Cloud's Rider

“Save it. I won’t take your money, long as you don’t want to go off the road I’d take—which is down by east or down by west. Anything else, you’d fell off the mountain.”

“I swear—” Carlo began.

“No big favor. I’m going anyway. Might as well have good company-”

Carlo let go a huge breath. “This guy,” Carlo said. “It’s not just me, understand. I’ve tried.”

“This Mackey guy—the senior—I don’t gather he’s got a good reputation in town, clear out to the rider camp. Ridley sure doesn’t think much of him.”

“I tell you,” Carlo said, thin-lipped, “I’d like to pound his head in. But he’ll take it out on Randy. So will the old man. We wouldn’t have a roof over our heads. And Icould end up in jail.”

“I think people in the village know—”

“I’m the stranger here. This guy has property. Listen—I want to ask you. If it ever got real bad—I mean realbad—or if something happens to me, could Randy come over to the camp? And you take care of him?”

“If it gets bad— bothof you come over. There’ll be breaks in the weather. I can get you on to Mornay or somewhere no matter the weather. Winter’s bad. But it doesn’t mean a horse can’t move.”

Carlo drew several slow breaths. “That’s real generous.”

“I’d take you this week if the weather clears. But—” He suddenly remembered the whole reason he’d come—and it dawned on him the import of what he knew and the village’s ambitions, and maybe that it wasn’t a real safe thing for Carlo and Randy to try to leavethe village with their news. Respectable people could do some damn dirty things—for less money than was involved—and while there might be some who’d take a chance to see there weren’tany heirs to Tarmin property but themselves—there might also be those who’d kill to be sure no other village heard about it.

Carlo could be living with one of the chief suspects in eithereventuality, to judge by Mackey’s blowhard son and the fact Carlo was talking about refuge.

But the plain fact was, riders weren’t in great abundance up here. All of Evergreen had better reckon they couldn’t get ten meters through the Wild without a rider to guide them, and that came down to him, and Ridley and Callie—with an eight-year-old they didn’t want in rough circumstances. Things came crystal clear to him of a sudden, just being over here in this environment, that if he made it real clear to the village at large that he and Carlo were close friends, it might be the best protection for Carlo and Randy he could arrange. Nobodyhad better piss off the only rider-for-hire there was up here.

“Has the marshal talked with you yet?” he asked Carlo in his new sense of immunity. “About your rights to property?”

Carlo squinted at him through the blowing snow and went very, very sober. “No.”

“There’s lawyers involved,” Da

“You’re serious. They’re going to do it.”

“No joke.” He felt keenly the lack of the ambient that would have made him aware what Carlo was thinking. “And it might work out all right. There’d be plenty of neighbors. Plenty of work fixing up. If you could stand to go back and live there—you’d ownyour papa’s forge, the shop and the house and maybe more than that. Anything you’d legitimately inherit. Anything your papa’s or your mama’s relatives had. You could be the richest guy in Tarmin.”

Carlo looked disturbed. He raked a hand through his hair, which had been damp with sweat and which was developing ice crystals in the snowy cold. “Mama’s property. Andthe forge. And the house.”

“You could be real comfortable—if you can be comfortable down there. This village hasto have Tarmin operating. Only place they can really warehouse goods. You know that better than I do. And until they can get oxen, or trucks and fuel to haul whatever they normally get from Tarmin, they’re probably going to have to port supplies up the Climb on hand-carts. That means it’s going to be a real lean spring up here. Prices are going to go sky-high. Just immediately as soon as the snow melts this village or somebody on the High Loop has got to get somebody down to Shamesey and buy oxen, hire drivers andget some truckloads of hay up here to the top of the treeline, or the Anveney truckers are going to gouge them for everything they’ve got. Not saying what Shamesey will charge—if they get wind of it before they’ve made a deal. They’re not going to wait around. These people have to move fast before word gets out.”

“Where’d you hear this?”

“There was a meeting. Actually a couple of meetings. I—should have come sooner—but—” He was embarrassed in the face of Carlo’s questioning look. “I wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure who’d be watching. I get the feeling they haven’t come here to tell you you’ve got rights. I’ll expect they’re going to talk to you. They bettertalk to you.”

“They haven’t. I figured—I figured they’d do somethingabout getting the warehouses down there going. But—”

“I get the idea a lotof people are thinking about claims down there. And you have rights. So’s Randy.” He hesitated. “—How’s your sister?”

“Don’t know.” Carlo’s whole body said he didn’t want to think about it.

“You could take care of her. And Randy. This Mackey guy is the onlyone that would be interested in the forge down there. He might try to buy you out, trade you here for what’s down there.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad deal—”

“No. Don’t take it. That’s what I’m hearing: there’s a chance—a real chance—that this village could go under—if the important people, all the people who know how to doanything, head downhill at the first thaw. It’d leave just miners and loggers up here— unless, I guess, people from the next village over decided to come over here and the next claims them—it’s going to be a scramble, is what.”

Carlo bit his lip. “I could go back down there. I would. Dammit, I would. I could set us up proper. Hellif I couldn’t. Damn Mackey!”

“If they come to you don’t sign anything. There’s lawyers involved.”

“Yeah. I hear you plain.” Carlo looked then as if he’d just been stung. “I got to get back to the forge.”

“Sure. I didn’t tell Ridley I was coming over here and Callie thinks I’m the devil on her doorstep. I didn’t tell ’em I was going.”

“I owe you a drink. At least. Several, in fact.”

“No difficulty. Anytime. You can come to the rider camp. No reason not. You get some time off—I can come across. I guess I can. Nobody seemed shocked I was here. —Suppose they’d serve riders in the tavern there?”

Carlo looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. I’ll ask.”

“Hey.” It dawned on him that was one of a set of things more that he could do. They neededhim. The village might have yet to figure it. But they needed him. The Evergreen ridersneeded him—or it was going to be an ugly scene, people wanting escort and Ridley and Callie with a kid they wouldn’t want involved. He suddenly resolved he wasn’t as down-and-under the local situation as he’d assumed— and that his situation was in some respects like Carlo’s. “Who’d guide anyone anywhere but me? And there’s horses painted in the church. This isn’ttoo bad a place. We should havea drink.”

“I’m supposed to get paid the rest of my wages. He betterpay me.”

Cash money was a problem he hadn’t solved—having not a pe

“Sure,” he said. He had a time to do something. He had somewhere to go. Amazing how that pi

“We’ll be there.”

He went with Carlo back to the door, and when it opened the heat inside was stifling and the inside was obscured with shadows and fire.