Rider at the Gate

“Kid,” Luke said. “What isyour grief?”

“Nothing.” He couldn’t own to what he felt. He didn’t know why he was mad, except Luke knew he’d promised Cloud that candy and Luke had no right.

“Nothing,” Luke echoed him, and <mad> was in the ambient now, horses milling about, Luke growing irritated with him, Da

That came from out of nowhere, when he was ready for an accusation. “I don’t know.”

“Man did you a petty little favor. You’re traipsing clear to hell paying him. Why? What’s it to you?”

<High country. Papa hitting him. Mama yelling. Snow and trees in Cloud’s mind. Stuart on the tavern porch talking to him as if he was really somebody.>

“Who hit you? A relative?”

“None of your damn business.”

“Yeah, none of our business. Till you screw up and need somebody to come after you, none of our business.”

<Stuart. Surly and mad. Him, Da

“Like Stuart?” Da

That didn’t sound like friends to him. And he’d had friends, one or two, no matter what Jonas said—well, at least the boys he’d hung around with in town, until he’d gone and taken up with Cloud.

They’d even tried to get past that, his town friends had. At least they’d tried. Gone on seeing him and hanging about with him, when he came back into town, maybe to shock their other friends, but, hell, it was more than he could say for Jonas and the rest of them, sitting smug on their horses, watching Stuart lose his grip on sanity in the upset they’d brought him.

<Stuart ru

Suddenly it was a resolve and a certainty to him: he couldn’t stand any more of their company. He stalked back to the fireside, grabbed up his gear and started hanging thongs from his shoulder and stuffing gloves in his pocket as he walked back to Cloud—<us leaving this place.>

“Can’t take it?” Jonas sniped at him, from the fireside. “This the way you honor contracts? Is this what you do to drivers you’re hired to?”

It was an attack the same way his mother attacked him. He was used to it. He jammed his hat on, reached for Cloud’s mane, the lump in his throat grown to painful size.

“Kid!” Different voice, Hawley’s. It made him flinch out of the flashy swing up he intended, but it wasn’t going to stop him: he chose the steadier, belly-down mount he knew he wouldn’t fail.

So he wasn’t good. So he got up like a kid. He was on Cloud’s back, and Cloud turned away from the fire.

“Kid. Use your damn head. Where are you going?”

“What do you care?” <Us downhill,> he thought, and Luke came and tried to get into his path. <Luke riding to stop him,> was in the ambient; but Jonas said,

“We don’t need him. If he wants to tag us he can follow. That’s all.”

He’d expected more interference. He’d frankly expected more concern. He sat there on Cloud’s back staring down at Jonas, mad, damned mad, and Jonas stared back at him.

“You’re a magnet for that thing, kid,” Jonas said. “You know that? You and that horse—making all that noise. You care about that horse? No?”

“Go to hell,” he said. He wished he hadn’t. But he’d said it. Now he couldn’t slink back to the fire. He stared down at all of them from Cloud’s back, then wanted <downhill,> and <empty road,> not <going back to Shamesey.> Just <empty road.>

“Doesn’t solve your problem, kid,” Jonas’ voice pursued him into the dark.

But Cloud took him onto the road and upped the pace to a trot, downhill into the dark of a clouded night, with a wind cold and keen as a knife.

He already wanted to go back to the fire. He knew he wasn’t fool enough to ride straight uphill to Tarmin Height, first and alone, taking Cloud into what an experienced rider like Aby Dale hadn’t been wary enough to survive.

But he couldn’t find a way to go back and duck his head and take it anymore—he couldn’t see getting Cloud hurt in a horse-fight, either, and he saw it coming if he didn’t give in: Jonas was pushing for it, because Jonas intended to run him the way he bossed Luke and Hawley, and once you started taking Jonas’ orders, he had the strong suspicion, it got harder and harder to break away from what Jonas wanted. A small group riding together wasn’t at all like Shamesey camp, where there was a whole thought-deaf town to escape to when you felt thoughts crowding in on you; and when the town got too bad to tolerate, which usually took a few hours, there was Cloud to come back to.

And if everybody in the world pushed them too far they could go out to the hills and hunt for three and four days and not need anybody. He’d managed to stay out of trouble. He’d never gotten Cloud into a fight. He wasn’t about to. Not three on one. Jonas knew it. Jonas kept pushing.

Bad decision maybe, that had made Jonas drag him along; so Jonas had thought better of it, and maybe Jonas had found out he wasn’t going to knuckle under easily—but was Jonas going to say he was wrong and manage the situation as civilly as possible until they went their separate ways? Hell if he was. Jonas couldn’t take somebody who didn’t think Jonas had done right by Stuart. Maybe that was Jonas’ conscience talking to him. Maybe it was just that Jonas was born a son of a bitch. It didn’t matter.

He had to wonder how Stuart’s partner had gotten along with the man. Why Aby Dale was lying dead up there on the ridge and they’d gotten away safe.

Then they’d gone over to Anveney to draw Aby Dale’s money out of the bank before they broke the news to Stuart at Shamesey. That was two, three days to make that detour, with some trucks that had to go that direction, he was sure—riders had to take their charges where they were hired to go, and that had to be the case. Hawley hadn’t told Jonas about taking the money. That was a point in Jonas’ favor. But hell, it hadn’t been exactly a straight line they blazed with their bad news, had it? And there were telephones. If they were ru

His throat ached. His chest hurt. Cloud slowed to a walk, mad, too, thinking <kick men, bite horses > until Da

<Men by quiet water, three men at the table, with mama and papa and Denis and Sam… >

Sometimes the images that came up were outright stupid. He didn’t know why he put those three men in the apartment with his family. They didn’t belong there.

He was mad at them and mad at his family. Luke asked who’d hit him, which was none of Luke’s business.

So what if he was mad that papa had hit him: he knew why papa had hit him, which Luke didn’t understand: papa hit him when papa couldn’t talk, the same reason he’d hit Denis—it was just something men in his family did, and it never meant you didn’t love somebody, it just meant you’d gotten to that point your throat wouldn’t work and the words weren’t there, which was when you loved somebody a whole lot and they did things you didn’t understand.