Rider at the Gate

Chapter VIII

MAN’S A DAMN GHOST,” HAWLEY SAID, AT THEIR WIND-BLOWN campfire that night, high on the road, in a clump of evergreens that gave them a little shelter. There was no sign of passage but the ruts the trucks had made in the road. The prints of horses on the dust were old, hardened mud; the tracks of game were newer. They hadn’t turned up tracks or sight or scent of Guil Stuart or, for that matter, any sight at all of whoever they’d sensed following them.

Maybe we imagined it, Danny thought against his day-long inclination. He was, by now, willing to doubt his perceptions and Cloud’s.

Maybe I misled everybody.

“It’s sure a steep climb if he’s gone straight up the ridge,” Luke said, meaning “Question is, how bad was he hit? He could have gone to ground somewhere, if he was bleeding heavy.”

The question turned unexpectedly to Danny then, when his mind was half-elsewhere; but Jonas was next to him, looking at him, so that a crawling-feeling went up and down Danny’s skin.

Jonas wanted, Jonas was impatient, that came through, and Danny’s wits went scattered. also came through to him, along with a feeling of irritation.

“Boy,” Jonas said. “You’d tell us if you had a thought of Stuart’s whereabouts. That so?”

“Yeah, but I don’t. Sorry.”

Jonas kept pushing at him. Friendly in the morning. Jonas’ back to him all afternoon. Everybody talking. Except him.

He rolled to his knees, intending to leave the fireside and go over to Cloud’s vicinity, where he was comfortable and welcome.

“Kid,” Luke said, not half so harshly. Luke was the friendlier, youngest one, the one he didn’t want a fight with—Luke maybe knew it. He couldn’t tell what got through to other people. “Sit down. Sit down, all right? Just a question.”

It wasn’t just a question, he thought, with upset still roiling in his stomach. The question he was asking himself was about his own competency, a question so wide and general through his life he didn’t want to consider it except piece at a time, and most of all he didn’t want to consider it with them.

But he didn’t want a fight with Luke, so he sat back down, arm around one knee, and found a dead seedpod to break up into dry pieces.

“Ought to have stayed with mama,” Jonas muttered.

“Yeah, fine,” he said back. “You want an answer, Jonas, sir? I don’t know where he is. I’m not hiding him.”

He was unhappy, Cloud was unhappy.

“You’re being loud, kid,” Jonas said.

“Yeah, well, get off me. Doing the best I can.” He didn’t look at Jonas or the rest of them. The seedpod was far more interesting. It had four inside chambers, with hard, round seeds, brown in the firelight. Crunch. Four, six, a handful. He tossed them at the fire, one, two, three, trying to land one where it would burn visibly. Two hit, off, the third landed under the glowing archway of branches at the edge. Achievement.

“Kid.” That was Hawley. He didn’t dislike Hawley. He really, really wasn’t sure about Jonas.

“Kid’s adjusting,” Jonas said. “And he doesn’t know.”

Truth. Jonas always talked nicer about him than Jonas talked to him. He didn’t know why Jonas couldn’t do a little adjusting himself.

Didn’t know why Jonas had wanted him if nobody was going to believe him, except that remark Jonas had made about him being bait, and he didn’t take that altogether as fluffery. They might have intentions like that, using him that way, to draw Stuart in; and no reason they shouldn’t tell him so.

They probably thought he was lying about people following him, trying to make himself important, trying to cover his trailing in late the way he had, as if there was some big, awful danger out there and he’d escaped it on his own.

Serve them right if somebody did come up on them. And he’d warn them, of course, but they wouldn’t listen. They were seniors, and knew everything.

“Kid,” Jonas said. “Calm down for two minutes, have you got it? We can send the horses off a ways so you and I can have a discussion, if you want.”

“No, sir,” he muttered. Nobody was sending Cloud anywhere he didn’t want Cloud to go. But it wasn’t smart to quarrel with men who carried knives for more than fire-making. It didn’t even take a junior’s intelligence to figure that out.

“Guns are quicker,” Jonas remarked dryly.

He was sending, again. Dammit.

“The kid’s just upset,” Luke said. “Lay off, Jonas. You’re pushing him too hard.”

“Damn right I’m pushing him. We leave him at Tarmin village first chance we get. The rogue’d have him for breakfast. Go right for him, it would. I don’t plan to get him killed.”

Madder and madder. Insult and concern. He couldn’t read Jonas’ signals and he couldn’t say whether Jonas was right or wrong. He wanted to go to Cloud the way he’d started to and not have to listen to them. He’d no need of lectures. But he’d been told to sit down, by the only one of them who was civil to him, and if Luke got mad at him the trip was going to be hell.

Cloud ambled up into the firelight, snuffing at the ground, insinuated his big head over Danny’s shoulder and rested it there, imaging

Danny patted Cloud’s cheek, and Cloud’s soft nose investigated his pockets, wanting he was sure his rider ought to have.

Cloud didn’t do things totally unselfishly.

“What I still can’t figure,” Hawley said, “is what he’s doing.”

He meant Stuart.

“Maybe he thinks the camp’s sent out hunters,” Luke said.

“They have, of course,” Jonas said, and it took Danny a second and more to realize Jonas meant themselves, that that was what they were. It didn’t even count whoever was following them. He told himself what he’d perceived was real, no matter what Jonas thought. It was a damned stupid mess, over a rider who hadn’t done anything—anything but go to the gate trying to get his belongings back.

Which they had brought with them. Supposedly to give Stuart’s belongings back to him when they found him.

But he wasn’t so sure what Jonas’ personal motives were.

He was probably sending again, but Jonas ignored it, just kicked the cook pan into the fire for the fire to clean. There wasn’t much grease. It made a flare, and the flare died quickly. He’d have to wipe it down in the morning, with a twist of grass, nasty job. But the youngest rider always got those jobs, it was a law of the universe.

“Suppose he did get hit worse than we thought?” Luke asked.

“I don’t think so,” Danny muttered without even thinking about it, and wished he hadn’t opened his mouth on any of their business, but Luke asking was different from Jonas asking, in his estimation, and by that comment, he’d committed himself. He found his hand resting on his leg above the knee, remembered the pain of the gunshot across the skin, the shock to the knee bones and tendons, vivid memory—he’d played it out a dozen times in his head and he did it for them, the whole image, to answer Luke’s question.

“Didn’t go through,” Hawley judged with a grimace. “Went past. Burned him good, knocked him down, is all.”

“Good,” Jonas said, not meaning about knocking Stuart down, meaning him: he suddenly figured he’d just done exactly what Jonas had been trying to get out of him, exactly the way that Jonas expected, and he hated Jonas for the satisfied look Jonas cast in his direction. But he held onto Cloud’s forelock long enough to distract Cloud when Cloud jerked his head up. Cloud’s hair burned through his hand. And Jonas won. Jonas was used to winning.

“Kid’s damned good when he wants to be,” Hawley said, which doubly confused him, about whether Hawley was serious or sarcastic, as Hawley, immediately off on another tangent, imaged It looked like Guil.

“Maybe not,” Luke said, not about him being good when he wanted to be: it was the rider-image Luke shook apart, in favor of < level trail >; a definite place, it seemed to be, but it could be any place. They knew what they were imaging. He didn’t. He sat there with places he’d never seen flying back and forth through his vision and no knowledge what the question was.

From out of nowhere Jonas put his hand on Danny’s knee— scared hell out of him, that too personal, powerful touch—shook him right out of his thoughts. “Gone across to Anveney?” Jonas asked without paying further attention to him, and the image of town and smokestacks Danny had never seen in person was certainly Anveney the way he’d seen it before, in his head. It was a place, he’d learned, that riders didn’t like, except Anveney paid well… and it was the only place of all the places in the world besides Shamesey he could have identified without their help.

Jonas hit his knee, meaning Shut up, Danny thought; stop thinking into the ambient.

“Man’s got no supplies,” Luke said.

“Question is if he’s got money,” Jonas said.

“I wouldn’t leave my stash under any hostel mattress,” Hawley said. “Not in Shamesey town.”

Insult his town, while he was at it. There were limits.

Another pat of Jonas’ unwelcome hand, and Jonas wasn’t even talking to him. Jonas was thinking about a building somewhere else, a place with bars on the windows, a jail, Danny thought at first, and then thought not, it was a business. “Has he,” Jonas asked, “got a draw on Aby’s account?”

The question surprised Hawley, angered Hawley. Danny didn’t know why. Then it seemed to perplex Hawley, who scratched his stubbled chin. “Hell. She never said.”

Jonas asked: “How much was in there?”

“Healthy amount,” Hawley said sullenly. “It’s not his.”

What did they do? Danny wondered. It sounded like an account at a bank, and money the dead rider had had there—that they thought Stuart might have gone to get.

There was an uneasiness in the air, Hawley’s Ice, Cloud, Jonas’ Shadow all suddenly on edge. Jonas wasn’t at all happy.

Hawley wasn’t.

Hawley had gotten the money the dead rider owned, out of a bank, somewhere not in Shamesey—which was maybe Anveney. Danny didn’t know about banks or how you got money out of them. He’d never been inside one. Papa kept his money on him, or in the hiding-place under the floor, which he didn’t want to think about with these men seeing it…

“Kid,” Jonas said sharply, and laid a hard hand on his knee. Shook at him.

“Sorry.” He knew he’d slipped this time, and dangerous men were close to anger with each other all around him, a long lonely way from anywhere.

“No,” Jonas said. “We’re not angry, boy. Hawley has a right to the money. He’s her kin. He evidently proved it to the bank.” “Just, it’s a damn complication.”

another sending imaged. But the sending stopped in anger.

“Everybody calm down,” Luke said. “Just calm down.”

“The damn kid’s a distraction,” Hawley muttered.

“You went in there,” Jonas said, “you took that money out.”

“I had a right!”

“You could have by-damn said, Hawley!”

“I’m on that account. Look, I’m her cousin.”

“Dammit, Hawley!”

“If you had a word you could have said it, Jonas. You knew I was going to the bank. What did you think I was going to do? I got the card. She give me the card.”

“Calm down,” Luke said. “Hawley, it’s all right. You did all right.”

“Yeah, all right,” Jonas said. “If he goes there, if he knows about the money—”

“I had a right!” Hawley said.

“You had a right,” Luke said. “There’s no question you had a right. —Danny, you want to get up and move the horses back? Do us a favor?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said, and got up—the horses were crowding in, snappish and pushy with the argument. He gave a shove at Cloud. That was easy, another, harder push on Cloud’s shoulder, Cloud’s understanding that they were both to leave the fireside, but dealing with the other horses was a scary matter. The seniors’ horses didn’t want any town kid pushing them around, didn’t want to take orders from him—

He walked in among them and suddenly a queasy darkness flittered through his mind, shapes and shadows and a violence that sent him a step back, disoriented. was in the ambient, from two sides. “Cloud!” he said, and made a futile grab at Cloud’s mane as horses squealed and heads darted past him, teeth bared, big bodies swinging about perilously close to him as shoulder hit shoulder.

Another spin. Cloud and Shadow. Heels flew past him and he jumped back barely in time.

“Shadow!” Jonas shouted.

It just stopped, horses jogged past each other in abortive attack. Shadow’s teeth snapped on empty air. Cloud’s heels kicked up and managed to miss.

He was shaking. he insisted, furiously, and but he couldn’t call their true names in his head, not with the knowledge their riders had; and meanwhile their riders were having an argument at the fireside. They wanted him out of the way because he was loud—and the horses were on edge, with each other and with Cloud on general principle. He tried to calm tempers all around, imaging but he couldn’t call the silent names, not the way their riders could.

He’d seen Shadow’s name when the fight started, that fluttering succession of treacherous shadow-shapes. It was a dreadful name— he truly didn’t mean to think in that hostile way of Jonas’ horse, but it wasn’t a name that slid easily past the nerves. He’d mistrusted that horse from the first moment he’d dealt with it, and he didn’t turn his back on it—he was scared of that horse in a way he’d never had to be scared of a horse.

And in the aftermath of the encounter he’d just had, when he recalled Shadow’s heels flying past his head, he was twice afraid. He didn’t want to think of what could have happened to him if he’d not moved fast enough or if the fight had gotten serious with him in the midst of the horses.

Which wasn’t the way to deal with horses at all. He fought his townbred nerves. He tried to separate them out, put Cloud to one side and keep the other three from snapping at each other or him, and they kept getting around him to make another sniping attack.

“Here.” Luke Westman came to help him, clapped him on the shoulder, which did nothing to help his knees, and shoved Shadow out of a not-entirely-inquisitive approach with the back of his fist—swatted Shadow hard on the rump when he didn’t retreat. came into Danny’s head—he for God’s sake hadn’t thought it, he was scared even to think of hitting that horse—Luke had launched that threat into the ambient on his behalf, Behave or the kid will hit you.

He didn’t think it a help. But Luke waved Froth away from him and came close up on Cloud.

“What’s his name?” Luke asked, meaning the inside name, the real name Cloud called himself—but he wasn’t sure that Cloud wanted Luke to know that name. Cloud was laying his ears back and wrinkling his nose as was, and he didn’t answer Luke. He just shoved at Cloud’s chest and wanted him apart from the seniors and their horses.

“Be careful of him,” Danny said. “Cloud, behave. Don’t bite.”

“He won’t bite,” Luke said, taking something from his pocket.

He held it out. Froth muscled in and got the treat. Candy. Cloud wanted it. But Ice sneaked his head in and got the next one Luke magicked out of his pocket.

Cloud sulked, and then Shadow intruded, slipped up behind Froth and Ice so slyly and so smoothly Danny didn’t see him until Shadow’s neck snaked out and Shadow nipped the third candy Luke’s pocket produced. Cloud was outraged.

But immediately Luke’s other hand was out, offering one to Cloud… < sweet, delicious sweet > was the image in the ambient, from Luke and the horses, Danny realized, and felt Cloud wanting it, inching toward it. Sugar-candy was what he’d promised Cloud for good behavior, when he hadn’t had one, and there it was, not from his hand, but from Luke’s.

Cloud’s mouth was watering,

Cloud was going to—

“Fingers!” Danny said, earliest manners-lesson Cloud had had to learn, where treats stopped and a rider’s fingers began.

But Luke had curled his hand around to hide the treat for a second, then showed it again, just halfway, teasing, did it twice, blink of an eye, had something else out of his other pocket, in his other hand, that Shadow got before Shadow created a fuss.

Cloud’s head darted out, Luke’s hand wasn’t there, and Cloud jerked… except there was the candy again, quick as a blink, right there,

Cloud nabbed it, jerked away, and backed off, jaws working on his prize. Hostile. Enjoying the sweet. Thinking he’d gotten away with it.

“He’s fine,” Luke said. “You ought to let that horse of yours around people more. It’s good for him.”

Danny didn’t know what he felt: he was glad Luke hadn’t lost a finger, glad it hadn’t sparked a horse-fight— that Cloud had fallen for it…

“Kid,” Luke said. “What is your grief?”

“Nothing.” He couldn’t own to what he felt. He didn’t know why he was mad, except Luke knew he’d promised Cloud that candy and Luke had no right.

“Nothing,” Luke echoed him, and was in the ambient now, horses milling about, Luke growing irritated with him, Danny felt it. “Kid, —why’d you take up for Stuart?”

That came from out of nowhere, when he was ready for an accusation. “I don’t know.”

“Man did you a petty little favor. You’re traipsing clear to hell paying him. Why? What’s it to you?”

“Who hit you? A relative?”

“None of your damn business.”

“Yeah, none of our business. Till you screw up and need somebody to come after you, none of our business.”

“Like Stuart?” Danny retorted. “Me? I don’t even know him, all right? I don’t see where he screwed up. He was doing fine till you came along with your lousy news.” A lump came into his throat. So he found one man who’d talk to him like a human being, one man in the whole universe who helped him who didn’t have to. He’d thought a couple of nights ago he’d found another in Jonas. He’d thought he’d found somebody else who stood by his friends. Which was a joke.

That didn’t sound like friends to him. And he’d had friends, one or two, no matter what Jonas said—well, at least the boys he’d hung around with in town, until he’d gone and taken up with Cloud.

They’d even tried to get past that, his town friends had. At least they’d tried. Gone on seeing him and hanging about with him, when he came back into town, maybe to shock their other friends, but, hell, it was more than he could say for Jonas and the rest of them, sitting smug on their horses, watching Stuart lose his grip on sanity in the upset they’d brought him.

Suddenly it was a resolve and a certainty to him: he couldn’t stand any more of their company. He stalked back to the fireside, grabbed up his gear and started hanging thongs from his shoulder and stuffing gloves in his pocket as he walked back to Cloud—

“Can’t take it?” Jonas sniped at him, from the fireside. “This the way you honor contracts? Is this what you do to drivers you’re hired to?”

It was an attack the same way his mother attacked him. He was used to it. He jammed his hat on, reached for Cloud’s mane, the lump in his throat grown to painful size.

“Kid!” Different voice, Hawley’s. It made him flinch out of the flashy swing up he intended, but it wasn’t going to stop him: he chose the steadier, belly-down mount he knew he wouldn’t fail.

So he wasn’t good. So he got up like a kid. He was on Cloud’s back, and Cloud turned away from the fire.

“Kid. Use your damn head. Where are you going?”

“What do you care?” he thought, and Luke came and tried to get into his path. was in the ambient; but Jonas said,

“We don’t need him. If he wants to tag us he can follow. That’s all.”

He’d expected more interference. He’d frankly expected more concern. He sat there on Cloud’s back staring down at Jonas, mad, damned mad, and Jonas stared back at him.

“You’re a magnet for that thing, kid,” Jonas said. “You know that? You and that horse—making all that noise. You care about that horse? No?”

“Go to hell,” he said. He wished he hadn’t. But he’d said it. Now he couldn’t slink back to the fire. He stared down at all of them from Cloud’s back, then wanted and not Just

“Doesn’t solve your problem, kid,” Jonas’ voice pursued him into the dark.

But Cloud took him onto the road and upped the pace to a trot, downhill into the dark of a clouded night, with a wind cold and keen as a knife.

He already wanted to go back to the fire. He knew he wasn’t fool enough to ride straight uphill to Tarmin Height, first and alone, taking Cloud into what an experienced rider like Aby Dale hadn’t been wary enough to survive.

But he couldn’t find a way to go back and duck his head and take it anymore—he couldn’t see getting Cloud hurt in a horse-fight, either, and he saw it coming if he didn’t give in: Jonas was pushing for it, because Jonas intended to run him the way he bossed Luke and Hawley, and once you started taking Jonas’ orders, he had the strong suspicion, it got harder and harder to break away from what Jonas wanted. A small group riding together wasn’t at all like Shamesey camp, where there was a whole thought-deaf town to escape to when you felt thoughts crowding in on you; and when the town got too bad to tolerate, which usually took a few hours, there was Cloud to come back to.

And if everybody in the world pushed them too far they could go out to the hills and hunt for three and four days and not need anybody. He’d managed to stay out of trouble. He’d never gotten Cloud into a fight. He wasn’t about to. Not three on one. Jonas knew it. Jonas kept pushing.

Bad decision maybe, that had made Jonas drag him along; so Jonas had thought better of it, and maybe Jonas had found out he wasn’t going to knuckle under easily—but was Jonas going to say he was wrong and manage the situation as civilly as possible until they went their separate ways? Hell if he was. Jonas couldn’t take somebody who didn’t think Jonas had done right by Stuart. Maybe that was Jonas’ conscience talking to him. Maybe it was just that Jonas was born a son of a bitch. It didn’t matter.

He had to wonder how Stuart’s partner had gotten along with the man. Why Aby Dale was lying dead up there on the ridge and they’d gotten away safe.

Then they’d gone over to Anveney to draw Aby Dale’s money out of the bank before they broke the news to Stuart at Shamesey. That was two, three days to make that detour, with some trucks that had to go that direction, he was sure—riders had to take their charges where they were hired to go, and that had to be the case. Hawley hadn’t told Jonas about taking the money. That was a point in Jonas’ favor. But hell, it hadn’t been exactly a straight line they blazed with their bad news, had it? And there were telephones. If they were running a race with the weather getting up there, they could have phoned. They could have told Stuart without the rogue-image in the ambient with him at the time. Maybe he thought of that because he was a town-kid. But they knew there were telephones. Now Stuart’s friends had his money the way they had his gear, to give to him, of course. And Stuart was out there with nothing, and going all the way up to Anveney, to the bank, he supposed, to find it out.

His throat ached. His chest hurt. Cloud slowed to a walk, mad, too, thinking until Danny reached down and patted his neck.

Sometimes the images that came up were outright stupid. He didn’t know why he put those three men in the apartment with his family. They didn’t belong there.

He was mad at them and mad at his family. Luke asked who’d hit him, which was none of Luke’s business.

So what if he was mad that papa had hit him: he knew why papa had hit him, which Luke didn’t understand: papa hit him when papa couldn’t talk, the same reason he’d hit Denis—it was just something men in his family did, and it never meant you didn’t love somebody, it just meant you’d gotten to that point your throat wouldn’t work and the words weren’t there, which was when you loved somebody a whole lot and they did things you didn’t understand.

Sometimes thoughts came up that didn’t make sense, as if they’d always lived in different spots in his brain and suddenly, because some nosy fool went asking into things he’d no right to ask, these separate things got together in scary combination, notifying you things didn’t match up right, they couldn’t make sense, and maybe the only safe way to deal with thoughts like that was to send them apart from each other before they messed up something in your life you couldn’t put back the way it was.

Same way he’d found he was at odds with what the preachers said, once there was Cloud. And he was going to hell, but he still thought about God.

Same way he loved his family, and got madder at them than he ever could at Luke and Jonas, and Luke and Jonas made him mad at his family all over again. Luke and Jonas were messing with what he thought, messing with what he was, that was what they were doing—trying to bend his mind around to directions he couldn’t figure. Luke thought he was like Stuart. Luke didn’t think Stuart was a good thing to be. Neither did Jonas. Probably Hawley didn’t.

He was Aby Dale’s cousin, which he guessed explained why Aby Dale had been with them this trip and not with her partner, Stuart. But it didn’t explain the other things. Hawley hadn’t said about the money. He’d kept that even from Jonas. It wasn’t easy to keep secrets with the horses around. He couldn’t do it. But some senior riders had that reputation—he’d run into them, and you didn’t know that they were different from other people, you just wouldn’t know, that was the problem—but word got around about some, that they lied really well. He just wished it had gotten around about Jonas and Hawley before he’d been so gullible.

And hell if he or Cloud would come and eat out of Luke’s hand. He was mad that he’d almost liked Luke. He wouldn’t give in to Luke’s tricks.

Cloud hadn’t either, not really. Cloud had just gotten his candy and backed off, still mad, still free of debts. Cloud just always knew things. Cloud was smarter than people sometimes. Cloud wanted to kick the men to the moon, was all, end of problem.

Cloud thought, pleased with the thought, going along quite energetically—but he wanted Cloud to slow down on the road. They’d gone far enough they wouldn’t hear him, no matter how loud he was.

Not far enough down the road to run into trouble, either, if there was anybody back there.

Jonas, damn him, knew he’d be following them tomorrow— Jonas had flatly said so. There was just one way up from here, he was on it, and they thought they could have him back any time they wanted to slow down and let him overtake them.

The hell with that, he thought. Jonas could get used to not getting what he wanted.

Cloud was quite happy with and But when, on his thought of Cloud began thinking then Cloud formed a queasy sort of area Cloud switched his tail and laid back his ears at that, rethinking in Cloud’s way, what to do about that

Cloud had gotten the rogue-image the same as all the riders and horses had, and, Danny well knew, gotten it from time to time from Jonas’ bunch, but Cloud wasn’t necessarily going to understand it the way a human would—a horse had to know all the sides of something before it didn’t at any random moment surprise him; and the notion of the rogue they might have to deal with—now that Cloud had remembered that danger—still was going spooky-strange on Cloud. They said horses didn’t think in future-time, but Cloud did. The rogue was just kind of a dark blurry spot in the future, dead center in that funny edge-of-vision blind spot horses had right in the middle and top of what humans saw, out of which most scary things came, because of the way a horse’s eyes were set. There was a bad horse in that danger-spot—Cloud didn’t like < shooting horses> but Cloud didn’t like that shivery spot, either.

Cloud also knew (thanks to the dogged tracking of human thoughts, far less skittery than horses’ thinking) about the three men they’d ridden out with being a problem and about men they’d smelled behind them who might become a problem. That was another hazy spot in Cloud’s geography.

In his own way, Cloud even seemed to know about Stuart—a human mind could keep Cloud thinking on a subject and going over and over it and not forgetting any of the pieces of it: that was what Cloud got from human thoughts, the sheer dogged stubbornness to hold on and put pieces together. And Stuart had been a lot in various human thoughts on this trip.

So Cloud had begun, in the mostly-now way Cloud thought, to decide tonight was more complicated than yesterday—and Cloud wasn’t, consequently, acting up on him. Cloud was being disturbingly sensible and doing exactly what he asked, in spite of the fact Cloud had a jittery feel to his slow gait.

That ambition had danced at the edge of his mind for the last couple of days—he’d not dared think it when Jonas was belittling him all the time, but now that he was alone with Cloud he could haul things out of the dark spots of his probably immoral mind and at least look at them and try to sort out the stupid notions from the really stupid ones, and the embarrassing things and all the rest he’d die before he dragged out in front of Jonas.

That picture was just too stupid, too impossible, too indecent a wish, counting Stuart was grieving over a woman who was, in Stuart’s mind, at least as much a wife to him as his mother was to his father.

More, he hadn’t even thought about partnering yet—hadn’t planned to find anybody until he was older. The juniors he could partner up with were all desperately busy looking out for themselves and handling the horse problem, which didn’t seem to come easily even for kids born to the camp. It was just a hell of a lot of cheek for a junior even to think about Stuart taking him on under any circumstances.

But that day on the porch, with the rain flinging a gray sheet across all the world else, Stuart had trampled right over the defenses of a scared junior’s inmost thoughts and learned more about him in five minutes than his parents or his brothers had figured out about him in a lifetime. Stuart had looked straight into him in one terrifying moment, calmed him down and maintained that calm contact through what remained at once the most devastating and the most exhilarating exchange of his life—Stuart had told him, one after the other, the answers to questions he didn’t remotely know how to ask, questions he didn’t even know he should ask, and in parting, Stuart had wished him luck, honestly wished him luck in his life and even given him a lead on the first real convoy job he’d ever had.

He hadn’t had that feeling figured out when he’d started off with Jonas—that night, with the drink and the craziness running through the camp, he’d been so in awe of Jonas he’d believed he was dealing with Stuart again—but he’d gotten smarter fast on this trip. He’d felt somebody else trying to do with him unwilling what Stuart had done to him in that one shocked moment—the way Stuart had just blazed right on through his normal tongue-tied stammering, faced him at a level of need nobody in his whole life had ever gotten into—and not criticized, not carped at him, not lectured him, just seemed to take him as he was, in spite of his spilling the deepest, most embarrassing secrets of his life into Stuart’s view.

Stuart had thrown advice back at him that had echoed right off his longings and drawn more and more of his secret hopes into the ambient. It gave him to this very moment a sense of disbelief when he reconstructed that hour or so—so vivid it was like meeting God, that was what it had felt like. So vivid it had scared him out of sleep for a week. So accepting of a kid’s stupid ideas and stupid questions he couldn’t believe it had ever really happened, and in a certain sense he’d been scared to death to go near Stuart again, because he didn’t want to find out it wasn’t real—or wasn’t the way he remembered it. He hadn’t gone back to him. He’d wanted to come back wiser and be able to talk to Stuart with some sense in his head.

Then Stuart had disappeared from camp—gone off wherever Stuart normally worked, the summer long.

But all Stuart’s advice had been true. And he’d not even known the man was back in camp this fall until Stuart had brushed by him at the gate.

So, God, yes, he was going up that road. He didn’t need Jonas for a preacher to tell him where right and wrong was. His father, never mind his faults, had taught him what was fair—

But mama knew. Damn right. Mama who kept the accounts, mama knew.

Sam never had figured it out.

There were moments he was damned proud of his parents. They might all fight, except Sam. Papa might be sure he was going to hell, and they might be cheating, dishonest townsmen to rider eyes, but that was the riders’ mistake, to lump everybody together. His father didn’t ever cheat; and he didn’t need moral lessons from a man who let his friend go off alone and hurt into the dark.

And he didn’t need Luke’s tricking Cloud into taking any damn candy, either, not at the price Luke wanted to sell it for. If he wanted to give Cloud candy, he gave it with no conditions, and he didn’t want more than Cloud was willing to give him back.

He picked his spot among the trees at roadside — he rode in among the trees, the branches brushing him with the gentle force of Cloud’s moving. He slid down as Cloud stopped, rubbed Cloud’s nose with gloved fingers, then flung down his packs and set about cutting evergreen boughs to go under their blankets.

He didn’t need Jonas to survive in the Wild, either. He was determined now to show them. He hadn’t had to have their help. He’d turn up not when Jonas decided to collect a terrified kid but whenever he decided to, whenever they really, really needed to know what he could tell them, yes, he might be there, and he might tell them what they asked — if they minded their manners and dealt with him like a human being.

Or he’d find Stuart himself and ask Stuart whether he wanted to be found.

Then to hell with Stuart’s not-quite-best friends in the entire universe. A winter in the high country, him and a senior rider, and (even if Stuart wasn’t interested in another partner) he could learn from Stuart God-knew how many things. He had his gear, he had a clear notion where Stuart had gone, given they’d named Anveney and a reason Stuart would go there, and he had an absolutely clear idea where Stuart would ultimately go. The main road he and Cloud were on led near Tarmin to another ascent, up to a loop all around to the villages of Rogers Peak—he knew that for certain.

That was where Aby Dale had died, up on that high road, as the convoy was coming down. He even knew the names of most of the villages on the mountain; and he knew that there was another old road to Tarmin up directly from Anveney—an old, tight-turned road almost unused these days except by line-riders.

They’d passed the Anveney lowland turn-off when they’d gone only half a day from Shamesey gates, about the place where Cloud had thrown him and he’d hiked over the shoulder of the hill. But if Stuart had gone down that other way, and over to Anveney the way they thought, then there was no reason for Stuart to ride all the way back to pick up the road they were on—Stuart would get up to Tarmin the old way. Trucks might not use it now, but a horse could.

So he didn’t need to wonder where Stuart was or where he’d come in and pick up the road to the accident—the Anveney-Tarmin road would join theirs before it went on up to the other villages on the High Loop of the Tarmin road. Stuart would go past Tarmin and up to that same road where the wreck was.

So he knew where he had to go.

And in his wildest dream, counting Hawley had made off with Stuart’s money, Stuart could be real glad to see a kid with a gun and ammunition and winter supplies.

Favor paid. He’d like that. He really would. Stuart’s respect of him—God, what wouldn’t he do to feel he’d won that?

That occupied his thoughts as he made their bed of evergreen fronds, and as he settled down to rest in his wind-shadowed nook and Cloud settled down by him, providing him his body heat.

In Cloud’s mind everything was right again, after all this and at the men, and most of all the money-thing, which Cloud never had gotten straight, whether it was a kind of food or guns or whatever.

was Cloud’s assessment of Jonas and his crew, utter disgust.

But Danny didn’t think of cattle—he thought instead of slinking predators. Shadow-horse still gave him the shivers.

And when, momentarily, he recalled Shadow’s self-image, Cloud’s skin twitched under his back as if something were crawling on it.

Fire warmed the den from the old fireplace they only used for the horses in the bitterest cold. Water was heating, and cloths went into it.

was the ambient, so Tara couldn’t see the den except through a veil, < white > so she burned her hands on the kettle and the hot rags, and bit her lip and kept at sponging Flicker down. “Rest,” Vadim begged her. “Lie down at least, Tara, you’ve done enough. Let us take care of her.”

But she wouldn’t. She hardly heard until Chad seized her arm with painful force and made her face him. “You’re contributing to it. Tara. You’re falling into it, same as she is. Pull out.”

Chad hit her across the ear hard enough to make her eyes water. Flicker threw her head and kicked out, lost her balance and all but had her feet go out from under her… Flicker was exhausted, hardly able to stand, and wouldn’t lie down, wouldn’t rest. Tara knew that. She was in the same condition, no different, legs shaking.

Rogue horse, they’d said: the marshal had had that warning in a phone call up from Shamesey—while she was on the trail.

“It’s you,” Chad said, and shook her and slammed her back into a post. “Sit down, Tara, sit! You hear me? You’re upsetting her!”

She jerked away. “Her lungs will fill,” she said, imaging a death she’d seen, long ago, on Darwin. She wasn’t a horse-doctor, she didn’t know how to get Flicker out of this and neither did Vadim or Chad or Mina, or, God save them, young Luisa. She just kept working, kept agitating, for fear that Flicker would give up. She warmed Flicker’s legs and flanks and chest. She brought oil-fragrant smoke and made Flicker breathe as much as she could in the drafty den.

And Vadim and the rest, her own sometime partners Mina and Luisa no mean force in the attempt, kept visiting their own horses, imaging good things, imaging treats and food and the warm den, fearing contagion, but not letting that to the front of their minds.

They curried and rubbed and bathed and combed—with Vadim’s and Chad’s steady good sense, they dragged any thoughts of the snow back to the warm, safe dark. They dragged any reckoning of the howling wind back to the crackle of fire in the fireplace. They kept fighting for their sanity and their lives, not entertaining for two seconds running the fear and the anger that wailed and roiled out there in the storm, and not bolstering, either, the defense Flicker still raised… they wouldn’t echo it, wouldn’t stand for it, wouldn’t give way to it.

Tara knew that they were keeping her sane as well, keeping out the storm, keeping away the white that threatened their collective reason. They were her friends, her refuge, her safety. She tried to tell Flicker that. She imaged their faces for Flicker. She imaged light and warmth and a den and horses Flicker knew. She began to fight for warmth against the white, to image

It was all that they could do: outlast the storm and look for the sun to rise. The night and the howling white were all about them, a thunderous snow that echoed off the mountains and shook the nerves.

And the white remained a veil, and the dark was too ready to seep into the image, as if the sun would never, ever rise.