Cloud's Rider

Cloud's Rider Page 22

by C. J. Cherryh

  He’d had himself calm and forgiving until Randy did that. He knew the kid was sulking. He knew the way Randy would react if he wasn’t sulking, and it was without question a sulk.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I said get up.”

  “Go to hell.”

  He was mad. Mad enough to think of pulling Randy out of those blankets and bouncing him off the wall.

  But it was those same thoughts running through his mind this morning. He didn’t know what he’d dreamed about. It was those same feelings, those same memories of rage—Brionne’s, his—his father’s and his mother’s—it was all there again. He didn’t want to be angry, he didn’t want to raise his voice to the kid. He never wanted to have another blank spot in his life like the one that night when the anger had come over him and come over their father and he knew his father couldn’t back down, and neither could he. Don’t, he thought he’d said. Don’t grab it. Just before the gun had gone off and he’d waked up, just standing there with the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils and the shock quivering in his hands, in his arms, in his gut—

  Came a door slam, and a great deal of clumping about in the passageway—not there, but here, in Mackey’s forge, which probably meant early customers, and he had to get control of himself. He didn’t like the Mackeys. They could provoke him and he didn’t want to be provoked to lose his temper—it was too close to the surface right now. He knew what he could do. He knew what he was capable of and they didn’t, and today he just wasn’t doing damn well at holding himself together.

  But the visitor wasn’t somebody coming to the shop. It seemed to be more than one person applying themselves at the Mackeys’ door.

  So deciding the business didn’t concern them and was some private visit to the house, he went to the forge to fire up and incidentally make as much racket near Randy as possible, to get him up in advance of the Mackeys coming in without having to argue with him.

  But too late. He’d just taken the first push on the bellows when Mary Hardesty came through the door from the passageway and the house to say there were visitors and they should come along, and, she added coyly, that there was breakfast and hot tea ready.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” His stomach was upset. He didn’t want to eat breakfast with the Mackeys, but it was sure something was up, and it didn’t take many guesses to know it was something to do with money or their rights or something that interested the Mackeys. She shut the door, and he went and nudged Randy solidly but restrainedly with his foot.

  “Breakfast with the house, little brother, and something’s up. Put on a good face and behave yourself or stay out here if you want to sleep and I’ll bring you some biscuits when I come back. This is real damn serious.”

  There was a moment’s quiet from the lump of blankets. Then a slight stir. Finally a tousled head and an arm appeared and Randy crawled out muttering damnation on the whole world.

  But bet on it first that Randy had good sense where it came to dealing outside the family, and second, that Randy’s curiosity would kill him if he wasn’t there to know what was going on.

  “Wash first.” Carlo went over to the washbasin that he’d set on the hearth to warm last night. He didn’t shave much yet. He rubbed his upper lip and decided the job he’d done yesterday was good enough for any visitors the Mackeys had. And he waited for his brother to wash. He could guess it was the authorities that had shown up.

  Maybe the lawyers.

  Randy toweled his face off and was still in the sleepy sulks as the two of them went out the short exchange of passages that led from the smithy to the main passages and to the house back door. Carlo knocked and opened it himself, and he and Randy were already inside by the time the wife showed up to escort them down the soot-matted rug to the sitting room.

  There were two men and a woman there besides Van Mackey, one he recognized as the preacher who’d met them at first in the riders barracks, and the woman in sober clothing he took maybe for a church deacon. He was going to be vastly disappointed if this turned out to be a church visit: he’d had his attack of religion while he was afraid of dying. He wasn’t, now, he hated being conspicuously prayed and preached over, and there were aspects of his situation he didn’t care to meditate or confess.

  But the third man was the marshal, Eli Peterson, and maybe that made this official, unless the marshal was a deacon or something in the church.

  “This is Connie Simms,” the marshal said, after he’d shaken his hand, and the woman he’d taken for a deacon stuck out her hand. “She’s a lawyer.”

  Oh, God, he thought, having dismissed that idea and now having to get his wits a second time oriented in that direction, as he smiled a wooden smile and said how glad he was to meet Connie Simms.

  “Sit down, sit down, won’t you?” Mary Hardesty said, which he felt as a rescue in that instant, and Van Mackey pulled out chairs for the group at the table. Rick sulked in the doorway, on the periphery, and finally slouched his way to a seat between the marshal and his father and across from the preacher.

  There was grace said: “Oh, Lord,” it went, “bless this house, bless this food, bless these strayed children of Yours which have come through Your storm to the bright sunny clouds of Your blessing.” And so on. It was long. It was a drain on the emotions of someone who’d hiked through that storm—or it pitched over the edge into maudlin. Carlo, having swung from one pole to the other, hoped Randy kept his head down and didn’t smirk or fidget, and was glad when after three close passes the preacher reached amen. The lawyer chimed in an amen, too, and so, of course, did Van Mackey and Mary the tightfisted.

  But they’d not stinted on the meal. There was ham and potatoes, there was bread and jelly and ham-drippings and cooked cereal and hot tea. Randy ate so much he was likely to be sick. Carlo kept nodding dutifully at the platitudes and observations of the preacher, and putting away the high protein stuff that was hard come by.

  “The Lord be blessed,” the preacher said at one point, “your sister is making slow improvement.”

  Damn. He should have asked. That didn’t make a very good impression of him or Randy.

  “I guess,” he said quietly, feeling guilty as he said it, “I guess I was afraid to ask. I didn’t hold out much hope.”

  “She’s still feeble, but she’s taking food and water.”

  Carlo tried to find something reasonable to say and couldn’t, except, “I’ll go see her, if it’s all right with the doctor.”

  “I know it’d be a healing on that afflicted child. Bless you, young man, for carrying her up here.”

  The man couldn’t talk without blessing this or that. He was worse than Denton Wales down in Tarmin.

  But preacher Wales had been something’s supper, and he shouldn’t think ill of the dead, even if he had one more preacher sitting at table and snuggling up close to two more substantial citizens who mouthed amen and cheated at any chance they got. He just said, “I will, then,” and had another helping of bread and ham-drippings gravy.

  Rick meanwhile had put away enough for a road crew and two of their oxen.

  Then lawyer Simms said, “We’ve come here, actually, in the interests of your legal rights.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You’re the sons and daughter of Andy Goss and of Mindy Wallace, his wife, who were the smiths in Tarmin, owning the premises and the house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” It was going exactly where Danny had said, and from having lost everything they owned, they suddenly had a lawyer saying,

  “If there are no other surviving heirs, you’re the sole heirs of that property and inheritance, and of your mother’s property and inheritance. For the court records—easier if you might have identification on you—”

  “We didn’t come away with any.”

  “Too much to ask, I’m sure. Is there anyone besides rider Fisher who can identify you?”

  “Tara Chang knows me. She’s a Tarmin rider—but she can make an identification, can’t she, legally? She knows me. She’s down at a shelter with a border rider.”

  T
hat came as a shock to certain faces: Van Mackey and his wife. They might have planned a fast one, Carlo thought. But the lawyer only nodded.

  “The High Loop district has no difficulty with her profession. Is rider Chang coming up here?”

  “I understand she is—come spring.”

  “Would she go back to Tarmin?” the marshal asked—meaning as a guide, as a village rider, maybe—he wasn’t sure, but the marshal had pounced on that with some speed.

  “I don’t know. I think she’d go there. I don’t know if she’d stay.” Guil Stuart was a borderer, and there was no pinning him down to a village, he was well sure of that. But he wasn’t here to answer for Stuart.

  “The Lord bless her,” the preacher said fervently. “Blessed are the faithful.”

  There was a lot more talk, the same kind as they’d met in the tavern, asking what buildings were where, and the sort of knowledge of the layout of Tarmin and the extent of properties he didn’t think Danny could have possibly told them. The questions were in such detail they taxed his memory and his understanding of the village he’d been born to—and called up too much he’d dreamed about.

  There was question about who’d lived where, and how many people there’d been in Tarmin—Simms was actually taking notes—and he didn’t know what they wanted with the numbers. He was sure the real question was how many houses there were to take over.

  But reverend Quarles said then that he’d like to hold a memorial service for the dead of Tarmin.

  “Yes, sir,” Carlo said. It was the only thing anyone had said yet that had brought a lump to his throat. The notion made it hard for him to think for a moment, but nobody jumped on the chance it offered them. Rick just sneered and didn’t say anything.

  Then Van said, well, they’d talk about plans for the future. “Maybe we can help these lads,” Van said.

  Rick kept sneering, maybe hoping looks could kill, and shoved half another biscuit in his mouth.

  “They’re good boys,” Mackey said. “Real skilled. We’d give ’em a stake. Or talk a deal. Wouldn’t we?”

  “Sure would,” Mary said.

  There it came. And Van and Mary started saying how they’d offer money and want a share for staking them to food and supplies and transport.

  “I don’t know,” Carlo said to that proposal. “We’d have to think about it. There’s other possibilities.”

  “What?” Van asked, startled into bluntness and clearly not happy.

  “I don’t actually know,” he admitted. He wasn’t going to offer them a trade of facilities. And he didn’t need their finance. He could get down there. Danny would take him for free. He owned the equipment down there. And the premises. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long.”

  “I’m just, you know, getting over this.”

  “Of course,” reverend Quarles said. “Of course. If you need any counseling, either of you, you come to me, hear? Any hour of the night. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You should come to me,” Van Mackey said. “Got to lay plans. Don’t be listening to anybody else.”

  “The boy’s thinking,” Mary said, and swatted Van on the arm.

  Van didn’t say anything. The breakfast was over and the visitors got up to go in a general shoving back of chairs from the table.

  Only the marshal and the lawyer had a paper they wanted him to sign.

  “No,” he said.

  “It’s only acknowledgment that we’ve advised you of the situation,” the marshal said.

  “I know it’s on the up and up, but I don’t read much, sir, and I’d like to think on it some and maybe get some advice from several people before I sign anything.”

  Randy gave him a look. He ignored it. And the marshal and the lawyer both said he was smart to be cautious, and they’d make a copy he could take to anybody he liked to be sure what it said.

  “I do appreciate it,” he said, thinking that he’d take it to Danny, who not only read, but read better than anyone he’d ever heard.

  And after that he and Randy and the three visitors thanked and apologized and chatted their way out into the hall and into their coats, in the visitors’ case, and out into the passages.

  He was for going to the forge and getting to work, but Van and his wife were in the hall and in his path.

  “That’s a real serious offer, staking you kids,” Van said. “You’re a big, healthy guy. You can do it. But it’s a lot of hard work down there. What you got to have is a stake and some help, and all hell’s going to break loose when these other villages get onto what’s happened. They’ll try to do you out of what’s yours. God, some of these miners—they’ll cut your throat for a tin cup, let alone real money. You take it from me, Carlo, it’s a lot of real rough guys going to be going down there. You need some muscle. Maybe cash to pay some guns of your own.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Carlo said quietly. “But I guess that’s all in the future and I’d better get to work, or I can’t afford my place here.”

  “A good worker like you,” Van Mackey said, “we don’t have to worry about. I tell you, I’d have no trouble backing you and your brother.”

  “And our sister,” Randy piped up, having said nothing troublesome all morning. It was to make Van Mackey give and give, every step he could, and Carlo knew it.

  “And your sister,” Van Mackey added.

  “I’ve got to go visit her,” Carlo said—wanting just to get it over with. Wanting—just to know how she was or wasn’t doing, and not to go back there soon. The whole world seemed in flux. What was past kept coming up in his face. And he wanted to convince himself that Brionne wasn’t the bad dream she’d become to him last night.

  “Anytime you think is good. Take extra time.”

  “Thanks. —We’d better get to work.” He wanted to get Randy out of the house before Randy said something just too far, and he wanted time, himself, to think what to do. He did his serious thinking here in Evergreen as he’d done at home, in the forge with the bellows hissing and the fire and the wind roaring and the hammer setting up its kind of rhythm. That was his privacy, his sanity, nobody being able to get through the racket except by shouting, and work always being an escape and an excuse from somebody trying to push him.

  So he worked his way out the Mackeys back door, smiling until his teeth ached.

  “You,” he said to Randy, “fire up.” And he went to get his apron and his gloves.

  But as he came back to the forge and was pulling on his gloves, shouting and thumping broke out inside the house.

  Randy stopped work and stared in that direction. There seemed to be one hell of a fight going on inside, Van shouting and his son Rick shouting, and then wife Mary shouting.

  “Remember what I said about stupid people being dangerous enemies?” he remarked to Randy while the shouting ascended to a crash of something breakable. “You don’t know what they’ll do. It won’t be smart, but it’ll be something he thinks will hurt us.”

  “The old man?”

  “Rick.”

  “Because he’s jealous?”

  “You could say so.”

  “Well, his papa isn’t too smart, either.”

  “He thinks he is. —And don’t talk here! I told you.”

  “You’re doing it.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t.”

  “They can’t hear us. They’re all shouting.”

  “It’s a bad habit. Mistakes come from bad habits.”

  “Are you really going to see Brionne?”

  “I think I better.” But he couldn’t face it straight from that going on inside the house. It wasn’t a day for family visits. “Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  Randy’s face assumed a sulk. “I don’t want to.”

  “You go this time and you keep your mouth shut. Just when we go, walk in, look sorry, say how nice she looks. Say something decent and we’ll leave. We won’t stay ten minutes. I won’t make you go again.”

  “I don’t want to go this time!”

  “It’ll look bad! Just shut up and be polite. Hear me? Or I’ll bash your head. We’ll go Sunday. After church.”

  “Church!�
�

  “We have to look decent!” It wasn’t clothes he meant. He was ashamed of what he’d blurted out. “We’ll go Sunday, when we’re cleaned up already. Be done with it.”

  Breakfast wasn’t sitting well. It was probably the ham-dripping gravy.

  Probably it wasn’t sitting well on Rick Mackey’s stomach, either. He heard the house door slam. He heard the door to the main passage slam. He didn’t need to ask Rick what he thought of the business, when Rick’s parents were suddenly showering good will on two strangers who were a real threat. Rick had never had competition in his life, and now Rick had a couple of strangers move in who were probably better smiths than he was—if they’d ever seen Rick Mackey do any work—who were more polite than he was, brighter than he was, and worst of all, rich enough to buy what Rick Mackey had sort of hoped to slide into ass-backwards and without lifting a hand.

  Bad news for Rick. His papa didn’t need him anymore.

  Bad news for two strangers that turned their backs on Rick Mackey, Carlo said to himself. Randy could gloat over Rick’s discomfort. He couldn’t. Randy to this day didn’t understand about stupidity and danger.

  He did. Much too well.

  The hunters stayed for breakfast, no second thoughts there—Ridley and Callie had served up a healthy portion of biscuits and a small portion of ham, which was, in the light of what he understood about the economy of the villages, a generous act, and an increasingly expensive gesture. The village could reliably freeze meat for the winter. It just took what the barracks had: a strong unheated shed, in the village’s case vermin-proof, in the case of the barracks— horse-proof. But if there was nothing to freeze—that was that.

  And if there wasn’t game in reach of the village, Ridley was going to have to take the hunters out on a much farther hike than they were accustomed to.

  There was talk, during breakfast, that the horse’s presence and the game having migrated elsewhere could be related in another way, that the horse might have gotten confused as the game moved and swarmed. Swarm was a bad and a dangerous word—one that couldn’t give comfort to men whose business was going where they couldn’t retreat as fast as riders could and without the kind of protection riders could get during a retreat by staying physically against their horses.

 

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