water‟s edge. They didn‟t even have to carry water for the horses kept there. “We have three stallions. But your horse is not in season.”

Gideon shrugged. “I spent the last four months on a breeding farm, and I swear some days it seemed like most of my time was took up keeping the studs away from her, or her away from the studs. I just don‟t want to take any chances.” “She has good lines. Why do you not wish to breed her?” “I work for a wild west show,” Gideon said, wondering if he‟d get invited to tell some of his stories. “I think she‟ll make great foals, too, but she‟s only four years old, and I ain‟t ready to ruin her for show work just yet.” Cowhatcowait shrugged and shook his head. “She is safe here. Kimane and her brother sleep at the lean-to, to care for our stallions. The horses have never escaped before.” Gideon nodded and started pulling Star‟s tack and saddlebags. She‟d had a long day and a fast one, compared to most, so he borrowed a burlap sack and rubbed her down good, smoothing her hair and looking for hot spots from her saddle or the bags, but she was fine. He dug in his carpetbag for a crab apple and held it out, enjoying the feel of the soft hairs and softer lip as she nibbled it out of his palm before, with a scritch for her ears, he set her loose in the corral. “Star is well?” Jed asked him when Cowhatcowait escorted him back to a big fire pit between the teepees. Gideon squeezed Jed‟s shoulder in thanks. It had taken Jed some time to accept just how attached to his horse Gideon was, and more time to appreciate why. “She‟s good. They even let me treat her with some oats, and in the morning I‟ll let her loose with the mares and the geldings to graze. Be a nice break for her, too.” “For her, yes,” Jed said, his face still and sober, but his eyes were dancing. Jed was teasing him again. “Yep. Now me, I‟m itching to be moving, but I suppose I can suffer with the break,” he said, and smiled when Jed shook his head, grinning fondly. “Come to the fire, Gideon.”

Gideon followed Jed to the big fire pit where three circles of logs, like theater seats, surrounded a big open space and the fire in the center. Cowhatcowait directed Gideon into the second row, and Gideon settled down next to Jed. A minute later Tendoy joined them, settling into a squat on Jed‟s other side. Gideon came to appreciate the bonfire as darkness fell and the night cooled down. There was a lot of talk, and some of it was even in English so he could understand it. As the smell of cooking meat started to fill the air, Gideon felt a change in the people around them. Voices rose and there was more laughter. Someone started playing drums, thin hides stretched over wooden frames, and before long a brave in the front circle peeled off his shirt and started dancing. Others followed suit, and soon enough most of the people from the inner circle were doing the same. It wasn‟t dancing as Gideon was accustomed to, not paired-off couples doing reels and twirls around the floor; instead, it was mostly men, stepping to beats of their own, a little like what Harold, Thomas, Aaron and the others did for the paying audiences in Bill Tourney‟s show. They moved in a wide circle around the fire, stomping their feet and clapping their hands, chanting like Jed but louder, their voices and the women‟s in the crowd blending with the rhythm from the drums. This dancing showed him more than anything else just how much of a put-on Harold and his kin did, and how much of their real dances they hid or saved for their special occasions. As the dancing went on, more of the men stripped off their shirts, twirling about with their skin glistening in the glow of firelight. A few went a step farther, dancing only in thongs and moccasins, their legs muscular and defined, sweeping upward to curves of ass and waist that made Gideon have thoughts he knew he ought not to be having right now. He wondered if Jed would take offense that these writhing bodies were affecting him. After a while, as the speed of the music changed, Tendoy leaned toward Jed and said something. Jed frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. He glanced to Gideon then turned back to Tendoy who said something else and smiled. As with Jed, it was a slight shift of the corners of his lips, but his eyes lit with amusement, and Gideon wondered how bad this was going to be.

“Jed?” he murmured, leaning in close to his friend. “Everything all right?” Jed said something else to Tendoy, who nodded, before Jed turned and said just for Gideon, “I have been asked to dance. It is an honor, to share the dancing circle.” Gideon looked to the dancers near them. “They, uh, ain‟t gonna ask me to join in, are they?” he asked. Not that he hadn‟t danced with his Indian friends before, when he‟d been drunk enough. Jed snorted. “No, they will not.” Gideon tilted his head Jed‟s way, examining the way his eyes followed the dancers‟ movements, certain Jed wasn‟t thinking the things Gideon had been a moment ago. “You want to dance?” he asked. Jed shot him an eager look. “It has been five years since I danced with others.” “You should, then,” Gideon urged, grinning despite himself. “I‟m happy to watch.” Jed‟s face hardened like it had when they‟d first met these Shoshone out on the plains. “Do nothing—” He stopped, pursing his lips, then glanced warily around them, “backwards. And stay quiet.” He leaned just a little bit closer and hissed out, “For both our sakes.” Gideon nodded agreement, even though he had to wonder what Jed was so worried about. He didn‟t speak Shoshone, and while the Shoshone spoke English, they didn‟t seem very keen on using the language unless they were talking to him directly. Wasn‟t like he was dumb enough to make eyes at any brave, not even Jed, in company like this. On the other hand, it was hard not to want to start something when he watched Jed move his blanket to a log in the front row and join the circle. The Shoshone were strong dancers, their movements sharp and aggressive, as if they were doing a war dance. But the sounds of drums and the bodies of most of the other dancers seemed to fade away as Jed absorbed more and more of his attention. Jed‟s movements were similar, and his dance was similar, but he used more turns and more circles, his hips and arms weaving patterns in the air. His voice

was hard to hear, but Gideon could imagine it, low and clear, familiar to Gideon‟s very bones. When Jed caught the hands of a brave and a squaw and set them to moving sideways, around the fire, they caught the hands of those next to them, and so on until all of the dancers were joined. The quiet conversations in the audience faded away until all Gideon heard was the crackle of the flames, the beat of the drums, the soft slaps of moccasins on dirt. This went on for some time, and ended as naturally as it had begun, folks simply letting go of each other‟s hands. When no one was holding hands anymore, conversation picked up again in the crowd, and Jed started to weave among them again. He reminded Gideon of an exotic woman who traveled Bill Tourney‟s show. She danced with scarves and veils and chains that she wore at her waist and on her ankles and wrists. The idea of Jed in colored veils, his limbs jingling with chains—well, it didn‟t do nothing for Gideon‟s peace of mind at the moment. Suffice to say, Jed was a sight to watch. He moved faster than the others, dancing between them and around the circle, his head thrown back and his long hair whipping around with his movements where the Shoshones‟ braided hair stayed more still. When Gideon caught sight of his face, it seemed that his eyes were always closed, which Gideon knew couldn‟t be the case—he could have run into the others or stepped into the big fire in the center of the dancing circle. Gideon leaned forward, fascinated, so focused that the voice next to him startled the hell out of him. “He dances as a warrior.” Tendoy had moved in close beside him, settling on the log where Jed had been sitting. Gideon nodded, careful not to reveal what he was thinking. “The gods sent us that dance,” Tendoy said slowly, as if trying to find the words. “We believe it is a way to save ourselves from your people, to bring us back to the old ways. To give us back our lands.”

The sadness in his voice caught Gideon‟s attention, and he turned to look at the older man. “That‟s the Ghost Dance then,” he said, less surprised than he supposed he should have been. Tendoy looked startled for a moment before the lines of his face smoothed to blandness. “The Ghost Dance has been forbidden by your white leaders,” he said, his voice mild. “We would not break your laws.” Gideon looked back to where Jed danced, twirling faster now, his arms outstretched, his leg strong and reliable for him, not bothering him at all. Some of the Shoshone dancers had stepped out of the circle to watch him, and Gideon read the respect on their faces. Outlawed or not, Indians still held to their faith just like white folks held to theirs. Seemed like Jed was made up of his faith. Tendoy said, still very slowly, “It was his people who died at the Knee.” His people. Jed moved to the far side of the fire, his movements partly lost behind the bright blaze. “I don‟t mean no disrespect, but I don‟t know a lot about your people—or any of the tribes, not on their own. I reckon everybody‟s read about Wounded Knee,” Gideon offered, careful now. “But I‟ll bet I don‟t know as much as I should.” It was sort of the truth. Most of his Indian friends were from further north, up in Canada. While he knew that there were a lot of different tribes, he‟d never given much thought to the differences between them, not like he would to, say, the differences between Irish and Italians. Here he was, keeping company with one, and he didn‟t know how to tell him from most of the other Indians he saw. Jed did a series of jumping twirls that had the drummers picking up the pace of the beat, and Gideon found himself clapping along, relieved when all the noise made it too loud for more conversation. The other dancers picked up the beat, too, as it grew into a frenzy of jumps and turns and somersaults in the air that made Gideon think more of circuses he‟d seen than of Indian ghosts. When Jed came out of a jump and fell to the ground, Gideon jerked forward, but Tendoy‟s hand on his arm stopped him. “He has died. He will rise anew,” he said, like he was quoting scripture. Gideon

watched as a few other braves leapt and fell to the ground, as other dancers moved over and around their panting bodies, and the rest of the tribe got to its feet, clapping to the beat of the drums until the dancers still standing came slowly to a halt. They were breathing fast and hard, shiny with sweat, and dark circles stained the shirts of the ones still wearing them. Jed pushed off the ground and shook his head back, his hair wild, his eagle feather still drifting in the air behind him, and strands of hair were stuck to his damp forehead. But his eyes were bright and as alive as Gideon had ever seen them—more alive than in the heat of their passion. This was something Jed loved, this dancing, but Gideon guessed Jed loved even more what it was supposed to do for his people. Any tensions left between the Shoshone and Jed ended with the dance. The food was ready, and they sat to eat, sharing a meal of goose and fresh venison, some kind of root vegetable that reminded him of turnips, and flat bread still warm from oven or stone. As Jed settled back down beside him, Gideon grinned. “If I‟d known you could do that,” he whispered, “I‟d have asked you to dance for me.” Jed grinned back and said just for Gideon, “You have. It‟s just a different sort of dance.” Gideon watched Jed eat, watched the grease from the venison shine on his fingers and wanted to lick it off them. He turned his eyes away before he made trouble. When the stories started, it was easier to ignore the lure of Jed beside him. An old woman who called herself Anzee-chee began the storytelling session, telling of a massacre some thirty years past that had taken too many of their people, and of a medicine man who‟d seen it in a dream and saved those families who‟d left before the military arrived from Fort Douglas. She told it in English, no doubt for his sake, and the way she spoke the words sounded like poetry to Gideon. He had the sense that if she repeated the tale, every word would be the same. He knew from Harold Crowe and his brother Luke that lots of tribes kept their history this way, since none of them were much for writing or book making.

“Jedediah says you tell many stories,” Tendoy said, turning to Gideon. He raised his voice, gaining the attention of all the folks settled around the fire. “Gideon will tell a story of his people‟s now.” Gideon flushed and shot a look to Jed, looking for guidance. He didn‟t think stories about the show were proper, not after the tale the woman had told, and he didn‟t know what these folks would want to hear. Jed nodded to him. “Tell them of how your mother met your father, and how she came to travel with him,” Jed suggested, and Gideon smiled. Jed loved that story, and it was a nice tale indeed. Might lift some spirits around here. So he launched into it, telling about his grandmother the schoolteacher, how his ma said it had been love at first sight with his daddy. “Well, love at first sight or not, it took the whole week the show was in town for it to be love of any other kind,” he said, infusing his voice with the dark humor of it. “A few weeks after the show moved on, Mama turned up expecting with me, and she wrote a letter to my pa to see if it was really love or if she‟d just been, well, a stop on the road.” Gideon smiled fondly at the memory, because he‟d had his share of stops on the road and not one of ‟em would he have been overly happy to hear that kind of news from. “My daddy‟s name is Robert Makepeace, and he wired her money to come and catch up with him the same day he got her letter. I was born in New Orleans, where the show hunkers down for the winters, and I‟ve worked with it since I was a kid. Still do,” he said. “But the show is not near here,” one of the braves said, a question in his voice. “Gideon was hired by a horse breeder in Montana,” Jed put in, “to help school some of his animals. Gideon saved my life there, and now I am returning him to his family and his work.” Some folks nodded, and plenty of the women were smiling. True love was always a happy tale to tell. When a brave stood up to tell a story, his was happier, too, and right funny, about his first hunt and how bad he‟d been at it, scaring the game away with his noise and his questions until his older brother had threatened to leave him under a tree until the hunt was finished. And so the night went on, long after the food was finished and the fires burned low. Some folks had already

gone to bed. Gideon could see shadows through the teepee walls, the movement reminding him of puppet shows the actors‟ troupe put on for little kids. Cowhatocowait asked him for one more story, so he told one about a dancing bear who had been a part of the sideshow for a couple of years, right up until it had tried to dance with the wife of the mayor in a small town in Virginia. The bear had been more interested in the smell of the flowers in the woman‟s hat than in the woman herself, but she hadn‟t understood that one bit, and the bear had scared ten years off her. They‟d managed to get everybody settled down with the bear unhurt, but the bear and his keeper had parted company with the troupe soon after. The moon, just a few days past new, had set long ago, and most of the fires were banked for the night. Tendoy held up his hands after Gideon finished. “Rest. We must hunt at dawn,” Tendoy said, his voice stern as he looked at the braves who were still chuckling at Gideon‟s story. Gideon said, “I‟m right tired myself. Jed and I still need to find a place to bed down anyway—” “You will stay here,” Tendoy said, gesturing to a nearby teepee. “The furs are thick and soft.” Gideon glanced to Jed, unsure of how to answer. “We do not wish to take someone else‟s furs,” Jed said in English, but he added to it in whatever that language was that both tribes seemed able to speak. Tendoy frowned, but he looked a little relieved, too. He answered Jed in that foreign tongue then clapped his hands together, pointing to a little crowd of young men. They rose and moved away to do his bidding, and Tendoy pushed himself to his feet. It was the signal for everyone else, and Gideon was thankful; his legs were aching from sitting Indian-style for so long. “We will share Tendoy‟s teepee,” Jed explained. “It is an honor to share his home.”

Gideon nodded his thanks to Tendoy. “Them geese Jed found,” Gideon said, “they weren‟t but three days east of here. Big flock of ‟em, maybe Jed can tell you how to find ‟em?” “Three days is off our land,” Tendoy said, a clear rebuke. Jed leaned forward, said, “It is less than two days, without a white man and his horse. The land between here and that lake is unsettled. We saw no cattle or whites to the west of it. You could send only two braves, and they could bring back much meat and feathers.” Tendoy looked thoughtful, and nodded slowly. “Tell Cowhatocowait of your route. But tomorrow. Now, we sleep.” Tomorrow, Gideon promised his unhappy dick, they‟d be moving on. But it was going to be a rough night of not thinking about Jed and his dancing. It wasn‟t though; once he settled in on the bed of furs a hell of a lot softer than his bedroll on the ground, Jed stretched out past him, their heads close together like they slept most nights, he found that he couldn‟t stay awake. As Tendoy had promised, the next morning started early, and Gideon was not happy to be rousted before the sun was even up. It didn‟t take him long to figure out that he was in a whole village of people like Jed, who were up and moving before first light, and he hoped they wouldn‟t be staying in too many more Indian camps along the way. He‟d got to liking his extra time to rest while Jed got up and roamed for meat or wild vegetables, and he realized now just how much Jed was spoiling him. The thought made him grin, and he vowed to do more of his fair share on the road ahead. Star was just as uninterested in moving around at this time of the day as he was, but she gave in more quickly when Jed murmured things to her in his own language and stroked her long neck and behind her ears. Gideon was almost jealous of the horse, and he said as much, drawing a quick grin from his companion. They set out with Tendoy and his braves, walking as the sun rose. There was as little talk as there had been the day before, but there was less tension. When Gideon started humming, one of the braves grinned

at him, and before too long, he was teaching “Never Mind the Why and Wherefore” to the whole party. They stopped at a stream to refill canteens, and Tendoy gave them back their guns. “We will part here,” he said, speaking English. “Kill no more than you must to eat for a day. Go in peace.” Gideon took his gun from the man then held out his hand in offering. “Thanks for the hospitality,” he said. Tendoy nodded, clasping Gideon‟s hand like a white man would. He turned to Jed and spoke in Shoshone, which Jed answered in kind. They spoke longer, and when they parted, they grasped each others‟ wrists in the Indian way. Tendoy stepped back, and Jed turned to Gideon. “Come on,” he said quietly, leading the way. The Shoshone waited as they walked away, and even though he could feel their eyes on his back, Gideon didn‟t even think to feel threatened. After a while he looked back, and they were gone. He could barely see them moving off to the north, vague shadows amid the dry grass. After a while Gideon asked, “Why did they give us back our guns? I thought they didn‟t want us killing anything they might need.” Jed smiled a little. “You shared food with them, and you shared your life with them. You showed respect for their ways.” “How about you, Jed?” Gideon asked. “Did I show respect for your ways?” Jed slowed his pace a little, looking at Gideon. For some reason, this answer was suddenly very important, and Gideon stood a little straighter. There was plenty he could have done wrong, from plain old ignorance— “Yes, Gideon,” Jed said slowly. “You did. I thank you.” Gideon felt his chest puff up with pleasure at that answer, and turned his face away to hide his smile, so Jed wouldn‟t tease him about it. Much as he usually enjoyed Jed‟s teasing, this thing with the

Shoshone had been… well, it had become important to him that he‟d done good by Jed. They moved on until almost nightfall, when Jed found a stream and strolled along until they found a good spot to camp near it. While Gideon set a small fire, working with Jed‟s flint which he was learning to master, Jed put their bedrolls side by side. Before the sun was down, Jed stripped out of his clothes and washed, then he wrapped himself in his blanket and his thong, so Gideon braved the icy water and did the same but pulled most of his clothes back on after. It was getting damned cold tonight. They ate dried meat and flat bread that Tendoy‟s people had packed for them, and while it seemed like they were talking a lot, neither of them actually said much with their mouths. Before they‟d finished their meal and packed the rest away for tomorrow, Gideon was half-hard, just from the looks he and Jed kept sharing.

AFTER the sun set, the gray dusk gave way to a blue-black night in the east and warm, darkening hues to the west; the crescent moon hung low in the sky. Jed stood and dropped the blanket onto the rest of his bedroll. With his eyes holding Gideon‟s, he moved in a slow circle around the bedrolls, swirling and stomping in a rhythm that needed no music, even though he did almost-silently chant the familiar sounds Gideon had come to know. Gideon slapped his thigh like a drum, keeping time with his partner, and it wasn‟t long before Jed was covered in a sheen of sweat that caught the firelight so that he seemed to shimmer as he moved. Jed‟s hair was blacker than the night, and it, too, caught what little light there was, shining as it swung and flew with a life of its own. Part of Gideon had a life of its own, too, and it rose hard and proud as Jed danced, his naked skin inviting, his lithe body showing all its finest qualities to Gideon‟s hungry eyes. The thong covered Jed‟s good parts, but it also defined the hard muscles of his ass, drawing Gideon‟s eyes every time Jed turned or twisted. On his fourth or fifth pass around their bedrolls—Gideon had lost count long ago—he came close enough for Gideon to reach and run his

fingers down the back of one leg. He didn‟t intend to throw Jed offbalance, just to draw him closer, but Jed was shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and Gideon‟s pull on it threw him off his center. Jed fell. Fortunately, he was small enough that he didn‟t hurt Gideon too much when he landed squarely on him. Unfortunately, it ended Jed‟s dance—and took Gideon‟s breath. Jed lay on top of Gideon, trying to get his arms under him. Gideon caught his hips, hands slipping on all that sweaty, bare skin, and did his best to lift a little, helping Jed put some space between them until Jed got his arms pushed out in front of him. His hair hung down like a dark waterfall on all sides of Gideon‟s face and over the top of his head so that Gideon couldn‟t really see anything: no stars, no moon or sky, not even the details of Jed‟s face just a few inches above his. All he could do was feel: the hard dirt beneath his bedroll and the hard, warm planes of Jed‟s body pressed against him. He could smell the rich, earthy smell of Jed, and the mint on his breath, could hear the sound of Jed‟s panting loud in his ears as Jed quickly caught his breath. Gideon decided that now was a great time to take it away again, with a long, deep kiss that ended with his tongue in Jed‟s mouth and his hands struggling to untie the damp leather tie of the thong. For his part, Jed had positioned his knees on either side of Gideon, and Gideon could feel the press of Jed‟s erection as it ground against his own. He twisted, levering himself and then rolling so that Jed was under him. The thong came loose, and Jed grunted as they rolled and twisted against each other. When Jed rose above him, Jed managed to get his hands between them and tug Gideon‟s pants open, and for a while, Gideon did no thinking at all. But when Jed slid down, urging Gideon on top, Gideon‟s body cooled just enough for his brain to start working again. He looked down into Jed‟s eyes, starlight reflecting in the wide pupils. “This means a lot to me,” he said, searching for words that he‟d never used before, not with a man or a woman. Words he wasn‟t sure he should be using now, not just because Jed was a man, but because the words seemed so important. Binding. San Francisco wasn‟t so far away anymore, and

they‟d be parting ways there. Words, meaningful words… there seemed no point to it, except for the need inside Gideon to say them. “I know,” Jed answered, his voice low. “I feel for you, too.” Gideon smiled down at him, the words warming parts of him that weren‟t connected to his balls. He leaned down and kissed Jed, slow and warm, letting the heat of passion cool just enough to give them both back a little control. “Want to give you something,” he said as he drew back. And Gideon did; he wanted to give Jed his heart, but that seemed big, too big, and the other offer was easier to face. “Want to let you get inside me this time.” Jed blinked and his breath caught, a choked sound in his throat. His hands tightened their grip on Gideon‟s shoulders, his fingers hooked into the fabric of Gideon‟s shirt. “What?” he asked, his voice passion-thick and rough with desire that was familiar now, and so damned welcome. Gideon swallowed, but he didn‟t back down on his offer. He didn‟t even want to. “You been the one doing the most giving,” he said. “Reckon I‟d like to be giving you some back.” Jed held his gaze for several seconds before taking a slow breath. “I—I can‟t. Not now. I am too impatient. You would have pain.” Gideon kissed him on the lips, a soft touch. “I ain‟t afraid of you,” he said as he pulled back. “And I ain‟t a virgin—I‟ve had men before.” Jed smiled, his teeth white in the darkness. “I‟m glad to hear it,” he said. “But for now, I like it better the way we have been doing it.” To emphasize his words, he spread his legs and hooked his ankles behind Gideon‟s knees. “I want you again tonight.” The relief Gideon had felt earlier came back, but this time, he chided himself for it. Jed had every right to ask for and get the same thing he offered to Gideon so willingly. And Gideon wanted to give it. But as Jed arched his back, pressing his hips up against Gideon, Gideon was glad that the hot column of flesh bruising his belly wasn‟t going into him tonight. He always had been called selfish, and he wouldn‟t deny that. Not about this. Jed really was impatient, and he barely gave Gideon time to find some grease to ease the way. By the time they were joined, he was

pushing up against Gideon, using his legs to lever his groin up off the bedroll, rubbing himself against Gideon‟s belly as much as he could while Gideon pushed deeper and deeper inside him. As much as Gideon liked talking, there just wasn‟t anything that needed saying when they were like this. He resisted the pull of Jed‟s ankles, resisted his own wants enough to get inside slow, until he was buried to the balls. Once he was seated he rested on his elbows and looked down at Jed‟s face, trying to make out what few details he could from the flickering firelight, but he had the feeling he‟d get his ass kicked— literally—if he didn‟t hurry up and get moving. Still he waited, until Jed‟s tight-clenched eyes opened, and Jed looked up at him, until Jed‟s urgent movements slowed just a little, and he thought Jed might be frowning at him. “What?” Jed asked him. “Nothin‟,” Gideon replied, and pulled almost all the way out of the tight-clenching flesh, then thrust back in. The movement made Jed‟s head push back into the ground and his neck arch, made Jed‟s chest push up a little as he responded to the pleasure Gideon could give him. Gideon got plenty of pleasure in return, the passage slick and tight, warm and so smooth, and he gave up trying to control this thing and just rode it, letting Jed lead as much as he could, even though he knew it was going to make him spill sooner than he wanted, make this end sooner than he wanted it to. He focused as much as he could on Jed, to try and take his mind off that tight, slick glove around his shaft, but it was a lost cause, and soon enough, he was grunting, sure the end was coming at him like a freight train, keeping the pace Jed seemed to crave with an effort that made the urgent pleasure surging in him all the better for not letting it get rushed any more than it already was. “Jed, I‟m—” he panted. The strangest thing happened: Jed, whose arms had been around his waist, moved one down to his ass and poked a finger into him, dry, startling him a little, and moved the other up to his arm, gripping his biceps hard. Jed didn‟t even say anything, and Gideon just kept thrusting, getting maybe a few more in than he would have otherwise,

from that little pain of Jed‟s finger in him and the other pain of Jed‟s fingers so tight they might leave bruises on his upper arm. He thought of them marks there, and felt how each thrust forward tightened his hole around Jed‟s slim finger, and when he came, he felt like his body was getting shaken apart. Every piece of it felt like it was coming: his ass where Jed‟s finger barely moved, his balls, his buried, overwhelmed cock, his belly, his throat where some kind of sound wanted to climb out, his clenched teeth, his arm where Jed‟s fingers branded him. Hell, it felt like the roots of his hair were quaking and shaking right along with the rest of him. He panted and shook, and Jed just lay there, legs gripping around the backs of Gideon‟s thighs, and when Gideon could, when the pleasure waned a little, and he had some kind of control over his body again, he hunched back just a little to make a space between their bellies. He didn‟t pull out of Jed‟s ass—he wasn‟t dumb about things like this—he just made enough room to reach between them, using the arm Jed didn‟t have that death grip on, grabbed up Jed‟s hard, hard cock, and stripped it fast, three times, four, five—the come slammed through Jed just like it had Gideon, the muscles of his ass clamping so tight ‟round Gideon‟s sensitized cock that it almost hurt, his body arching and rolling and making this ride as rough and wild as any spirited bronc could, but so much better. So damned much better. Slowly, Jed‟s grip on his arm loosened, and slower still Jed‟s arched body relaxed back onto their bedrolls. “Ahh,” he said, a damned noncommittal sound for all the pleasure Gideon knew they‟d each just had. It made him smile, though, and after a second he slid his hand down Jed‟s arm, encouraging him to ease his finger out. He used the same hand to reach even more awkwardly behind himself and unhook Jed‟s ankles from around each other, and only then did he pull out of Jed. The sound, soft and wet, sent a last lurch of pleasure through his groin, and he smiled some more as he finally rolled to one side of Jed and stared happily up at the blanket of stars. “One day,” Gideon said, “you‟re gonna fuck me like that.” The silence stretched on for a couple of minutes, broken only by their calming breaths, the crackle of the small fire, and the sounds of

night critters—crickets mostly, and mice or rabbits or gophers rustling the dry grass around them. Jed‟s hand bumped Gideon‟s hip and felt around for his hand, clasping it tight. “One day,” Jed agreed. Gideon figured he could die right now, and he‟d be satisfied with his life, short as it had been so far. He didn‟t have to look at Jed to strengthen that feeling. He wasn‟t sure this feeling could get any stronger, this satisfaction that reached far past his loins, up to his heart and his head and into his soul. For the first time this trip, he decided that California, and San Francisco, weren‟t nearly far enough away.

Chapter 6

THE next two weeks flew by and so did the landscape as they left the northern edges of the Great Plains far behind. Somewhere along the way they‟d crossed the Continental Divide, and Gideon thought he could tell by the different climates out here that they were in the Pacific region now, where the weather was influenced more by the great ocean than by the Great Plains. They passed through Owhyee and didn‟t spot another living soul until they reached Winnemucca, past mining towns big and small until they reached what a woman in dungarees told Gideon was the Humboldt River. “You ain‟t far from home, are you, ma‟am?” he asked. She rode astride, which plenty of women did out where city folk weren‟t around to judge ‟em. In this part of the country, the cities weren‟t much to speak of anyway. Her hand dropped to the rifle that hung from a strap on her saddle‟s pommel. “Don‟t matter to you how near or far I am,” she said, frowning. Gideon chuckled, trying to be polite about it. “We‟re just headed west, thought if you wanted some company we could move along at a pace for a time, if we‟re going in the same direction.” “We ain‟t,” she said, but the words were gentler now. She was moving west, her horse‟s gait enough slower than Star‟s that Gideon realized again just how much Jed had managed to push the pace for them. A wide track peeled off by a creek, a shallow tributary to this pretty, meandering river. “Our family‟s place is up that way. Good day to you, boys,” she said, and reined aside.

“See, Jed?” Gideon whispered before she‟d gotten too far away. “Another decent enough white.” “I believe that many white people are decent, Gideon. Some, much more than that,” he said, and the sideways glance he slanted made Gideon‟s mouth stretch into a wide grin. “It is the whites who are not that trouble me and my kind. There are many of those, too.” Gideon couldn‟t hardly argue, so he didn‟t. Instead he struck up a conversation even Jed seemed willing to warm to, about their first gals: first time seeing a woman naked, first fucks—first kisses, which Gideon already knew was his. What they liked and disliked about women carried them the whole day and blended seamlessly into what they liked and disliked about men. Here, Gideon was more hesitant about spelling things out. It still seemed strange, having a man he was comfortable enough to talk to about the subject. He‟d bedded—or at least been blown by—enough men, it oughtn‟t to feel strange talking about it. But Gideon realized there‟d only been one boy, back when he was barely a teenager, he‟d felt close enough to want to ask, and even to want to explain how strange and scary and rich all this lust for men felt. So they shared some silences, too, with just the clomp of Star‟s hooves, shifting stones, rushing water, and the wildlife that thrived along this river‟s edge. They shared each other, every night. Some mornings now, too, when Gideon could interest Jed in the notion. The big mining towns, they gave wide, wide berths. They steered clear enough of Rose Creek and Tungsten, Mill City and Rye Patch, towns that were marked more by the smoke from the smelting plants and the track that crisscrossed the land, rail lines that brought in coal and timber, food and equipment, and hauled out ore. After he and Jed passed a big, beautiful blue lake, some of the land they crossed was dry enough that it barely supported crickets and scorpions, much less sheep or cattle. Dry salt flats caught sunlight like mirrors, making his eyes squint and his skin tan darker. Jed‟s, too, he thought, which surprised him. For some reason he‟d thought Jed‟s skin was as dark as it could get the day they‟d met in Livingston.

Worthless land made for lonely land, which suited Gideon just fine. Jed, too, by the look of him. They spent their nights on shared bedrolls, sometimes with a fire and sometimes without, sometimes dressing after their loving and sometimes just rolled close together, skin on skin, sure they were far enough off the paths of any but the most determined or desperate trappers that the risk of getting run across was small. Or maybe they just didn‟t care. Gideon was sure that would be him doing the not-caring, that Jed looked out for them always, and he was glad Jed knew this wild land well enough to know when they could afford the pleasure of sleeping naked together. Some days were hard walking, and some days Star slowed them down when they went too long between finding rivers or streams and thirst bothered her. Gideon worried about that a little, but Jed seemed to feel it without Gideon having to say, or recognize it in Star‟s plodding steps, because soon enough he‟d find sign of a spring or a creek, even just a burble of water coming up from the ground to make a pool plenty big for refilling canteens and letting Star drink her fill. He‟d thought he‟d gotten to know Jed well enough from nursing him through that time of infection and fever, but he‟d learned so much more of the man on the trail: his strengths in the wild, his way with hunting and foraging and caring for Star. He had such quiet ways, but sometimes, something would drive him to talk, to share a story of his own. The Shoshone had respected him and how he looked in that dance… he knew his own body well, and he had learned Gideon‟s plenty fast. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—they‟d stop on the trail when they ran across water, and if the weather was nice and there were trees or shrubs along the bank to keep them from being visible through a spyglass, Jed would just drop to his knees, or into that familiar native squat right in front of him, open his pants, and suck him dryer than the salty ground they trekked over. He almost never let Gideon pay him back, not in the middle of the day like that. But sometimes, less often, if Gideon woke when Jed roused himself, Jed would let him suck him before they started their day. Those mornings were Gideon‟s favorites, and he thought Jed walked with a smoother, lazier gait when he‟d allowed Gideon to tend to him.

It was on a sunny afternoon after one of their more pleasurable mornings that Gideon was reminded that not everything was as tame out here as it seemed. They‟d stopped at a trickle of water that might, in a few months when the weather turned and snow was falling on the mountain tops, be called a creek, but for now it was just a faint line of water running along the ground. Star sucked it in as best she could, and Gideon was standing with her, his back to the sun, when something niggled at the pit of his belly. He turned, looking for Jed, who he found on his knees nearby, his pack on the ground in front of him, but his head turned so that he was staring at something in the scrub. Maybe it was his unnatural stillness. While Gideon was now accustomed to his friend‟s taciturn nature and his spare and necessary movements, Jed was so still that Gideon wasn‟t certain he was even breathing. Or it could have been the strange sound he heard, one that had slowly crept into his awareness over the past few seconds. It was low and fast, like the buzzing of a nest of bees, but more distinct, and it didn‟t take his brain but a second to identify the noise. He stepped away from Star, taking two steps toward Jed. Jed didn‟t move, but he said in a hiss, “Gideon, don‟t—” Gideon ignored him, drawing his pistol unthinkingly as he saw the threat: coiled in the faint shade of the scrub bush was a snake, its tail shaking its bone rattles, its head raised on a long arc of body. It hissed at the same time that Jed did, and drew back, ready to strike. Gideon didn‟t give much thought to firing, save that Jed was damned close to his line. Not too close for comfort, though, not with his shooting skills. Gideon blinked, giving himself a few seconds to look around in the aftermath, searching for any other signs of danger. The snake lay several feet away, its long body uncoiled now, blown backward by the impact of the bullet that had shattered its head. The tail still rattled as the body twitched, but the sound was less ominous now. “You all right?” he asked as he walked over and nudged the severed snakehead away with his boot. There was still enough venom in that mouth to do either one of them in, and he wasn‟t going to risk

one of them stepping on it. Jed‟s silence drew his head around in worry. “Jed?” Jed pushed to his feet, moving stiffly, and his voice was also different, dull and a bit breathless. He swallowed before he spoke. “The snake spirit—” “Was too close to my Indian spirit,” Gideon cut in, annoyed. Jed was staring at the snake, his eyes wide and his face pale. But he nodded. “Yes, it was too close. I—thank you, Gideon.” They stood for a time, just staring at the snake as its death twitches slowly subsided, until Star broke the tension with a whoof and a stomp of one of her hooves as she dug into the small puddle of sandy mud. Gideon looked at her and the strong emotion drained away. What a damned fool way of almost losing Jed, after all the effort he‟d put in to keeping him alive in Livingston. He was still holding his pistol, but the barrel had stopped smoking. Carefully, he slid it back into its holster and stared at his right hand. He‟d always been proud of his skills for the show and for the odd hunting trip, but he‟d never been quite this grateful for them before. He rubbed his hand along the side of his pants to wipe away the sweat. “You are a skilled marksman,” Jed said quietly. He had moved to stand beside Gideon, and he reached out slowly, taking Gideon‟s hand in both of his. He used his fingers to spread Gideon‟s hand open, and rubbed at the palm with his thumb, causing an altogether unseemly reaction to course through Gideon. “I‟ve told you how many stories, and you‟re only now believin‟ me?” he asked, trying to sound aghast. But most folks loved to talk, and very few could have made that shot. “Only now have you given me cause. Again, I owe you my life.” Gideon wanted to gripe about Jed‟s lack of faith in his word, but right then Jed leaned over Gideon‟s hand and even though Gideon had no idea what he was going to do, it had the feel of some sort of promise or obligation that Gideon didn‟t like. He tugged his hand back, catching one of Jed‟s wrists in the process and pulling the smaller man against him. “Weren‟t nothing you wouldn‟t have done for me if the situation

was reversed and you‟d had the shot,” he said gruffly even as he hugged Jed close. “But you‟d probably have done it quieter,” he teased, laughing as much to ease his own tension as to lighten the moment. Jed didn‟t laugh, but Gideon could feel the answering smile where Jed‟s mouth touched his cheek as Jed returned the hug. They stood that way for a while as the fear passed, and their hearts stopped pounding against each other. When Jed finally pushed away, he asked, “Is that what you do in your show? Shooting like that?” Gideon smiled back, squeezing Jed‟s hand before letting him go. “Some of it, yeah. Ma started teaching me to shoot when I was big enough to lift the gun—small ones, at first. She has a Derringer rig that she wears when we travel, and it was the first thing I learned to shoot. I‟m not as good as my sisters, though—the twins are going to be stars in their own right. They can shoot the bee off of a flower and never touch the petals.” Jed‟s face expressed his doubt, so Gideon nodded. “I ain‟t exaggeratin‟, Jed. I don‟t, usually, just so you know. They‟re that good.” Jed nodded and his lips twitched in his almost-smile, but his eyes were serious. “I think your skill with the gun is more than good enough for me,” he said. “Thank you.” Gideon swallowed and nodded. “You can thank me for dinner, too. That there rattler‟s about the best meat we‟ve run across in a couple of days now.” “Thank you for dinner,” Jed said, unaccountably sober and serious. Gideon cleared his throat, uncomfortable with that kind of praise. “I think I‟m rested enough—how ‟bout you? Ready to move on?” Jed did chuckle then, but he didn‟t argue, picking up his pack and the snake‟s long body as Gideon rounded up Star. But as they left the water-hole, Gideon took one more look at the bloody puddle of snakehead, reminding himself to clean his gun when they stopped for the night.

After that day, Gideon was more mindful of the dangers of this untamed land and of the simple pleasures of the trip. He spent a whole lot of time enjoying God‟s country, and Jed‟s chanting, and all the ways they‟d been learning to pleasure each other. His various educations—about Jed and Jed‟s body, about the wild and living easily in it instead of making it a battle between his citified habits and mother nature—took up nearly two weeks and, he guessed, five hundred miles, getting them from the reservation of the Shoshone, through the rest of Idaho, across rocky deserts and salt flats, through wild rivers and peaceful valleys, and almost to Carson City before tension of any kind finally set in between them. Gideon was the one who started it. He wasn‟t sure where the words came from or why they came out the way they did, but as the town grew in the distance, he heard himself ask Jed if he was going to „act civilized and take a bath in hot water and sleep in a real bed.‟ It wasn‟t the question itself, which he could have laughed off as a joke, but the tone of it, which even to his own ears sounded needlessly harsh. Jed slowed his pace and turned to look at Gideon, his features twisted into a frown. “Why are you angry, Gideon?” he asked, the words slow and measured. “Have I done something you dislike?” Gideon felt the heat as his skin flushed. “No,” he said quickly. “I just thought—well, we‟re coming up on Carson City, and I‟d like to stay the night there, maybe get a warm bath.” Jed looked at him, the frown clearing away but leaving his features blank. After a few seconds, he said, “You can do whatever you want.” Gideon drew a deep breath, mulling the words over long enough to realize what he was really asking. “I want you to come with me,” he said. Jed looked away and toward Carson City. “You want me there even though you know I would not be content to linger.” Gideon sighed. “No, of course not. But I think you‟re judging us too hard. I got you taken care of in Livingston, didn‟t I? You think I can‟t do it here?”

Jed didn‟t say anything for a while, and Gideon wondered how much he‟d upset the other man. He also wondered what he was really doing—but he didn‟t have to wonder on that for long. They were getting close to a city, and he wasn‟t lying—he wanted a hot bath and hot food cooked with staples and supplies, salt and flour and biscuits all fluffy, dripping with butter and tart with salt. He wanted to sleep in a damned bed for once and not have Jed look at him like that desire made him weak, because it flat-out didn‟t, no more than Jed‟s ease under the open sky made Jed weak. They were just different—raised different, educated different, and there wasn‟t nothing wrong with that. There shouldn‟t be, anyway. But he wanted Jed with him, too. He wanted Jed with him as much as possible, to store up the memories for the time after they reached San Francisco and went their separate ways. He thought about Jed making this trip back alone, to his more familiar territory in the Dakotas, and knew Jed was fine with his own company, completely competent to handle himself and most things that came his way—hell, Gideon thought, annoyed, he‟d probably get back from San Francisco in half the time it took him to get there, with Gideon and Star dragging him down—as long as he was careful about snakes. Gideon had thought on that watering hole more than once as the days passed, wondering whether that rattler would have struck, if it would have got Jed. As comfortable with nature as Jed was, Jed was no more a part of it than any man, and all it‟d take was a wild pig or a rattler, a scorpion or the wrong kind of spider in his bedroll, to end him. The man darned well ought to learn to appreciate cities and the relative safety of them. Eventually, as the buildings grew more distinct, and the homesteads and fenced cattle pastureland they‟d been passing gave way to smaller farms, then houses with smaller barns and big kitchen gardens, Jed said quietly, “I enjoy our time together. But do you think we would be able to be together in a town? Your people are not tolerant of what we do together, alone, and not just because I am an Indian. We are both men—that might be better with an Indian, a savage,” he said, and there wasn‟t even any twist of irony in his voice, “but it could still mean our deaths if we were found out. Is a hot bath and a bed worth risking our lives to you?”

Gideon looked at him, thinking about his words. “Sure ain‟t,” he answered, letting the annoyance show in his voice. Of course it wasn‟t. “But we camped with them Shoshone, and as far as I know they didn‟t figure nothing out. Did they?” he challenged, and watched Jed closely for deception. Jed cast him a sideways glare. “No, they did not. But then, we only slept. You are telling me you want to lie in a soft bed that you pay for… and only sleep?” Gideon clenched his teeth against his answer, because Jed had him caught out there, six ways from Sunday. Yes, he wanted a soft bed, and he wanted Jed and their hard cocks, right there in it. “All right, I admit it,” he grumbled, lowering his voice. Kids were out working in the kitchen gardens, and while the pair of them walking along didn‟t earn many glances—the acreage still pretty big and the gardens well back from the road to keep from tempting travelers to help themselves to a free snack—being careless was a surer way to make Jed right than anything else could be. “I like the thought of us in a clean bed, soft sheets that smell like soap instead of sweat and horse hair. I like the thought of lying there with you, with a locked door—‟cause whether you like it or not,” he said, poking Jed‟s arm for emphasis, “when we‟re out in the wild without a locked door, that‟s its own kind of chance. It‟s just a risk in your world, where you feel comfortable. Well, Jed, I‟ve lived twenty years in cities and traveling between ‟em.” Here he lowered his voice even further. “And I ain‟t never even got a gal caught out if she was of decent folk, where someone seeing her with a man like me would get her in trouble. I sure as hell ain‟t never got caught with a man, and yeah, I reckon I‟ve had my share of those. Right inside the city limits. Right inside respectable hotels and boarding houses and homes, Jed.” All right, it had only been one home, with that one feller who‟d been a bachelor and had his own place and had clearly been lusting after Gideon during the shows. The guy had come to every performance, hadn‟t missed Gideon even once, and after a couple days‟ careful feeling out of each other, the feller had been sure enough to invite him home “for supper and friendly conversation.” They hadn‟t eaten a bite of food and hadn‟t talked much either. But still, he was trying to make a point here.

“Nothing you can say would ever convince me you feared for your safety in the wild, during our times together,” Jed said, his voice as quiet as it got when he was chanting. “I never did,” he agreed. “Because I trusted you, and trusted that you knew what you were doing.” He let Jed chew on that for a time, as the lots got smaller and the road got wider; soon enough they‟d have to turn off it to skirt north or south of the town center, or this road would take them right into the heart of it. Besides, he really did think Jed might be over-reacting. Jed was right that they‟d need to be careful—very careful. But Gideon knew all about how to do that. “You take a fork in the road, and I‟ll follow you,” he said after a while. “We can skip the city, find us a general store on the edge of town to stock up and move right on through. But it would mean a lot to me, Jed, if we stayed in town. If you stayed with me.” Jed looked at him then sighed. “We need supplies,” he said by way of an answer. “But please, Gideon, remember that many of your people simply do not like my kind. You cannot talk everyone into your way of thinking just by being,” he waved a hand, “charming.” Gideon wanted to crow at that compliment, but he tried hard not to let his victorious smile slip out, because it‟d be a damn shame and just plain wrong to boot, to rub Jed‟s face in the pleasure he took from this little win. Besides the pleasure he hoped they‟d share in creature comforts like baths and somebody else‟s good cooking and clean sheets, he was enjoying this, the winning. Lordy, but he was a selfish git sometimes. “I‟m not looking to change every person in Carson City,” he said. Hell, he even meant it. “I‟m just looking for a place that don‟t mind catering to whites and redskins alike, that‟ll let me buy a bath and a good, hot meal we didn‟t have to cook ourselves and a decent room. My charm and my money can get us that.” The road widened, as he‟d predicted, then it widened some more, just past a turnout for the electric train that clearly brought working folks downtown or on through town to the smelters north of here. He didn‟t reckon folks working the Comstock load up in Nevada‟s

Virginia City would actually