Or the risk of being tried for the crime of killing an unarmed man. Because after one day of their company, he was close to taking the carbine’s stock to the side of the younger American’s head simply to shut him up. Because apparently even the sulkiest of prisoners felt the need to speak after a while.
By the time evening came, he learned that he’d been right: the younger man was a scout, name of Anderson, and he had been hired to escort US Marshal Paul Tousey safely across the Territory and back again. Like every ex-Army scout Gabriel had ever met, Anderson was bitter, cranky, and not prone to taking orders from anyone graciously, much less a female. He grumbled about having to walk, he grumbled about being dragged off to “some jump-up,” and he particularly grumbled about being dragged off by, in his words, “two wimmin.” Gabriel’s laughter at that hadn’t helped his mood at all; he had clearly expected more sympathy.
LaFlesche solved the problem by shoving a rag into his mouth and affixing it with a cord so he couldn’t spit it out.
Tousey, on the other hand, seemed quietly resigned to the situation. He had offered nothing more than his name and occupation, but on the morning of the second day, Gabriel had handed him the badge he’d found. The marshal held it in his hand briefly, then pinned it to the inside of his lapel, his hands shaking only slightly.
“Thank you” was all he’d said, but there had been a wealth of meaning there. Gabriel didn’t hold with letting a thing define who he was, but he knew Isobel took comfort in her sigil, figured marshals would too, no matter what side of the river they were sworn to. Too, Tousey placed his feet with the careful consideration of a man who’d been surprised by snakes or gopher holes at least once, but without taking his attention off either the land around him or his companions. He slept that way as well, Gabriel had noted: quiet but alert. Without Jefferson’s intervention, the marshal might have found himself in the Territory anyway. Or not.
Their horses had fled when the magicians began their circle, Tousey admitted midway through the second day; they hadn’t thought to hobble the beasts. “I’d ridden that beast all the way from the Mississippi,” he said. “Territory-bred, they told me. Went the entire journey without spooking or startling. But the moment those two and their kind . . . did whatever it was they did, the fool beast lost what little mind it had.”
“Magicians are something else entire,” LaFlesche said, and Tousey had only shaken his head, as though he still was not entirely certain he believed anything they were telling him.
Isobel had merely snorted, walking with a hand on Uvnee’s neck as the mare plodded along with one of the magicians weighing her down, still less than pleased with the burden, from the way her ears kept twitching.
“We were warned . . .”
We, Gabriel noted. He didn’t think Tousey referred to the scout with him, which likely meant that other marshals had been sent into the Territory. Had they all been sent to search for magicians? If Jefferson were as canny as was claimed, he’d have more than one spoon to the pot.
“Warned of what? Clearly, not to not meddle.” Isobel had been ignoring the Americans as best she could in such proximity, but that seemed to push her too far. “What did they warn you of, then? Because from here it was nothing useful.”
But that was all Tousey was willing to share. LaFlesche gave Isobel a hard stare, as though to remind her whose prisoners they were, and Isobel snorted again, then walked more swiftly, striding ahead of their group.
“She’s young,” Gabriel said to LaFlesche, watching her go. “And still green as grass, for all that she’s learned since we set out.” And bitter, he thought. That was something new, and unwelcome. Finding the source of the buffalo’s death seemed to have deepened her anger, not lessened it, as though despite fulfilling her promise, something still spurred her on.
“She needs to learn faster” was all LaFlesche said.
Isobel could hear them talking behind her, although the words themselves were too low to be overheard. She knew it was petty, knew that she had snapped when she should have been calm, but neither Gabriel nor the marshal seemed to understand the pressure of warding like this, around two different objects, constantly moving.
And telling them, trying to explain, would make it sound as though she were weak or complaining—and she wouldn’t do that, not in front of the marshal, and of a certainty not in front of outsiders.
She did regret irritating the marshal, for purely selfish reasons. LaFlesche had been on the Road long enough that her stories must be fascinating. Isobel slid a hand under her hat and scratched at her scalp, wondering if the older woman knew a source of the dry washing powder Devorah had given her, if that was a thing women on the road shared, and if she’d annoyed the woman into keeping that secret from her.