Rider at the Gate

<Cattle,> Cloud thought. <Jonas Westman hitting Shadow, at the gate.> Cloud hadn’t missed that. Cloud didn’t like it in the least. Cloud didn’t like Jonas Westman orhis horse. <Shadow-horse pitching Westman in road. Cattle tail on Shadow.>

Cloud vehemently didn’t like the Westmans. Cloud certainly hadn’t indicated anything about that when Cloud had nudged him into going. Maybe it had always been Cloud’s notion that they could kite up to the High Wild and desert the Westmans to their business with Stuart, but that wasn’t the way Da

Or maybe, with somebody following them, it was time for Cloud to use his nose and his horse-sense and get them out of danger.

Whoever was following them could be somebody who didn’t like the Westmans. It could also be somebody who didn’t like Stuart, like that bunch in the meeting… and they’d cut your throat soon as look at you: Da

Whatever went on among riders, there was usually—and always before in his experience—a convoy and a lot of riders, or at least a boss of some kind, to buffer the feud, and if nothing else, to give one rider or a group of riders excuse to ride apart from one another and keep out of each others’ thoughts. But here there wasn’t any convoy boss to provide a young rider fearful of being put upon by his seniors the least small contact with town law.

He was off with people where there just wasn’t law at all… where seniors ran off and left you at a pace faster than any convoy was ever going to travel. He’d thought of helping somebody, their friend, no less, and this was the pay he got. The preachers said, Do unto others. And it wasn’t working that way.

It was darker and darker. There were singers in the grass he couldn’t identify, there were images that could come from a goblin cat pretending to be something small and harmless for all he knew…

Cloud snorted suddenly, and <horse> flashed into mind.

Da

But Cloud didn’t act disturbed, just disgusted, and jolted forward into a trot.

<Cloud stopping! > Da

<Cattle,> was Cloud’s comment. <Rear end of cattle.>

Then they went jolting right off the road and through brush that made Da

< Smell of smoke, > Cloud sent then, even Da

But smoke led to fire and the gleam of fire through the brush to the stray nighthorse who had clearly come out to look them over as they approached; and the nighthorse—he was sure now it was Froth—led to three riders seated at a campfire and cooking supper.

“Well,” Jonas said, hardly looking up. “Made it, did you?”

<Cattle,> was his own quick thought, no more pleasant than Cloud’s. But you didn’t do that with a senior, you said, meekly getting down,

“My horse and I worked it out.” He wasn’t sure he wanted now to say anything about people following them. He wasn’t sure he wholly trusted present company to be friends of his, any more than the people behind them, but the thought that he might say something was enough, with the horses all about.

“What riders?” Jonas asked, with no levity whatsoever.

“I don’t know,” Da

“But you don’t know whether they got wind of you.”

“Possible they did, sir. I don’t know.” They thought he was stupid. He wouldn’t exaggerate what he didknow: it was too serious a matter. “We kept the wind with us and got out of there, crosscountry. Cloud thinks there were more than two, less than ten, that’s all we could tell.”

Hawley was stirring the coals with a stick. He flung it into the fire. There was silence, and a confused group image of the meeting, of the principal rider who kept arguing to shoot Stuart.

“Harper,” Jonas said. “Damn him.”

It was undeniably the right image. Da

And he wondered if they were going to put out the fire at the news and run for it, maybe higher into the hills, and off the trail. It was what he might do if he were Jonas and he thought Harper and several of his friends were behind him with hostile intent.

“Sit down,” Jonas muttered. “We’re not budging.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and sat down and shed his baggage on the ground beside him. It was dirtier and more scuffed than it had been in the morning. Maybe it looked a little less like a novice’s gear. By some miracle he still had the gun in its holster and it made sitting uncomfortable. He took it off, and decided, in the smell of bacon and sausage starting to cook, and the sight of tea on to boil, that he was very glad they weren’t going to budge.

But he thought he should figure out what the rules were.

“Do I put in, or cook my own, or what, sir?”

“What’re you carrying’s the question.”

“Bacon and biscuit-makings mostly.”

“You can put in tomorrow. We made enough. You got jam?”

“Yessir,” he said, thinking then that he’d been too judgmental, and they’d figured all along that he’d make it. “Got jerky, too. Fair deal of it.”

“Save it. You mix up the breakfast dough, leave it set the night. There’s clean water. You wash up.”

“Yes, sir.” That was Luke Westman who gave him that order, and it was fair. “So what about this Harper, sir?”

“There’s time,” Hawley said. “There’s plenty of time to settle with that one.”

How? he wanted to ask. Did they mean have a fight, or wait in ambush and shoot them, or what?

“Scared?” Jonas asked.

He hadn’t pla

And now there was this Harper following them, who might, Da

No camp-boss out here and nobody to tell town law what had happened between a group of stray borderers with feud on their minds.

There was a real chance he might not get home next spring. Things could happen out here, very final things, he began to take that into truly serious account—things nobody would ever know about except the ones that pulled the triggers.

He just didn’t know right now why these men had ever needed a junior in their midst, or what good he really was to anybody. He wished he hadn’t come. He wished he’d asked somebody like Lyle Wesson what his mature judgment was of his going off like this, somebody who might have said Don’t do it, kid, you don’t count for anything out there.