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“That’s saying Stuart’s going to do a damn thing he ought!”
Ancel Harper stood up to say. “He’s not going to stay away from Shamesey. He’ll be back.”
“That’s tomorrow’s trouble!” a borderer shouted, and stood up. “And it isn’t proved, Hallanslaker! There’s never been a rogue come into this district!”
“You’ll see it proved when you’ve seen a man and a horse go bad—and I have, Reney, I’ve seen it, don’t you tell me what’s not proved! I’ve felt it, don’t you tell me what’s like and not like! You want to feelit, Reney? Come outside camp and I’ll show you!”
“That’s no call to go after Stuart!”
“I’m telling you he’s a danger. He’s already spooked the town— and he’s not going to let go and go away. You got people out with guns in the town streets, Wesson. You’re going to have people killed over there if you don’t get Stuart shut down—”
“Hold it, hold it, hold it!” Lyle Wesson yelled, pounding the table. But people had started shouting at one another, and got to their feet, and started yelling at each other about hazards to the camp, about outsiders, which Stuart was, and which the Hallanslakers also were, but the Hallanslakers seemed to have forgotten that point, or Harper had. Harper started yelling at Lyle Wesson that they had to hunt Stuart and his horse, and Lyle Wesson banged his stick down on the table.
“Shut the hell up!” Wesson shouted. “And let’s talk about the trouble in Tarmin Height. Let’s talk about clearing that road of a hazard, and keeping the thing away from the villages up there on the Loop this winter. That’s our business, if you’d shut the hell up and quit stirring things up, Harper!”
Tarmin was where Stuart was going, Da
“Stuart’s going up there,” he said, too quietly, he thought, but a leaf-fall would have made a sound in that silence. He sat down again, hugged his arms about him and wanted not to make another sound.
Lyle Wesson said, “Going up where, Da
“To find what killed her and that truck driver. He’s going up to Tarmin to stop it, just like you said.”
“He’s shown no sign of leaving, yet,” a Hallanslaker shouted. “What’s the kid got? A phone line to God? Stuart’s a danger to the whole camp! Shoot him andthe horse before he comes back! The town may not have a second chance!”
“No!”
It was a voice he’d heard before this night—one of the strangers, the one who’d accosted him, the one who’d called him seriously to task for giving way to his panic. “The kid’s right. He’s going up there. Absolutely that’s where he’s going.”
“So you say!” the Hallanslaker shouted. “We got this town at risk! You’re not going to get any help out of Stuart!”
And another of his lot: “The Shamesey riders already say the camp’s too large, the town’s too large—you let a rider run amok around Shamesey fields, what do you look to have? Murders in the streets? Bodies stacking up like cordwood? You don’t trust Stuart’ll do any damn thing he ought to. Hell with him handling the Tarmin rogue—he spooked the whole damn town! Shoot him, I say! Then we’llhandle the Tarmin problem!”
The ambient was miserable. The rider next to Da
He stayed. He said, standing up again and forcing the words through a throat that seemed too small, “He’s wrong.”
“Who’s he?” a Hallanslaker asked. “Who is this kid, some kin of Stuart’s?”
His voice stalled. He cleared his throat with an effort and prayed it wouldn’t crack. “I’m not any kin of his. But he’s already left. He’s not crazy. He’s done what you say and left the town the way he’s supposed to. He just wants quiet for a while.”
“ Howdo you know?” one of the Shamesey riders asked him, and he retorted,
“I heard him go.”
“Heard him go. Sit down, junior, till you know what you hear and don’t hear.”
He was standing alone against a senior, mad, uncertain of his facts, his face gone hot.
But another man stood up, Stuart’s friend. “Kid’s right.”
“Then that’s you and the kid,” Harper yelled, on his feet again, “against all of us!”
“Four of us,” one of the other strangers said, on his feet, and the other man stood up. People started yelling again, and more and more people were getting up, Hallanslakers and other borderers in a shouting match.
“All right, all right,” Wesson shouted, banging his stick on the boards. “So shut up! If he goes to Tarmin and deals with it, our problem’s solved, if everybody just calms down. Just shut up and let a man breathe.”
“Somebody better go,” a Shamesey woman said, “somebody better track him to be sure he clears the area.”
“Somebody better be sure what’s up on Tarmin gets dead,” a Shamesey senior said. “Somebody should have taken care of it when the thing showed. Convoy or not, you had your best chance—”
“We had three of us left!” the foremost stranger said. “Aby Dale was our convoy boss! We were short-handed as was. We had trucks to get down off that road! You ever been outside a pasture, Shamesey man?”
< Ice,> hit the ambient. A winter’s day. And the crack of Wesson’s cane. “Shut it down!” Wesson said. “Enough damn should-haves! They didn’t have that option so long as they had the convoy in their charge!”
“So?”
Debate started again. Riders swore, and more of them got up and stayed on their feet.
Wesson banged his stick on the porch rail. “Stuart’s Dale’s partner. He has a right— -firstnatural right to deal with that thing on Tarmin Ridge. But so have the villagers on Rogers Peak a right to their safety. And so have townsmen down here in the plains a right, and us in their camp, we’ve got rights! If Stuart has gone up there, well and good. But if he can’t do it…”
“It’s not our responsibility!” the Shamesey rider yelled. “I’m not risking my neck up there!”
“Yeah, go guard cattle! Nobody asked you!”
Shouting started again. Da
“Shut up!” Wesson yelled. Da
But the lead stranger, unlike others, hadn’t sat down. “Boss-man.” He held the center of attention, his arms folded, face grim and downcast. “ Friendsshould go after him. If he goes over the edge… friends should make sure of him and do what has to be done. Or help him get that thing. We’re ready to go up there.”
“You naming yourselves?” Wesson asked.
“Three of us,” the man said. “Jonas and Luke Westman, Hawley Antrim, all out of the MacFarlane. We’ll take his belongings to him, we’ll catch up with him and we’ll bring him back sane. We’ll have that thing out of the heights. Aby Dale was a close cousin of Hawley’s.”
“Settled, then,” Lyle Wesson said.
Discontent prickled through the air, a quiet muttering, no one satisfied… or someone utterly dissatisfied.
“Beds and quiet,” Lyle Wesson said, levered himself up with his cane, and abandoned the porch for the inside of the tavern, where the powers in the camp repaired to talk about things juniors didn’t need to know—Da
And he supposed it would happen now the way the boss said. He hoped it would. He looked askance at various individuals of the retreating crowd, hoping he hadn’t made a permanent and grievous mistake by speaking out like that and setting himself up to argue with his seniors. He didn’t know why he’d done it, except his father always said he never could keep his mouth shut.