Rider at the Gate

Chapter V

THE SUN WAS COMING. THAT WAS THE SURE PROOF THAT THE world had rolled on without much giving a damn. Something died, something became something else’s supper, something brand new saw the dawn, and the world was still here.

Guil Stuart became aware of that fact, sitting, blanketed in grass, against Burn’s warm and breathing side, and watching the stars go out above the plains that began at Shamesey town—watching what, in the mountains, you couldn’t see: the edge of the world, where the illusory daylight began, unraveling the night along a long seam of light.

Almost cloudless morning.

Nice day.

His leg hurt. Damn stupid, walking on it. It didn’t want to bend now. He supposed it would, once he warmed up: his legs were numb and his backside was feeling the chill seeping up through the grass mat from the ground beneath. His hands were icy cold… he’d come away with no hat, no scarf, no gloves, and he’d waked with a pale rime of frost on the ground, on the leaves of knifegrass he’d cut for a lap-robe, and on the toes of his boots. If he moved, he might lose the grass he’d so meticulously arranged, which would expose his arm and shoulder to the icy cold, while the other arm, the one against Burn’s body, was comfortably warm, so he chose not to move, and not to disturb Burn’s sleep.

It seemed not but an hour or so ago that they’d settled to rest, unable to go on, Burn aching from the effort and unwilling to take another step. Burn had settled on the ground to sleep, not Burn’s habit when the ground was this cold, but Burn’s legs were tired.

So, having been so bright as to have left his pocket matches and his glass with his guns and his trail gear (God, it was slovenly camp habits he’d fallen into lately, having no glass and no matches on him; but, hell, he hadn’t expected to be on his own in the Wild in what he stood in, either) he’d done the best he could. He’d cut the tall plains grass for a mat to keep Burn’s belly warm and for a cover for himself. He’d been too tired to weave strip-and-tie mats—the cold hadn’t been that bad, and his eyes had kept shutting while he worked.

But he’d worked up a sweat doing it. And hurt the leg, like a fool. But it was numb with the morning cold, not too bad. The side of him next to Burn was downright warm.

If he didn’t move, Burn wouldn’t.

Aby died, and the morning after, the uncaring sun came up, and the man who, alone in the world, ought to be broken-hearted, was busy preserving his own warm spot in the frosty dawn, moving his toes in his boots to be sure they would move… first small venture of his mind out of its deliberate search for pain and distraction, and it wasn’t so bad, the world wasn’t, the cold wasn’t, the sun wasn’t. It was incredible it all went on, but it did, and he found he did, miraculously sitting on the other side of a black pit he just couldn’t look into yet.

He wasn’t interested to look. Aby was gone and there wasn’t anything profitable in that dark, crazed night past, the night he could remember only because some fool townsmen had tried to blow his leg off.

Fool rider, far more to the point. He’d risked Burn, going down there in the mood he was in, and he was bitterly angry with himself for that. He’d lost all his gear but the knives he carried, but, hell, he deserved to lose it for what he’d done, and Shamesey could keep it for good, before he’d go whimpering back to Shamesey camp gates, saying he was all right now and could he have his guns back? He knew why the gate-guards had fired at him—it wasn’t a justified fear: he hadn’t been beyond controlling himself until they’d shot at him, but that didn’t matter in townsman accounts. They just wanted what they wanted, thought what they wanted to think, and they could go to hell and keep what they wanted.

His frame of mind didn’t matter much to the camp-boss either, who just wanted peace in his camp, and no troubles. Wesson might even agree to take him back into camp, but there’d be somebody tagging him the entire winter, and there’d be quarrels lurking. He’d been surprised to find Harper and his cronies in camp when he’d gotten there. He hadn’t liked it, and he wasn’t limping back there to try to restrain his temper in Harper’s case, not this season. Figure that Harper would push until he got something. There was too much between them.

Death happened. Riders died. Mostly they died young and by surprise, a nasty quick accident in storm or slide or some hole in a river-bottom. Moon had gone along with Aby, which was the best way, rider and horse at once, nothing untidy, a minimum of pain… Aby couldn’t leave Moon. That pair couldn’t be split.

He could take to the road and go on down toward the coast, to Malvey town. He knew riders who might winter there, and he liked them better than he knew or liked folk in huge Shamesey camp.

Ava Cassey might be at Malvey, freckled Ava, who…

… who wasn’t Aby, dammit, who was far short of Aby’s measure, and who, good-natured as she was, didn’t deserve to put up with a man constantly moping about that fact. The horses didn’t leave you much illusion. No polite lies. No self-deceit, for that matter.

A lump gathered in his throat. The stinging in his eyes wasn’t the cold. The rime-ice showed white crystals on the grass as the sun slowly widened its eye—showed white on his boot-seams, on his toes, but Burn was a warm lump against him, and under Burn’s mane he had a warm place for his fingers.

He sat there watching the sun come up, watching the sky become pinkly opaque, and the autumn grass go to golds and pale browns, with here and there the dark brown seed-spikes of what was, in summer, gold and red-flowering fireweed.

The frosts came steadily now. Most mornings like this one showed rime. Green and gold-green died. The browns and the reds came into their own season, on the foothills first, then on the rolling plains.

So very few times anybody could count on seeing that change. You thought you’d see it forever. You thought you were immortal. But what had Aby gotten? Twenty-six times the seasons turned, twenty-six autumns, twenty-six times to see the fireweed die and the snows fall, and three and four and five of those times being a clingy brat kid who didn’t pay attention.

You got only so many nights to see the stars. You got only so many sunrises. Shouldn’t a man go out from under roofs and look at them?

Maybe that was the poison in towns like Shamesey, or grim, gray Malvey, where factories smoked the pristine sky.

Only so many times to make love. Only so many frosty mornings.

A man should wake up and know he couldn’t buy one, not for all the townsmen’s money. The days came to you and you didn’t know how many you’d get.

He couldn’t know, for instance, if he’d ever see the seeds of those brown spikes grow up gold again, or the flowers flaming red. He should have looked more carefully at the summer fields.

He should pay attention to the frost this morning. He should look at the wispy pink of the clouds and know he was using up his ration of them.

That was the happiest thing Burn knew. By which he knew that Burn was awake and pigs were in danger.

“Haven’t got any bacon,” Guil muttered, and moved a hand to scratch beneath Burn’s abundant mane. “Wish I had.” He could taste it. He began to ask himself was it fair to Burn to go up to the privations of the highlands for the winter, and not to go back to Shamesey town, to comfort he could, at cost to his pride, bargain for.

Burn imaged.

Burn had such faith in him. He didn’t know where to procure the death of pigs.

Except… there was a place on the way to the upland, the high passes. There was a factor Aby’d taken hire with; and there was, in the way of towns, a bank in Anveney.

They said if you put funds in at Shamesey you could get them out at Anveney; or down in Malvey; or clear to Darwin.

He’d never tested that idea before. He’d always carried all he owned, until he got to camp, put funds in with the camp he’d winter in—and had this year; but there was an account he and Aby held, Aby’s idea; and he’d put his carrying-cash in it, the way Aby had said. He’d been relatively sure he could get that out again at Shamesey, if he walked into that Shamesey office and said hand it over… now. The Shamesey camp-boss had said it was as good as having it on account with him, and as safe.

He’d doubted it. But he’d done it, the way Aby asked him to.

He was less sure about Anveney, and this business of getting money out where he hadn’t put money in. But maybe what Aby believed was true. Shamesey had phone lines up to Anveney. Wherever the phones worked—and they worked, intermittently, at least, in the lowlands, until the first ice-storm of the winter—the money was supposed to be available. Merchants certainly seemed to do it… although townsmen looked out for each other and cheated riders when they could.

Well, he could see. He could try. There was that man in Anveney whose shipping business Aby had worked for on a regular basis—it had been Cassivey goods in that inbound convoy, he’d seen the flags.

And knowing that was the job Aby had taken, he wanted to ask Cassivey some questions, too, like what in hell had been so last-rush important a convoy had to go up there, risking the weather, risking the movement of creatures who always became more active and more dangerous when winter was threatening and the urge to mate and feed up fat took prey and predators alike.

But that led to darker thoughts he didn’t want to think, and to anger he didn’t want to entertain.

Burn just thought of bacon and wheat-cakes frying, in abundant grease.

Danny didn’t own a rifle. He had a pistol, fifty years old, a good one, though the ammunition was of a large caliber that was hard to come by. He’d paid for it what you’d pay for a good rifle, but a high country rider didn’t encumber himself with much else, and he’d thought it would be a good idea to have the firepower, for his sake and Cloud’s. He’d bought that before he’d promised anything on the replastering and the paint for his family.

In the same way he’d gotten a good flat-brimmed hat to keep himself from sunburn, and a good, heavy coat, with a lining gone to rags and the elbows patched, and with a new patch and some stain on the side, of which the second-hander didn’t know the cause… but it was far better than the new ones he could have afforded. It was beautiful, buttery-beige cowhide and had fringes as long as his hand. He’d bought new, bullhide boots to fend off the brush, boots made for his feet, and fit for walking, when Cloud decided that he’d had enough of carrying a healthy young man.

He owned, besides that, one truly good knife; and, of course, his trail kit, with fold-up pans for eating and cooking.

Plus a couple of second-hand blankets, with frayed edges, but he’d hemmed those up, which had given him a lot of practice with his stitches… you could see a considerable difference between where he’d started and where he’d finished.

And he couldn’t, especially on this cold dawn, forget the where-from of all of it, because Guil Stuart had given him a list, once upon that rainy afternoon, of the gear he most urgently had to have, and told him besides how to get the best quality and who to deal with, and when to take second-hand and when not.

Because, Stuart had said, that’s a high country horse you’ve got, and if you really want to go, he’ll take you there someday. Likely he’ll take you there even if you don’t want it. Count on it, if you take my advice.

Count on it just as surely, too, as he’d discovered his very first long convoy trip, that Cloud wasn’t any pack-animal. He’d stowed his stuff, except his pistol and a single reload of ammo, in the supply truck, and kept on good terms with the drivers, because Cloud wasn’t the one of the two of them that was going to carry any packs, thank you: Cloud didn’t like anything but his rider on his back, and Cloud didn’t tolerate loads of gear on his rider.

His gear right now was adding up to a fair weight, when he included in the makings for biscuits and a slab of cured bacon and the jerky. He’d gone to the suppliers first thing as their doors opened, and asked outright for what a traveler would most need in the High Wild. Jerky was lightweight. A couple of slabs of bacon of course solved the oil problem for the biscuits, so he didn’t have to have a container of that, but there were six kilos of flour and soda to carry for a long stay in the high country, as would be, if the roads became impassable.

Cloud would hunt, when weather and time permitted; but what Cloud caught, he might not want, so he took fishhooks, line and cord. The extra rounds for the pistol, which he couldn’t count on getting in the high country, weighed like sin, but that could provide meat he’d otherwise have to carry up there. He began to ask himself what the balance was between weight he could carry himself and how willing he was to go a little hungrier. Flour weighed more than jerky, value for value. But jerky cost more.

You traded with your traveling companions. But you didn’t ever, Stuart had warned him, want to get down to needing to trade. You never came out ahead.

Spare blade. Razor, for more than shaving, and a good oilstone.

Clean rolled bandages, sewing kit that was for your clothes or you if you needed it; awl and a piece of leather to wrap it in that could become ties if you needed them. Burning glass. Waxed matches. Spare shirt, spare socks, and heavy underwear. You could literally die of a soaking rain and a strong wind up in the hills. He’d heard too many stories about freezing to death after a slip in a mountain stream, or going hypothermia in a rainstorm that wasn’t even cold enough to make snow, because the wind always blew up there, strong and cold, especially when the sun was going down.

He’d heard every horror story in camp, and a lot of it encompassed good advice, he was sure. But he didn’t want to look, either, like the novice that he was, and he’d tried to get his load down to as small and as light a set of packs as he could possibly make, counting he’d maybe been extravagant in food. He didn’t own a proper pack-kit for it, but he’d had enough of canvas sacks that got soaked, last time he’d gone out, and he’d stitched together a real oiled-leather kit—with a great deal of swearing, his fingers repeatedly bloodied by the awl and the needle-butt; no fancy seams, either—oiled twine and thongs instead of proper leatherworking and buckles to connect the bags together. He’d thought he’d save money. But it didn’t, when he loaded it, hang quite the way he’d planned. Worst of all—it was new, raw leather that hadn’t even been rained on.

The Westmans and their cousin Hawley, who’d blazed through the supplier’s before him with definite knowledge of what they needed, had gathered at the den exit, at the main camp gate. They were lean and tanned, they and their gear were weathered alike to a general impression of browns and blacks and tans against the solid black of their horses. They were the sort of experienced-looking riders that convoy bosses probably never even dared ask how many times they’d been to any destination.

But, unexpected and unwelcome witnesses, a cluster of idle younger riders had gathered in the vicinity of the gates, standing with backs against the hostel wall, and Danny found himself far more public than he had ever planned to be as he walked toward the rendezvous by the gates. His private obligation had gotten him a reputation-making hire, he suddenly realized, and he was the center of his age-mates’ attention and gossip—maybe even the object of their envy. He tried not to think that: the horses might betray anything he thought, though he got none of the expected catcalls and heckling from the junior bystanders. He was only aware of the senior riders’ impatience in waiting for him.

“Ready?” Jonas asked and, not waiting for his answer, Jonas vaulted up onto his horse’s back—a flashy move, a show-out move, one Danny hadn’t perfected and Cloud didn’t much like.

Cloud wasn’t even out of the den yet. He wanted Cloud to hurry up. Please.

And true to habit Cloud came sauntering leisurely and calmly out of the log-and-earth den and into the morning sun. Cloud shook himself all over as he reached the daylight, making a haze of dust, Cloud having (depend on it) rolled in it; and for a moment as horse met horse the ambient was full of images, all uneasy.

Cloud moved into the vicinity, refusing to take any orders from Jonas’ horse, flatly, no. Every horse in the trail party was male and older, autumn was nippish in the air, and the Westmans might be a working partnership in which a new horse and rider weren’t necessarily welcome—but that didn’t daunt Cloud in the least—Cloud was

Teeth clacked, snap, just short of a nighthorse rump, as Cloud passed Jonas’ horse to the rear. A foot cocked and slyly kicked back, again a miss, all calculated, all narrowly short of mayhem—just a trial of personalities.

Jonas swatted his own horse across the withers, and the meeting last night flashed across Danny’s mind, skinnier and plainer and more junior than he thought he was. He’d learned their names last night, when he’d agreed to come with them: Jonas and Luke Westman and Hawley Antrim, who was somehow a cousin of theirs and related to Aby Dale. Their horses… they imaged themselves, and no rider could totally figure a strange horse’s name on meeting: but in their riders’ word-names, they were Shadow and Froth and Ice respectively, a chilly set of impressions in the ambient.

He laid a hand on Cloud’s neck. Shadow had annoyed Cloud, and Danny really, desperately hoped that Cloud wasn’t going to make him start out the trip walking, in the company of senior riders, with all the juniors lined up at the gate to watch.

He made a solid try at getting up on Cloud’s back, determined to do it on the first attempt, and determined that Cloud not move away from under him.

To his relief he landed square on, and immediately Cloud took a snap at Froth’s rump, moving closer, momentary jolt.

But Jonas had started riding toward the gates, and the others followed, the horse called Froth not without a snap back at Cloud in retaliation.

< Still water, > Danny kept thinking, as he followed the three out the gates of Shamesey camp. Nobody got thrown, nobody bit anybody: he let the three senior riders go well ahead as they rode in leisurely fashion past the gates of Shamesey town.

He thought then—he was suddenly sure that he should have sent a note to town, telling his parents where he was and what he was doing. For one thing, it would make his parents worry about him for a satisfactory several months.

—Off hunting a rogue horse. Don’t worry. Back before summer. Love, Your Son.

He really, truly wished he’d done that. They deserved it. His father deserved it.

And, thinking that, he lagged farther and farther back, away from the casual images the three seniors let flow back and forth, because he didn’t want to think about his family in their range, or eavesdrop on their business, either, feeling himself on scant enough tolerance.

He’d be on trial with them for the first while, he was sure: they thought he was useful because he could hear Guil Stuart farther than he was supposed to. They said it was because he was a snot-nosed junior who couldn’t control what he thought, and in spite of the fact that that was his use, he didn’t intend to broadcast everything in his head all the way to catching Stuart, or annoy them with his junior-rider insecurities spilling over at them.

So, first to keep from thinking of home, and then to keep from thinking about the trip ahead and the chances of trouble, he looked at the grass moving in the breeze. He noted the footprints of a timid scavenger that had crossed the road last night. Field-rats, he thought. Somebody had been careless with the garbage. Probably the garbage-wagons had spilled over when they went out yesterday to the dump. Out there—the province of truly junior riders—you got vermin so thick the ground moved.

Cloud’s skin twitched. Garbage-guard was a job he’d never done but a week. He’d have starved first. Cloud didn’t want to think about it, and switched his tail energetically, thinking instead of until his head was crowded with those thoughts.

He’d meant to look back at least once while they were near enough, but he’d decided not: the juniors might be watching from the gate. He did only when they rode past the shoulder of the hill, when the road wound around it and he knew it was his last chance before it cut off sight of Shamesey town.

But all he could see from there was the wooden wall, the pastures, the fences out across the valley.

He saw the cattle-keepers taking the cattle out for their daily pasturage, far in the distance. The junior cattle-guards were the little moving dots of darkness far in the lead. The herds of cattle and sheep and pigs went out like that every day, rain or shine, until the snow fell.

He might be doing that all winter, instead, earning a few coins, or, at best, riding winter watch on the phone lines that ran along the road to Anveney and down the coast to Malvey, watching for breaks and guarding the crews that kept them working.

The lines ran beside them as they traveled, following the road. They were all that let you believe that human civilization stretched out into the Wild. The shadows of them went on and on across the land, a convenient perch for birds that preyed on vermin in the grass. He saw them, dots along the wire, as the sun grew higher. He heard their buzzing cries. He sometimes had that strange out-of-body notion that he was watching himself ride along with three other riders; but that wasn’t a bird sending that impression: that was some creature a little closer to the earth and with a bigger brain than any bird had. It was watching them from the rocks that cropped out of the grass on the west side of the road. The cattle-guards might need to look sharp, later in the day.

The riders ahead of him didn’t speak. He had other, less spooky images, sometimes: Cloud’s, of the High Wild, he was sure that was what he was seeing,

Cloud switched his tail as he walked, quite certain where he was going now, quite content with the direction, but not—not communicative or sociable with the horses ahead of them.

Cloud was uneasy, Danny thought, and saw the twitch of Cloud’s ears, the backward slant of them that accompanied a thought of

Danny shivered. He slapped Cloud with his hand to distract him. “Don’t be like that. They’re older, is all, you silly sheep. Don’t pick a fight. There’s three of them.”

Cloud wasn’t happy with the riders or their horses. He wasn’t sure Cloud understood what they were after, coming out here, except the chance to go into the highlands—which Cloud did approve.

Cloud, he thought on the instant, didn’t see any real reason to be following the tails of three other horses. Cloud could take him where he wanted to go. Cloud didn’t need a guide.

And in that thought, also, he suffered a clear, cold realization where he was, on the dusty road far from Shamesey town and Shamesey camp, headed north into territory he knew was dangerous for the weather alone—to be stuck there probably for the whole winter, in company with three strangers he’d only just met, of a class of people reputed for wildness and strange manner, and whose only recommendation was being friends of a man, also a borderer, whom he only remotely knew.

“No,” he muttered, disquieted. He toed Cloud in the ribs. Cloud tossed his head, threw a cow-kick to jolt his rider.

He couldn’t ask why Cloud thought that way. He couldn’t find an image to argue with, nothing but the same dead-rider image that Cloud threw him. he tried to inform Cloud. < Stuart on the porch. Bacon and gear. Lots of bacon. Biscuits. Stuart in the High Wild, on Burn.>

Cloud threw his head and sulked.

So Cloud was just generally disappointed in their company, disapproving of anything but

“We can’t,” Danny said. “We promised. And maybe Stuart can’t get this thing by himself. This thing’s bad, it’s real bad, Cloud.” He didn’t want to think about it, but he wondered if Cloud had any real idea what they were chasing up into the hills, or how it connected to the dead rider. And the wondering alone connected it.

Cloud imaged, so vividly, so threateningly for a moment he couldn’t see the riders ahead of him or the hills or anything.

“Somebody’s got to get rid of it.”

Cloud’s ears came up. With a kick and a toss of his head, Cloud dived uphill off the road, jolted slantwise across the hill as Danny grabbed a double fistful of mane.

“Stop it!” Danny yelled.

But Cloud didn’t stop it. Cloud had the mountains in his mind, and that was all he wanted to see.

“Dammit!” Danny yelled. “Cut it out, Cloud! Stop!”

Cloud didn’t stop.

Danny imaged, and began to figure where he and Cloud could part company without his breaking an ankle. He slid to one side, displaced their center of weight, and hung on to Cloud’s mane, put his feet down a couple of times, sliding on the grass, before Cloud sulked to a slower pace.

Danny planted his feet hard, on the grass, and skidded, holding on to Cloud’s mane, his packs swinging around him as he jolted over a series of uneven spots on the hill.

Cloud just kept plowing ahead, dragging him with him, imaging while he returned raw anger, that was most of it, and, when he wasn’t fighting for footing. He was determined to win the fight, determined he wasn’t going to give in with the seniors watching from below, not if he had to walk for the next three days.

But Cloud was mad, too. Cloud took out on a particularly steep uphill and Danny braced his feet the harder—until his feet hit a rock. His grip on Cloud’s mane jerked Cloud’s forequarters around, threatening to bring them both down.

At once he gave up his grip on the mane, which put the downhill under him—he fell through empty space, curled to protect his head, landed with his baggage under his back and skidded downhill over the slick, dusty grass.

He fetched up finally on a small grassy hump, momentarily out of slope to slide on, with the laughter of the strangers ringing out from below the hill. His feet were pointed upslope—between which he saw Cloud standing staring down at him.

He rolled over, struggled against the downhill slant to get his feet under him, and got up, with the thong-tied packets banging about his arms, without the weight of the pistol in its holster. He saw it downslope, beyond him, and he slouched down the hill in a fit of temper, recovered it to its holster and sulked on down to the road, walking aslant on the hill, because the Westmans and Hawley, having had their laugh, were going on, leaving him to sort it out, and he had to overtake them, afoot or ahorse, they clearly didn’t care.

He was mortified. He didn’t look back to find out where Cloud was. He limped on down toward the road, intending to intercept them, still finding bits of dry grass to pick out of leather seams and brush out of his hair.

Cloud couldn’t resist making him look the fool. It was one thing when he dumped him in front of the juniors. It was another, when he was working, when matters were serious and he was out on the road. He was furious with Cloud. The seniors were clearly disgusted with him. Their riding on meant they were testing him, whether he could get himself together and catch up.

And then he either misjudged where he should intercept the others, or misjudged how fast he had to follow, because by the time he reached sight of the road, having crossed over the shoulder of the hill—they were nowhere in sight.

He went downslope, not believing that they would have left the road and turned off cross-country, but not sure of that until he saw their tracks in the dirt of the roadway.

So he followed them, having no suppositions whatsoever that Cloud was going to leave him. Cloud was up there in the hills, not far, probably watching him, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge that fact.

So Cloud wouldn’t carry him. Then Cloud could trail him along the heights of the hills, playing his little games while he fell farther and farther behind the Westmans, and while the Westmans laughed at Cloud’s foolish junior rider, that was all Cloud had gained.

Meanwhile he was hurt. He’d bruised his backside, his shoulders, and all but knocked the wind out of himself. He had itchy grass down his collar that he couldn’t reach. He’d hurt his ankle when he hit the rock that caused his fall, and it was probably swelling. He might be lame for life. He hoped Cloud was satisfied, making him look like a fool, which Cloud had to do every damned time it was really important to convince somebody that he knew what he was doing, and he hoped Cloud really enjoyed his temper tantrum. Cloud’s rider was humiliated, and bruised, and ready to guard cattle for the rest of their lives.

Which would probably happen to them. He’d fall so far behind the other riders he’d never catch up. He and Cloud would have to limp back to Shamesey camp alone, their reputation would be ruined, all the high country riders would know he wasn’t to be relied upon, the juniors would laugh at them, and they’d never, ever, ever make it to the mountains.

He wasn’t sure Cloud heard him that far up the hill. He was too mad to care. The other riders were out so far ahead now he no longer tried to overtake them. He could only hope they stayed on the road, and didn’t put him to tracking them across open country, at which he wasn’t as good as he needed to be.

He could lose them if they got off the road and he’d be out in the dark alone with the goblin cats and the willy-wisps.

He was damned mad.

came to his mind.

Maybe that was his thought.

Fine, he said to himself, and sulked along, limping with his sore ankle on the rutted road, a mere track the trucks maintained, dragging chain on the undercarriages to keep the weeds down. It was a fine road for trucks. It was perfectly fine for nighthorses.

It was a damned sorry mess for human feet.

It was a damned long walk, measured in telephone poles and sore joints, and in the tracks of the riders in front of him, riders doubtless laughing at him. And he was more and more sure that Cloud was up there on the heights, as steep as the hills had risen above this section of road.

Maybe the other riders could stop for noon break, but he didn’t dare stop, for fear of not overtaking them before dark. He kept thinking, irritably, Cloud understood that.

And eventually, when his steps were growing shorter and shorter, and his tailbone decidedly hurt with every step, he saw a dim image of

he sent. He’d learned stubbornness from Cloud.

< Danny getting down from Cloud. Danny falling down the hill.>

<Danny going off over Cloud’s shoulder, > he sent back, the maddest he’d ever been at Cloud.

The argument kept up, until he changed tactics, thought about pain and sore feet and bruises, thought and < still water. >

Then he was aware of Cloud’s presence closer than had been. Cloud met him as the road took a bend and a climb, Cloud standing on the hillside, and then walking along, head down and ears flat. Danny threw him only the most casual of glances, and limped, badly, thinking about < woods and rocks and the dead rider. >

Dirty trick.

He heard Cloud behind him, then. He didn’t have to look. He could see himself, ahead of Cloud, limping along with the stupid baggage.

He heard Cloud closer, a whispering in the grass, a soft breathing.

Cloud imaged.

< Raindrops on still water, > he thought, and Cloud shoved him between the shoulders.

Cloud thought.

Unfair, of course. Humans couldn’t image on their own, but humans were tricky and inventive when they got the knack of it.

Cloud peevishly dashed raindrops onto their still reflection. Cloud understood his tactic.

But Cloud couldn’t drown the reflection. Cloud wasn’t as mad as the human in question was determined—and the human in question wasn’t stopping or getting into details. Danny just kept limping ahead, in the tracks of horses nice enough to carry their riders.

Cloud thought.

Cloud could combine images when two thoughts crossed in his head.

And they clearly had.

Cloud came up beside him and slumped along pace for pace. They walked along maybe half an hour before Danny thought and Cloud stopped and waited for him to climb up.

He didn’t do so well getting up this time. He hadn’t the strength for a swing on Cloud’s mane, he just planted his arms across Cloud’s back, jumped up and landed belly-down, tangled in the strings of his baggage, to work his way across Cloud’s back in a maneuver he would be humiliated to do in front of the strangers he was trying to overtake, while, annoyed by a knee in his kidneys, Cloud began to amble on his way, giving him no grace whatsoever.

But Danny didn’t argue. Cloud was going his direction.

he thought, to please Cloud.

Cloud imaged,

“Cloud. Behave. Dammit.” He’d not had so much trouble out of Cloud on the regular hire they’d taken. He’d worked with other riders. He didn’t know why Cloud should take so profound a dislike to horses that were going to guide them to the High Wild, that would be their protection by their experience and their riders’ guns once they reached an area they might not be able to cross safely on their own… granted anything went amiss.

Cloud persisted sullenly.

Then Cloud threw his head and looked back, just the red-edged corner of a nighthorse eye, cast along their backtrail.

Nostrils widened.

Cloud imaged, and stopped joking.

Did we miss them? was Danny’s first thought—stupid thought. There were multiple nighthorse tracks under Cloud’s feet at the moment.

They were following three horses. But Cloud was looking behind them.

He thought of the horse who’d gone out the gate, following Stuart:

Cloud persisted. Cloud didn’t think it was one horse he was hearing back there.

Line riders, Danny thought. Inspecting the phone lines.

But it wasn’t the day they usually went out, when he thought of it—unless they had a break in the line that shut down the phones, which would bring somebody much faster.

So who among the riders would go? Danny asked himself and Cloud, trying to see if Cloud could recognize the horses.

But Cloud didn’t answer his perplexity, except with this same dark image of more than one horse, on ambiguous ground, except that there was Cloud’s wind-image in it, the sweeping of the images, coming and going, distorting to many and back to a conservative two or three.

Danny asked.

Cloud shifted footing, snorted to clear his nostrils of stray scents and sniffed again.

was all Cloud could give him, but this time they had riders, less certain an image—just the illusion of shadows atop shadows.

Not wild horses, then. Not likely, unless Cloud was getting not the scent but the desire of the horses for humans.

A wild lot wasn’t something to meet in the autumn. And they did go on the move in this season.

Danny suggested. But Cloud didn’t, Cloud only started uphill and off the road, where Danny didn’t want to go.

Danny swatted Cloud’s shoulder, wanting

was Cloud’s thought.

And Cloud picked up the pace.

Danny thought, not the still-water of silence, but

Cloud didn’t think so. And maybe it was true: they were so close the scent-image came to them on the wind from their backs, and strange riders were almost certainly back there—it was too persistent to be anything Cloud just remembered. But the wind came to them treacherously as it did in the foothills, reversing its ordinary direction in places, coming almost east to west, when nearly the opposite was the rule on the road—and they could only trust the wind would shift again.

A human knew that. He wasn’t sure Cloud did. What ruled Cloud’s decision was likely the surety that he didn’t smell humans in the direction he took and he did smell them at their backs.

Trouble was what they had to reckon it. Towns were the safe zones. You didn’t trust what you ran into in the Wild—not solitary riders or groups of riders. That was the law Danny Fisher knew. Maybe it was a townsman way of thinking, but Cloud lit out at that fast-traveling pace Cloud could hold for long, long runs— Cloud had learned that humans didn’t put their noses down and smell tracks, but they saw them and they understood them by processes that had never occurred to Cloud.

That was what Cloud reasoned—maybe as far as the fact that nighthorses without humans didn’t use roads. And Cloud wasn’t staying around to meet them.