“Not . . . as such, surprisingly.”
“Well, ain’t you sweet.” With a smirk, Chess sat up, right into a particularly luxuriant stretch — stark naked, and not seeming to give much of a damn who might be watching. Rook saw scars on him, both old and fresh, which hadn’t been quite so obvious in the hours before: a pink curlicue tracing one rib, the pale flowery knot of a plugged bullet hole punctuating one shoulder blade.
Chess turned back to catch Rook gaping at the fierce white slash that hooked from right-hand sideburn to just under his jaw — suddenly visible, even beneath the red — and said, airily: “Yeah, that’s where my Ma stuck me with her yen hock, same night I told her I was signin’ up. Stung like a bitch, the whole time I was growin’ out my beard to cover it.”
“My God!”
Chess shrugged. “Suited me fine; I’m prettier shaved, which gave her the grand idea she might rig me up as some she-he, sell me that-a-way to fools who crave somethin’ extra up under the skirts. But I ain’t fit to be no girl, much less a poor jest of one — while I may not be the sorta man most think they are, I’m a man, just the same. Made to ride and fight, take what I want or swing tryin’, not die on my back or live on my knees. Knew that the minute I first touched a gun.”
“Colonel Colt, et cetera.”
“Exactly so.” He cast Rook a sidelong glance. “Think you’d like me better if I was a gal, Ash Rook?”
The Rev looked him up and down, and answered, without a hint of equivocation, “I don’t really see how I could, Chess Pargeter. Seein’ how you already move me absolute best of any damn thing I’ve come across, thus far.”
He got to his own feet then, towering over Chess, and smiled at the way his shadow seemed to knit them both together, long before he gathered him fiercely back in. They collided, mouths open, tongues working sweetly.
When he pulled away, at last, he was equally pleased to see how Chess’s pale eyes seemed all but dazed with arousal. And then something entirely brand new came into his look, an angry sort of hope.
“I . . . wasn’t raised to — care — for no one,” Chess told him. “But if I did grow fond of any man, outside the usual transactions, well . . . you might be that one, Rev.”
Rook nodded, carefully.
“I think I’d like that,” he replied.
“You’re damn right, you would,” Chess agreed. And gripped Rook by both biceps at once, his fingers leaving bruises, kissing him so hard spit mingled with blood.
They raised the subject of outlawry that night, ’round the campfire, and watched it pass unanimously. “Always did think I’d probably end up robbin’ folks, once the War was done,” was old Hosteen’s only comment.
“It’s dangerous work, is what I hear,” Rook pointed out.
“Sure,” Chess said, “same as anything else. But we’ll be right enough, I expect.”
“How’s that?”
That crooked, dazzling smile. “’Cause we got you.”
True, Rook thought, as far as that went. The only problem being he didn’t actually know, himself, just how far that was . . . not with any true degree of accuracy. Particularly not under pressure.
Magic had its price, was what Rook had always heard, and that price was mighty hard. On the one hand, whatever he preached did come true, indisputably — and since everything he preached came straight from the Book itself, the direct and truthful word of God, he believed he might be forgiven for having assumed it would be good work he did with it overall, rather than the reverse. Yet everything he preached went bad, in the end — swiftly, and often inventively.
In the Painted Desert, for example — waiting for information on which trains might be best worth robbing, with what food they’d brought along running out fast — he turned to the tale of Elijah, who was fed by ravens. Soon, a plague of black-feathered birds huge as his namesake descended, dashing themselves to death against the canyon walls. The gang, starved enough to overcome their disgust at this haphazard delivery system, handily ate them roasted, only vaguely plucked and splinter-crunchy with hollow broken bones.
So Rook turned to Moses and his manna instead, bringing unleavened bread falling from the air (straight into dirt, soft and sticky, not exactly nourishing). It was blander, but kept better.
“Maybe you should seek for other hexes,” Chess suggested. “Chat them up, get them to tell you what they do, or don’t, in similar situations. Couldn’t hurt.”
“Couldn’t it?”
(Minds always touching his, feeling him out, harrying him: Go here, do this, do that. Stay clear. Most he couldn’t put a name to, ’sides from a Chink gal called Songbird to the west whose thoughts coiled and spat in a venomous centipede nest. Rook hoped to never come near enough for her to see what he looked like, let alone lay hands on him directly.)
“Hell, I don’t know — I ain’t no hex. But I got my best advice from other gunslingers, same’s I got my worst. Take it all, pick through it at your leisure . . . and practise.”
That morning, before dawn, Rook woke first and left Chess wrapped in both their coats, careful not to wake him. Then sat down in the dust bare-assed, stretched out a hand, frowned at the largish, greyish rock set opposite, and ordered it — “Come here, to me. C’mon, now.”
Nothing happened.
“Here, I conjure thee. I . . . command.”