“My place is up in the San Isabel hills,” he said. “It’s small. Needs work. But it’s mine, and no man there will put you on a block. If you come with me, you come with your say intact. You hear me? I’m offering shelter, not chains.”
Naomi lifted her face first, eyes swollen from tears. Clara looked at Gideon’s scar, his worn cuffs, the careful distance he kept. She looked at the gold on the planks and at the bottle in her father’s hand. The choice was no choice at all, and yet Gideon had given it back to them as if it mattered.
That was the first gift.
“We’ll come,” Clara said, her voice hoarse but steady.
Rufus lunged for the gold, but Gideon caught his wrist hard enough to stop him cold. “You sign first.”
Within minutes the paper was drawn up. Rufus scratched his name with a shaking hand. Gideon made the sheriff witness it, which the man did reluctantly, sweat gleasing his brow though the air was cool. Clara noticed that Gideon watched every movement as if he trusted no one there farther than he could throw them. She found that oddly comforting.
When it was done, he stepped back and said, “Take your time gathering what’s yours.”
“What’s ours,” Clara said bitterly before she could stop herself, “could fit in one sack.”
Gideon’s eyes met hers. “Then we start with one sack.”
They left Blackstone before sundown in a sturdy wagon pulled by a gray mule with a patient face. Clara sat with Naomi in the back beneath a patched canvas cover, their few belongings tucked around them: a sewing kit, two blankets, a Bible with their mother’s name in it, and a tin box of dried beans. The town receded behind them in a cloud of dust and mean little buildings. No one called after them.
