Cloud's Rider

“I don’t like this any better than you do,” Ridley said shortly. “None of us like this.”

“Yes, sir.” He was completely rattled. He felt like a traitor to a decent man on the one hand and a thoroughgoing traitor to an unlucky horse on the other—a horse who’d never actually threatened, who’d tagged on to them but never done them harm, who just for God’s sake wanted the only humans in reach to do something to straighten out the mess it had fallen into. Its sending was lonely, most of all, just terribly lonely.

“We all feel sorry!” Ridley snapped at him.

“Yes, sir,” he said in real contrition, and for a while there was quiet.

Then Ridley said, “Let’s go back and pretend we shot at it.”

He thought Ridley was making a bad joke. But Ridley wanted Slip <ruming toward home,> and Cloud followed Slip into a turn.

“Do we say that, sir?” he ventured to ask. He still wasn’t sure what was going through Ridley’s mind.

And after a moment of quiet, Ridley said,

“We’ve got to tell the village something, don’t we?” Ridley fired his rifle off without a blink in warning and Cloud jumped and Slip jumped.

“That might scare it off,” Ridley said.

It might draw it in, too. It was hard to know, with a horse. And he didn’t think even yet he could get into Ridley’s thoughts.

He didn’t think, for one thing, that Ridley had made up his mind what to do—or that the principal reason Ridley had come out today with him was to hunt horses. He didn’t know—maybe Ridley had caught sympathy for it from him, or maybe Ridley wasn’t so sure now that he wanted to be alone with him so far from camp and wanted simply to set him off his guard.

Maybe he’dbeen Ridley’s real quarry, today. He began to think so.

He didn’t know even yet if he trusted Ridley. He had a far better idea where Callie was.

Outright dislike was a lot easier to map.

Saturday night, and the talk in the village was the horse haunting the vicinity—far too high on the mountain, far too late in the year, and far too coincidental to the arrival of strangers to be chance.

Carlo heard it from Rick, who lounged, thumbs in belt, near the forge. “I hear you brought us a gift. I’d say somebody who’d done that ought to be shot. What do you think?”

“What gift?” he’d said, as if he couldn’t mostly guess—he’d been in such a state he’d let Rick back him against one of the walls in the forge and try to intimidate him.

“Outside of that pretty little sister of yours, who’s cold as yesterday’s fish? A horse, mister. A horsecome around the walls last night and there’s a lot of people asking why.”

“Not my problem,” Carlo said.

“I’ll bet,” Rick said. Rick’s attempts to make trouble were always tedious and full of bluster.

And it took maybe a quarter of an hour and Rick heading off to the tavern before they were rid of him.

“Was there a horse?” Randy asked. “I dreamedabout a horse. I dreamed that horse was following us.”

“Yeah,” Carlo said, “well, I guess it did. And don’t talk here.”

“Pig Rick’s gone.”

“Just don’t start finding excuses,” Carlo said. “This isn’t a game, have you got that figured? This isn’t a gamewe’re playing with rulesand exceptionsand time-outs. You do what I tell you.”

“I don’t see the reason—”

He laid a very careful hand on Randy’s shoulder. “Little brother. Let’s be done. Let’s have a beer.”

“You don’t let me drink.”

“I’ll let you drink tonight. One beer. All right?”

“All right.”

He let go of Randy’s shoulder. He’d had only one thought in that, that it was just best if Randy slept soundly tonight. And if he had to carry the kid home that was the way it would be.

So they went and closed up shop.

“Can we talk?” Randy said when they’d got outside. “About the horse, I mean. I mean, people are going to ask us.”

“You keep quiet. You don’t mention it.”

“Do you think Da

“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?” He didn’t mean to be sour with the kid, but Randy was being fourteen. Or thirteen. Or whatever. He was tired. His eyes watered with the smoke that water didn’t take away, his arms hurt, his shoulders hurt, and his hands hurt, and most of all his gut hurt from the desire never to have to deal with Rick Mackey, who was bound to be inside.

They walked up onto the porch, stamped the snow off on the mat and walked in.

“There’s the ones that brought the horse!”

“Pig!” Randy yelled at Rick.

Carlo jerked him sideways and Randy yowled in protest—which didn’t get the public fight Rick was spoiling to create. Carlo just went toward the back of the tavern, found a table on the borderland of miner’s territory and headed Randy at the chair.

“Hold the table.”

“I don’t think—”

“ Holdthe damn table,” Carlo said, and maybe he looked mad. Randy shut up and sat down and held the table while he went over and put two meals on the Mackey account.

“Watch those,” he said, set the bowls on the table and went after the beers.

He kept an eye out all the same, to make sure the kid stayed seated and people stayed away from the kid.

“So what about the horse?” the bartender asked.

“What Ihear,” Carlo said in all sobriety, on an instant’s impulse, and very conscious what he was saying, “is it belonged to a rider down at Tarmin who crossed a friend of Da

“God bless,” the bartender said. “Don’t need none of that.”

“I’d lock the doors at night,” he said. He was being a fool. He didn’t have any business pushing the matter. It had just gotten on his nerves, and now he knew the whole story would be all over town by morning—tell the bartender, for God’s sake. And mention crazyafter what had happened down at Tarmin. He’d meant to get the matter of the horse off him and Randy. And what he’d just done hadn’t been at all bright.

He thought—he thought he’d like to go to church tomorrow.

He brought the beers back. Meanwhile Randy was trying to ignore a miner who’d sat down in the other seat and was asking questions.

“My seat,” Carlo said. “My supper. My brother. ’Scuse me.” He quietly got possession of the seat, glared at the departing miner, and shoved a beer at Randy.

“There.”

Randy picked up the mug and took a gulp.

“Go easy on that. I’m not carrying you.”

“You should have bashed Rick.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not thirteen.”

“I’m fourteen.”

“Then act like it.”

“Listen. You—”

Another commotion started near the door, but it wasn’t Rick, it was Van Mackey, who was tolerably drunk, telling his son go home.

Rick didn’t want to go.

There was pushing and shoving.

Carlo sipped his beer and had a spoonful of stew. The Mackey family argument was headed for the porch when the door opened and Da

Da

Like what about the horse, he was sure. Da

Then Da

Da