Cloud's Rider

<Daylight. Storm on the mountain. Blood on the snow.>

He didn’t want to stay still with thoughts like that. He flung the blankets off, got up and got himself ready for the day before he went over to Randy, who was sleeping like a lump, and nudged him with his foot.

“Time to get up,” he said, and Randy just snarled and hauled the covers over his head.

He’d had himself calm and forgiving until Randy did that. He knew the kid was sulking. He knew the way Randy would react if he wasn’t sulking, and it was without question a sulk.

“ Come on,” he said.

“Leave me alone.”

“I said get up.”

“Go to hell.”

He was mad. Mad enough to think of pulling Randy out of those blankets and bouncing him off the wall.

But it was those same thoughts ru

Came a door slam, and a great deal of clumping about in the passageway— notthere, but here, in Mackey’s forge, which probably meant early customers, and he had to get control of himself. He didn’t like the Mackeys. They could provoke him and he didn’t want to be provoked to lose his temper—it was too close to the surface right now. He knew what he could do. He knewwhat he was capable of and they didn’t, and today he just wasn’t doing damn well at holding himself together.

But the visitor wasn’t somebody coming to the shop. It seemed to be more than one person applying themselves at the Mackeys’ door.

So deciding the business didn’t concern them and was some private visit to the house, he went to the forge to fire up and incidentally make as much racket near Randy as possible, to get him up in advance of the Mackeys coming in without having to argue with him.

But too late. He’d just taken the first push on the bellows when Mary Hardesty came through the door from the passageway and the house to say there were visitors and they should come along, and, she added coyly, that there was breakfast and hot tea ready.

“Thank you, ma’am.” His stomach was upset. He didn’twant to eat breakfast with the Mackeys, but it was sure something was up, and it didn’t take many guesses to know it was something to do with money or their rights or something that interested the Mackeys. She shut the door, and he went and nudged Randy solidly but restrainedly with his foot.

“Breakfast with the house, little brother, and something’s up. Put on a good face and behave yourself or stay out here if you want to sleep and I’ll bring you some biscuits when I come back. This is real damn serious.”

There was a moment’s quiet from the lump of blankets. Then a slight stir. Finally a tousled head and an arm appeared and Randy crawled out muttering damnation on the whole world.

But bet on it first that Randy had good sense where it came to dealing outsidethe family, and second, that Randy’s curiosity would kill him if he wasn’t there to know what was going on.

“Wash first.” Carlo went over to the washbasin that he’d set on the hearth to warm last night. He didn’t shave much yet. He rubbed his upper lip and decided the job he’d done yesterday was good enough for any visitors the Mackeys had. And he waited for his brother to wash. He could guess it was the authorities that had shown up.

Maybe the lawyers.

Randy toweled his face off and was still in the sleepy sulks as the two of them went out the short exchange of passages that led from the smithy to the main passages and to the house back door. Carlo knocked and opened it himself, and he and Randy were already inside by the time the wife showed up to escort them down the soot-matted rug to the sitting room.

There were two men and a woman there besides Van Mackey, one he recognized as the preacher who’d met them at first in the riders barracks, and the woman in sober clothing he took maybe for a church deacon. He was going to be vastly disappointed if this turned out to be a church visit: he’d had his attack of religion while he was afraid of dying. He wasn’t, now, he hated being conspicuously prayed and preached over, and there were aspects of his situation he didn’t care to meditate or confess.

But the third man was the marshal, Eli Peterson, and maybe that made this official, unless the marshal was a deacon or something in the church.

“This is Co

Oh, God, he thought, having dismissed that idea and now having to get his wits a second time oriented in that direction, as he smiled a wooden smile and said how glad he was to meet Co

“Sit down, sit down, won’t you?” Mary Hardesty said, which he felt as a rescue in that instant, and Van Mackey pulled out chairs for the group at the table. Rick sulked in the doorway, on the periphery, and finally slouched his way to a seat between the marshal and his father and across from the preacher.

There was grace said: “Oh, Lord,” it went, “bless this house, bless this food, bless these strayed children of Yours which have come through Your storm to the bright su

But they’d not stinted on the meal. There was ham and potatoes, there was bread and jelly and ham-drippings and cooked cereal and hot tea. Randy ate so much he was likely to be sick. Carlo kept nodding dutifully at the platitudes and observations of the preacher, and putting away the high protein stuff that was hard come by.

“The Lord be blessed,” the preacher said at one point, “your sister is making slow improvement.”

Damn. He should have asked. That didn’t make a very good impression of him or Randy.

“I guess,” he said quietly, feeling guilty as he said it, “I guess I was afraid to ask. I didn’t hold out much hope.”

“She’s still feeble, but she’s taking food and water.”

Carlo tried to find something reasonable to say and couldn’t, except, “I’ll go see her, if it’s all right with the doctor.”

“I know it’d be a healing on that afflicted child. Bless you, young man, for carrying her up here.”

The man couldn’t talk without blessing this or that. He was worse than Denton Wales down in Tarmin.

But preacher Wales had been something’s supper, and he shouldn’t think ill of the dead, even if he had one more preacher sitting at table and snuggling up close to two more substantial citizens who mouthed amen and cheated at any chance they got. He just said, “I will, then,” and had another helping of bread and ham-drippings gravy.

Rick meanwhile had put away enough for a road crew and two of their oxen.

Then lawyer Simms said, “We’ve come here, actually, in the interests of yourlegal rights.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“You’re the sons and daughter of Andy Goss and of Mindy Wallace, his wife, who were the smiths in Tarmin, owning the premises and the house.”