Cloud's Rider

Chapter 15

That’s right, darling. Take another spoonful. There’s sugar in it.”

The girl swallowed down the cereal, and after three or four such spoonfuls, the girl heaved a little sigh and blinked and blinked again. “You’re in Evergreen, honey,” Darcy said. She offered that information every time she thought the girl might have come close to hearing anything or truly absorbing the things she said—because there’d been that moment of lucidity—and then it had gone for the rest of the day. But she knew that if it had come once, it could come back—to the right lure, to the promise of safety and comfort. “You’re in the village up the mountain. My name’s Darcy. How are you doing?”

“I’m tired,” the girl said unexpectedly and matter of factly. But Darcy didn’t let herself show surprise at all.

“I imagine you are, honey. Do you want some more?”

“All right,” the girl said, and ate the rest of the bowl before she shut her eyes and seemed to drift away.

Darcy was trembling as she set the spoon and the bowl down. She sat there by the girl’s bedside telling herself she might really have won this one, and seeing in that wind-burned face, still lovely after the long trek up the mountain, and the hands all broken-nailed and cut, the evidences of a suffering and struggle her Faye had never known except in the few minutes of her death.

This child would never know privation in Evergreen, not while she was taking care of her. This child would grow up safe and have all the things a beautiful young girl should have, and she’d see to it.

She went downstairs and went on tidying up. She arranged things in Mark’s office, and sterilized the instruments in boiling water, against the arrival of clients.

Then she went out on the snowy balcony of the second floor and opened the storm shutters. People about in the winter evening, the few who weren’t using the tunnels in the light snow-fall, stopped in the street and looked up. No one spoke.

But two—two, while she watched, came from the street onto the walk, and stamped their boots on the porch and disappeared under the angle of the porch roof.

She heard a knocking at her door. Miners, she thought. Maybe clients.

It was bitter cold out on the balcony and she gladly went inside and down. She opened the door and set herself in the doorway in such a way that they couldn’t just brush past her without explaining themselves, because some such clients were the sort that deserved sending right down to the pharmacist with an order for sugar pills or strong purgative.

“Ma’am,” the tall one said. “Are you the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“My name’s Carlo Goss. This is my brother Randy. How’s our sister doing?”

The girl’s brothers. It came to her like a thunderstroke that these boys could take the girl away. It wasn’t fair. They couldn’t. Not now. They hadn’t even asked how she was. They didn’t care—

But in the same heartbeat and in deep confusion she had to amend that harsh judgment. They’d carried the girl to her with heroic effort. There were frost burns on their faces. How did they love her enough to do that—and not come to see her?

“She’s doing pretty well,” she said—hardly a breath having passed in those thoughts. Their arrival disturbed her for reasons she didn’t even want to look at in herself. She didn’t want to let them through the door to talk to them, much less admit them to the girl’s room— but she couldn’t say go away. They had rights. They could go to the marshal and complain, and Eli would have to come back and say, Darcy, you have to let them see her, and how would that look? And how would that feel?

“Come in,” she said. She wondered whether she should ask them to take off their coats. She wondered whether she should offer tea. She wanted them out of the way, out of this house, but how fast could she push them and how much could she keep secret that wouldn’t ultimately get back to them and color how they dealt with her?

Friendly. Friendly seemed the best approach. Court the boys. Make them comfortable so they couldn’t turn on her.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “Would you like to sit down?”

“To see our sister,” Carlo said—and very businesslike, very much in possession of his rights over the situation. She was afraid.

“Come along upstairs,” she said, then, constrained to cooperate.

“Nice house,” the younger brother said as if he was estimating the value of the set-abouts.

“Thank you,” she said, while her mind was racing over what they wanted and whether they meant to take Brionne and what she could do about it. She winced at bringing two such enemies into the heart of the house, into things that were hers and Mark’s and Faye’s, where they could see what she had and maybe calculate it wasn’t as fine as where they’d come from and wasn’t really a house they’d want their sister in. But she had no choice but take them up the stairs and into Faye’s bedroom.

There they took off hats and gloves and loosened scarves. They brought deep cold with them. It clung to their clothing, on which snow didn’t melt. They brought noise. They brought foolish fears into her heart—even to think of them taking her back. The brothers didn’t know how to deal with her. They didn’t understand how to take care of the girl—they’d failed. They stood above a sleeping sister—having failed.

And then—then—maybe a creak of the floorboards, or maybe just a sense the girl at times seemed to have—she opened her eyes and stared at them.

“Carlo?”

“Yeah,” he said, and got down on one knee and took her hand. “Hi. How’re you doing, Brinny?”

Dreadful nickname.

“All right,” she said. Her hand rested listlessly in her brother’s as he squeezed it.

“You slept all the way up,” the younger brother said, and squatted down by the older. The girl lay on her prop of pillows and gazed into their faces.

“I don’t remember.” Her hand moved on the lace and yellow ribbons of the coverlet. “Isn’t it a pretty room?”

“It’s real pretty,” the older boy said and squeezed her hand again. “—Listen, Brinny-boo, we’re down by the gate. Got a job in the smith’s setup here. We live there. We’re fine. Randy and I are fine. You need anything?”

“Where’s mama?”

“Mama and papa are gone, Brinny. So’s aunt Libby. They’re all dead. Nothing left of Tarmin but us.”

The blue eyes clouded. She turned her face into the pillow and tore her hand from her brother’s fingers.

“Brinny?”

“I want mama.”

“Yeah. I know, I know.” Carlo patted her shoulder as he got up from his knees and looked at Darcy. “I don’t know what I can pay you right now, ma’am, but I will, as soon as I come by any money. As could happen.”

“I’d like her to stay here. No charge. I have the room. I don’t mind her using it.”

“That’s awfully kind of you.”

“I’d be glad to take care of her.” She became desperate, fearing she’d led herself into a dangerous dead end of reason, and having lost all her sense of what anyone truly wanted, she had nothing left to throw to the hunters but a tidbit of her privacy, to make them think they were friends and to make logical to them her position. “I had a girl about her age. She died. The house has been real empty. The girl needs someone all the time—a stable environment. She can’t be moved to still one more strange place.”

“If Brionne could live here, if you were willing to do that for her, we’d be grateful. We might be able to help out, do some fixing up and all. Next spring—next spring it looks like we’ll be able to give you some kind of payment.”

That didn’t matter to her. Money didn’t matter. Their separation from Brionne was the currency she wanted. It was wonderful news.

“I’m well set,” she said, and walked out to the head of the stairs, luring them to follow as she kept talking. “I can take care of her. Of course you’ll come and see her.” By spring—by spring if they changed their minds and wanted their sister back, she’d argue the child was too delicate to travel with them and live in a ravaged village. It was a stupid idea for them to go back there, and by what she’d heard of Tarmin, though the buildings might be intact and all, they’d still have to get supplies there. By the time the boys were in any fashion set to want her back she’d have Brionne attached to her, that was what she’d do. So they’d never get her back. By that time Brionne wouldn’t even think of going—to brothers she hadn’t been tearfully glad to see.

“We’d really be grateful,” Carlo Goss said; and the younger brother said, as they followed her down the stairs:

“Carlo and me get along all right. But it’s pretty rough down at the forge.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” She knew the smith, his surly brat. And his wife, as vicious and self-seeking a woman as ever she’d met— only woman in town who could have made Van Mackey worse than he was. “Your sister owes her life to you. It was a miracle you got up the Climb at all.” She reached the front door and, since they had never taken their coats off and seemed in a hurry, gave them no grace at all of invitations to stay and talk. “You come back whenever you want. You’ll know she’s just down the street.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the older boy said. “I’m grateful. We are. Really.”

“Any time.” She opened the door, waited just long enough to see the boys leave down the snowy steps.

Then she shut the door and latched it against the kind of drunken fools that sometimes mistook the private door for the office, and calmed herself enough for a sigh of relief.

The girl was hers. They hadn’t, after all, come to make any other arrangements. They were no more than kids themselves, the younger boy young enough to need someone’s care—but not hers. It didn’t need to be her business. Nothing about them needed to be her business.

But in one thing she was puzzled—the impression she’d gotten that, after all they’d done to save her, they’d not been shattered by her condition—or cheered by her improvement. They’d just offered money—and left with nothing in evidence but relief.

Odd, she thought. That certainly wasn’t the behavior of loving brothers. It just wasn’t. And Brionne had shed no tears, none at all.

The kids hadn’t come back down from the midway shelter when the weather cleared—which meant the two of them had a choice of going up what Tara called a hellish road, or going up a straight-up-the-mountain route that Tara swore she could make, and that Guil maintained, against her protestations, that he could make.

There were, Tara said, logging shelters and miners’ cabins, and she knew with a local rider’s knowledge where they were.

There was supposedly such a shelter ahead of them on their ascent, not of the road, but of the broad mountain face. It was a shelter, as Tara had imaged it,

But thus far Guil saw it only through the inner eye, in Tara’s memory of a summer approach to the place, and not the sort she’d care to overnight among. The image was

The reality was and it was a good thing, Guil thought, that they had two experienced high-country horses feeling their way through the snow, knowing by the way trees grew and brush situated itself that there might be a ledge, knowing the soft, attractive snow was not at all reliable. It wasn’t a rapid progress and, hazy as the snow-sifting branches had become to Guil’s perception, he walked, or staggered, used Burn’s tail to help him up the generally steep slopes.

It wasn’t Burn’s favorite way to make a climb, with a human pulling on a fairly important part of Burn’s dignity, but Burn tolerated it, as Burn tolerated the baggage knocking about his ribs, because otherwise his rider wasn’t going to be able to follow Tara and Flicker up this damn slope—and that would have meant Burn, torn between and faced an unthinkably inconvenient choice.

Which would of course be but damnably dreadful to make.

<“Burn…” waiting.> Guil didn’t talk out loud much at all—or hadn’t, until the last few days. He didn’t know when he’d last had someone to talk to—last time he’d ridden with Aby, he guessed; but it surprised him, now, the unaccustomed word coming out of his mouth, the way it surprised him that the snow was so gray and the world that was going around in such an unaccustomed way.

It was a very inconvenient place to fall. He had empty air at his back, rock under his feet, and feeling himself overbalanced, he grabbed a sapling evergreen, which bent, but which kept him on his feet and on the small ledge somewhere on a fairly steep slope. Even when the whole world went and an attempt to find footing failed; he only swung around with the tree in his embrace—facing he wasn’t quite sure what direction, but it felt like sideways on the mountain.

“Guil? Guil, hang on!”

“Oh, I will,” he said, and kept his arms full of tree, hoping that his sight would come back—he had Burn’s view of and but he didn’t think that was directly in front of him. It seemed rather, like the rest of the mountain, somewhat to the side and behind him.

That persuaded him, along with the general inclination of the very flexible, smelly and prickly sapling, which stabbed right through his gloves and through a gap that had developed between his glove and his jacket cuff, that if he let go he’d fall—which would hurt his side and his headache far worse than hanging on was hurting him. So he clung.

Eventually he heard, through the gray that beset his vision, the scrabble of human feet and felt much closer to him.

“Here.” A hand closed on his arm. “I’ll steady you.”

“I’m not seeing.”

“You can’t see?”

“It’s not bad. It’ll come back.”

“The hell it’ll come back!”

“A little knock on the skull. A while back. I’m just dizzy.”

“But you can’t see.”

“It’ll go away.”

“You’re a damn fool, Guil!”

“Just wait here a minute.”

“You should have told me you were having blackouts!”

“Just gray. It’s fine.” He blinked several times. He could see quite plainly, looking down on the scene and slightly overlapped—his brain having temporarily lost the knack for sifting skewed images into one image. It made him dizzier, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose his breakfast into the bargain, which might make him let go of the tree.

Not a good idea.

And he supposed if it were just him and Burn, Burn would get back down here and give him something besides a tree to hold to; Burn had four feet, and he’d feel a lot better about that, than about Tara’s trying to pry him loose.

“You can’t hold me,” he said.

“I want you to put your arm around my shoulder and I want you to put your right foot in the direction I go. All right?”

“You can’t hold me.”

“Shut up and let go! We’re not that far from the shelter. Trust me, hear?”

He let go. He didn’t grab her, fearful of dragging her off if he slipped, trusting if they slid, her instinct would save her; and he’d try for the tree. He could see a bit—at least a blur of white and gray that was snow and rock. He could see through Tara’s eyes, clearer than that, once the human brain decided which view of things was compatible with where two human bodies were standing. Once he had that, he could climb, using her balance and her sight, up that slope to where two horses waited anxiously.

“Sit down?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, and found a rock and rested there until the blood got back to his brain or away from it or whatever unnatural condition was causing the gray-out.

Then he saw a log cabin in front of him.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re here. Mining camp. Halfway to the upper road.”

He said, on a copper-tasting breath and with a pounding headache: “Told you I could do it.”

Preacher John Quarles came to call at the clinic in the morning. John’s mother had sent over a cake, which came welcome.

“Is it true?” John asked. “Has the little girl waked?”

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t want John to go and pray over her, but she didn’t see any way out. She brought him upstairs, where the sunlight through white curtains, on white lace and yellow walls, made the girl so beautiful she liked just to look at her at this hour.

Brionne had actually been reading—one of Faye’s books, that lay beside a white hand on the lace and satin coverlet. Brionne had nodded off, as she would almost every page.

“She’s very weak yet,” Darcy said in a hushed voice. “She asked for books. But she tires very quickly.”

“An angel,” John said, and launched into a quiet little prayer for “the Lord’s own little miracle.”

Brionne never stirred.

Darcy led her visitor downstairs again and, in the obligation to social courtesy, found herself comfortable with the visit—actually found herself in a buoyant mood as John sat and shared tea and cookies.

“Truthfully,” John said, “it wasn’t just the cake that brought me. I wanted to be sure you were aware—” John cleared his throat. “I trust there’ve been no visits from Simms.”

“For what?” She reacted to every breath of wind that threatened the girl staying here. She’d come to hope—so much. And they couldn’t change the arrangement. She didn’t want to deal with lawyers.

God, did he suspect? Did he know it mattered that much?

“Knowing that child’s welfare is precious to you,” John said, “I think you should petition the court for guardianship—and have her rights protected.”

“Against what?” Her nerves wouldn’t take shocks. Not anymore. “Why?”

“This child has rights,” John said, “to a lot of property. There was a village meeting about it. The Goss children are the heirs to the smith down in Tarmin. And a house. At least one house. Maybe two. It’s been the talk in the village—”

“I don’t get around the village much,” Darcy said. “Socially. As you know.”

“Well, in the Lord’s wisdom, the boys and this dear child are the only living heirs—some say of the whole village, but the judge I think will rule that the village is salvage, except that the Goss family holds the blacksmith shop and the family house and maybe one or two other houses in the village.”

“The boys came here talking about maybe coming into some money. That was what they meant.”

“Seems they do stand to inherit quite an establishment. Now, the oldest boy seems quite a nice young man—but I just would be careful, Darcy. I think you should seek legal guardianship. In this child’s interests. There are just too many who might seek it. If you understand.”

Hell, she thought. That was why the elder boy had been so forward with his offers of money. She said with never a ruffle: “There’s no way this poor girl can go down there. God knows the conditions down there. I hope you’ll back me in that with the judge.”

“I have no difficulty with that,” John said. “The boys are good boys. But they have their interests in actually working the forge, in which I just do not imagine this fragile child has any skill. I do think they’ll stand by her financially as the Lord blesses them—they seem good churchgoing boys, and they do seem right in their intentions, but the older boy in particular is at that age when some girl will take his fancy, and he’ll start thinking of his own house. The brothers seem very close, and I think there’s no worry for the younger boy, who I’m sure will apprentice to his brother, but I think to assure equity for this child there should be some provision for her, specifically, with some caring person, independent of means, to look out for her interests.”

“I agree. Guardianship.” Darcy found her hands trembling and tried to disguise the fact. John Quarles was an opinion that counted almost conclusively with the judge. John was also one to couch even his harshest judgments in very soft words, and John seemed to be saying that in his opinion the boys weren’t that acutely concerned for their sister—in which conclusion her own observations thoroughly concurred. “Also,” she said, “I do think—whatever my own reservations—it would be well if the child had exposure to church. You know I sent Faye. As traumatized as this child has been—I am thinking of taking her to services. And that tells you, John, how much I’m willing to commit to for this child.”

“That in itself is a miracle, Darcy.”

“Maybe—” She’d sell her soul for possession of the girl upstairs. And prepared to do it. “Maybe after all I’ve been through I’m willing to listen, myself. I at least think it’s important to give this child every stable influence I can lay hands on. And this child needs a guide, John.” She considered half a breath and threw all the chips on the table. “Maybe I need a change of heart, too.”

That, God help her, led to a spate of praying right there and then, which she found incredibly ridiculous and embarrassing. But she bowed her head and said, feeling she would throw up, “Amen,” when John was finished.

But it meant John would fight for her rights. John had himself a couple of challenging prospects. They were hard come by, in a village divided between the hard-drinking woods-dwellers and the villager youth who, after their usual pubescent foolishness, realized that their respectability and their standing depended on the church. Village youngsters fell, either as a matter of course or a matter of post-procreative contrition, into John’s kindly hands. Those were no challenge. She was. Her attendance would set the village abuzz—and satisfy no few pious busybodies who’d included her in Sunday prayers for years.

Her Brionne. Her wayfarer from the storm—might be a wealthy young woman. A respectable, looked-up-to woman, churched, prayed-over, able to dictate her own way in the world and have anything she wanted.

That was what the boy had been talking about, this Tarmin business, and coming into some money. If he wanted to send money, if he wanted to pay Brionne her inheritance in cash, that was very good. She’d call Simms tomorrow and have a document drawn up, something to protect Brionne and assure her rights to her share.

She wrote out a prescription to the pharmacist for cough medicine which John and his mother both used.

“How soon do you think they will resettle Tarmin?” she asked.

“Oh, up and running by next fall. At least to get a substantial establishment there, and maybe some supplies up here. The marshal’s organizing. The judge is drawing up documents. And the very clever heads are figuring how to deal with the lowland companies without getting into debt. There’s a great deal of greed at work here, Darcy, an uncomfortable amount of worldly greed.”

That, she believed truly shocked John. So many things did. It didn’t mean John didn’t understand them.

“I tell you,” she said, “this child’s been through enough. She deserves to stay up here and be very comfortable.”

“Amen,” John said. “Lord bless, and amen to that.”

That afternoon, with the sun peeking through gray clouds and the office curtains back, and her porch sign saying Open for the first time in a year, Darcy had her first doors-open customer, when a miner came trailing in with a sliced arm he claimed to have gotten on a nail near the barracks and she knew damned well was a knife cut, likely gotten in the tavern last night, by the color and character of it, the sort of thing knife fighters often got defending themselves, and bad knife fighters at that.

Even before this last year she’d tended to send this sort of patient to the pharmacist for salve and bandages, since the man hadn’t come in directly after the fight (he’d slept it off, she was sure, oblivious to the pain) and the cut was too old for the stitches it could have used. Probably it had been a clean knife. The likeliest contaminant was The Evergreen’s steak sauce.

“I do appreciate this,” the man was saying. Earnest was his name. Earnest Riggs. Miner, of the sort constantly trying to get a stake to hire and provision a couple of his fellows for some hole in the rocks out of which they did a little hunting, a little mining, a little of anything to keep going another season, for, of course, the big find, the vein he just knew was there. She didn’t even ask if he was the down-the-mountain sort, or the up-the-mountain sort, which might have said whether he was panning or digging. She personally didn’t care. He did have credit slips with the bank, which she asked for up front. But while she was getting the bandages, he was telling her what an upstanding citizen he was, and how his little company had a find— this was always preface to an appeal for funds, but he hadn’t gotten to it yet.

She was aware of movement and a whiteness on the stairs a second before calamity—Brionne slipped, squealed in alarm and skidded a few steps.

Earnest leaped up and all but knocked her down getting from the office to the stairs to pick up Brionne who, both feet out from under her, was clinging to the rail. He was a big man with long hair and a grizzled, bushy beard, and Brionne was so, so slight in his huge arms, her white nightgown against his blue plaid shirt.

“You poor, pretty thing,” Ernest said over and over, and hugged Brionne against his shaggy self. “Damn. Damn. —Are you all right, honey?”

“Let me see,” Darcy said, anxious, and not alone for the almost fall. “Set her down. Set her down!”

“Poor little girl.” The miner, Ernest, set Brionne down on the couch and Brionne sat and looked up at him with wide, dazed eyes.

And Earnest—

Earnest was clearly entranced. Nothing would do but that Earnest help Brionne up the stairs once Darcy had ascertained there were no injuries.

“She’s perfectly fine,” Darcy said, taking charge to prevent Earnest carrying the girl into the bedroom. “Downstairs. I’ll be right down to take care of you.”

“Now, don’t you slight that poor little girl. This scrape’s nothin’. You take care of that poor little lady first, and I’ll wait downstairs. It don’t hurt. I promise you, it don’t hurt me none at all.”

It didn’t ease her mind. Earnest clearly had an interest in That Pretty Little Girl, as Earnest called her.

Himself being a big rough miner and of course not in any pain from a knife slice. Damn him.

Meanwhile, Brionne was just weak, was all she could detect. Brionne had gotten hungry and come downstairs, and that was easy enough to deal with.

Earnest, she feared, was another matter. Earnest had turned worshipful, and when she came downstairs to deal with Earnest, the deity in Earnest’s universe was clearly upstairs, where Earnest directed soulful looks.

She was ever so relieved to get him out the door.

She was more than annoyed when Earnest came back an hour after she’d put him out the door, knocking at the streetside entry and presenting a box of cookies from the bakery, and a bouquet of paper flowers.

Ernest wanted to carry the cookies up to The Little Girl’s room, but she wouldn’t have that—no. She wouldn’t let him in. But she took the bouquet and several cookies and a cup of tea upstairs and didn’t tell Brionne exactly where they’d come from. Brionne was pleased with the flowers and ate two of the cookies.

But she’d no more than carried the tray downstairs again and begun to wash dishes than came a knock at the streetside door and—

Earnest.

“Now, look, Mr. Riggs,” she began in exasperation, gripping the edge of the door and bracing a foot behind it.

“No, no, ma’am,” Earnest said, and took off his hat, scarf and all, despite the bitter wind starting to veil the street in snow. “I know— I know I’ve bothered you three times today. But I been thinking.”

She wasn’t about to let him in. She was thinking about the marshal. “Well, I’m working, Mr. Riggs, I’m very busy, and if you don’t mind—”

“Ma’am, I don’t ask to come in. Just a minute of your time. I just was noticing how the porch rail is losin’ paint—”

“You don’t paint in the winter, Mr. Riggs.”

“—and missin’ some pieces. So’s various things. You don’t have anybody regular hired to fix those things—”

“The house will stand through the winter, Mr. Riggs. Then it may be time to think about it.”

“By then ever’body’ll be down to Tarmin, ma’am. And what I hear, what I hear, ma’am, that pretty little girl is from there. And she’s due a lot of property if there was those lookin’ out to protect her—”

“Not your business, Mr. Riggs.”

“Well, them Mackeys have got her brothers, and those brothers is sellin’ her out, ma’am. I don’t know they know what they got into, but there’s lawyers comin’ and goin’ out of Mackeys place—”

She had by no means meant to let Mr. Riggs in. He was just too persistent, and wanted something. He was a fearsome looking sort, with his wild hair and unkept beard, and dealing with miners was dangerous. Some would steal when your back was turned. Some would get ideas of different sort, and his infatuation with her or with, God help them, Brionne, in this place where miners very, very rarely found prospects among the local girls and even less rarely found women willing to go out into the privation of the camps, could easily get out of control.

But he had information she didn’t have, that she suspected John Quarles didn’t have, and if Simms or Hodges were taking money or promises regarding Tarmin property, forewarned was forearmed.

She opened the door. “Come in, Mr. Riggs.” And stepped back, cautiously, all the while thinking of the gun in Mark’s office.

But Ernest was probably harmless. He was very careful to wipe his feet and to dust the snow off.

“So what about the lawyers? Simms? Is it Simms?”

“A woman.”

“That’s Simms.” Simms was the lawyer who wasn’t related to Judge Hodges. The one she wasn’t mad at for shenanigans with Mark’s father’s property and that damn brother of Mark’s.

“Well, actually the other one was there, too,” Earnest said. He was a careful man with his hat. He didn’t roll it or crush it. His fingers kept dancing around the careful curves of it, smoothing the bushdevil tail that was its ornament. “I didn’t get his name, either. But I heard say that’s who it was. I kind of hang out at The Evergreen, ma’am, and that’s right next door to the Mackeys. So’s the barracks, for that matter. So, you know, winter settin’ in and strangers come around, what they do, people watch. And gossip about.”

“So what is the gossip?”

“How them brothers is dealing with the Mackeys for a stake to go down there come spring, and how they been hanging around with that rider lad that brought ’em in, and how there’s just somethin’ sharp goin’ on, if you take my drift.”

“Not entirely, Mr. Riggs. —Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I wouldn’t want to put you out, ma’am.”

“Oh, the water’s generally hot. Come into the kitchen.”

Sound from talk in the parlor could carry upstairs. And she wanted everything Earnest Riggs knew or suspected, but she wouldn’t leave him alone near the office and the drugs, either.

So she led him into the kitchen, set him at the breakfast table, made two cups of strong tea and put out a piece of the cake John had brought over.

Earnest’s eyes lit at that.

“So what sharp dealing is going on?” she asked Earnest when he had his mouth full of cake.

A sip of tea followed. “Well, ma’am, what they’re sayin’ is how the Mackeys is going to provide the backing for them boys, and how either they’re going to trade ’em the shop and house up here, which ain’t worth near what the one down in Tarmin is, for the shop and at least two big houses down there. Otherwise there’s talk as how they got to employ Rick and pay ’em back near a hundred percent interest on anything they lent ’em. I ain’t supposing there’s been too much damage to the shop by the critters, but water comin‘ by snows and rains might not be too good, and a lot of doors was left standin’ open, if you take my meaning.”

“Entirely. In other words, it’s going to take supplies of food, possibly of cash for metal—”

“Well, it’s going to be worse than that, ma’am, I am greatly afraid.”

“How?”

“Well, that the Mackeys nor them boys is going to hold out against the looters. That town’s going to be a bloody mess. Law ain’t goin’ down there. Bunch of lawyers’ papers—they ain’t worth— Well, they ain’t goin’ to be worth a thing, ma’am. Miners, many of ’em, is fine folk. And some ain’t. There’s them that’d shoot you in the back for a nugget, let alone a house. And there ain’t going to be any law down there. The marshal can’t leave here. His deputies ain’t fools. So—them as wants to hold the property that they got title to had better have guns and better be ready to use ’em. And I don’t think the Mackeys have got the guts, if you want my opinion, ma’am. They’re early in the game, but they’re likely to end piss-poor or dead.”

Darcy drew a long, slow breath. Sense told her she was hearing the truth from this man, a truth that didn’t bode well for anybody holding rights down in Tarmin.

“So what’s your proposition, Mr. Riggs? I take it you have a proposition.”

“Well, yes, ma’am, I do. This little girl, her havin’ rights and all, her brothers is dealing with the wrong folk in the Mackeys, and they’re going to get sharped out of ever’thing they got due ’em. Which is fairly well goin’ to take this little girl’s property down with ’em, if you’re relyin’ on them two boys to protect her rights. Mackeys is going to get killed if they go down there. And so’s them boys. But that little girl—she’s such a pretty thing—”

“You said there’s a rider backing the boys.”

“Oh, yeah. And that’s a powerful hand. Don’t nothin’ move crosscountry without ’em. But once we get there, once there’s walls, ma’am, us miner types, we know how to dig in, we know how to get by. First villager boy tries it, he’s down something’s gullet fast. But there ain’t but your two riders, and they got a little girl to watch out for, besides they can’t leave the village without riders. That’s down to one rider, this Fisher boy, and some friends of his, supposedly, but that’s still three riders and a lot of supplies to haul down—and how many places can this Fisher be at once? You got supplies to haul. You got Tarmin to sit guard on. Any convoy that moves ain’t really safe without at least a rider to front and one to back. There’s just a hell of a lot they ain’t addin’ up, ma’am. You got to have somebody to sit down there and defend a bunch of pukin’ village boys who’d lose all their sense and rush right out into a lorrie-lie’s arms, first night they heard the Wild talkin’ to ’em, and you got to have somebody to ride with the truck convoys—granted they’ll come with their own riders—but somebody’s got to fix the damn phone lines, too. And that’s another rider. Fisher can’t be all those places. The convoy riders, they’re another breed, and they got their hire. Before they can do anything like move supplies they got to get riders from the other villages, and then the word’s out, and not a lot of people in those villages—specially the miners—is going to be damn happy there’s a bunch from Evergreen who’s gone down to Tarmin and squatted on the good property. Miner’s laws goin‘ to rule this ’un when the dust flies, ma’am, and if somebody ain’t looking out for that little girl’s interests—she ain’t going to get a penny.”

“Then I can provide for her, Mr. Riggs. Sounds as if I’m going to have a lot of business.”

Earnest leaned forward across the table. “Yes, ma’am. But that ain’t the only danger. You got this little girl, same as them boys, walking around with nobody to watch ’em, and could happen— could happen, there’d be some snatch this pretty little thing on account of her being not only just damn pretty but also rich and having rights. And when the law does come down there in a couple of years, if you’re alive and you got rights—the law’s going to be for you and again’ others in whatever dispute might be. You don’t want to sign away what’s due that pretty little girl.”

“Yeah. I might, rather than see her involved in what you’re talking about.”

“No, now, ma’am, you can look out for that little lady’s interest, you know, if you’d have somebody as can defend her claim down there.”

Now it came to money. “Mr. Riggs, clearly you’re expecting I’ll give you a stake. And I don’t have money for groceries. I’ve not been working the last year.”

“You got this nice house. You got credit at the bank.”

“Mr. Riggs, —if I gave you money and you went down there and got killed, I’d have a debt, the girl would be broke, and there’d be no recourse.”

“Ma’am, we’ve thought of that. There’s a number of us, five or six, that’s willin’ to go down there together to look out for ourselves, and the little girl’s interest, well, you know men. It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep guys headed the same direction, if they got a thing to do together. So while we’re looking out for ourselves, we could look out for the little girl’s property.”

“Her brothers’ property.”

“Well, we could strike a deal with them for her third. Damn sure the Mackeys ain’t going to pay anything to keep the property safe, and the boys are poorer than we are. We could hire them, howsoever.”

“Let me have it clear. You’re proposing to have me pay you money to shoot anybody who tries to claim the Goss property.”

“No, ma’am. I’m proposing you buy us shells and flour and oil and such and we’ll sit on the property and defend ourselves if someone’s such a fool as to take on five of us. It’s that little girl’s legal title to the property that’d give us special status before the law, ma’am. And the property around it’s what we’d claim for ourselves. Wouldn’t lay no claim on the girl’s property.”

“That’d be a fair piece of the village you’d be sitting on.”

“Yes, ma’am, it would.”

“How much would you want?”

“Thousand. In advance. For supplies, ma’am. Not a penny more.”

It wasn’t so much as she’d feared. But it was a huge amount of cash.

“And what about the brothers?”

“Fairly well depends on them. How they like us for neighbors. Or we’d protect them, too, if they come up with an offer.”

There were very sharp edges to this affair. And she couldn’t trust that Riggs wouldn’t strong-arm the Goss brothers once they were down in Tarmin with Riggs’ crew all around them.

She was halfway surprised she didn’t hear an offer to make sure The Little Girl inherited all the Goss property. But if she borrowed that trouble she lost all power to control the purse strings and thereby to control Riggs.

And there was a chance the Gross boys might—might try to prevent her gaining custody of Brionne. She wasn’t a fool. She didn’t give up her cards until she knew what they were worth.

And she didn’t need to put a thousand in cash into Riggs’ hands so he could drink it up by spring and ask for another.

“This spring,” she said, “I’ll have the cash for you.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but spring’ll be a rush on supplies, prices are bound to go up. We’ll need more if we wait till spring.”

“Then I’ll put it on account at the store and they’ll reserve you supplies, but they won’t deliver until I say so.”

“Ma’am, you’re one sharp woman.”

“Yes, I am. You turn in your list to me. Can you write?”

“No, ma’am. But one of my guys can. We’ll get a list.”

“The other matter, Mr. Riggs, is—don’t talk outside your group about my supporting you. If this becomes gossip around town, I’ll know I can’t trust you, and you won’t get a sack of flour or a foot of rope.”

“I do understand. And you don’t have no doubts: I’m the one can get that little girl her rights. I can lay claim down there for her, fix up the place—what needs fixin’. I mean, if them houses was swarmed, it’s going to be pretty messy inside. But I can do that. Pretty little girl.”

“She’s thirteen,” Darcy said coldly, seeing exactly where that was going.

It set him back. Maybe. For about two seconds. “Well, that’d be about right, a few years on. Pretty little thing. Awful pretty. You got to watch out, them rough guys, you know.”

“I’ll tell you plain, Mr. Riggs, she’ll never be any miner’s wife. She might hire somebody. As I might. He might do all right for himself. If he was honest—he could be very well-set. Possibly go into business.”

She had a big house, and all the equipment, and everything. But if Tarmin proved more viable, if Brionne’s welfare somehow demanded better than the cold winters and isolation of Evergreen— there was, the thought came to her like a revelation—there was the Tarmin’s doctor’s establishment, better equipment, bigger population, once the village got going again. No drunken miners to treat. Those all came to Evergreen and Mornay.

Ernest might in fact be very useful to two women trying to get their share of what everyone else was scrambling to get.

And it was going to happen this spring. The treasure-seekers and the looters and ordinary citizens trying to stake claims to businesses and shops were going to be down that road like a nest of willy-wisps stirred with a stick.

“You know, Mr. Riggs, there was a doctor in Tarmin. Probably all the instruments are still there.”

“Sure won’t be, ma’am, if them loggers get there first.”

“Yeah, well, how many properties do you think you can preserve unlooted? Would another thousand make sure that office was mine?” It was unreal to her to be asking a question of a practice she and Mark had never been able to dream of.

But it could be hers. Completely logical. No one else could use that office, that equipment. There was a doctor at Mornay. But he was old. She could see to it there were both options—and if it proved necessary to move to Tarmin, if it was necessary to do that to assure a good life, without the girl being subjected to winters up there, she would have a foot in either village. And assets which would be worth a great deal. She could become wealthy.

Wealth would protect herself and her baby girl, her daughter, against a world that was not and would never be the way John Quarles saw it. Wealth to buy the likes of Earnest Riggs, a small debt now to own a major part of Tarmin and a future for herself and her daughter.

“I’d think,” Earnest Riggs said, “that’s a lot to protect. I got to hire more men.”

“Three thousand,” she said, and got to her feet to give Earnest Riggs the cue she was through, on that point, and he could leave very soon upon her making it. “Free doctoring. My respectable reputation behind your claim on whatever property you fancy down there. You can all be well-to-do by next fall. That’s all you’ll see from me. You don’t talk about it, don’t let your hirees gossip drunk or sober.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Earnest got up, hat in hand. “Three thousand and we don’t talk for nothing.”

Tara did the woodcutting for the coming night. Guil had done the fire-building with the first small load Tara had provided him for the shelter’s fireplace. He also did the cooking and the currying of snow out of nighthorse manes and tails, and he was damned tired of horses wanting in and horses wanting out of the cabin. Horses could stand out there in the next snowstorm if horses didn’t make up their minds.

Thump. “Dammit, let me in!”

That wasn’t Burn. Guil left the soup-pot simmering and got up and got the door, admitting a snowy Tara with a huge armful of wood; and, right behind her, head lowered, figuring to warm himself from the cold, but not quite sure whether he wanted in or out, came Burn.

“Are you coming?” he asked Flicker, who lurked coyly behind Burn’s rump and who put forth a nose, but just at the threshold and while he was waiting with the door, Flicker kicked up her heels and gave the high-pitched squeal of a nighthorse wanting

Burn wanted out, then, and went right past him with a whip of a snow-caked tail that hit like a pelting of snowballs.

<Snow on Burn,> he sent in no uncertain force, and got back a completely distracted <female,> and <sex.>

There was snow in clumps all over the boards of the floor. And unless one wanted to walk barefoot over unexpected puddles in the evening, there was nothing to do but get the broom and sweep the lumps over to the fire where it might evaporate—melting streaks all the way across the dusty boards. These particular miners were sloppy campers, and they’d not cleaned up, they’d not stocked the cabin with wood against winter emergency—seeing themselves as their only concern—and they’d not left provisions, for the very good reason that it was a flimsy shelter and food inside would have invited predators to dig their way in and destroy the little furniture there was.

So it was a good idea they’d lugged supplies up the mountain.

Tara had dumped her firewood beside the fireplace. She’d been across the slope with Flicker and Burn for protection. The shelter had an axe, its one amenity besides the snow shovel and a single pot, and the axe instead of the hatchet they’d brought had meant larger firewood quicker. He’d been hearing the sound of the axe fairly steadily while he was arranging supper, and the pile she’d brought in was enough for the night.

“Quiet up there,” she said as he picked out a couple of pieces to add to the cookfire. “Just real, real quiet. I sat out there a few moments, being nothing, trying to shape the mountain in my head. And the hole is back. I can’t locate it—but up. Definitely somewhere up.”

The thing they’d felt before, especially in the nights down in the lonely, lifeless woods at first stage—it came and it went above them. The thought of it showing up made him damn nervous in the afterthought of Tara having possibly taken out up this trail without him. There had continually felt to be places up above them on the mountain—not always the same places—where life didn’t exist. And they still didn’t know why.

Neither of them had ever seen a swarm on the scale that had happened at Tarmin. Maybe, they’d reasoned when they’d considered the question down at first-stage, creatures drawn into the events at Tarmin hadn’t really ever gotten out of the swarm. Maybe groups were still spooking each other off at minor alarms, moving out of their territories in panic and not yet able to reestablish boundaries for themselves and settle down to a normal winter.

Their combined experience as riders just didn’t cover what was going on up above them. One heard about rogues—rare as the condition was. But the folklore had never prepared them for the destructive force it had loosed, the lingering spookiness on the mountain even after the rogue was dead. They hadn’t expected the mass movements of game that seemed to go one direction and then the other on the face of the mountain with no reason, with absolute vacancy at the heart of it. Weather had had them pinned down—but it hadn’t been affecting the oddness up there.

A massive hole in the ambient, this moving darkness.

“You know, one thing that blank spot could be,” Guil said, tucking a medium-sized piece of wood into the fire below the soup pot. “Big predator.”

“Nothing ever like this that I ever heard,” Tara said, hugging her arms across her, and added a moment later: “The rogue might have felt like this—in deep winter—if there weren’t a lot of racket.”

Meaning the natural noise in the ambient that all those lives had made in Tarmin village was gone now. Humans didn’t send far without something to carry it—but an aggregation of living things even like a herd of cattle was noisy.

And in the silence on Rogers Peak they ought to have been able to hear very, very for across the mountain right now, not any specific creature, just—presence. Life. It was possible the villages were aware of that silence. It was possible they weren’t. Too many people—like too much light—came with settlements. You couldn’t see the fainter stars. You couldn’t get a fair listen to this thing.

Kids, on their own, making their way perhaps as slowly as they were against hostile weather, could blunder right into it. It had worried him through the days that they were pinned down at first-stage. It worried him now that there was snow coming down with fair vigor out there. He didn’t want to be wintered in here. He truly didn’t.

Tara moved to have a look at the soup, and stripped the gloves off hands that just weren’t used to the amount of wood-cutting she’d had to do lately, hands that, in the firelight, showed raw sores the gloves hadn’t prevented.

He captured a hand and had a closer look.

“It’s all right,” Tara said, and freed it for a look under the lid of the soup-pot. Then added: “It’s all right—just like your head.”

Wicked woman. Halfway up the mountain looking for kids she maintained she didn’t want to find about half of every day. She’d taken the risk, committed herself, given a damn; she was in danger of outright charity—figuring she could have stayed put and not budged from first-stage and not helped. She’d worked hard out there; holding and being held felt very good right now, in the absence of anything else to do, to make it clear he was very appreciative of the stack of firewood he hadn’t had to cut. His head hurt. Her hands hurt. If they held a competition they could probably find other spots, but at least the couple of stitches she’d put in his side, front and back, some days ago, had held up during today’s climb, and they were doing pretty well for a couple of fools.

Meanwhile the horses were cavorting around the rocks out there and one just hoped, as the ambient went scary with from one of the two fools, that they didn’t fall off a snow-buried cliff.

“Supper’s ready,” he said into her hair. “I made the whole mess of potatoes up. Figuring we can carry it.”

“Temperature’s just floating out there. It may go above freezing tonight. If it does—it’s going to be just real nasty conditions. An early winter, but a slow one setting in. We could get real damn tired of potatoes.”

“Beats bushdevil.”

“By a bit,” she agreed, and having found interest enough to be hungry, she served up the soup that was destined for supper and breakfast-to-come, and they settled down to one more night with the temperature still hovering. He’d cut up the whole supply of potatoes which the kids had left at first-stage and they’d carried it up with them: the perishables left there would have frozen soon, as they’d slightly frozen on the climb, in spite of the protection in which the stores had been buried. Tara had escorted a cart out with that load of perishables not too long before the disaster, supplies the road workers should have used fast, but, Tara had said grimly, certainly nobody down on first-stage level was going to need them— including two more of Tarmin’s riders, friends of hers, besides the ones who’d died in Tarmin.

So at least they went to someone’s use, and if they got bad weather they’d at least have potato soup for days before they ever had to resort to what might be very thin hunting on this face of the peak. But if they got their wish and the weather turned to deep cold and reliable freezing, their next night’s supper, frozen, could pack up and go with them up the mountain, for an open-air camp or for very fast moving in their effort to get up to Evergreen. Then they could find out, in the best news they could expect, that the kids had made it alive and didn’t need their help, or that the kids were stranded down at midway and were going to need help.

Better if the kids had been able to go this direction. But Tara couldn’t have shown Danny Fisher this route: Tara wasn’t totally sure of it herself. Experienced horses could deal with the trail they were using—but he’d hate to have sent Fisher and a young horse up the trail they’d taken. On second-hand landmarks they’d never have found the mining shack.

Their own horses of course wanted into the cabin, now that potato and ham soup had entered the ambient in a very vivid way. Tara did the getting up and let in two snow-caked horses.

And the instant two humans settled down again to their supper Burn leaned his head on his rider’s shoulder in ambitious anticipation of tasty bits, namely all the ham and considerable amounts of the sauce. Flicker moved in on Tara in the same way, to look doleful and coy from the front.

They both could be quite hard-hearted until, dammit, they were through. Then they poured out a couple of bowls on the hearthstones—quite a suitable platter for horses, and very unlike their dumping of snow and drip of melt onto the floor, there wasn’t a smidge of soup left to mop.

Guil put a cover on the pot, determined to keep horse noses out of their several days’ supply. And they sat, after the horses had cleaned the stones, watching patterns in the fire. Burn and Flicker settled down to mutual grooming and Tara—

Suddenly Tara thought of She thought of stopping, looking uphill, trees and white.>

She seized his hand, hard. “Think of something else. Now!”

It was the earliest childhood calm-down.

she added.

The horses lifted their heads, hungrily and vividly interested in though they were stuffed with hay and grain and had ham and potatoes to chase that.

Tara laughed.

Laughed and laughed, out of proportion to the image.

Guil knew where she was headed, the collapse after long and impossible strain. He sent her and Tara lay on the floor holding her stomach, the spasms were so intense. She’d sober up— and break out laughing again until laughter gave way to helpless sobs for breath.

Then came just hard breathing, and panic—panic that she’d stopped up since that night she’d spent

hit the ambient, the way Flicker would send when Flicker wanted to hide. Guil tried to take hold of her: mistake. She shoved hard at him. It hurt his side.

That got through to her. It hadn’t on other occasions. It brought her out of herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, and threw her arms around him while he was trying to get his breath back.

Panic in the ambient ebbed.

But was out there. The horses had forgotten all about fish, and lovemaking. They stood stock-still, heads lifted, nostrils straining for smells that were only in the ambient,

And something—

Something that was and and

Guil didn’t think about the pain. He was on his feet with his hands on Burn’s neck. Tara had done the same with Flicker, wanting

Guil wanted the same from Burn. There was no cabin here. There was just

For a long time they stood like that, not letting the ambient go, not letting anything but those images into the night. There were no humans or horses here, there was no fire, there was no shelter, there was nothing but forest and snow.

When they let go, carefully and little at a time, the ambient was quiet. It wasn’t there, either.

Darcy drifted, almost asleep when a terrible wail broke through the dark of the upstairs.

Then a sudden shriek, a thump and a second thump.

Darcy leapt up in a tangle of blankets, fought her legs free and ran for the balcony, thinking of the stairs and the chance of the girl turning toward them in the dark and unawares.

“Faye!” she cried, and intercepted the girl on the balcony, held her in her arms as she gasped for breath.

“Mama,” the girl cried. “Mama, mama, mama, he shot my horse, he shot my horse—”

“Shot your horse— What are you talking about, honey?”

“They shot him, they shot him, and I hate him—I hate her!”

“Who?”

“I’ll find them—I’ll find them! I’ll make them sorry,”

“Hush, hush, child.” Darcy hugged the trembling body against her own, shivering in the winter cold, and guided her back to the safety of her own room, holding her arm, talking to her gently. “I was afraid you’d fall. There’s stairs to watch out for. You’re on the second story. You mustn’t get up and walk in the dark. Call me if you’re want to get up in the dark.”

“It was my horse!” the girl sobbed. “I want them dead!”

“Hush.” Darcy set her frail charge down on the edge of her bed and sat down herself on the edge of the mattress, tucking the girl up in the quilt. “There’s a love. You’re safe. There’s no one to hurt you here.”

“I hate them! ”

“Hush.” Darcy combed the soft, tangled curls with her fingers. “Hush. You mustn’t talk like that.” She didn’t know about horses. She didn’t understand what the child was dreaming about, but it scared her, it was so unexpectedly off the map. “You were dreaming, honey. It was just a dream. You mustn’t talk about horses. It makes the preacher worry. And we shouldn’t worry the preacher, should we, honey?”

“I prayed to God for my horse! And he was mine!”

“Hush, hush, it’s not a thing to say. You’ll scare people. They won’t understand it.”

There was a shaky sob. “I want my mama.”

“Yes, honey. I know, I know. But your mama’s gone, honey. I’ll take care of you.” She stroked Brionne’s hair and Brionne rested her head against her shoulder. Brionne’s arms went around her.

“I’ll find a horse,” Brionne heaved a huge, shuddery sigh.“One will come for me. I’ll call it and it’ll come.”

Now that the panic was past, she was only halfway appalled: some children did fantasize about horses. Occasionally they listened to bushbabies or hung about near the rider camp trying to pick up images—a spate of curiosity at about age seven or eight, a spate of trying to pick up sexual images around adolescence. Shocked parents came with fair regularity asking what to do—and Brionne was old enough for the second phase. But it might equally well represent a bright and imaginative child’s wish for independence, for a romantic event to transform her life from the settled routine she saw as her growing up.

Or even escape—from the very dreadful events down at Tarmin.

She’d done her own daydreaming, at such an age. She didn’t believe in the preacher’s God, never had, from her mother’s knee, and her wish for escape had been from an apprenticeship rigorous and humorless. If a horse had ever called her in her youth she supposed she’d have gone out the gates without a qualm.

So she resolved to deal with the child’s fantasies with far more humor and heartfelt understanding than her own mother had had for anyone.

To begin with she didn’t call the girl a fool, or depraved.

“That’s just all right, honey. Maybe you’ll call a horse for me, too, and we’ll ride all over the mountain.”

“You’re not scared of me?”

“Nothing scares me.”

The girl’s arms hugged her tight, tight a moment. “I love you.”

She hadn’t expected that. It was very difficult to get the unaccustomed words out of her throat, but she did.

“I love you, too, honey.”

They sat like that a while. Darcy’s feet went numb from cold. She didn’t mind. Her arms were warm.

At last the girl heaved a vast sigh. “It’s so quiet now. It’s gone away.”

“What’s gone away?”

“The horse out there. Now I can’t hear anything. It’s scary, everything’s so quiet. Can we light a lamp?”

“Sure. Sure, honey. You want to come with me? I’ll light the lamp in your room.”

There was a young horse in the rider camp. She didn’t remember. She thought there was. She didn’t know the status of it. She just hadn’t hung about for gossip because she hadn’t wanted the reciprocal questions into her business.

But if imagining horses and being scared of the dark were the only complaints the girl had after the climb up the mountain she’d done very well indeed.

A normal, natural little girl.

That was all.