A muffled snore shuffled through the big house. Gideon waited, listening. Nothing. Everyone was asleep. He let out his breath and eased over the floorboard that had so inconveniently offered to report his unscheduled departure. Down in the front room, he held a brief discussion with the lock on a chest and, without too much difficulty, persuaded it to hand over his weapons. Leaving them was unthinkable; his bowie knife had made more than one man back up and the revolver. . . that had turned out to be his inheritance.
Buckling his gun belt, Gideon felt fully dressed for the first time in ages. He slipped outside and the cool night air greeted him, tingling with possibilities.
A blue roan waited in the last stall on the left and nuzzled Gideon’s chest affectionately. Whether the sheriff had found him or the Rivers, Gideon didn’t know, but he would admit to being grateful. The roan was broad and tall, too big some said for an inexperienced rider. That’s where they got it wrong. Gideon had plenty of experience, more than most, and what he didn’t know, he was learning fast.
Henry rubbed his head more insistently against his rider, confused at the lack of response to his playful attentions.
“Best we raise a little dust– an’ sooner’s better, my friend,” Gideon murmured as he tacked up.
A different place, a different time– maybe— but not now. . . not anymore. The Rivers would get in the way. What Gideon had, the only thing he had left to hold onto, were his responsibilities. He had obligations, and they were only going to get harder the longer he left them.
Rivers din’t mean to mess nothin’ up.
But he did.
Yeah, but he din’t mean to.
Truth was, leaving was about the most neighborly thing Gideon could do. Keeping him around was akin to climbing up on a big box of horseshoes in the middle of a nasty lightning storm.
“Going somewhere?”
Gideon’s heart jumped into his throat and scrabbled for the territorial line. He let out an oath and caught up the bridle he had dropped. Clearly Aspen was not asleep. The deuced man was wide awake and fully dressed as if he had been waiting for Gideon to run. When would he give up?
“And you were doing so well,” Aspen tisked, leaning his shoulder against a post. “Why are you in such a hurry to be rid of us?”
Gideon measured the narrow gap Aspen’s body left between the gate and the alley. He turned back to Henry and the horse obligingly dipped its head to accept the hackamore.
Matrushka doll. That’s what came to Aspen. Years ago there had been a Russian woman with a wooden doll, more like two cups put rim to rim than any human shape, and inside one nestled another, and another, until the very center which housed a tiny doll about the size of a lima bean. That was Gideon: everything tucked inside, layer upon layer and everything hidden.
“Why was Nelson surprised you would help him?”
How’d he hear that?
Couldn’t’ve. He’s a-fishin’.
“Wadda ya mean?” said Gideon, stalling for time.
“I wonder what else Nelson would have said, if you had let him?” Aspen prodded softly.
“Don’t,” Gideon warned, snugging up his cinch. “You ain’t got you no idea.”
“So tell me.”
Aspen remained right smack in the dang way. Gideon tugged an imaginary wrinkle out of Henry’s saddle blanket.
“Who’s Gideon?” Aspen coaxed in that same quiet tone, half sure he already knew.
As it turned out, he was wrong– though not by much.
“Me,” Gideon flung the word, as if to backhand the world in general and Aspen in particular.
“Why did you lie to us?”
The answer was too obvious for the question to be genuine. Aspen was playing cougar, verbally creeping up, looking for the advantage. Needlessly, Gideon checked the ties on his saddlebags and wished without hope that Aspen would go away, disappear, anything but keep standing there asking for answers he couldn’t possibly understand.
“What’s between you and Nelson?” Aspen asked.
“He were Tarlston’s,” Gideon answered short. “I were Harris’s. That’s plen’y.”
“It is,” Aspen agreed, “but it’s not all.”
“Not that it’s no business-a yourn, but it were my bullet Nelson done tooked. If’n I had it to do again, I’d aim a mite higher. That fight weren’t no po-lite parley an’ that sorry waste-a skin’s lucky to be breathin’.”
“Gov, you cannot go through life—”
Gideon spun, fists clenched. “Don’t you preacher me ’bout the proper eddeecut-a gettin’ by! I been through the mill so many times I’ve had my fill an’ then some an’, so help me, I still get up ever’ miserable day!”
Aspen changed his mind. Gideon wouldn’t break apart with the war raging inside him, he would implode with the violence of black powder dropped on a bonfire. Either way, it would be a shame.
“Didn’t your father raise you to be more than a hothead with a gun?” Aspen prodded, in a deliberately condescending manner.
“He were a miserable, good-for-nothin’ sack-a sorrow what done got worse ‘til there weren’t nothin’ to do but git.”
Somehow Gideon’s gun was in his hand, though he couldn’t remember having drawn it. His knuckles had gone white. It seemed to Aspen that Gideon did not so much hold a gun here in this moment, as on an echo of the past. His father? Aspen could not imagine a time or a reason he would ever have cause to hold a gun on his own pa. Whilst other men spoke proudly of the time they had first bested their father, first fought and won, Aspen was proud that, for him, such a day had never come. As he grew, so had his father and they became the closest of friends, not rivals. Certainly not enemies.
“I ain’t a-stayin’,” Gideon threatened.
Any number of rational lines of gentle persuasion queued up on Aspen’s tongue. Not being given to acts of stupidity, he kept them to himself.
“Until the judge arrives, your best course of action is to just sit tight,” he replied.
They were too close; Gideon would never get a leg over Henry. Even if he could, Aspen could still grab the bridle. The weight of the gun in Gideon’s hand presented itself. It was pointed at the ground, and he may not have meant to draw it, but there it was— all he had to do was aim.
“You don’t want to do that,” Aspen said reasonably.
He’s right.
Gideon forced himself to agree with the voice in his head and shoved the gun back into its holster. If he could lure Aspen away from the stall, there might be a chance. A single whistle would bring Henry running and then they could light a shuck. Gideon shouldered his way into the alley. Behind him, Aspen pulled the stall gate shut.
Oops.
Don’t reckon that there were part-a your plan?
Nope.
Gideon bolted. Just shy of the wide-open barn doors, something tangled in his feet and sent him crashing. He snatched up the offending halter, hurled it back, and sprung back up barely in time.
“We don’t have to do it this way,” Aspen pointed out, but Gideon wasn’t listening.
He tried to edge around, but Aspen checked every move. Gideon threw anything his hands could find and heard a grunt, but still his guard shifted closer. Getting out was impossible, and backing up required skills Gideon hand never acquired. Cornered, Gideon took the only available path. He charged.
Aspen spun aside, his hands found purchase and he kicked Gideon’s feet out from under him.
“Are you done?” and now Aspen sounded exasperated.
Gideon tried for his knees, but the knee in his back was not open to negotiation. Aspen shook his head at such stubbornness– how many times did anyone need to make the same mistake?
“What is’t to me when you yourself are cause?” he quoted, putting a handy length of rope to good use.
“What’re ya doin’?” Gideon asked, staring.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Aspen returned a brush to its box and righted a feed bucket. “Eliminating evidence. You keep quiet and I
just might get us inside without anyone suspecting just how big a fool you’ve been.”
“Ain’t ya gonna tell your pa?”
“No, but you should try talking to him. Now hush up.”
“This don’t—”
“I told you to hush. And keep still.”
When the barn had been put to rights, Aspen helped Gideon to his feet.
“Oh, you’re good,” he acknowledged, pinning Gideon against a wall and tightening the rope. “My brothers would have never been able to loosen that knot.”
“Well, I ain’t no brother a-yourn.”
“All the same, let’s try this one instead.”
Ropes properly tightened, Aspen put Gideon over his shoulder and hauled him upstairs, where he then dumped his burden onto their shared bed.
“You a-fixin’ to leave me like this?” Gideon said, pointedly tugging at the doubled-up knots.
“That is the general idea.”
“For real play?”
“If that means ‘Do you mean it?’, then yes.”
“All night?”
“Of course not,” Aspen relented, tugging off Gideon’s boots. “Only what’s left.”
“Now see you here, amadan—”
“Aw-mah-dawn? What is that, Latin?”
“Don’t ya think I could know Latin?” Gideon bristled. “I done met Latinians afore.”
“Good for you,” Aspen said, getting himself ready for bed.
“C’mon. Untie me.”
As the older brother to several siblings, Aspen was immensely familiar with kid brother wheedle. Gideon may not have been a brother but, already well-conditioned to the role, Aspen opted to do what any self-respecting older brother would do. He whispered ‘penance’ in Gideon’s ear and went to sleep.