Cloud's Rider

Cloud's Rider Page 23

by C. J. Cherryh

  A real bad situation, Danny said to himself; and when after breakfast the men agreed that they should leave the hunt for the horse to riders, and left, Danny didn’t even question that he and Ridley were going out today.

  Ridley went back into his and Callie’s room, advising him without any discussion of the matter to put on his cold weather gear. Nothing Callie had heard this morning had made her happier, Jennie was very much in a down mood and angry, for reasons young Jennie probably couldn’t even figure out—

  But, Danny thought, if Jennie had asked him whether he was angry, he would have had to say that he was—both angry and sad. But nasty business that it was, it was his business, it had come up the mountain with him, and he had finally to see to it as he should have done back down at first-stage.

  So he went to his room and put on everything he owned, everything he’d worn up the Climb, and came out lacking only the sweaters he’d kept hanging on a peg in the main room as something he needed when he went out to the den.

  He put those on, catching the ambient from horses who’d perceived and who’d hung about the cabin, aware of Jennie was still and Callie was holding her feelings to a very low level, cleaning up after breakfast.

  He had a foolhardy streak. But not enough to go over there right now, when a woman was probably thinking that if she didn’t like him sleeping under the same roof she sure didn’t fancy staying here and sending her partner out with him.

  He very quietly put on his outdoor gear.

  “You shouldn’t shoot it,” Jennie said.

  “You mind your business,” Callie said sternly, and for just a moment that veil lifted on a worried, angry woman.

  “I won’t be a fool,” Danny ventured very softly, “remembering he’s got a kid to come back to.”

  He didn’t wait for Callie’s answer. He, took up the rifle and ducked out the door and out to the porch and down, to give Cloud and the rest of the horses a light before-dawn breakfast. Cloud understood , which Cloud was greatly in favor of— but was a lot chancier feeling, involving Shimmer and foals and his rider’s worry.

  He’d ducked this, Danny thought, just too long. But he hadn’t villager kids in his care now, and he and Cloud wouldn’t be alone trying to deal with Spook-horse.

  Ridley came out after a delay Danny suspected had nothing to do with dressing or putting his coat on, and everything to do with partners and daughters. Ridley was not in a cheerful mood when he came into the den, and Danny volunteered to go shovel the gate clear.

  The sun was well up, casting full daylight barred with evergreen shadow on snow lying white and untracked along the road. In the stillness of the morning they were the only presence—and even a town-born rider could feel the vacancy about them.

  The mountain was gone, as far as the ambient was concerned. Or at least wrapped in a silence like some vast fog in which the mountain might be there—but no one could see it, no one could hear it, and all the life that ought to be there didn’t talk to them.

  A normal horse, a wild one or a horse that had known a rider, ought to have made its territory clear to them. And it didn’t challenge them, either.

  “I knew the man that rode this horse,” Danny said quietly as he rode. “He wasn’t too reasonable. Once he took a notion into his head—he could get real stubborn. This horse coming back again makes sense in that regard.”

  “Not a Tarmin rider.”

  “Not Shamesey, either. Out of the south. That’s all I know.”

  “Fisher, —”

  Ridley was It was down to the moment Danny had dreaded. He’d called their bluff in showing he knew about the He knew that was dangerous. But he’d done the most he could to show he meant to do just that. Just—

  Cloud went light-footed, , and Danny didn’t see what of, except that there was something in Ridley’s mind he couldn’t penetrate. Ridley was a senior, and did things in the ambient Danny didn’t always expect. All of a sudden, out in the woods alone with the man, Danny’s horse was picking up some uneasiness between them, after some unspoken dissatisfaction on Ridley’s part. He feared, considering the matter, that he’d assumed all along that his enemy was and that the surface of Ridley’s intentions was the whole truth. Good humor didn’t answer everything—and he never had thought that Ridley believed everything he heard.

  Slip likewise wasn’t easy to figure—Slip’s image was a lot like Spook’s, just went sideways on you when you were most trying to get a fix on that horse, there and there and there and there, until you didn’t know where Slip was within a few feet of distance, and then—

  Then Slip stopped and Cloud stopped and swung around and Ridley very deliberately lowered the rifle he’d been holding aimed generally skyward for safety.

  The barrel came down toward him.

  “Need some answers,” Ridley said. “Fisher. Just you and me.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said, and Cloud wanted , but he didn’t, and kept sending , like a poor silly kid—because with somebody he didn’t want to shoot, he wasn’t much better armed than that. He was truly, deeply embarrassed to be so outright helpless, and so taken in by the man.

  “You’re pretty sharp,” Danny said, while Cloud’s withers rippled in a shiver of fight-flight stymied by about the danger.

  “I’m asking again,” Ridley said with all his ordinary calm. “Fisher.”

  “I don’t know exactly what you want to know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Danny heaved a sigh. “Can you put that thing down?”

  “No,” Ridley said plainly and simply. “I’ve got a village and a partner and a kid. You know what I’ve got to protect.”

  “Yes, sir, I do know that.”

  “On the other hand, you don’t seem to me to have a lot of responsibilities to be protecting. Which leaves me and my partner wondering sort of what you are protecting, do you follow me?”

  “Yes, sir. I truly do. And I’m not good at lying.”

  “Oh, you’ve done all right at that.”

  “No, sir, if I were as good at being quiet as you are, I wouldn’t have spilled anything. And I’ve probably sounded worse than I am. I’ve wanted to talk to you.”

  “You’re not sounding too trustworthy.”

  “I lied, all right? I lied to the marshal. I think.” He’d been through so many ins and outs of the story he wasn’t sure where he’d told the truth and where not. And he’d faced a gun before. More than once. He’d never added up how much had happened to him in a very few weeks. “I’d like your advice, sir. I’d have come to you for advice before I came in the gates, except my friend down there was hurt and I was all there was to take the kids and try to get them here—which I was going to do. But I didn’t plan to do it without talking to you.”

  “Do what?”

  hit his thoughts. And he knew he’d better come across with the whole Brionne business while he had any credibility with Ridley, and while his chances of riding home with Ridley were at least even.

  “Fact is, sir, the —” He wasn’t managing his thoughts real well. They were far too colorful with and the horses, neither one, liked the memory. Slip jostled Ridley sharply. But Danny stayed still.

  “The girl we brought,” Danny said, “she rode it. She got it into Tarmin. When it died—she became—like she is. And I’ve been scared to death, sir, —” His teeth started chattering. Fool, he said to himself. He would sound like a liar. “I didn’t intend to come all the way to Evergreen. I didn’t intend to have a loose horse follow us all the way to the top of the Climb, and I’m afraid it’s after her—”

  “Damn you,” Ridley said. “You didn’t intend.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “How much else isn’t the truth? Chang surviving? Your friend? Aby Dale?”

  “I didn’t lie about that. I just—didn’t know what to do about the girl. Tara Chang wanted to shoot her. My friend, Stuart, he said no. She’s been out cold ever since, I think she’s dying—I just—didn’t expect the horse. And if you want me to leave, right now, and not come back till I’ve shot it—I’ll do that. I figure—maybe—that’s what I ought to do. I’ve put the village at risk.”

 
; The ambient was full of But figured there, too. And the gun stayed level in a long moment of silence, while Danny only hoped to God, whatever else happened, Cloud wouldn’t be a target.

  “How old are you?” Ridley asked, absolute confirmation he’d acted the junior and the fool.

  “Seventeen,” he confessed, scared as hell to turn the situation into that, senior and junior, knowledgeable rider and one whose decisions all along had been wrong. He owed Carlo and Randy to stay responsible for them and not to plead off on being a fool. “Going on eighteen. This winter.”

  “From Shamesey.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who in hell put you in charge?”

  “There just wasn’t anybody else, sir.” The tremor got away from him. “It wasn’t Tara’s fault. She was in Tarmin when it went, and she wasn’t in good shape. And Guil sure wasn’t. This guy shot him in the craziness down there. The same guy that rode the horse that’s loose—I think. —And I didn’t exactly tell Tara I was going to go up the mountain. She told me the route, but I don’t think she ever thought the girl was going to make it and she didn’t know there was a horse going to close in on us. —So we had to get out of there. And I never planned to go all the way up from midway in one day—so I couldn’t ask you about the girl. But I had to leave there—the weather was closing in, and I didn’t know how to judge how bad it was going to get. I just—left the shelter and it got worse and we kept going because I didn’t know where I was on the mountain.”

  “Bloody hell,” Ridley said, and slowly set the rifle back on his hip so it aimed at the sky. Danny let go a breath. Cloud liked it a lot better and was on the edge of

  Danny thumped him with a heel, patted his neck, wanting For a moment the ambient was completely charged, completely volatile.

  Then Danny ventured: “I’m sorry, sir. All I can say. I should have trusted you when I came in.”

  Ridley’s face was absolutely grim.

  “I’ll go after that horse,” Danny said.

  “Let’s just use a little better sense than we’ve had around here,” Ridley said sternly. “All of us.”

  “Yes, sir.” Meekness was called for. Ridley had met him with a great deal of restraint—well short of shooting him, which Ridley could have done with no village marshal calling him to account for it. “Another thing, sir.”

  He didn’t want to tell things he knew but he thought Ridley, if he trusted him now, might be an ally and. if otherwise— he didn’t know what he might have brought on the interests he was trying to protect.

  “Carlo Goss,” he said, feeling as if he had something stuck in his throat. “Carlo said he shot his father. The whole town was going crazy. The rogue was coming down on them—it was his sister. And there was a family fight. I don’t say it was even Carlo’s idea to shoot. I can’t say it wasn’t. I don’t know what the reason was. I just know he’s no killer. He survived the swarm in the jail. He and the kid— that’s where they were, and Randy’s only fourteen. I figured—figured with what they’d been through—I didn’t need to bring that up. Let him start over again. Let him take care of the kid and the sister. That’s what I thought.”

  Ridley drew a slow, deep breath and let it go, a cloud in the frosty morning.

  “Any more cards you want to lay on the table?”

  “No, sir. That’s all.”

  “I think,” Ridley said, “that you did pretty damn well under the circumstances.”

  Danny asked himself if he felt that about himself, and he thought not.

  And as Ridley imaged them , he thought it might be well to keep the ambient very quiet, very subdued while he and Ridley went side by side, and until he was certain what Ridley was thinking.

  He didn’t look forward to going back to the barracks until Ridley had gotten his mind made up what to do. Callie might vote for shooting him.

  And he didn’t ever want to see an accusing look in Jennie’s eyes, Jennie who had as much reason as Callie not to trust him anymore.

  “We’re after Ridley said.

  “Yes, sir.” He tried to call , then, but he couldn’t put the conviction of harmlessness into his own image that he needed to.

  “I don’t like this any better than you do,” Ridley said shortly. “None of us like this.”

  “Yes, sir.” He was completely rattled. He felt like a traitor to a decent man on the one hand and a thoroughgoing traitor to an unlucky horse on the other—a horse who’d never actually threatened, who’d tagged on to them but never done them harm, who just for God’s sake wanted the only humans in reach to do something to straighten out the mess it had fallen into. Its sending was lonely, most of all, just terribly lonely.

  “We all feel sorry!” Ridley snapped at him.

  “Yes, sir,” he said in real contrition, and for a while there was quiet.

  Then Ridley said, “Let’s go back and pretend we shot at it.”

  He thought Ridley was making a bad joke. But Ridley wanted Slip , and Cloud followed Slip into a turn.

  “Do we say that, sir?” he ventured to ask. He still wasn’t sure what was going through Ridley’s mind.

  And after a moment of quiet, Ridley said,

  “We’ve got to tell the village something, don’t we?” Ridley fired his rifle off without a blink in warning and Cloud jumped and Slip jumped.

  “That might scare it off,” Ridley said.

  It might draw it in, too. It was hard to know, with a horse. And he didn’t think even yet he could get into Ridley’s thoughts.

  He didn’t think, for one thing, that Ridley had made up his mind what to do—or that the principal reason Ridley had come out today with him was to hunt horses. He didn’t know—maybe Ridley had caught sympathy for it from him, or maybe Ridley wasn’t so sure now that he wanted to be alone with him so far from camp and wanted simply to set him off his guard.

  Maybe he’d been Ridley’s real quarry, today. He began to think so.

  He didn’t know even yet if he trusted Ridley. He had a far better idea where Callie was.

  Outright dislike was a lot easier to map.

  Saturday night, and the talk in the village was the horse haunting the vicinity—far too high on the mountain, far too late in the year, and far too coincidental to the arrival of strangers to be chance.

  Carlo heard it from Rick, who lounged, thumbs in belt, near the forge. “I hear you brought us a gift. I’d say somebody who’d done that ought to be shot. What do you think?”

  “What gift?” he’d said, as if he couldn’t mostly guess—he’d been in such a state he’d let Rick back him against one of the walls in the forge and try to intimidate him.

  “Outside of that pretty little sister of yours, who’s cold as yesterday’s fish? A horse, mister. A horse come around the walls last night and there’s a lot of people asking why.”

  “Not my problem,” Carlo said.

  “I’ll bet,” Rick said. Rick’s attempts to make trouble were always tedious and full of bluster.

  And it took maybe a quarter of an hour and Rick heading off to the tavern before they were rid of him.

  “Was there a horse?” Randy asked. “I dreamed about a horse. I dreamed that horse was following us.”

  “Yeah,” Carlo said, “well, I guess it did. And don’t talk here.”

  “Pig Rick’s gone.”

  “Just don’t start finding excuses,” Carlo said. “This isn’t a game, have you got that figured? This isn’t a game we’re playing with rules and exceptions and time-outs. You do what I tell you.”

  “I don’t see the reason—”

  He laid a very careful hand on Randy’s shoulder. “Little brother. Let’s be done. Let’s have a beer.”

  “You don’t let me drink.”

  “I’ll let you drink tonight. One beer. All right?”

  “All right.”

  He let go of Randy’s shoulder. He’d had only one thought in that, that it was just best if Randy slept soundly tonight. And if he had to carry the kid home that was the way it would be.

  So they went and closed up shop.

  “Can we talk?” Randy said when they’d got outside. “About the horse, I mean. I mean, peop
le are going to ask us.”

  “You keep quiet. You don’t mention it.”

  “Do you think Danny’s going to come?”

  “I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?” He didn’t mean to be sour with the kid, but Randy was being fourteen. Or thirteen. Or whatever. He was tired. His eyes watered with the smoke that water didn’t take away, his arms hurt, his shoulders hurt, and his hands hurt, and most of all his gut hurt from the desire never to have to deal with Rick Mackey, who was bound to be inside.

  They walked up onto the porch, stamped the snow off on the mat and walked in.

  “There’s the ones that brought the horse!”

  “Pig!” Randy yelled at Rick.

  Carlo jerked him sideways and Randy yowled in protest—which didn’t get the public fight Rick was spoiling to create. Carlo just went toward the back of the tavern, found a table on the borderland of miner’s territory and headed Randy at the chair.

  “Hold the table.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Hold the damn table,” Carlo said, and maybe he looked mad. Randy shut up and sat down and held the table while he went over and put two meals on the Mackey account.

  “Watch those,” he said, set the bowls on the table and went after the beers.

  He kept an eye out all the same, to make sure the kid stayed seated and people stayed away from the kid.

  “So what about the horse?” the bartender asked.

  “What I hear,” Carlo said in all sobriety, on an instant’s impulse, and very conscious what he was saying, “is it belonged to a rider down at Tarmin who crossed a friend of Danny Fisher. It’s looking for another rider. Drove the last one crazy. Just stark staring crazy.”

  “God bless,” the bartender said. “Don’t need none of that.”

  “I’d lock the doors at night,” he said. He was being a fool. He didn’t have any business pushing the matter. It had just gotten on his nerves, and now he knew the whole story would be all over town by morning—tell the bartender, for God’s sake. And mention crazy after what had happened down at Tarmin. He’d meant to get the matter of the horse off him and Randy. And what he’d just done hadn’t been at all bright.

 

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