He thought Aby would approve of her.
And he knew he was being stupid and too cautious. Hed not felt nearly so anxious about Abys risks as he did about risk to TaraAby having been there, left hand to his right, a fact of the world since they both were kids, and capable of taking care of herself. God, yes, hed loved herthered always be a hole in his world the shape and size and duration of Aby. But the matter with Tara was here and urgent, because the woman was apt to do any damn thingand he wanted her safe, and didnt want her to have done things shed be sorry for, and meanwhile he had things he needed to do and shed be up here by herself rather than see him goit had a very Aby-like feel, her stubbornness did. And he wanted to protect her from that
The way he hadnt done with Aby.
His thinking was in a real mess, was what it was.
Horseplay outside had come near the cabin. Attention had turned to them, and they were aware of each other like a light switch going on.
Dammit! he said to Burn, caught, and knew it was going to be
A hand came to rest on his knee, took on weight, patted it hard.
And the ambient said that Tara wasnt mad.
You arent going up there, she said. I will.
No. Ill go.
I said Id do it. Go by yourself, hell. This is my mountain. You sit here.
No. They were back to that argument.
Theres a short way up there. But its a lot of walking, a lot of climbing, and rough ground. You cant make it.
The kids are on the long way. If I cant make it, Ill know it. Ill stop. I can camp and stay warm.
Listen to me. The hand on his knee shook at him. You hear anything?
You and two horses.
And nothing else. Nothing else.
He took the point. Soberly.
The mountain isnt over with what happened, Tara said. Its not safe out there. For someone who maybe gets sick, cant move
Or just as well somebody that travels alone. With you or behind you, woman. Take your pick.
Your life. Over those kids. They can damn well take care of themselves or theyve got no business up here.
The kids didnt have much damn choice about being out of the village, Guil said. And can the village up there take care of itself? They could need help. We sent our problem up there.
Where theres a lot more resources than weve got.
And a mountain thats still in an upheaval. What do they know about it? I want to know where that horse went that drove them out of here.
Damn you, Guil.
Yeah, well.
He sat there beside her at the fireside, and thenthen the horses outside were mating, and they sat there bundled in their thick clothes, receiving that.
Doesnt help the thinking, he said on a heavy breath.
Not damn much, she said.
But the horses wanted in, at that point. Having had their fling they wanted to get warm and muddy up the floor.
He made supper for the two of them plus horse-treats. He figured he could do that: shed done everything in the day including putting him on his horse.
Theyd have gotten caught by weather at the midway shelter, he said during supper. They could be holed be there. Suppose we ought to try the road?
Windchill on those high turns is too fierce. Uphills easier. Longer. But easier. They can come back down a lot easier than they can go up. Surely theyve got that sense, if theyre stuck there.
No sign of it yet, he said.
Maybe they made it up before the weather. Just pushed on.
Maybe they didnt make it. He had to think that, too.
In that case hed be sorrier than he could say. And he and Tara would be wintering in Evergreen.
But they had to go there anyway.
There was nothing right now in the ambient but themselves. There was that silence all around them, a mountain swept clean of life. Or life gone underground, gone into hibernation, as happened in deep, foodless winter.
But thered been more food on Tarmin Height, grisly thought, than anywhere hed ever heard of.
You suppose, he said, everythings eaten so much theyve all gone to burrows?
Possible, she said. Possible, too, they remember the rogue, and theyre scaring each other, one to the next. Or possiblythat horse is out there. I dont think it belonged to my partners. Id know.
Harpers horse, Guil said.
Yeah, she said. No question in my mind.
And long, long after theyd settled down to sleep, tucked down by the fire, in all the blankets theyd brought and found, came a strange, spooky sending that drew an alarm from the horses.
Ghosty thing, just a shiver over the nerves. Guil lay still, but Tara sat up, and got up, and he stirred onto the side that didnt hurt and sat up, too.
The horses were upset.
Somethings wrong, Tara said, with her hands on Flickers neck.
Burn came over and stood right over him,
Burn was going to defend him, that was clear. A shiver ran up Burns leg and over his hide and Burn snorted and hissed at an unseen enemy.
Can you make it out? Tara asked. Its not a swarm.
Dont think so. He made an effort to get up and did, leaning on Burns shoulder. From Burn there was another snort and a violent shake of his mane.
Not good, whatever it was.
Tara was came from her and from Flicker, he couldnt mistake that.
They were armed. They had supplies. But there was that notice on the board that Danny Fisher had written, that warning.
The kid hadnt been a rider that long. The kid hadnt ever been into the High Wild. And if hed heard something real damn confusinghe might not know what he heard. But two experienced riders and their horses
didnt know, either.
It was a moral question to Dannywhether his responsibility for Carlo and Randy continued or ought to continue; and it was still a common-sense kind of question whether he could get Carlo in some kind of trouble by running over there to inform Carlo on what lawyers were doing, and including Carlo into matters that obviously involved the rich and powerful people in the village. Such people werent as rich and powerful as they might be down in Shamesey, granted, but seeing Carlo was accidentally between these people and a lot of money, hed spent some extensive worry on the matter, at some times concluding he shouldnt go, then thinking that while some were for protecting Carlos rights, some werent. And then again thinkingif Carlo was seen not to know, Carlo had a certain amount of protection, in that ignoranceif ignorance was ever protection, and his own experience said it wasnt as much as the ignorant thought it was.
Most of all he didnt know at what point of their own morality these people from the pretty blue-muraled church would conclude they were doing wrong. He was scared of lawyers. He was scared of courts.
Most of all he didnt want to mess up Carlos future by making a decision that he didnt have the information to make, and hed held off till this morning hoping hed hear some kind of wisdom out of Ridley or Callie during their evening talks.
You suppose theyre going to treat the Goss boys all right? hed asked finally in desperation. Are the lawyers honest?
Theyre fools, was all hed been able to get out of Ridley last night. Ridley was mad about the situation, and that was what Ridley had on his mind: losing people from his village. And to the question of the lawyers being honest At poker, Callie said, which didnt tell him much about Carlos chances with them.
You suppose I ought to tell Carlo? hed asked Ridley then, deciding on the direct approach.
Dont know what he could do about it, was Ridleys answer.
That put him in mind of what his father had always said about the law, which seemed the onl
y wisdom that appliedjust dont sign anything.
Hed slept with it, and waked with it, and worried over it.
His first trip this morning had to be out to the den, and he left the breakfast table, dressed for the colda light snow was falling and took Cloud a biscuit from breakfast. The other horses, crowding him as he came into the den from the open-air approach, were obliged to wait: Ridley encouraged him to do that, saying that waiting their turn was good for them: theyd gotten out of their summer manners, meaning when they regularly had strange horses in the den, and they could learn they hadnt a right to every biscuit that came into their sight.
So while Ridley was helping Callie clear the dishes, he fed Cloud his treat and rubbed him down from head to tail and oiled his feet, quiet in his mind for the first time since hed come to Evergreen.
Cloud was satisfied, making that curious contentment sound, enjoying the importance of the first and only biscuit of the day. Cloud ducked his head around while he was working and licked the inside of his ear, which Cloud knew he hated.
Both of them were moving a little more freely now, on feet less tender and joints less sore, and, able to go to Cloud and do such basic, ordinary things, Danny felt a great knot of tension that had been in him unravel. Conclusions hard to come to in the guarded ambient in the barracks were far clearer to him when hed gotten out here to ordinary work.
The truly difficult things were over and done with, the emergencies were all settled, and there was almost nothing to do but brush Clouds tail and feed Cloud and bring him biscuits.
Cloud liked that idea. If thered been females available, the winter would be absolutely perfect. But, next best thing to please his horse, Danny thought about , and expected Cloud to approve that idea.
Cloud wasnt as enthusiastic about it as he might have been. Cloud lifted his head and looked toward the walls and shivered.
Danny found that very odd. He stopped the brushing with his fist still full of Clouds tail, and he looked in that direction without even thinking hed done it.
Hed never been wintered-in anywhere before. Shamesey didnt have weather to require it, although a lot of riders arrived there to winter-over and the trade died down: Shamesey never felt isolated.
But Evergreen village suddenly seemed very small and very fragile against the mountain shoulder. It dawned on him then for the first time that there just wasnt any human civilization in the world farther out on the edge than Evergreen and the little string of villages down its lonely road. Over on the other side of the mountain there was just the Wild, where humans whod dropped down from the sky had never visited, not on their farthest rides. No villages, no trails, no camps, no riders. Civilization just stoppedmaybe just around the shoulder of the rock outcrops on the road theyd ridden. Civilization stopped in the mountains hed not been able to see from his whited-out vantage on that high turn. Nobody had been out there. Ever.
Clouds skin twitched. Cloud snorted and the other horses acted bothered, but the ambient was otherwise quiet, and Cloud settled to being brushed again, rocking gently to the strong strokes Danny put into it.
A rider just shouldnt think about spooky things, he told himself, not up here, not when the wind had started to blow out of the unsettled Wild.
The snow was coming down thick and hard when he walked out of the den with the notion increasingly sure that in this edge-of-the-world place friends were hard come by.
The end of winter might not see him better settled in the barracks than the beginning had: he had every legitimate right to be in the rider camp for the winter, but he still found himself in an awkward position as an intrusion in the common room of the barracks which turned out to be a familys living room: not that it was supposed to be that, but there just wasnt another child Jennie could play witheven as easy as the rider camps relationship with the village seemed, that line was one people wouldnt send their children acrossand the barracks that in some places was a very rough and careless environment, was unquestionably a family living arrangement in Evergreen, an arrangement in which a teenaged visitor of outside origins was undeniably suspect in motives and personal habits. He didnt think even Callie thought hed do something so awful as have designs on Jennie; but clearly Callie didnt leave him alone with Jennie, He wasnt friends with Callie. He never would be, he strongly suspected. He probably would never be friends with Ridley, on Callies account.
He didnt know what his relationship was with Carlo, and why he hesitated so long and resisted so much going over there, whether he didnt want to get the rebuff hed had from some of his old townside friends, or whether he was beginning to believe Callie that he was a fool in the path of rational people, and he was scared to give Carlo advice on something he really didnt understand any more than Carlo did.
He was spooked about the law, was one thing. His early association with it hadnt been that of an honest and upright citizen
And he held too damn many secrets to sleep sound at nightCallie not even trusting him to keep to his bed. Hed tried turning down the vodka last evening.
Funny thing, Callie had said her feelings would be hurt if he didnt drink it. So he had drunk it, all but certain now his very deep sleep and morning lethargy had something to do with it. People whod do that to youmaybe they didnt want you wandering across the line between camp and village. That was the other matter that had him spookedbut at least this morning he knew for sure what hed suspected about his nights there.
And they were the source of all the advice he had.
Maybe they had their own set of problems. He had his.
So he found no need to tell them he was going.
He cast a look toward the barracks veiled in blowing snow, and no one was stirringhed given the excuse of going out to the denhe didnt have to give them excuses, and there was no reason he couldnt go over villageside on his own, absolutely no reason. Ridley was camp-boss, and could forbid him, but then hed be out that gate and elsewhere.
Theyd say later, Where did you go and what did you do? not as if they had a right to ask.
And he supposed, as he walked toward the camp gate and toward the village, that if he told Carlo what he knew, things were going to get out that could speed up the gold-rush mentality that was working among the rich. And that could rouse a little of the anger he knew was stored up and waiting for him when he finally did let loose what he knew about the Goss kids.
It wasnt a happy situation hed landed in. In some measure hed like to walk up to the barracks, fling open the door and lay out in two minutes everything he had to say.
But once you let a matter out of the proverbial bottle, it was out.
And panic wasnt at all a thing to let loose in a place like this, with all the High Wild around themat least that was the only wisdom on a situation like this hed ever gotten from anyone. Panic in the ambient was like blood-smell on the wind.
There were two other people who knew everything he knew. And Carlo began to be not only somebody he owed the truth toCarlo began to be the only human being in Evergreen that hed rely on.
So never mind what the village marshal wanted, or what Ridley expected. With a quiet walk through thick snow-fell over to the gate of the camp and past the restraining post into the village side, he was gone, on his first foray into the village alone, into the quiet of the villageside ambient, this time without Ridleys voice to fill the silence.
He found it spooky to walk among utter strangers. He felt cut off, deaf in a very important sense. Passersby became a threat to him in a way merchants and chance encounters in his own neighborhood in Shamesey town had never been. He didnt know these people. For the first time in his life he was in a place where he didnt know people either by long experience or by the thoughts they shed.
Which was stupid. He wasnt in danger and neither was Cloud.
But hed sure felt safer when Ridley were with him.
Right now
hed feel safer with eight-year-old Jennie for a guide, which told him how entirely silly he was being: the street was mostly deserted, and while a rider in his leather breeches and fringed jacket was as conspicuous as a horse walking down the street, he was in a mostly deserted neighborhood in heavy snow, and it wasnt exactly as if he was walking among hostile crowds.
The few venturers outside their passage system did stare. One man even said hello. A couple of girlshe thought they were girlswalking along bundled into shapeless coats talked behind their hands while they approached and giggled as they came close. Hello, he said, defiantly taking the offensive in the deadness of the ambient; hello, one said, and then they went into a spasm of teenaged giggles and raced off down the street.
Very young, he said to himself in all the maturity hed assumed. Too silly. He wasnt interested. Much.
He passed the public tavern Ridley had mentionedRidley hadnt said whether in so small a camp he and Callie ever crossed over for an evening of what his father called ale and riotor whether it was going to be a dry winter. It looked like a comfortable sort of building, with lights glowing behind glass windows, with tracks on the snow going up onto the porch and inside.
Then, next to a rusting and untidy stack of iron scrap and old truck parts mostly buried under snow, was a huge evergreen tree, and the smiths shop.
The double doors were shut, as came as no surprise. But he took the handle and turned it and pushed, testing whether the place was open, and as it proved to be, walked from the snowy outside white into the shadowy, smoky heat of a large, low forge-shed.
Yeah? said a burly young piece of trouble who turned up standing right beside him.
In the same moment, across a low stone wall, hed seen the ones he was after. Carlo and Randy were working at the forge, Randy with his hand on the bellows lever and Carlo with a set of tongs in his gloved handwhich, if Carlos fingers felt like his, Carlo wouldnt find comfortable.
Cloud's Rider Page 17