CHAPTER 5
Find The Lady
Let’s Go
THE world was warm, soft and comfortable. The peculiar sensation inched into Gideon’s sleeping consciousness and searched for some nook to call home. Sidestepping a salty gang of brain cells wound tightly against trespassers, it stubbed a toe on a pile of neurons well associated with beds made of solid rock. Unable to escape the conclusion that ‘comfort’ had no decent place in a brain like this, the cushy sensation turned about and, as wonderers in the dark are wont to do, promptly bumped an elbow against the lamp of wakefulness.
Memory walloped Gideon alongside the head and he lay still, barely squelching the impulse to reach for a gun he did not have. Muffled voices drifted nearby, as did the smell of breakfast. A drawer opened and closed. Fabric rustled. Judging this unthreatening, at least compared to some of the alternatives, Gideon opened his eyes.
“Good morning,” Aspen greeted, with infernal cheerfulness. He tugged a shirt onto his square shoulders and began doing up the buttons. “That is my family downstairs. They came in last night. I suggest you shake yourself up because my brother can put quite a dent in a meal and I’m hungry.”
More food? Whyn’t he thicker ‘round the middle?
‘Cause he’s thick ’round the head instead.
Gideon dropped his feet over the edge of the bed and gave considerable consideration to cutting a trail.
“Come on, Governor,” Aspen coaxed.
The tone suggested he knew exactly what Gideon was thinking and wished to discourage such foolishness. Gideon dragged his braces up over his shoulders and took the vest held out to him. Boots were slid in his direction and he pulled them on with a yawn.
“We’ll see to your leg after breakfast,” Aspen promised.
Handcuffed together, they went downstairs where two men sat at the kitchen table, already halfway through their breakfast. The young one was in his twenties, stocky and bull strong. The other, of average build with mid-brown hair starting to gray, had to be Aspen’s father; side by side the resemblance was strong. Both men were clean shaven and neatly dressed in store bought work clothes that, as far as Gideon could tell, had only yesterday been on the shelf.
“I hope you left a bite of crust for us,” Aspen teased.
“Hey, I was up,” the stocky one replied, with a superciliousness that plainly fell short of being truly meant. “Devil take the hind most, older brother.”
Aspen took a seat on the bench opposite, compelling Gideon to do likewise. With a minimum of expression Aspen made clear exactly who the hind most would be if his younger brother was going to start the day being cheeky. Fort, in equally frugal measure, made plain he did indeed feel his oats and his dear sibling could try what he liked in his own due time, no appointment necessary. The exchange took three seconds or less and might have turned into more except for the prohibition against rough play at the table and Pa sitting so near, looking not so congenial as his norm.
Wisely, Aspen attended to courtesy. “This is my father, Amos Rivers, and the fellow rationing the flapjacks is my brother, Fort.”
A brother? With that red hair? The color was akin to the powder made from chili peppers.
Gideon did not see the familial look pass between the men that asked and explained the need for handcuffs. The redhead passed the flapjacks, and Aspen gave brief but honest thanks before serving himself and Gideon. One did not touch platter nor spoon in Amos Rivers’s house without first saying grace.
“Did you sleep well?” asked Amos, from his station at the head of the table.
Gideon was taken aback to be asked such a question, as if he were a proper guest instead of a prisoner and his host actually cared about the answer.
“What’s your name?” Amos tried again.
Gideon shoveled his mouth full. Given the wealth of food burdening the table, these folks could stand the loss of a plateful. None of the Rivers commented on how he used his fingers more readily than a fork. He ate like he expected it to be the last meal he would see in a month.
“Talking is a notional thing with him,” Aspen said, to explain the silence.
“Come now,” Amos encouraged. “Everyone has a name and you know ours.”
Gideon remembered these men from the ridge, though at the time he hadn’t put them all together as a family. Rivers had carried himself with authority up there, no doubt he expected to have it here at his own table.
Well, he can go on spectin’.
“He wouldn’t tell me either, Pa,” Aspen explained. “I’ve taken to calling him Governor. Isn’t that right?”
Fort watched their guest nod in what had to pass as agreement. The young man was coiled tight, straddling the fence between fighting or running and, where it could go either way at any given moment, Fort would put his money on fighting. How old was he? Something near to Emberlee’s age perhaps. Fort tried to imagine either of his younger brothers being so thin, so . . . feral?
“Why Governor?” he asked, trying to help things along.
“It’s from a scene in ‘Henry the Fifth’,” replied Aspen.
“Shakespeare?”
Gideon’s pride stung at the disbelief he heard in Fort’s voice, but he clamped his teeth against the angry response that jumped to his tongue. He would never have believed Fort’s tone was not meant for him, but born of the notion that no one— other than Aspen— actually read such thick stuff. Not that Fort had anything against a good book, only Shakespeare counted more as a forced march trudge through a literary quagmire.
A memory came to him of Aspen standing triumphantly atop a rock, brandishing a stick for a sword, rallying his meager troops with a king’s passion. Henry had made sense then and Fort had lifted his own stick-become-sword and gladly followed his brother into imaginary battle.
“So,” said Amos, eyes narrowing in Gideon's direction, but finger pointing to the cuts and bruises plainly evident on his eldest son, “is this your defiance?”
The boys exchanged glances. Never one to suffer fools, when their father had a grouch on it never boded well for any luckless soul gone errant within twenty miles.
When Gideon finally decided to speak up, he hit on exactly the wrong thing to say.
“Sure now, I am a pris’ner.”
Amos glared and his mouth tightened. His boys were familiar with the expression and equated it with black clouds building to a gully washer.
“Pa, he saved my life,” Aspen volunteered.
“Did he now?”
“Yes, sir.”
Amos toyed with his coffee, apparently weighing his options. He set the cup down with the barest of clinks, as if some woman had ingrained in him the need to be delicate with her good china.
“Then I suppose I should thank you,” Amos said, and the metaphorical sky cleared.
The meal carried on and Gideon willed the conversation to shift to the rustlers, but no one said anything and he was not prepared to answer the questions that would be put to him if he asked directly. They were about to be put to him anyway, but how was he to know?
When they finished eating, Aspen and Gideon were left to clear the table.
“Prison labor?” Gideon objected. “Do your own cleanin’.”
“I thought we were coming to an understanding?” said Aspen, sliding a pile of sticky dishes into the wash water.
“Yeah,” Gideon replied, struggling to repress the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I offer trouble an’ you change my mind for me.”
Only Aspen’s eyes revealed his amusement. “That’s the one. I’ll wash. You dry.”
Gideon worked a towel over plates and bowls, pans and spoons, all the while chewing over a puzzlement until he just had to ask.
“This here ain’t no jail. So what now?”
“That’s up to Pa.”
There it was again: the power of the rich. At a word, they could determine how a man would live.
Or die.
Not me.
&nbs
p; Gideon didn’t figure to live by that sort of thinking. Recognizing its existence was one thing, willfully participating was another. The thing was, a rich man had every reason to believe such a setup was the natural way of the world because it suited him that it should be. After all, thanks to the persuasive qualities of his bank account, it usually was. But what he saw as a fundamental truth, Gideon saw as an unconscionable lie.
“That’s about enough,” said the rich man currently on dish duty.
“Huh?” said Gideon.
“The bowl,” said Aspen, “you’ll wear it through.”
“Oh.”
Gideon set the dish aside, picked up another, and did his level best not to think about the lies men tried to make true— often at any cost. When the dishes were all placed in their dried and perfect places, Aspen pulled a chair over.
“Stay put,” he directed.
“I got a choice?” Gideon replied, lifting the hand now locked to the enormously heavy stove.
“Only if you can make good time dragging cast iron,” drawled Aspen, already headed for the sitting room.
Hushed voices drifted to Gideon’s ear, their meaning completely indecipherable. Occasionally someone would peer into the kitchen, and Gideon would stash whatever lock pick he was currently experimenting with. Thus far, nothing had been small enough to fit the handcuffs. At the sound of footsteps Gideon stashed a fork, now somewhat worse for a strategically bent tine.
“My father is a good man, I suggest you trust him,” Aspen explained, releasing Gideon from his increasingly permanent relationship with heavy furniture. “At the very least, do not try him; believe me, that is one bronc you do not want to fork.”
He led Gideon to the couch and placed himself on the hearth opposite. Amos waited in a wide, leather armchair, the likes of which Gideon had rarely encountered. The big redhead was nowhere to be seen.
“Why were you on the ridge?” Rivers senior asked.
Cuts right to it, don’t he?
“Followin’ rustlers,” said Gideon, on the basis there was no harm telling a man what he undoubtedly already knew.
“Alone?” Amos said mildly. “Against six men?”
Whatever reply Gideon made could be edged and turned back on him, so why answer at all? Better by far to take hold of the conversation right now.
“Look you here—” he began.
“Why didn’t you go to the law?” Amos insisted and, upon reading Gideon’s perplexed expression, decided it was sincere. “There are laws and men pledged to defend those laws. Why did you go after criminals, alone, and manifestly without the law?”
Law? He off his rocker?
How many vigilante parties had Rivers seen? How many men would bother about the niceties of a civilized trial when every man beside him was carried on a surge of communal idiocy, the blood screaming in their ears and the little voices in their heads jumping up and down, crazed beyond sense to have seized control, and convincing them ‘justice’ demanded their personal judgment and execution? Law was about who held the gun and who paid for the bullets.
That there’s ‘law’. Anyone says diff’rent’s a-foolin’ themselves an’ had best get over it, fast, afore a-learnin’ the lesson gets ‘em planted.
“This judge-a yourn—” Gideon said, reaching once more for the conversational reins.
“I asked a question,” said Amos, keeping competent hold.
“It don’t take no lawman,” Gideon spat contemptuously.
“Oh, why is that?”
Amos’s gaze was unnervingly direct and his bland voice suggested they discussed nothing more than last year’s crops. Experience had taught Gideon to play things close to the vest, but this man had information he needed– needed worse than the desert needs the rain.
“Sheriffs ain’t likely to lift their keesters off a chair,” he allowed, “let ‘lone leave the comfort-a their cozy town.”
“Where are you from?”
“Huh?” said Gideon, lost at this blind jump from a marked path.
“You obviously do not know Sheriff Gandy,” Amos reasoned, “therefore you’re not from around here.”
“What’s your stake?” Gideon stonewalled.
Amos leaned forward, rested his arms across his knees, and blatantly looked Gideon over. It gave him time to discipline his own frazzling temper. After all, it was not Gideon’s fault that he, Amos, was in no good mood. Besides, sometimes a moment of silence was more powerful than an hour of yelling. Give the young man credit, he didn’t flinch under the heavy scrutiny.
“Allow me to make your position clear,” Amos said quietly. “The residents of this region are good people however, at the moment, they are good people with a serious grievance. When the judge arrives he will be told about the prisoner in my custody. Make no mistake, he will be told that boy is guilty as sin. What would you have me say? ‘No, Your Honor, I don’t know what he was doing, where he’s from, or even his name, but believe me he’s innocent?’ You have to give me more than that.”
“What’s your stake?” Gideon insisted, discounting this explanation of pure benevolence.
“He wouldn’t listen to me either, Pa,” Aspen said.
“Every man has something he believes in,” Amos offered, with remarkably shored up patience. “Now, I know you aren’t a rustler and I’m willing to stand up for that. The question is: are you?”
Gideon squinted, searching for the deception.
“That’s it? There ain’t no pay off?”
“None,” said Amos.
“You’re here,” Gideon probed. “That mean ya catched them rustlers?”
“Some of them, yes.”
“You could describe ‘em?”
“I could,” Amos replied easily. “But I won’t even consider doing so until you give me a straight answer. What’s your part in all this?”
Confoundit! S’pose he ain’t got our man?
Then time’s a-wastin’ an’ we best get to huntin’.
An’ if’n he does?
Then judge or no, them rustlers is gonna hang, boyo. His neck or yours, it’ll tally out the same— all-a your plannin’ willn’t be worth buff’lo spit.
Blast!
So close, and one infernal posse later, so complicated. Why couldn't that dang sheriff have been one lousy cup of coffee later? What was the least Gideon could say? One look at father and son made it clear he had best get to saying something.
Hey! Ya got wits, boyo. Try usin’ ‘em.
Right. Right. ‘Course.
Let’s see if’n they can follow the lady, hmm?
The first truth in life was that, if you wanted to cling to life, you did not have to cling to the strict truth.
“One-a them rustlers goes by Jim Neilly,” Gideon began, metaphorically picking up the cards and giving them a good shuffle. “Up Nebraska Terr’tory, he done worked for a gent name-a Tarlston, a hard walkin’ sort. Some folks fought back, most were too afeared. Nathan Harris, he had ‘im a good spread— grass, water, an’ the like— an’ he weren’t the quitin’ kind. Tarlston pushed an’, help or no, Harris weren’t a-fixin’ to budge. Come the end. . . Harris lost.”
Gideon’s last words shuffled awkwardly. They were out, it was said, and there was no taking them back. No avoiding them either. It had been a massacre and, aside from Tarlston’s outfit, Gideon was the only person who had lived through it.
“Do you intend to take Nelson back for complicity?” asked Amos.
Gideon didn’t know from complicity, but he understood ‘back’ sure enough. Did Rivers think they were out east? This was the opposite end of the world entirely. Two moth-eaten tents and a creek justified the title of camp, and it didn’t take much more to be promoted to full-fledged township. To an easterner’s eye the entire region looked like a whole lot of ‘out there’ filled up with a double shipment of nothing. What the more forward thinking saw were possibilities, an endless flow of possibilities waiting to be realized. Some would succeed, some would not. Sadly,
life did not seem to be playing fair lately. Life, as far as Gideon had anything to say about it, was due a reckoning.
“‘Gainst Tarlston’s kind, there ain’t no law,” Gideon contradicted flatly. “Even were there no court up thataway, there ain’t a horse alive could get me out-a the country fast ‘nough if’n I tried it that a-way. It were a war, mister. Plain an’ simple. An’ it ain’t over.”
“Well, I won’t help you kill Neilly,” Amos said. “That will only lead to a noose– or a bullet— and I have a suspicion you’re better than that.”
He’s a-list’nin’. Now make the lady dance.
“Kill ‘im? Sure, I were a-fixin’ to,” Gideon admitted, with no apparent compunction. “Only I got to thinkin’ an’, thing is, I need the yellah-bellied skunk.”
“Why is that?”
“How do I know ya catched Neilly? Some shooked loose.”
Amos leaned back in his chair and crossed one long leg over a knee. Everything about him suggested a line was about to be drawn.
“No. Some are dead. I had a nice long look at the others.” Amos acquired a steely edge. “Now, I will not put my neck out one more inch for you until I have the whole story.”
“You’ve Neilly?” Gideon replied, unimpressed.
Amos’s eyebrows rose. Gideon figured the line Rivers had drawn was the same line where his own luck ran out. All the same, a promise had been made and, though it remained unfulfilled, he intended to see it finished. No matter what.
C’mon, boyo, keep this idjit a-guessin’.
Gideon shifted slightly and licked his lips in the manner of a nervous man. Direct lies tended to come with unintentional gaping holes, whereas Gideon’s lie was a truth deliberately crafted with holes. He swung to the next vine of reasonably constructed fabrication with the native comfort of the jungle-born and the uneasy awareness of a fellow with a firm grasp on the concept of gravity.
“It’s all perty new up Nebraska way,” he said, judging his arc. “Ain’t much-a nothin’ up there to stop a gent a-doin’ whateverall suits ‘im, legal nor otherwise. Ain’t no terr’tory nowhere as needs the likes-a Tarlston. I can’t pin Neilly down, but I can make ‘im talk— an’ rumor’s a powerful poison to a fellah’s reputation. Tarlston’ll be finished.”
“And you’d let Neilly get away with murder?” Amos asked, clearly not buying.
“Hired man for the boss?” Gideon gave a satisfied harrumph. “Ain’t no bad trade.”
“If Tarlston’s as ruthless as you say, why would he leave such an obvious loose end?” Amos wondered, like a man niggling over a broken trail.
“Far as he knows, Neilly done been dead a year.”
“How does that come about?”
Gideon looked away. He wished he could look away from that night, but the images were etched indelibly on the very fiber of his being. Every minute, every last—
Easy, boyo. Just keep a-shiftin’ the queen. Rivers ain’t never gonna find her.
“It were dark,” Gideon replied, getting a grip. “Bullets were a-flyin. Neilly got hit an’ his lot done left ‘im for dead. Loyal sons, eh? Way I fig’r, given the choice ‘twixt a-hangin’ or a-turnin’ on a no-good belly crawler like Tarlston, Neilly’ll flat out sing.”
Father and son mulled this over for a long minute. Gideon tried to read their faces. Had he played it right or were they about to crash his game?
“There’s still a small hole in your story,” said Aspen, pulling himself from the background. “Why you?”
If Gideon wasn’t careful, filling that hole would shoot a big ol’ hole right through his plans.
“Were me worked for Harris. That’s why I need Neilly,” he answered, carefully passing a mental hand over the cards once more, making them allemande left with half a truth. “If’n I speak ‘gainst Tarlston, it’d look like nothin’ but a hired hand out for revenge.”
Aspen regarded Gideon, eyebrows raised in perfect image of his father.
“I got me a right for revenge,” Gideon argued in his own defense. “But I done telled ya, I ain’t a-lookin’ to plant Neilly. An’ I ain’t a-lookin’ to kill Tarlston. He done did a passel-a harm to some mighty good folks. I want ‘im made small, real small, so ‘s he can’t never do it again.”
Living with that, for a man like Tarlston, would be better than a bullet; it would be shear, unmitigated misery.
Amos compared the hard spark of Gideon’s grudge against the likelihood of his story. Tarlston’s sort were not known for waking up one day, reflect upon their gains, and miraculously eschewing their dirty methods. Amos glanced at his eldest, who nodded.
“Well,” Amos declared, “we’ll talk with the sheriff and see what can be done.”
Gideon nearly leapt at the words. “He’s above snakes?”
“Someone who calls himself Neilly is alive, yes. However, I’m going to sound foolish telling Sheriff Gandy ‘A young man swears it’s true.’ I need a name.”
“Aw, Gandy don’t need to know nothin’.”
“The sheriff will know and I’ll think about you going.”
Gideon foresaw his cards scattering to the wind, dancing lady or no. How interfering could one man be?
“‘Course I’m a-goin’,” he insisted. “Neilly willn’t b’lieve you. Seein’ me’ll scare ‘im. It’ll make ‘im b’lieve.”
Amos held up a hand. “There are men in town who want your hide—”
Gideon sprang to his feet, his whole body a challenge twisted tight.
“Look you here, mister, you ain’t—”
“Enough!” The single word was pitched low, yet cracked like a whip. “A name, or I will leave you right here.”
The younger man squared up to the older, each equally resolute. In that moment, nothing mattered to Gideon but his target. Nothing mattered but personally getting his hands on Neilly. Barely tucked away, pure rage waited its turn, flickering like a flame behind the cracks in the walls of a powder magazine. And then, somehow, Gideon sidestepped the impending internal explosion.
“Seb Fletcher,” he said, through clenched teeth.
Being there to question Neilly was not a choice— Gideon did not have many choices left anymore. It simply had to happen. Exactly why was no concern of the law’s, and certainly no concern of Amos Rivers.