Cloud's Rider

And even to this moment he wasn’t entirely sure they’d not all imagined it, on the strength of Randy’s desires and his and Carlo’s fears—all hallucinating the creature, including the riders in Evergreen. Real and not-real had gotten very disco

Well, if Ridley hadn’t told them, he wouldn’t mention it, not until that horse did pose a danger. Which it hadn’t.

And until and unless Brio

He’d tell Ridley and Callie—soon—about Brio

So it was his to hold. On his own. If spooky stuff once started to spread where horses and an eight-year-old kid were involved, it could turn scary for sure. And no one would ever figure out who had contributed what to the pot.

So he answered the villagers’ questions, at a safe remove from Tarmin orthe intruder on the mountain slopes, and the Evergreen marshal’s office provided hot tea and the preacher provided cookies until they seemed to have run out of questions.

He was free and clear.

“We’d like,” the marshal said then, “for you to come back tomorrow.”

If there’d been a horse near at that moment of distress it would have told everything in the district he’d just panicked.

“I told you all I know,” he said.

“We’d like you to tell the council,” the marshal said. “Won’t take too long. General meeting.”

There wasn’t a way to say no. It wasn’t as if he had a tight schedule.

And the weather today had certainly proved a storm didn’t stop Evergreen officials and their meetings.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “No trouble.” He collected his hat, his scarf, his gloves, and a couple of cookies for Cloud, for a peace-making.

Ridley nipped a few for, he was sure, deserving horses who would expect the same of someone who came remembering <cookies,> and the same for Je

“Oh, we provided,” the preacher said, and came up with a whole sackful, which Ridley took with a grin and a thank-you.

So they went out into the passages with the bag of cookies, and trekked back through the echoing boards toward the camp.

“What do you suppose they want?” he ventured to ask Ridley, and Ridley shrugged.

“Got to tell it firsthand,” Ridley said. “The village wants to know. And the miners and loggers, they have their rights to know. It’s just the way they do things. It’s their rules with the miners association.”

“Huh,” he said, and tried instead, in preparation for coming into camp, to think about cookies—good cookies. And he let himself think how his feet hurt, and he let himself limp and think about his sore knees, which didn’t take any pretending at all.

They walked back through the passage and past the post-and-jog that was the horse-barrier, after which they were in the rider camp, and through the door that let them out into the yard.

Je

Then Cloud caught the notion of <cookies> in Ridley’s possession. So had Je

“Pig,” Da

Je

Callie came out into the yard before the bag was gone, and got one, at least, before Shimmer persuaded Callie fairness dictated she was due the other one.

Da

His feet didhurt. He hadn’t lied so much in that.

But, God, he wished there weren’t tomorrow to deal with. He’d thought he was free and clear: he’d thought he could go back to camp and dismiss Tarmin from his mind for good and all—at least until spring, when he could get out of here. Dirty trick on their part.

Very dirty trick. So in a concentrated effort to empty his head of everything he didn’t want broadcast, he just stared at the stones and the fire and thought about Shamesey, where things were safe, and about Carlo, whose company he missed, and about—but there were reasons he couldn’t go and talk to Carlo.

The marshal and the village would imagine their questions going to Carlo’s ears, for one thing; they might trust a young rider who was under the orders of a camp-boss they knew, but they’d have no way to know Carlo’s self-restraint, or lack of it.

He wondered if Carlo would be at the meeting tomorrow. Maybe he’d see him there and have a chance to know how he was getting along.

But he didn’t want to betray an interest in the question, no more than he wanted to talk about other things he knew.

Chapter 10

The weather had settled down after yesterday’s snow—as generally the weather had been more moderate than the storm of the night they arrived.

It proved, Da

Fool again, he thought. He should have stayed put.

Maybe.

But then—that came of flatlanders climbing mountains in the winter. He’d lived through it. He learned from it.