Cloud's Rider

“You’re always so damn right!” Randy said. “You aren’t, you know? Somebody else knows something besides you.”

He didn’t say a thing, even an advisement to shut up. He didn’t go back and hit the kid. That was what Randy was following him, begging for—so he’dbe in the right.

That was the kind of argument Randy had grown up understanding.

Now hewas the villain. He didn’t know what to do about that.

He truly didn’t know what to do.

Da

Je

Je

“I want to stay up,” the refrain began. Which didn’t work.

“To bed,” Callie said. “Or you don’t go outside tomorrow.”

Je

“Good night,” he said calmly, aware that Callie was vastly upset at that inclusion. “Pleasant dreams.”

“Night,” Je

Ridley didn’t say a thing. And Callie might have, to Je

“Might do some hunting tomorrow,” Ridley commented. “Feels more normal out there tonight.”

“Normal’s come and gone all season,” Callie said. “Everything on the mountain still feels upset.” Callie was pouring vodka, two glasses, and a third one ready.

“None for me, thanks,” Da

Callie frowned a little, and didn’t pour the third. She and Ridley had theirs.

So Callie couldn’t doubt, now, that he knew very well why he’d gone out so thoroughly the moment he went to bed every night. But he tried to act oblivious to any hard feelings over it. He didn’t look in Callie’s direction.

“So how are the boys doing?” Ridley asked cheerfully—Ridley was very much the peace-maker in the house, and if he’d headed at the matter of the yellowflower in the drink every night he was sure Ridley would have a perfectly cheerful way of putting it that they’d feared he might slip around the barracks at night and threaten sleeping children.

“Mackey’s found out there’s money to be had,” Da

“Man’s not to trust,” Ridley said, as if there wasn’t a double meaning in the village, and as if they trusted him implicitly. “Between you and us.”

They talked a while, mostly about hunting. And Callie was quiet.

Callie certainly wasn’t happy he hadn’t drunk the vodka, Callie wasn’t happy about him being included in Je

He wished Callie trusted him. It was very hard to keep Ridley’s kind of cheerfulness when he knew all the while Callie was probably pla

And maybe a little of his thinking leaked out, the horses being stirred up. He wasn’t sure. But Callie frowned the darker and Ridley talked on about last year and the hunting.

It was the craziest kind of conversation he’d ever tried to navigate.

Go at Callie’s distrust head-on? Say, —Callie, I swear to you, I won’t murder people in their beds?

Not if he didn’t want a confrontation. And he didn’t.

Thatgot around to serious wondering—like—what had he missed while he was out cold, and hadthat horse been hanging around, and was there a solid reason for Callie to hate him and Ridley to be nice to him?

 “Going to bed,” he said. “Ridley, if you want to go hunting, I’d sure like to exercise Cloud, before he takes to digging under the wall.”

“Hope it stays quiet out there,” Ridley said. “Yeah, hunting would be a relief.”

“Yeah.” On the thought that there was still more being said while things were being said than any sane person could track, Da

He’d likeddealing with Carlo. He’d liked being where he was appreciated. Didn’t any human being?

He was getting out of his shirt when he heard <dark. And fire.>

A cold sweat came over him. He reached after his gun—he’d disposed his pistol on the bench beside the head of the bed when he came back from the yard, as he usually did, and he caught it up the instant he’d gotten his shirt back on. His rifle was over in the corner next the shelves—and he knew at the same time his brain was handling those locations that Cloud was <by the fence,> that it was a sending <from outside> and that it wasn’tone of their horses.

“Mama? Papa?”

Scared kid, in another room. He didn’t blame her. He heard a door opened and bare feet ru

“It’s not Cloud,” he said as he found Ridley and Callie putting on coats.

“That damn horse is back!” Callie picked up the shotgun. “It didn’t go downhill! I told you it never went downhill!”

“Let me see if I can deal with it,” Da

“Don’t you dare open that gate!” Callie said.

He didn’t say, I’m not a total fool. Or, What do you think? I won’t risk my horse.

He just went for his sweaters and his coat, against the cold out there.

“Fu

He was stu

Then he flung open the main door and went out onto the porch, beset with a <blood on snow> image.

Hiswaking wasn’t the question on his mind: Brio

Carlo sat in the glow of a banked fire, blanket hugged about him. His teeth were chattering and he couldn’t find the presence of mind to get back under the covers.

It might have been a particularly vivid nightmare—except it was still going on.

<Blood on the snow.>

As if it was its name, for God’s sake. As if that was what it called itself. The way Cloud was storms, or summer puffs of white. <Shot echoing off the high rocks. Snow and a man lying dead.>

As if in the reaches of a shocked and grieved mind, it had been born anew there, in that place, at that moment.

<Snowy woods. Snowy woods with the glow of winter nights. All the mountains

<Something in the shadows, among the trees.>

<Wariness. Movement behind walls.>

The world wasn’t flat anymore. He could seeand hear—the way he had on the Climb, and he sat there and shook—

Then it was gone. Just gone.

And the world flattened out again—crashed into flatness and dullness that left his heart beating hard. He sat there thinking of the journey up the mountain, thinking how that sensehad been their guide in such desperate, blind moments—recalling how Cloud had beaconed them up that road and they’d known there was mortal danger every time that sense went out.