“Warm or cold?”
His hands paused a moment. “Cold.” He pulled back and poked one finger at her jacket, helping her ease it off her shoulders. The skin under her blouse prickled without its warmth, even as his hands braced against her ribs, and he had her inhale and exhale. “And then you . . . I’m not sure, but you seemed to be arguing with something. And then your hoofed friend over there showed up and knocked you flat on your back.”
Isobel turned her head, wincing as her muscles protested, to where she was reasonably sure the elk waited, draped in the shadows.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It was our quiet friend who dragged you out of the way,” Gabriel said, misunderstanding her words. “I think whatever you were doing is what changed his opinion of us.”
She risked turning her head again to look at Broken Tongue. He was sitting by the fire again, legs crossed in front of him, the firelight casting him half in and half out of shadows. “Merci,” she called, not expecting him to acknowledge her.
He didn’t.
“Do you feel up to eating something?” Gabriel asked, moving away slightly. “We saved you some of the fish.” He grimaced. “What didn’t burn, anyway. But there’s some left, and bread, if you can stomach it. Then I want you to move around a little before you sleep.”
She thought about arguing, then thought about the elk keeping guard in the shadows, the way it had, she was certain, winked at her, and she nodded, allowing Gabriel to wrap a blanket around her shoulders and fetch a plate. Nothing else would happen tonight, she thought. Not while the guardian stood watch.
She looked up and saw the old man observing her. His face fell in shadows, but there was something that made her tense again, then glance to where she thought the elk stood. If she’d learned anything from traveling with Farron Easterly, it was that someone could be an ally and not be trustworthy. And “friends not yet made” did not promise friendship would occur.
She lifted her chin and stared back at the old man, black gaze steady against brown, until Gabriel came back with her dinner and they both looked away.
There was no birdsong. Gabriel noted that before he was fully awake: more proof that something was wrong, that there was danger lurking, even if he couldn’t see it.
Caution prickling his skin, he slipped out from under his blanket, leaving the other two sleeping by the remains of the fire, and went down to the creek to wash his face. There was no sound to alert him, but when he looked up, the elk stood on the other bank, its antlers silhouetted by the pale dawn light rising behind them. He paused, half-bent to the creek, and watched the animal as it moved, placidly chewing at the grass, occasionally lifting its head to scent the air and then returning to the grass again.
The fact that it lingered was curious; that it had appeared not once but twice was both reassuring and worrisome. He had named it wapiti, but it had not spoken, had not offered unasked-for advice, and spirit-animals excelled at unwanted advice. And yet it was clearly more than an ordinary creature, no matter how it behaved now: it had acted with intelligence when it had let them pass, it had acted with intent the day before when it knocked Isobel away from whatever had been threatening her.
The thought drove him to pick up a stone and flip it, violently, down the creek, making two skips before sinking into the current. After knocking Isobel away, the wapiti had wheeled to face whatever had attacked her, placing itself as a barrier while grandfather darted forward to pull her to safety. An elk and an old man had been of more use than he’d managed, aware something was happening but blind to whatever it was. Useless.
And why is that, a voice asked him. Why was grandfather able to see, and you were blind? Hnnn?
The voice?—mocking, but not unkind?—was familiar. Old Woman had been the one to take a bedraggled, half-mad man out of the mud and teach him to breathe the Territory’s air again. Not that he’d wanted to at the time.
You are what you are and this is the place where you are that, the Hochunk woman had told him, sucking thoughtfully on the pipe she carried with her at all times. It smelled like aged skunk to him, but he was never fool enough to say so. The harder you ran from it, the harder it chased you. But it cannot catch you without you willing it so.
Gabriel’s back teeth ground against each other. He did not will it. He would not. He would not be owned.
The elk raised its head and looked at him, as though it had heard his thoughts. “Don’t you lecture me either, elder cousin,” he told it, and leant down to splash water on his face. When he looked up again, skin tingling from the cold, the elk was still staring at him.