Cloud's Rider

Chapter 13

There was a presence in the passage, early in the morning, and Cloud knew it—Cloud was aware of and disturbed about it, following along the ridge as the walked under the wall, and picking up all the way.

Danny wanted and decided it was time to get up, urgently so. He flung clothes on, hearing a stir in the barracks from and and lastly and not least from and from who instantly rolled out of bed and tumbled onto the floor.

Danny was no slower into his clothes than Ridley and Callie, and into the hall at the same time.

Ridley knew the and wanted too. Callie was and Danny sent out a strong to Cloud, who was

A knock came at the passage door about then, and Ridley opened it without hesitation, letting in three men, one with a shotgun, all with a weathered, outsider look about them, leather breeches, leather coats with the fur turned in—no fringes such as a rider wore, but never having seen high-country hunters as a group, Danny still had an idea what they were, and by that, guessed what they wanted—and also that they weren’t used to being harassed by a rider’s horse.

“Sorry,” Danny felt obliged to say, even before introductions, as the men wiped their feet on the mat and Ridley and Callie offered tea. He had an and had to duck outside, coatless, onto the porch, about the time young Jennie was arriving in the barracks’ main room behind him.

Cloud was out there in the dim first light of dawn, perplexed about the and not sure what he should do about it, but Danny came down off the porch under a still black-as-pitch morning sky, hugged Cloud about the neck and reassured him with pats and his presence and showing him the men in his mind, perfectly ordinary men,

Cloud was only mildly reassured, but he’d at least settled on the image of and had the notion of

But on the steps dissuaded that with a strong argument, leaving a mildly behind, with Slip and Shimmer, who didn’t find anything unusual in the

Danny went back into the barracks, shivering and very glad to go to the fireside and meet the three men. Harris was the senior of them, with gray in an impressive beard. And there was Golden, younger but not much, and Brunnart, who might be related to Golden, but Danny wasn’t sure. Tea water was on to heat, and the talk was, excluding the matter of anxious horses, about the horse in the neighborhood and the game moving off.

They were the hunters Ridley had been going to take outside this morning—hunters responsible for seeing the village provisioned with meat that didn’t come up the mountain dried, canned, and expensive—their supplement to low-country beef and pork, as well as hides and furs other businesses depended on.

And the hunters heard from Ridley and Callie what Danny also felt as the state of the mountain this morning, that there wasn’t anything stirring out there.

“Spooky quiet,” Jennie put it, sitting on the stones and with her hair uncombed and her feet still bare and her shirttail out.

“Quiet,” her mother said, meaning a too-talkative child, not the ambient.

“This commotion last night,” Harris said. “This business down by the gate—didn’t see anything of the horse?”

Harris was questioning him, and Ridley didn’t object. “No, sir,” Danny said. “It was pretty well out of the area before I got out there.”

“The horse came up from Tarmin,” Ridley said, and went on to say what Ridley hadn’t said to the marshal: “Male, lost his rider, followed Fisher here up the mountain.”

It wasn’t his place to talk to outsiders to the camp when the camp-boss was there to talk for him. That was the rule down in Shamesey, and it had never made so much sense—but it left him nothing to do but sit and feel guilty as hell that his—maybe manageable—problem down at first-stage had now become these men’s problem, and the village’s problem.

“Got to be dealt with,” Harris concluded. Danny figured Harris must be senior among the hunters, and probably stating the position for a lot of unhappy people including the grocer and the ordinary village folk. “We’re offering help.”

“It’s a dangerous kind of business,” Ridley said, and in the passage of a horse near the walls—probably Slip—there leaked a little bit of and worry into the ambient. “Jennie-cub, you have to understand, a bad horse is worse than a bear or anything. It’s dangerous. Nobody wants to shoot it. But sometimes that’s our business to do.”

“I don’t want you to,” Jennie said.

“You hush,” Callie said, “you sit still, and you learn. Questions later.”

“Yes, ’m.” Jennie said faintly, and stared at her hands.

“Fisher,” Ridley said, “you and I better go out today.”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said. “No question.” They’d made their try at luring it in. They couldn’t let it start stalking the village. He didn’t like to think about shooting it. But he could think of worse things, including having that horse waylay a rider or a hunter.

“We’re offering backup,” Harris said. “Three of us.”

“I think,” Ridley said slowly, “that none of us have ever had to hunt a horse, and a man on foot is just too vulnerable. I’m not turning you down. I’m saying let us see whether there’s any chance at all of us getting it without taking that risk.”

“You don’t—” Harris cleared his throat. “I don’t want to talk in front of the young miss, but—is there any chance—it’s here for somebody inside?”

“Not for our daughter,” Callie said in no uncertain terms.

“It’s possible,” Ridley said.

Danny sat burning with what he ought to say, and with what he knew, and things he didn’t want to say. But the water was hot and tea-making and hospitality after a cold and spooky walk for these men was at the top of the agenda.

He thought—I have to say something.

But what in hell could his information do? If the horse was trying to link up with Brionne—it was in serious trouble. A healthy horse wouldn’t do it. He was sure of that. And that chance was what made him sure they couldn’t take half measures in getting rid of it. Sometimes—sometimes you had to protect the non-riders who were relying on you, and sometimes you had to protect yourself and your horse, or the camp you were in. And if it meant doing something he’d ordinarily not choose—well, he saw less and less choice about it.

Sleep didn’t cure the confusion or the anger. Carlo waked in the morning and lay in the blankets thinking that maybe, it being a new day, he would feel better and not lose his temper and maybe Randy would be his cheerful self.

But the more he tested his feelings the more he raked over thoughts he didn’t want to lie in bed with, and didn’t want to be idle with.

Fire on the glass. The rogue had sent that while it prowled Tarmin streets, while it drew people out their doors and the vermin had swarmed in.

People hadn’t died quick deaths. Maybe there were some large predators like goblin-cats or lorrie-lies with jaws that could make a quick end of someone, but mostly—mostly the end wasn’t quick.

Their mother had died that way.

Their father—

Explosion in his hands. A shock that shook the world.

Papa stopping in midstep and mama—mama’s mouth open, and maybe a sound coming out—he didn’t know.

Faces below the village hall porch. People with lamps and electric torches. Angry faces. Mouths open there, too, but he didn’t hear. He just kept hearing that sound. That explosion. Feeling that shock in his hand. Brionne was lost and their father was blaming them for every fault, every failure of ambition or expectations—

It wasn’t his fault Brionne had gone outside the walls. Their father had believed they were murderers—that out of jealousy they’d shoved her outside and locked the gates.

Give me back my girl! That was what he’d been yelling. You did it, you were the one!

And he’d fired. He’d fired when their father headed at him with the intent to take the gun away from him, and after that to beat him and Randy for God knew what. He never knew why their father hated them, and why Brionne was perfect. All their lives, he never knew: that was the hell of it—until this time, their father—

For the first time in his whole scared life, he’d held the threat, he’d told his father to stop. But his father wouldn’t—constitutionally couldn’t—hadn’t.

He didn’t remember firing.

There’d been the explosion.

The faces below the porch, all looking at him. Tara Chang speaking up for him. His mother damning him for a liar and a murderer—I want my Brionne, his mother had yelled.

And the jail. Himself and Randy—the bars.

All of Tarmin had heard the rogue in their streets, had opened their doors and gone out to help their neighbors.

But the marshal’s wife had taken up a shotgun and spattered herself all over the office so as not to open that door. He and Randy had sat blank with horror while the rogue and its rider had gone up and down the street, calling aloud and in the ambient—all Brionne’s anger, looking for mama, looking for papa, looking for them.

They’d sat locked in—listening—and Brionne had found them. Had screamed at them to open the door—but they couldn’t.

And she couldn’t. She’d tried. She’d tried and kicked and battered at the door in a tantrum. She’d called them names. And things had come through the ambient, things swarming over each other, snapping jaws, biting and feeding and tearing each other in their frenzy, and people screaming and people dying and screaming and screaming—

And when Brionne gave up and went away, the swarm had come against that door and gnawed and scratched at the wood for hours after the light went out.

They’d sat in the dark. He and Randy. For hours. Knowing that while their cell had bars to keep out the big predators it wouldn’t stop the little ones. The vermin had been working at that door just now and again, but they hadn’t been out of food yet and the jail hadn’t been the only source—yet.

Then Danny had come.

In the dark, after all those hours, they’d heard Danny calling for survivors. He’d led them out without a question of where he’d found them and guided them down a darkened street littered with the scraps of flesh that had been their mother, their neighbors, every living creature in Tarmin.

He didn’t want to stay still with thoughts like that. He flung the blankets off, got up and got himself ready for the day before he went over to Randy, who was sleeping like a lump, and nudged him with his foot.

“Time to get up,” he said, and Randy just snarled and hauled the covers over his head.

He’d had himself calm and forgiving until Randy did that. He knew the kid was sulking. He knew the way Randy would react if he wasn’t sulking, and it was without question a sulk.

“Come on,” he said.

“Leave me alone.”

“I said get up.”

“Go to hell.”

He was mad. Mad enough to think of pulling Randy out of those blankets and bouncing him off the wall.

But it was those same thoughts running through his mind this morning. He didn’t know what he’d dreamed about. It was those same feelings, those same memories of rage—Brionne’s, his—his father’s and his mother’s—it was all there again. He didn’t want to be angry, he didn’t want to raise his voice to the kid. He never wanted to have another blank spot in his life like the one that night when the anger had come over him and come over their father and he knew his father couldn’t back down, and neither could he. Don’t, he thought he’d said. Don’t grab it. Just before the gun had gone off and he’d waked up, just standing there with the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils and the shock quivering in his hands, in his arms, in his gut—

Came a door slam, and a great deal of clumping about in the passageway—not there, but here, in Mackey’s forge, which probably meant early customers, and he had to get control of himself. He didn’t like the Mackeys. They could provoke him and he didn’t want to be provoked to lose his temper—it was too close to the surface right now. He knew what he could do. He knew what he was capable of and they didn’t, and today he just wasn’t doing damn well at holding himself together.

But the visitor wasn’t somebody coming to the shop. It seemed to be more than one person applying themselves at the Mackeys’ door.

So deciding the business didn’t concern them and was some private visit to the house, he went to the forge to fire up and incidentally make as much racket near Randy as possible, to get him up in advance of the Mackeys coming in without having to argue with him.

But too late. He’d just taken the first push on the bellows when Mary Hardesty came through the door from the passageway and the house to say there were visitors and they should come along, and, she added coyly, that there was breakfast and hot tea ready.

“Thank you, ma’am.” His stomach was upset. He didn’t want to eat breakfast with the Mackeys, but it was sure something was up, and it didn’t take many guesses to know it was something to do with money or their rights or something that interested the Mackeys. She shut the door, and he went and nudged Randy solidly but restrainedly with his foot.

“Breakfast with the house, little brother, and something’s up. Put on a good face and behave yourself or stay out here if you want to sleep and I’ll bring you some biscuits when I come back. This is real damn serious.”

There was a moment’s quiet from the lump of blankets. Then a slight stir. Finally a tousled head and an arm appeared and Randy crawled out muttering damnation on the whole world.

But bet on it first that Randy had good sense where it came to dealing outside the family, and second, that Randy’s curiosity would kill him if he wasn’t there to know what was going on.

“Wash first.” Carlo went over to the washbasin that he’d set on the hearth to warm last night. He didn’t shave much yet. He rubbed his upper lip and decided the job he’d done yesterday was good enough for any visitors the Mackeys had. And he waited for his brother to wash. He could guess it was the authorities that had shown up.

Maybe the lawyers.

Randy toweled his face off and was still in the sleepy sulks as the two of them went out the short exchange of passages that led from the smithy to the main passages and to the house back door. Carlo knocked and opened it himself, and he and Randy were already inside by the time the wife showed up to escort them down the soot-matted rug to the sitting room.

There were two men and a woman there besides Van Mackey, one he recognized as the preacher who’d met them at first in the riders barracks, and the woman in sober clothing he took maybe for a church deacon. He was going to be vastly disappointed if this turned out to be a church visit: he’d had his attack of religion while he was afraid of dying. He wasn’t, now, he hated being conspicuously prayed and preached over, and there were aspects of his situation he didn’t care to meditate or confess.

But the third man was the marshal, Eli Peterson, and maybe that made this official, unless the marshal was a deacon or something in the church.

“This is Connie Simms,” the marshal said, after he’d shaken his hand, and the woman he’d taken for a deacon stuck out her hand. “She’s a lawyer.”

Oh, God, he thought, having dismissed that idea and now having to get his wits a second time oriented in that direction, as he smiled a wooden smile and said how glad he was to meet Connie Simms.

“Sit down, sit down, won’t you?” Mary Hardesty said, which he felt as a rescue in that instant, and Van Mackey pulled out chairs for the group at the table. Rick sulked in the doorway, on the periphery, and finally slouched his way to a seat between the marshal and his father and across from the preacher.

There was grace said: “Oh, Lord,” it went, “bless this house, bless this food, bless these strayed children of Yours which have come through Your storm to the bright sunny clouds of Your blessing.” And so on. It was long. It was a drain on the emotions of someone who’d hiked through that storm—or it pitched over the edge into maudlin. Carlo, having swung from one pole to the other, hoped Randy kept his head down and didn’t smirk or fidget, and was glad when after three close passes the preacher reached amen. The lawyer chimed in an amen, too, and so, of course, did Van Mackey and Mary the tightfisted.

But they’d not stinted on the meal. There was ham and potatoes, there was bread and jelly and ham-drippings and cooked cereal and hot tea. Randy ate so much he was likely to be sick. Carlo kept nodding dutifully at the platitudes and observations of the preacher, and putting away the high protein stuff that was hard come by.

“The Lord be blessed,” the preacher said at one point, “your sister is making slow improvement.”

Damn. He should have asked. That didn’t make a very good impression of him or Randy.

“I guess,” he said quietly, feeling guilty as he said it, “I guess I was afraid to ask. I didn’t hold out much hope.”

“She’s still feeble, but she’s taking food and water.”

Carlo tried to find something reasonable to say and couldn’t, except, “I’ll go see her, if it’s all right with the doctor.”

“I know it’d be a healing on that afflicted child. Bless you, young man, for carrying her up here.”

The man couldn’t talk without blessing this or that. He was worse than Denton Wales down in Tarmin.

But preacher Wales had been something’s supper, and he shouldn’t think ill of the dead, even if he had one more preacher sitting at table and snuggling up close to two more substantial citizens who mouthed amen and cheated at any chance they got. He just said, “I will, then,” and had another helping of bread and ham-drippings gravy.

Rick meanwhile had put away enough for a road crew and two of their oxen.

Then lawyer Simms said, “We’ve come here, actually, in the interests of your legal rights.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“You’re the sons and daughter of Andy Goss and of Mindy Wallace, his wife, who were the smiths in Tarmin, owning the premises and the house.”

“Yes, ma’am.” It was going exactly where Danny had said, and from having lost everything they owned, they suddenly had a lawyer saying,

“If there are no other surviving heirs, you’re the sole heirs of that property and inheritance, and of your mother’s property and inheritance. For the court records—easier if you might have identification on you—”

“We didn’t come away with any.”

“Too much to ask, I’m sure. Is there anyone besides rider Fisher who can identify you?”

“Tara Chang knows me. She’s a Tarmin rider—but she can make an identification, can’t she, legally? She knows me. She’s down at a shelter with a border rider.”

That came as a shock to certain faces: Van Mackey and his wife. They might have planned a fast one, Carlo thought. But the lawyer only nodded.

“The High Loop district has no difficulty with her profession. Is rider Chang coming up here?”

“I understand she is—come spring.”

“Would she go back to Tarmin?” the marshal asked—meaning as a guide, as a village rider, maybe—he wasn’t sure, but the marshal had pounced on that with some speed.

“I don’t know. I think she’d go there. I don’t know if she’d stay.” Guil Stuart was a borderer, and there was no pinning him down to a village, he was well sure of that. But he wasn’t here to answer for Stuart.

“The Lord bless her,” the preacher said fervently. “Blessed are the faithful.”

There was a lot more talk, the same kind as they’d met in the tavern, asking what buildings were where, and the sort of knowledge of the layout of Tarmin and the extent of properties he didn’t think Danny could have possibly told them. The questions were in such detail they taxed his memory and his understanding of the village he’d been born to—and called up too much he’d dreamed about.

There was question about who’d lived where, and how many people there’d been in Tarmin—Simms was actually taking notes—and he didn’t know what they wanted with the numbers. He was sure the real question was how many houses there were to take over.

But reverend Quarles said then that he’d like to hold a memorial service for the dead of Tarmin.

“Yes, sir,” Carlo said. It was the only thing anyone had said yet that had brought a lump to his throat. The notion made it hard for him to think for a moment, but nobody jumped on the chance it offered them. Rick just sneered and didn’t say anything.

Then Van said, well, they’d talk about plans for the future. “Maybe we can help these lads,” Van said.

Rick kept sneering, maybe hoping looks could kill, and shoved half another biscuit in his mouth.

“They’re good boys,” Mackey said. “Real skilled. We’d give ’em a stake. Or talk a deal. Wouldn’t we?”

“Sure would,” Mary said.

There it came. And Van and Mary started saying how they’d offer money and want a share for staking them to food and supplies and transport.

“I don’t know,” Carlo said to that proposal. “We’d have to think about it. There’s other possibilities.”

“What?” Van asked, startled into bluntness and clearly not happy.

“I don’t actually know,” he admitted. He wasn’t going to offer them a trade of facilities. And he didn’t need their finance. He could get down there. Danny would take him for free. He owned the equipment down there. And the premises. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Don’t think too long.”

“I’m just, you know, getting over this.”

“Of course,” reverend Quarles said. “Of course. If you need any counseling, either of you, you come to me, hear? Any hour of the night. It doesn’t matter.”

“You should come to me,” Van Mackey said. “Got to lay plans. Don’t be listening to anybody else.”

“The boy’s thinking,” Mary said, and swatted Van on the arm.

Van didn’t say anything. The breakfast was over and the visitors got up to go in a general shoving back of chairs from the table.

Only the marshal and the lawyer had a paper they wanted him to sign.

“No,” he said.

“It’s only acknowledgment that we’ve advised you of the situation,” the marshal said.

“I know it’s on the up and up, but I don’t read much, sir, and I’d like to think on it some and maybe get some advice from several people before I sign anything.”

Randy gave him a look. He ignored it. And the marshal and the lawyer both said he was smart to be cautious, and they’d make a copy he could take to anybody he liked to be sure what it said.

“I do appreciate it,” he said, thinking that he’d take it to Danny, who not only read, but read better than anyone he’d ever heard.

And after that he and Randy and the three visitors thanked and apologized and chatted their way out into the hall and into their coats, in the visitors’ case, and out into the passages.

He was for going to the forge and getting to work, but Van and his wife were in the hall and in his path.

“That’s a real serious offer, staking you kids,” Van said. “You’re a big, healthy guy. You can do it. But it’s a lot of hard work down there. What you got to have is a stake and some help, and all hell’s going to break loose when these other villages get onto what’s happened. They’ll try to do you out of what’s yours. God, some of these miners—they’ll cut your throat for a tin cup, let alone real money. You take it from me, Carlo, it’s a lot of real rough guys going to be going down there. You need some muscle. Maybe cash to pay some guns of your own.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Carlo said quietly. “But I guess that’s all in the future and I’d better get to work, or I can’t afford my place here.”

“A good worker like you,” Van Mackey said, “we don’t have to worry about. I tell you, I’d have no trouble backing you and your brother.”

“And our sister,” Randy piped up, having said nothing troublesome all morning. It was to make Van Mackey give and give, every step he could, and Carlo knew it.

“And your sister,” Van Mackey added.

“I’ve got to go visit her,” Carlo said—wanting just to get it over with. Wanting—just to know how she was or wasn’t doing, and not to go back there soon. The whole world seemed in flux. What was past kept coming up in his face. And he wanted to convince himself that Brionne wasn’t the bad dream she’d become to him last night.

“Anytime you think is good. Take extra time.”

“Thanks. —We’d better get to work.” He wanted to get Randy out of the house before Randy said something just too far, and he wanted time, himself, to think what to do. He did his serious thinking here in Evergreen as he’d done at home, in the forge with the bellows hissing and the fire and the wind roaring and the hammer setting up its kind of rhythm. That was his privacy, his sanity, nobody being able to get through the racket except by shouting, and work always being an escape and an excuse from somebody trying to push him.

So he worked his way out the Mackeys back door, smiling until his teeth ached.

“You,” he said to Randy, “fire up.” And he went to get his apron and his gloves.

But as he came back to the forge and was pulling on his gloves, shouting and thumping broke out inside the house.

Randy stopped work and stared in that direction. There seemed to be one hell of a fight going on inside, Van shouting and his son Rick shouting, and then wife Mary shouting.

“Remember what I said about stupid people being dangerous enemies?” he remarked to Randy while the shouting ascended to a crash of something breakable. “You don’t know what they’ll do. It won’t be smart, but it’ll be something he thinks will hurt us.”

“The old man?”

“Rick.”

“Because he’s jealous?”

“You could say so.”

“Well, his papa isn’t too smart, either.”

“He thinks he is. —And don’t talk here! I told you.”

“You’re doing it.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t.”

“They can’t hear us. They’re all shouting.”

“It’s a bad habit. Mistakes come from bad habits.”

“Are you really going to see Brionne?”

“I think I better.” But he couldn’t face it straight from that going on inside the house. It wasn’t a day for family visits. “Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow.”

Randy’s face assumed a sulk. “I don’t want to.”

“You go this time and you keep your mouth shut. Just when we go, walk in, look sorry, say how nice she looks. Say something decent and we’ll leave. We won’t stay ten minutes. I won’t make you go again.”

“I don’t want to go this time!”

“It’ll look bad! Just shut up and be polite. Hear me? Or I’ll bash your head. We’ll go Sunday. After church.”

“Church!”

“We have to look decent!” It wasn’t clothes he meant. He was ashamed of what he’d blurted out. “We’ll go Sunday, when we’re cleaned up already. Be done with it.”

Breakfast wasn’t sitting well. It was probably the ham-dripping gravy.

Probably it wasn’t sitting well on Rick Mackey’s stomach, either. He heard the house door slam. He heard the door to the main passage slam. He didn’t need to ask Rick what he thought of the business, when Rick’s parents were suddenly showering good will on two strangers who were a real threat. Rick had never had competition in his life, and now Rick had a couple of strangers move in who were probably better smiths than he was—if they’d ever seen Rick Mackey do any work—who were more polite than he was, brighter than he was, and worst of all, rich enough to buy what Rick Mackey had sort of hoped to slide into ass-backwards and without lifting a hand.

Bad news for Rick. His papa didn’t need him anymore.

Bad news for two strangers that turned their backs on Rick Mackey, Carlo said to himself. Randy could gloat over Rick’s discomfort. He couldn’t. Randy to this day didn’t understand about stupidity and danger.

He did. Much too well.

The hunters stayed for breakfast, no second thoughts there—Ridley and Callie had served up a healthy portion of biscuits and a small portion of ham, which was, in the light of what he understood about the economy of the villages, a generous act, and an increasingly expensive gesture. The village could reliably freeze meat for the winter. It just took what the barracks had: a strong unheated shed, in the village’s case vermin-proof, in the case of the barracks— horse-proof. But if there was nothing to freeze—that was that.

And if there wasn’t game in reach of the village, Ridley was going to have to take the hunters out on a much farther hike than they were accustomed to.

There was talk, during breakfast, that the horse’s presence and the game having migrated elsewhere could be related in another way, that the horse might have gotten confused as the game moved and swarmed. Swarm was a bad and a dangerous word—one that couldn’t give comfort to men whose business was going where they couldn’t retreat as fast as riders could and without the kind of protection riders could get during a retreat by staying physically against their horses.

A real bad situation, Danny said to himself; and when after breakfast the men agreed that they should leave the hunt for the horse to riders, and left, Danny didn’t even question that he and Ridley were going out today.

Ridley went back into his and Callie’s room, advising him without any discussion of the matter to put on his cold weather gear. Nothing Callie had heard this morning had made her happier, Jennie was very much in a down mood and angry, for reasons young Jennie probably couldn’t even figure out—

But, Danny thought, if Jennie had asked him whether he was angry, he would have had to say that he was—both angry and sad. But nasty business that it was, it was his business, it had come up the mountain with him, and he had finally to see to it as he should have done back down at first-stage.

So he went to his room and put on everything he owned, everything he’d worn up the Climb, and came out lacking only the sweaters he’d kept hanging on a peg in the main room as something he needed when he went out to the den.

He put those on, catching the ambient from horses who’d perceived and who’d hung about the cabin, aware of Jennie was still and Callie was holding her feelings to a very low level, cleaning up after breakfast.

He had a foolhardy streak. But not enough to go over there right now, when a woman was probably thinking that if she didn’t like him sleeping under the same roof she sure didn’t fancy staying here and sending her partner out with him.

He very quietly put on his outdoor gear.

“You shouldn’t shoot it,” Jennie said.

“You mind your business,” Callie said sternly, and for just a moment that veil lifted on a worried, angry woman.

“I won’t be a fool,” Danny ventured very softly, “remembering he’s got a kid to come back to.”

He didn’t wait for Callie’s answer. He, took up the rifle and ducked out the door and out to the porch and down, to give Cloud and the rest of the horses a light before-dawn breakfast. Cloud understood which Cloud was greatly in favor of— but was a lot chancier feeling, involving Shimmer and foals and his rider’s worry.

He’d ducked this, Danny thought, just too long. But he hadn’t villager kids in his care now, and he and Cloud wouldn’t be alone trying to deal with Spook-horse.

Ridley came out after a delay Danny suspected had nothing to do with dressing or putting his coat on, and everything to do with partners and daughters. Ridley was not in a cheerful mood when he came into the den, and Danny volunteered to go shovel the gate clear.

The sun was well up, casting full daylight barred with evergreen shadow on snow lying white and untracked along the road. In the stillness of the morning they were the only presence—and even a town-born rider could feel the vacancy about them.

The mountain was gone, as far as the ambient was concerned. Or at least wrapped in a silence like some vast fog in which the mountain might be there—but no one could see it, no one could hear it, and all the life that ought to be there didn’t talk to them.

A normal horse, a wild one or a horse that had known a rider, ought to have made its territory clear to them. And it didn’t challenge them, either.

“I knew the man that rode this horse,” Danny said quietly as he rode. “He wasn’t too reasonable. Once he took a notion into his head—he could get real stubborn. This horse coming back again makes sense in that regard.”

“Not a Tarmin rider.”

“Not Shamesey, either. Out of the south. That’s all I know.”

“Fisher, —”

Ridley was It was down to the moment Danny had dreaded. He’d called their bluff in showing he knew about the He knew that was dangerous. But he’d done the most he could to show he meant to do just that. Just—

Cloud went light-footed, and Danny didn’t see what of, except that there was something in Ridley’s mind he couldn’t penetrate. Ridley was a senior, and did things in the ambient Danny didn’t always expect. All of a sudden, out in the woods alone with the man, Danny’s horse was picking up some uneasiness between them, after some unspoken dissatisfaction on Ridley’s part. He feared, considering the matter, that he’d assumed all along that his enemy was and that the surface of Ridley’s intentions was the whole truth. Good humor didn’t answer everything—and he never had thought that Ridley believed everything he heard.

Slip likewise wasn’t easy to figure—Slip’s image was a lot like Spook’s, just went sideways on you when you were most trying to get a fix on that horse, there and there and there and there, until you didn’t know where Slip was within a few feet of distance, and then—

Then Slip stopped and Cloud stopped and swung around and Ridley very deliberately lowered the rifle he’d been holding aimed generally skyward for safety.

The barrel came down toward him.

“Need some answers,” Ridley said. “Fisher. Just you and me.”

“Yeah,” Danny said, and Cloud wanted but he didn’t, and kept sending like a poor silly kid—because with somebody he didn’t want to shoot, he wasn’t much better armed than that. He was truly, deeply embarrassed to be so outright helpless, and so taken in by the man.

“You’re pretty sharp,” Danny said, while Cloud’s withers rippled in a shiver of fight-flight stymied by about the danger.

“I’m asking again,” Ridley said with all his ordinary calm. “Fisher.”

“I don’t know exactly what you want to know.”

“Yes, you do.”

Danny heaved a sigh. “Can you put that thing down?”

“No,” Ridley said plainly and simply. “I’ve got a village and a partner and a kid. You know what I’ve got to protect.”

“Yes, sir, I do know that.”

“On the other hand, you don’t seem to me to have a lot of responsibilities to be protecting. Which leaves me and my partner wondering sort of what you are protecting, do you follow me?”

“Yes, sir. I truly do. And I’m not good at lying.”

“Oh, you’ve done all right at that.”

“No, sir, if I were as good at being quiet as you are, I wouldn’t have spilled anything. And I’ve probably sounded worse than I am. I’ve wanted to talk to you.”

“You’re not sounding too trustworthy.”

“I lied, all right? I lied to the marshal. I think.” He’d been through so many ins and outs of the story he wasn’t sure where he’d told the truth and where not. And he’d faced a gun before. More than once. He’d never added up how much had happened to him in a very few weeks. “I’d like your advice, sir. I’d have come to you for advice before I came in the gates, except my friend down there was hurt and I was all there was to take the kids and try to get them here—which I was going to do. But I didn’t plan to do it without talking to you.”

“Do what?”

hit his thoughts. And he knew he’d better come across with the whole Brionne business while he had any credibility with Ridley, and while his chances of riding home with Ridley were at least even.

“Fact is, sir, the —” He wasn’t managing his thoughts real well. They were far too colorful with and the horses, neither one, liked the memory. Slip jostled Ridley sharply. But Danny stayed still.

“The girl we brought,” Danny said, “she rode it. She got it into Tarmin. When it died—she became—like she is. And I’ve been scared to death, sir, —” His teeth started chattering. Fool, he said to himself. He would sound like a liar. “I didn’t intend to come all the way to Evergreen. I didn’t intend to have a loose horse follow us all the way to the top of the Climb, and I’m afraid it’s after her—”

“Damn you,” Ridley said. “You didn’t intend.”

“I didn’t.”

“How much else isn’t the truth? Chang surviving? Your friend? Aby Dale?”

“I didn’t lie about that. I just—didn’t know what to do about the girl. Tara Chang wanted to shoot her. My friend, Stuart, he said no. She’s been out cold ever since, I think she’s dying—I just—didn’t expect the horse. And if you want me to leave, right now, and not come back till I’ve shot it—I’ll do that. I figure—maybe—that’s what I ought to do. I’ve put the village at risk.”

The ambient was full of But figured there, too. And the gun stayed level in a long moment of silence, while Danny only hoped to God, whatever else happened, Cloud wouldn’t be a target.

“How old are you?” Ridley asked, absolute confirmation he’d acted the junior and the fool.

“Seventeen,” he confessed, scared as hell to turn the situation into that, senior and junior, knowledgeable rider and one whose decisions all along had been wrong. He owed Carlo and Randy to stay responsible for them and not to plead off on being a fool. “Going on eighteen. This winter.”

“From Shamesey.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who in hell put you in charge?”

“There just wasn’t anybody else, sir.” The tremor got away from him. “It wasn’t Tara’s fault. She was in Tarmin when it went, and she wasn’t in good shape. And Guil sure wasn’t. This guy shot him in the craziness down there. The same guy that rode the horse that’s loose—I think. —And I didn’t exactly tell Tara I was going to go up the mountain. She told me the route, but I don’t think she ever thought the girl was going to make it and she didn’t know there was a horse going to close in on us. —So we had to get out of there. And I never planned to go all the way up from midway in one day—so I couldn’t ask you about the girl. But I had to leave there—the weather was closing in, and I didn’t know how to judge how bad it was going to get. I just—left the shelter and it got worse and we kept going because I didn’t know where I was on the mountain.”

“Bloody hell,” Ridley said, and slowly set the rifle back on his hip so it aimed at the sky. Danny let go a breath. Cloud liked it a lot better and was on the edge of

Danny thumped him with a heel, patted his neck, wanting For a moment the ambient was completely charged, completely volatile.

Then Danny ventured: “I’m sorry, sir. All I can say. I should have trusted you when I came in.”

Ridley’s face was absolutely grim.

“I’ll go after that horse,” Danny said.

“Let’s just use a little better sense than we’ve had around here,” Ridley said sternly. “All of us.”

“Yes, sir.” Meekness was called for. Ridley had met him with a great deal of restraint—well short of shooting him, which Ridley could have done with no village marshal calling him to account for it. “Another thing, sir.”

He didn’t want to tell things he knew but he thought Ridley, if he trusted him now, might be an ally and. if otherwise— he didn’t know what he might have brought on the interests he was trying to protect.

“Carlo Goss,” he said, feeling as if he had something stuck in his throat. “Carlo said he shot his father. The whole town was going crazy. The rogue was coming down on them—it was his sister. And there was a family fight. I don’t say it was even Carlo’s idea to shoot. I can’t say it wasn’t. I don’t know what the reason was. I just know he’s no killer. He survived the swarm in the jail. He and the kid— that’s where they were, and Randy’s only fourteen. I figured—figured with what they’d been through—I didn’t need to bring that up. Let him start over again. Let him take care of the kid and the sister. That’s what I thought.”

Ridley drew a slow, deep breath and let it go, a cloud in the frosty morning.

“Any more cards you want to lay on the table?”

“No, sir. That’s all.”

“I think,” Ridley said, “that you did pretty damn well under the circumstances.”

Danny asked himself if he felt that about himself, and he thought not.

And as Ridley imaged them he thought it might be well to keep the ambient very quiet, very subdued while he and Ridley went side by side, and until he was certain what Ridley was thinking.

He didn’t look forward to going back to the barracks until Ridley had gotten his mind made up what to do. Callie might vote for shooting him.

And he didn’t ever want to see an accusing look in Jennie’s eyes, Jennie who had as much reason as Callie not to trust him anymore.

“We’re after Ridley said.