Cloud's Rider

Cloud's Rider Page 34

by C. J. Cherryh

  If he lived to get there. If—God—if Randy hadn’t followed him.

  If Randy had followed instructions for once in his life and gone to Danny—Danny would come after him. Danny was probably already out the rider-gate and looking for him, if he just made a little noise—in all this quiet.

  Then something made a sound. A horse sound.

  And his world—expanded.

  , he thought with relief, and had that sense of where that told him as a sound came to him, of something moving. He lay still, asking himself wildly how he was going to explain things to Danny, how he was going to ask Danny to go with him, prematurely, in the winter, down to Tarmin, to get at those damned records—because he had a chance again.

  came treading softly up to him, and it appeared to him incongruously upside down as he lay on his back. It— he—lowered its head and blew warm horse breath over his face—spooked up when he moved and turned and scrambled backward on his hands and knees.

  was its name.

  He saw > It was inside out—or outside in.

  And if Danny was right it was a killer. Or could become so—on any provocation.

  He got up very slowly, trying not to startle it. Danny had said, never startle Cloud, and he thought—maybe—if he just backed away very, very carefully and got to a tree—

  The horse edged forward, leaned to smell over his gloved hands, got through his guard to smell his face, his snow-caked coat and trousers, his coat again and his face. The ambient was there. Spook-horse was Its friendliness could change in the instant it realized it wasn’t his rider.

  “Stupid horse,” he said, trying to back away, knowing his thoughts were in themselves betraying him. He looked for a tree whose branches he could reach. And didn’t see one. “Stupid horse.” It was nuzzling his hands again, forcing its way closer. “What do you want?”

  Then it dawned on him.

  The horse following them up the mountain in the winter season. The horse persisting in harassing the village, even at risk of being shot. The horse— and to the village walls at night—

  It wanted its rider. It wanted a rider. That was what it wanted.

  “Stupid horse.” He kept backing, losing ground, cast a look back to make sure there wasn’t another cliff, and it got its nose past his hands to blow breath in his ear. Which brought his head around and his chin into collision with its spooked head-toss as it backed off. He saw stars for a second, and found it coming forward again, pushing at his hands.

  “Stupid horse, you’ve got the wrong one of us. It’s my brother that wants you. Not me. I’m a blacksmith. I’m not a rider. Go away! Leave me alone!”

  The black nose got past his protective hands, and nudged him full in the face, desperate for something, but Danny had told him the truth—he didn’t hear everything in a horse’s sending; and he didn’t know what it was thinking—or expect it when of a sudden the damn horse licked him on the face, across the nose and bashed his lip when he flinched. He put out his hands in self-defense and it butted against them, rubbing its face on his gloved palms, with that odd sound and that feeling Danny had said was

  “Damn fool,” he said to it, but to appease it he rubbed its cheek with his hands—otherwise it was going to rub its head on him and bash his face again. That led only to a harder push and a loss of balance. He went down backward in the snow and the horse nosed him in the face, or the hands, when he pushed at it, radiating and He couldn’t get up without its nose in the way. He got as far as his knees and had its head in his middle, butting him until he patted its neck and used it for a wall to lean on getting up.

  “I’m not it, silly fool. I’m not.”

  But it wanted. It and he’d been with Danny long enough to know that if a horse wanted to reach his rider, he’d go through or over anything remotely possible, and this horse wanted with that kind of intensity. It wasn’t in its mind any longer. It was something else—he didn’t know what, but it wasn’t any longer, either.

  Neither was he It had him, and he had it; and he couldn’t be as scared as he’d been or as desperate as he’d been or as lonely as he’d been, while the creature he’d most feared was most interested in rubbing its face against him.

  , he kept seeing, but not a threatening shape, just a fast-moving shadow through the trees, horse here, horse there—the eye couldn’t track it.

  “Spook,” he said to a back-turned ear, his arm at the moment encircling its neck from below. He was there instead of the person it most wanted, whoever that was. He was there because he’d happened into its path, was all, when Randy had wanted it, when maybe his sister had, in her untouchable dreams. It might get him back close to the village, might save him, but certainly he hadn’t a right to it—

  Which, he realized all of a sudden was his answer to every question of everything he’d ever had a chance for—he hadn’t a right. He was the oldest. He had the responsibilities, he always had been the responsible one. He had to learn the craft. He had to stay and work. He had to go to Evergreen. He had to see to Brionne’s life. To Randy’s future. To the forge down in Tarmin. All those things. Only thing he’d ever done right, only thing good anybody ever said about him, was he was responsible, and what could he do now? He was a stand-in for his brother with this creature. It wasn’t responsible to have notions of accepting it himself.

  was the ambient right now. It was powerfully persuasive. It was so, so attractive to believe it could make a mistake like that, and that he might accept it and just not go back again to being responsible.

  Couldn’t. Randy wouldn’t forgive him.

  It could keep him safe, though, till he could deal with the charges and prove—whatever he could prove to the village.

  It could—it could take him clear to Tarmin. It knew the way up and down the mountain. It could fight off predators. It could guide him, hunt for him, protect him—he didn’t need anything he didn’t have in his hands right now.

  And the world around him had expanded so wide, and the smells had become so clear—he didn’t know how much he’d lost when he’d left the ambient for the Mackeys’ forge and the living he owed his brother.

  If he stayed too long, he said to himself, if he let himself get used to it, he didn’t know how he’d give it up.

  “God, I don’t know about horses. I don’t know how to ride. You’ve really made a mistake, horse. I swear to you I’m not it.”

  Didn’t make a difference. Spook was still there. Still wanting, exploring with a curious soft nose the gloved hands he put up to save his face from being licked raw. Hands failed. The horse butted him in the chest and wanted him to

  There weren’t words. He felt presumptuous even to try what it wanted him to try. Danny if he were here would call him a fool.

  But Danny wasn’t here.

  And he had no notion how to do the flashy move Danny could do, grabbing the mane and swinging up: he knew where that would land him. So he tried the way Danny would when things were chancy, and just bounced up to land belly-down across the horse’s back and tried, with the horse beginning to move, to straighten himself around astride.

  Too far. He made a frantic grab after a black and cloudy mane that like finest wool went almost to nothing in his hands—stayed on for maybe a hundred meters, breathless with what he’d done, was doing, could do. But when the course turned uphill he slid right off over Spook’s rump.

  To his surprise he landed on his feet, in a position to look uphill as the horse reached the top and looked down at him as if to say, God, I’ve picked a fool.

  He slogged up the snowy incline, panting, and tried again—got on, and fell off more slowly, still clinging to two fistfuls of mane, when Spook picked up the pace.

  Definitely there was a knack of balance he didn’t have.

  But he got on again.

  He wanted to go back and find Danny. But Danny was and Spook didn’t want to find Danny. He suddenly had that image. He couldn’t just ride into Danny’s sights—when Danny thought Spook was a danger to the village. He couldn’t go back and get Spook killed for no reason.

  He knew now as l
ong as the village chased him, Randy had a chance to do what he’d told Randy to do if things got bad—go get Danny’s help; with Randy staying in the rider camp, the marshal at least couldn’t include a fourteen-year-old in a murder charge.

  He had to talk to Danny. But on his terms. After he’d had time to think what to do, what he wanted, where he was and where he wanted to go.

  Spook had hit a rhythm and broke into a run that didn’t pitch him off. They’d reached a road—the road, a road, he didn’t know— where there was easy moving and for a hundred meters or so he was with Spook, and no longer fighting for balance—it was just there. It was wonderful, wild, and right in a way he’d never found anything just happen for him.

  Until the stop that almost pitched him over Spook’s shoulder.

  Danny was there. On Cloud. With a

  Spook saw it, too. Spook swung around and bolted and he didn’t know how he stayed on, except the double handful of mane, both legs wrapped tight and his head ducked down because he swayed less that way.

  “Carlo!” he heard Danny yell at him. “Carlo, it’s all right, come back!”

  Couldn’t take the chance. Couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t.

  was the only safety. It was what Spook knew. Or he did. He’d have trusted Danny. But Spook was afraid. And he thought now he should have been.

  “Damn it!” Danny cried. “Carlo!”

  But Carlo wasn’t hearing him. Couldn’t hear him, maybe. Or Spook-horse’s state of mind was contagious.

  Chase him, maybe. But push him on a mountain road with no-knowing-what ahead—no. , he wanted of Cloud, and tried sending into the ambient,

  Cloud didn’t think so. Cloud’s mind conjured and Which wasn’t the case, but that was where Spook had consistently been, long enough that it was part of Cloud’s thinking.

  Which he had to calm down. Cloud was of a mind to right now, and that wasn’t what he wanted.

  , he thought, patting Cloud’s neck as they walked along the well-defined track in the snow. “It’s all right,” he told Cloud. He didn’t know how far Carlo might make the chase—but he was willing to go that far. He’d come out with his kit, his cold-weather gear and his guns. He was equipped. He’d taken longer than he wanted getting onto Carlo’s trail.

  He’d known when had hit the ambient that he’d been too late, and he’d only come up on them because they were so obsessed with each other, in that way of new pairings, that they wouldn’t have heard a herd of horses coming.

  He’d made his mistake when he’d hesitated—one way or the other, shoot fast or don’t shoot. Spook wasn’t a green horse from the mountains, playing tag with echoes of gunshots and sprays of dirt on the hillside, the way Cloud had done with the gate-guards down in Shamesey two years ago. Spook very well knew what guns were, and he’d had one rider shot to death.

  Wasn’t going to have a gun pointed at him, no. And he’d been asking himself down to the moment the pair turned up in front of him whether he was going to be obliged to shoot the horse to save Carlo.

  The lingering question was, should he have, and whether he’d just stood back and let somebody he was supposed to protect go off on a horse that had last belonged to a crazy man.

  * * *

  Chapter 19

  Ť ^ ť

  It might have been a quick turnaround—out after the kid, and back again, with a live kid or a dead one, and then maybe a chance for negotiation with the village authorities, or an expedition to Momay.

  But neither had happened, and Ridley made a trip over to the villageside, through the little gate, this time, and without Slip, to talk to Eli Peterson.

  “No luck so far,” he said to Peterson when he met him on the street in front of the pharmacy.

  “I feel bad about it,” Peterson said. “I don’t think the boy did it, fact is.”

  “Fact is, I wouldn’t take the Mackeys’ word for a sunrise I was watching.”

  “The girl, however,” Peterson said, “the sister—”

  “What?”

  “Says the brother shot their parents, down in Tarrnin. Says the boy was in jail.”

  Ridley drew a slow breath. “I’ve been aware of it.”

  “And didn’t say?”

  “Fisher told me all about it. Fisher thinks the boy’s innocent.”

  “He’s not a judge! Neither are you!”

  “I’m asking you—let that matter lie. None of us were in Tarmin. None of us can imagine how it was. What I caught from the Fisher boy—you wouldn’t want to see. Look at what happened this morning! I had a terrified boy running into the camp—”

  “The words flew out of my mouth and the damn miners were after somebody. They didn’t give a damn who. —How’s the kid taking it?”

  “I’m keeping him. At least till his brother gets back.”

  “You think he’s coming back?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Something you know?”

  “Fisher’s still gone. Fisher would come back if it was useless. The boy’s with him. I’ll be willing to bet. And the younger boy’s been through too much as is.” He hadn’t told Peterson the central matter. He thought about it, decided finally on half a truth. The snow was still falling and passersby aboveground were all but nonexistent on this cold day—except a batch of kids sledding the snow-pile across the street on a piece of board. “That horse that’s loose—can’t tell for certain, but I think the older boy’s contacted it. I don’t know what to expect.”

  “You mean you think he’s teamed up with it? As a rider?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t say it’s going to work. Or that he’s going to survive it. He could fall off, break his neck—the horse could kill him.”

  “Do they do that?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of it happening. A horse that’s just too spooked. A rider that’s the wrong rider. Things like that. This isn’t nice and controlled like Rain and Jennie. The kid could break his neck, the horse could go off a cliff—or the kid could come back here and then spook right along with the horse. I have to tell you this—don’t take to account anything the sister says. She’s not right. She’s not innocent. I don’t know how else to warn you. I had to get my horse out of there this morning. She spooked my horse.”

  “Scared Slip?” Peterson was clearly dubious.

  “Marshal, if I’d kept Slip there to deal with her—she’d have spooked the village out the gates. Lorrie-lies and goblin-cats aren’t as scary as what’s in that girl’s mind.”

  Peterson seemed to get the idea, then.

  “She’s not right,” he repeated to Peterson. “She’s been associated with the rogue down at Tarmin. She’s dangerous.”

  “How—dangerous?”

  Fisher had left him with a set of truths—and a situation. As camp-boss, he had a privilege to deal with things in camp. And he didn’t pass blame—or legal matters—on to the village marshal. “Fact is—she was on the Tarmin rogue’s back. And she’s a lot safer with you than with us, is what I’m comfortable saying on the matter.”

  “That’s not damn all you owe me to say, rider-boss!”

  “Keep her away from the horses. This spring—we’ll find a way to get her down to someplace safe. Anveney would be my advice. No horses in Anveney.”

  “Good lovin’ God. What have you handed us? What am I dealing with?”

  “Marshal, the situation arrived on us on the sudden, on a junior rider’s best guess what to do. And with that horse out there, and what’s gone on—I’d say Darcy Schaffer’s got a real problem on her hands.”

  Peterson was mad. He couldn’t blame him for that. Peterson walked off from him as far as the edge of the walk.

  “What were my choices?” Ridley asked while Peterson stared off into the white.

  “We could have put her with somebody else than Darcy Schaffer!”

  “Yeah,” Ridley said. “Counting that we’ve got to get that girl out of Evergreen—I’d say just about anybody else. But the girl could get better by spring.”

  “Better than what, rider-boss? Better than happened down in Tarmin?”

  It was a question.

  Serious question.

  “I didn’t have all the in
formation at the start.” Being rider-boss he didn’t on principle want to pass the blame. But he wasn’t going to have it attach to Callie, either. “Callie was doubtful. I was too inclined to go easy. I should have held Fisher to account, I didn’t until I had clearer indication—and when I did get the truth it was a little damn late. I don’t see he could have done better than he did, given the situation. That’s what we’ve got for the winter.”

  “And this is the younger kid of the same family you’ve got in camp right now!”

  “Scared. In love with the horses. Willing to learn—maybe. Maybe some horse will have him. I don’t know. Maybe even Shimmer’s foal. And if that horse has taken his brother it may solve our problems for the winter, if we can move him on, say, to Mornay and get that influence out of here. Or settled. A rider might calm that horse right down.”

  Peterson looked unhappy. But Peterson came back and met him close up. “Your guess. —No, dammit, your horse-guided opinion! You think the Goss boy is guilty or innocent of the business on Darcy’s doorstep?”

  “Better than a guess. My horse knows the Goss kid, at least from one meeting. Nothing on that porch led me to the Goss kid. Nothing whatsoever. Everything persuades me that the sister is a problem. He isn’t. Neither is the younger boy or I wouldn’t have him near the horses.”

  “There’s talk that Darcy agreed to pay Riggs a lot of money.”

  “I’d sooner suspect miners and money for Riggs’ disappearance. It makes a lot more sense. It wasn’t the Goss boy.”

  “Riggs otherwise had no money.” Peterson said. “And I’m inclined to think it’s possible. Story is, Riggs was hiring men to claim property for the girl. Riggs had this notion of marrying her.”

  “She’s a kid.”

  “Yeah. And, your better-than-guess aside, there was reason for her brother to take offense. That much is true. —Then I ask myself— well, couldn’t the Mackeys want to see the Goss boys charged and out of the picture? But that doesn’t benefit them too much, while the girl’s with Darcy. Unless they contracted to run the Tarmin shop for the girl. And between you and me and the rest of the village, Rick Mackey couldn’t run that shop or this shop on his own, and if it came down to Mary Hardesty, she’s a businesswoman but she’s no decent smith, and without her, Van Mackey won’t stay sober. Business is all she likes, work has to get done and the Goss boy, the older one, is the only likely one there is. So where’s their motive?”

 

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