Rider at the Gate

Chapter XXII

YOU TAKE CARE!” TARA CHANG SAID, WHEN THEY WERE GATHERED in the yard of the rider-shelter, and take care was what Danny meant to do, personally. He’d said his good-byes to Guil Stuart inside: Guil wasn’t on his feet, but would be, they had confidence of that. Meanwhile Burn was taking advantage of an open door and a sunny day. So was Flicker, and Burn was sending Cloud a serious warn-off, that had everyone’s nerves on edge.

That was one reason for leaving. The kid bundled in the travois was another: Brionne Goss and her brothers weren’t comfortable companions for nighthorses in a winter shelter, and the first crystal-clear day, with the sun burning bright in the high-altitude sky was a chance Danny knew they couldn’t turn down.

Guil didn’t mind much, Danny figured that for himself. Guil got a winter-over with a damn pretty woman, all to himself, and had a village down the way with a store full of supplies. They’d shared with Burn and Flicker and, nighthorses being what they were, Burn and Flicker didn’t mind saying they’d take the ham, thanks, but Cloud could take his rider, the and the three and hit the road.

Down the mountain or up the mountain wasn’t Burn’s urgent concern. But Guil said, “If you go up, don’t linger in the shelters.”

And Tara: “The mountain doesn’t give you many days after the snows start. Either one’s dangerous. You make time. Make time, all you can do.”

So in this bright, clear morning, they went, and he thought up, all considered, was the best choice. Cloud wasn’t against it. Avalanche on those lower slopes scared him personally worse than the high, hard climb did. Jonas had taken the chance. He thought maybe Jonas had won the bet with the mountain; but they’d been holed up and couldn’t prove it.

The days that that downward road would be passable were getting fewer, if they weren’t gone already.

And Guil said he hoped Jonas made it. About Hawley, Guil still wasn’t sure, but he said Hawley was a thorough-going jerk, that was what he was guilty of, and he’d forbear to shoot Hawley, in colder blood, when next they met.

Assumptions. Assumptions was the thing that had been so fatal. Lives that touched one another and never knowing they’d touched at all.

Aby Dale had never figured, when she’d died, that she’d have cost so many lives.

Jonas Westman and his friends had never figured, when they came clear down to Shamesey, that they’d bring rogue-taint with them. Likely, was Danny’s private opinion, that the disturbance in his own family owed something to the contagion the Westmans had brought; likely that Harper’s private vendetta owed something to it, too. Harper had been a haunted man. And rogue-craziness had been very close to what drove him. The man had carried a grudge for years and, crazy-mean that he was, had had it set off by something, maybe rogue-sending, maybe just the scent of blood in the ambient when they’d shot at Guil down by Shamesey, and a hunter-sense when Guil had taken to running.

Maybe then in Harper’s head the balance of fear had shifted and he’d seen his chance to settle old scores.

But it hadn’t been a good place, the mountain hadn’t, for a man with a guilty past. A rider could lie to other riders, sure, but he had to lie to himself first, had to lie to himself. And Guil Stuart hadn’t had a thing to do with Gerry Harper’s death. Stuart hadn’t known that Harper was on his tail, hadn’t even known how Harper’s brother had died.

A kid who’d come up from town had had the pieces of it shoved at him, that fell into place once Guil told what he knew: a whack in the head from a winch cable, a partner dead, Gerry Harper going off from Ancel in a fit of rage, the Harper brothers not dealing with each other any more for years.

“Gerry was all right,” Guil had said. “A lot more reasonable than his brother. I got along with him. —So Ancel shot him.” Guil was surprised and sad. That came through the ambient. Harper believed his brother had gone rogue.

“Maybe he did,” was Guil’s opinion. “God knows. I don’t. So Ancel shot him. Shot his horse.”

At a campfire. Late one night.

Harper had told himself it was all Guil’s fault. Told it well enough at least other men had followed him up a mountain looking for blood.

Harper had found blood, all right. They heard his horse at night. Spook came in looking for him—but it wasn’t a rogue, itself, just lonesome. And they hadn’t the heart to shoot it or the guilt to let it haunt them. Harper’d taken a shot at Guil at Tarmin gates; he’d taken his second at the start of the Tarmin Climb.

But Harper wasn’t the marksman Tara Chang was. She’d snapped off that one shot and nailed him dead through the chest. So all Harper’s hate, all Harper’s craziness had ended right there, in the snow. The horse mourned him. Nobody else did.

Guil hadn’t known the Westmans were on his track, either: when he’d found out, he’d blamed them for the shot at Tarmin village and wouldn’t trust them. He damn sure hadn’t known Harper and his lot were on his heels, hadn’t remotely expected the shot out of nowhere that had gone through his side. He hadn’t, he swore, cared a damn about Harper, hadn’t spoken to him for years.

But Harper’d paid his life for a grudge Guil didn’t know Harper was carrying.

And come to find out—Guil had had no idea in the world there was a kid named Danny Fisher. Riders weren’t prone to polite lies: the horses didn’t let them do what townfolk did, and Guil didn’t deny there’d been a rainy afternoon on a porch, and a kid asking him questions, Guil just didn’t remember him. All the way he’d tracked Guil up on this mountain to pay a debt Guil didn’t remember.

In his way he supposed that he was as crazy as Harper was. But it was a debt he still held valid. He’d heard. He’d listened. He’d learned.

He’d remember some time when some kid came to him: he’d know what he said could save some kid’s life and he’d take the time.

He might not remember doing it, either. He supposed the moments that came on you to do something good or something evil weren’t necessarily lit up in flaming letters. The things you assumed all needed looking at, and the way you answered a kid’s asking help needed looking at; if you mistook as few as possible of the former and did as much of the latter as you could, the best you could while doing your honest work, he figured that answered all morality a rider was responsible for.

That and his ties to his partner. He wouldn’t ever forget the way Guil had come after Aby Dale. He hoped some day to have a partner like that, man or woman. It wouldn’t be Guil.

And it shouldn’t be. He couldn’t give anything in that relationship. He could only get. And maybe Tara Chang was it for Guil. Or maybe she wasn’t.

A winter in a one-room cabin might be a start on finding it out.

Meanwhile he had two boys in his charge. Carlo and Randy; and a kid who might never get any better: Brionne Goss. He knew things he didn’t need to tell.

He was, right now, their best hope of living.

So it was a down-payment on the debt he had.

“Come on,” he said to the boys, and sent Cloud on ahead to break the trail, Cloud’s three-toed feet being quite adept at doing that. It was what Cloud was born to, the High Wild, and the mountain.

There were villages on the High Loop that would take strays in. There were villages where the boys could find a place and a rider could earn a living if he wanted to stay.

But down by spring, he thought. He wasn’t ready to settle yet. Neither was Cloud.

was in Cloud’s thought.

And an upward road.