Cloud's Rider

He didn’t personally give a damn, not for gossip in the Mackey household and not for gossip at his back in the tavern, of which there was considerable. He didn’t have to give a damn, he said to himself.

And he made it most of the way to the door before a drunken miner grabbed his arm, introduced himself as Earnest something-or-another Riggs and said he’d be glad to look out for—his words— “two nice kids like you” and keep away the “bad lot, real bad lot,” that would otherwise move in.

“That’s real kind,” Carlo said, and maneuvered himself and Randy out the door minus the offered escort.

“Damn!” Randy said. “They’re crazy!”

“Wait till spring,” Carlo muttered as they went down the porch steps from the tavern. The Riggs encounter had persuaded him they weren’t as safe as he’d hoped. That there’d be numerous offers of that ilk, and it wasn’t going to be easy to figure out other interests. He halfway expected another offer to follow him, after the rest saw Riggs’ move.

But no one accosted them. Snow was coming down thick, haloed in the lanterns they’d hung on poles to keep patrons from breaking their necks. It looked peaceful. He wanted to think of it that way.

“So what are they going to do?” Randy asked as they walked home. “Those guys—they’ll strip the place for nails. That’s our stuff down there! I mean, I didn’t think we’d go back for it and it’s pretty godawful, but I don’t want those guys carrying off my stuff and getting into mama’s stuff—”

“You know how the phone lines go down every winter?”

“Yeah.”

“No way any other village up here can find out about what happened down there until somebody hikes there from here or Tarmin doesn’t come on-line in the spring. Evergreen, all by themselves, is going to swarm down there at first thaw, bet on it. That’swhat Da

“Why? Of what?”

“Because there’s folks here poor as poor, there’s miners don’t own anything but a no-pay claim and owe the suppliers their shirts and the nails in their boots. It’s the chance of their lifetimes. These are rough people, kid. And that guy who stopped us on the way out—”

“Mister Earnest Riggs?”

“Listen, you. Take it seriously. We’re in their way. We’re owners, you figure it? And more than the Mackeys might want us for partners.”

“Why?”

“Kid, figure it. We’re the only way that the Mackeys or somebody else could have a real, legitimate claim to the forge and the house and everything down there. If we sold it to them or if we partnered with them somehow—”

“Not with the Mackeys!”

“I’m not going to sell and I’m not partners with them. Just let me handle it. Da

“You think they would?”

“Maybe.” They’d almost reached the forge-shed. He stopped Randy where he and Da

“ ‘I think I’ll go outside.’ That’s stupid.”

“It’s smarter than ‘I want to talk secrets’!”

“Maybe we could go over to the rider camp. Maybe they’d let us live there till spring. I mean, we’renot afraid of the horses, are we?”

“Forget it.”

“If I was a rider we’d have money. And you could be.”

“I’m a blacksmith. That’s what I want to be. That’s what I want to do. And forget this stupid notion. We’ve got rightsto a hell of a lot of property down in Tarmin.”

“We could sell it and go to Shamesey.”

“What’d we sell it for? Smiths here have got everything tied up in their property. What’s this business about Shamesey all of a sudden? What’s wrong with here on the mountain?”

“Rick’s a pig.”

“Yeah, well, and if we don’t go to Tarmin and take our stuff back pig Rick is going to get our house and live there till he dies of stupidity. I don’t want them to be rummaging through our stuff, either. I don’t want them living in our house. You want that?”

“No.”

“Then don’t talk stupid. You only go to the rider camp if something happens to me—”

“Nothing’ll happen to you.”

“Oh, ‘nothing will happen.’ ‘Nothing will happen.’ God! Did we look for anything to happen down in Tarmin?”

“I’m not stupid! Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”

“Then don’t talk like it! You’re a minor! You’re fourteen! If something happened to me, the Mackeys could get custody of you andthe property down there, you understand? I don’t want that!”

Randy ducked his head. “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he muttered, not because he was stupid, Carlo thought, but because Randy had lost enough, that was what he was trying to say; he didn’t want to go down to Tarmin where everybody was dead; and Carlo hugged him hard.

“Not if I can help it, no. I’ll take care of you.”

Randy cried. Randy wasn’t in the habit. And he couldn’t go into the shop like that: Rick would make capital on it, for sure, if Rick happened to be lurking about inside.

So they stood out in the snow with no one around them until Randy got himself in order.

It was a chancy evening. Maybe it was the spookiness of a strange place. Maybe it was just suddenly realizing the person he was trying to do everything for was justifiably upset with the choices he was being handed. He pushed the latch up and went with Randy into the warmth and the firelight, our of the wind and the cold—but not clear of the leaden upset in his stomach and the feeling that shivered along his nerves.

He needed Da

And that Da

He still felt warmed by that gesture, in ways no fire could touch. He looked forward to getting together with Da

But Randy—Randy just didn’t have anybody else. Fourteen was a hell of an age. Everybody was looking at you (as if they had the time), you were obsessed with your own stupidity and you were just so damn knowledgeable about what other people were thinking— fact was, nobody was interested in your opinions and it was a hell of a time to lose every friend you owned. Randy was going through his own grief, and it hurt, too.

Randy sat down and sulked on the stone wall where the heat was, and he could just walk over and hit the kid. That was what he felt like. God, he hated that expression.

“I could be a rider,” Randy muttered.

It was the one thing that just sent whiteout over his reasoning. “No,” he said for the hundredth time. “No. You can’t.”

“You won’t even talk about it!”

“I just told you not to talk in here!”

“It’s not about that. It’s about what I want to do!”

“Well, you’re not going to.”

“Who made youmy papa?”

He crossed the intervening space in two strides and grabbed the kid by the shirt.

And didn’t—didn’t hit the kid. Their father had done far too much of that. For a lifetime.

Randy stared at him, surly, full of his own notions, full of confidence he could go out there and tame a horse that might be a killer like the last one.

“Damn fool is all,” he said, and walked off and got a rag and wiped soot off the water barrel. There was always soot in this place. The chimney didn’t draw as well as theirs down in Tarmin. They breathed it. It got on their clothes, on everything they touched.