Cloud's Rider

Then Slip stopped and Cloud stopped and swung around and Ridley very deliberately lowered the rifle he’d been holding aimed generally skyward for safety.

The barrel came down toward him.

“Need some answers,” Ridley said. “Fisher. Just you and me.”

“Yeah,” Da

“You’re pretty sharp,” Da

“I’m asking again,” Ridley said with all his ordinary calm. “Fisher.”

“I don’t know exactly what you want to know.”

“Yes, you do.”

Da

“No,” Ridley said plainly and simply. “I’ve got a village and a partner and a kid. You knowwhat I’ve got to protect.”

“Yes, sir, I do know that.”

“On the other hand, you don’t seem to me to have a lot of responsibilities to be protecting. Which leaves me and my partner wondering sort of what you areprotecting, do you follow me?”

“Yes, sir. I truly do. And I’m not good at lying.”

“Oh, you’ve done all right at that.”

“No, sir, if I were as good at being quiet as you are, I wouldn’t have spilled anything. And I’ve probably sounded worse than I am. I’ve wantedto talk to you.”

“You’re not sounding too trustworthy.”

“I lied, all right? I lied to the marshal. I think.” He’d been through so many ins and outs of the story he wasn’t sure where he’d told the truth and where not. And he’d faced a gun before. More than once. He’d never added up how much had happened to him in a very few weeks. “I’d like your advice, sir. I’d have cometo you for advice before I came in the gates, except my friend down there was hurt and I was all there was to take the kids and try to get them here—which I was going to do. But I didn’t plan to do it without talking to you.”

“Do what?”

<Brio

“Fact is, sir, the <rogue>—” He wasn’t managing his thoughts real well. They were far too colorful with <fire and death in the street> and the horses, neither one, liked the memory. Slip jostled Ridley sharply. But Da

“The girl we brought,” Da

“Damn you,” Ridley said. “You didn’t intend.”

“I didn’t.”

“How much else isn’t the truth? Chang surviving? Your friend? Aby Dale?”

“I didn’t lie about that. I just—didn’t know what to do about the girl. Tara Chang wanted to shoot her. My friend, Stuart, he said no. She’s been out cold ever since, Ithink she’s dying—I just—didn’t expect the horse. And if you want me to leave, right now, and not come back till I’ve shot it—I’ll do that. I figure—maybe—that’s what I ought to do. I’ve put the village at risk.”

The ambient was full of <anger.> But <doubt> figured there, too. And the gun stayed level in a long moment of silence, while Da

“How old are you?” Ridley asked, absolute confirmation he’d acted the junior and the fool.

“Seventeen,” he confessed, scared as hell to turn the situation into that, senior and junior, knowledgeable rider and one whose decisions all along had been wrong. He owedCarlo and Randy to stay responsible for them and not to plead off on being a fool. “Going on eighteen. This winter.”

“From Shamesey.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who in hellput you in charge?”

“There just wasn’t anybody else, sir.” The tremor got away from him. “It wasn’t Tara’s fault. She was in Tarmin when it went, and she wasn’t in good shape. And Guil sure wasn’t. This guy shot him in the craziness down there. The same guy that rode the horse that’s loose—I think. —And I didn’t exactly tell Tara I was going to go up the mountain. She told me the route, but I don’t think she ever thought the girl was going to make it and she didn’t know there was a horse going to close in on us. —So we had to get out of there. And I never pla

“Bloody hell,” Ridley said, and slowly set the rifle back on his hip so it aimed at the sky. Da

Da

Then Da

Ridley’s face was absolutely grim.

“I’ll go after that horse,” Da

“Let’s just use a little better sense than we’ve had around here,” Ridley said sternly. “ Allof us.”

“Yes, sir.” Meekness was called for. Ridley had met him with a great deal of restraint—well short of shooting him, which Ridley could have done with no village marshal calling him to account for it. “Another thing, sir.”

<Scene in the barracks that first night, Brio

“Carlo Goss,” he said, feeling as if he had something stuck in his throat. “Carlo said he shot his father. The whole town was going crazy. The rogue was coming down on them—it was his sister. And there was a family fight. I don’t say it was even Carlo’s idea to shoot. I can’t say it wasn’t. I don’t know what the reason was. I just know he’s no killer. He survived the swarm in the jail. He and the kid— that’s where they were, and Randy’s only fourteen. I figured—figured with what they’d been through—I didn’t need to bring that up. Let him start over again. Let him take care of the kid and the sister. That’s what I thought.”

Ridley drew a slow, deep breath and let it go, a cloud in the frosty morning.

“Any morecards you want to lay on the table?”

“No, sir. That’s all.”

“I think,” Ridley said, “that you did pretty damn well under the circumstances.”

Da

And as Ridley imaged them <going on through the woods,> he thought it might be well to keep the ambient very quiet, very subdued while he and Ridley went side by side, and until he was certain what Ridley was thinking.

He didn’t look forward to going back to the barracks until Ridley had gotten his mind made up what to do. Callie might vote for shooting him.

And he didn’t ever want to see an accusing look in Je

“We’re after <a horse,”> Ridley said.

“Yes, sir.” He tried to call <Spook-horse,> then, but he couldn’t put the conviction of harmlessness into his own image that he needed to.