Cloud's Rider

“It’s a bad habit. Mistakes come from bad habits.”

“Are you really going to see Brio

“I think I better.” But he couldn’t face it straight from thatgoing on inside the house. It wasn’t a day for family visits. “Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow.”

Randy’s face assumed a sulk. “I don’t want to.”

“You go this time and you keep your mouth shut. Just when we go, walk in, look sorry, say how nice she looks. Say something decent and we’ll leave. We won’t stay ten minutes. I won’t make you go again.”

“I don’t want to go this time!”

“It’ll look bad! Just shut up and be polite. Hear me? Or I’ll bash your head. We’ll go Sunday. After church.”

“Church!”

“We have to look decent!” It wasn’t clothes he meant. He was ashamed of what he’d blurted out. “We’ll go Sunday, when we’re cleaned up already. Be done with it.”

Breakfast wasn’t sitting well. It was probably the ham-dripping gravy.

Probably it wasn’t sitting well on Rick Mackey’s stomach, either. He heard the house door slam. He heard the door to the main passage slam. He didn’t need to ask Rick what he thought of the business, when Rick’s parents were suddenly showering good will on two strangers who were a real threat. Rick had never had competition in his life, and now Rick had a couple of strangers move in who were probably better smiths than he was—if they’d ever seen Rick Mackey do any work—who were more polite than he was, brighter than he was, and worst of all, rich enough to buy what Rick Mackey had sort of hoped to slide into ass-backwards and without lifting a hand.

Bad news for Rick. His papa didn’t need him anymore.

Bad news for two strangers that turned their backs on Rick Mackey, Carlo said to himself. Randy could gloat over Rick’s discomfort. Hecouldn’t. Randy to this day didn’t understand about stupidity and danger.

He did. Much too well.

The hunters stayed for breakfast, no second thoughts there—Ridley and Callie had served up a healthy portion of biscuits and a small portion of ham, which was, in the light of what he understood about the economy of the villages, a generous act, and an increasingly expensive gesture. The village could reliably freeze meat for the winter. It just took what the barracks had: a strong unheated shed, in the village’s case vermin-proof, in the case of the barracks— horse-proof. But if there was nothing to freeze—that was that.

And if there wasn’t game in reach of the village, Ridley was going to have to take the hunters out on a much farther hike than they were accustomed to.

There was talk, during breakfast, that the horse’s presence and the game having migrated elsewhere could be related in another way, that the horse might have gotten confused as the game moved and swarmed. Swarmwas a bad and a dangerous word—one that couldn’t give comfort to men whose business was going where they couldn’t retreat as fast as riders could and without the kind of protection riders could get during a retreat by staying physically against their horses.

A real bad situation, Da

Ridley went back into his and Callie’s room, advising him without any discussion of the matter to put on his cold weather gear. Nothing Callie had heard this morning had made her happier, Je

But, Da

So he went to his room and put on everything he owned, everything he’d worn up the Climb, and came out lacking only the sweaters he’d kept hanging on a peg in the main room as something he needed when he went out to the den.

He put those on, catching the ambient from horses who’d perceived <men burrowing back under the wall> and who’d hung about the cabin, aware of <hunting.> Je

He had a foolhardy streak. But not enough to go over there right now, when a woman was probably thinking that if she didn’t like him sleeping under the same roof she sure didn’t fancy staying here and sending her partner out with him.

He very quietly put on his outdoor gear.

“You shouldn’t shoot it,” Je

“You mind your business,” Callie said sternly, and for just a moment that veil lifted on a worried, angry woman.

“I won’t be a fool,” Da

He didn’t wait for Callie’s answer. He, took up the rifle and ducked out the door and out to the porch and down, to give Cloud and the rest of the horses a light before-dawn breakfast. Cloud understood <going hunting,> which Cloud was greatly in favor of— but <hunting male horse> was a lot chancier feeling, involving Shimmer and foals and his rider’s worry.

He’d ducked this, Da

Ridley came out after a delay Da

The sun was well up, casting full daylight barred with evergreen shadow on snow lying white and untracked along the road. In the stillness of the morning they were the only presence—and even a town-born rider could feel the vacancy about them.

The mountain was gone, as far as the ambient was concerned. Or at least wrapped in a silence like some vast fog in which the mountain might be there—but no one could see it, no one could hear it, and all the life that ought to be there didn’t talk to them.

A normal horse, a wild one or a horse that had known a rider, ought to have made its territory clear to them. And it didn’t challenge them, either.

“I knew the man that rode this horse,” Da

“Not a Tarmin rider.”

“Not Shamesey, either. Out of the south. That’s all I know.”

“Fisher, —”

Ridley was <not happy with him.> It was down to the moment Da

Cloud went light-footed, <scared,> and Da

Slip likewise wasn’t easy to figure—Slip’s image was a lotlike Spook’s, just went sideways on you when you were most trying to get a fix on that horse, there and there and there and there, until you didn’t know whereSlip was within a few feet of distance, and then—