Cloud's Rider

“We see you!” Callie called back. “Try not to break your neck!”

Callie was crying. There were tears on her face. But Callie was holding the ambient very quiet, and he gave her all the help he could in that.

“Slow it down,” Callie shouted to her besotted offspring. “You’re going to take a spill!”

But about that moment <happy> washed through the ambient with all the noisy force of a pair of youngsters—God, it deafened. It had to reach Ridley. It had to reach Guil and Tara at the bottom of the mountain. And Da

Ridley knew. Ridley had heard—God, who in all creation hadn’t? Da

“She’s still a baby,” Callie complained aloud, he guessed to him. “So’s the damn horse.”

“A goodhorse. He’ll take care of her.”

“A damn colt!”

“A smart one.”

Then—came a feelingfrom somewhere outside the walls that was <horse> and <lonely> and <wanting, so, so badly.>

There was <someone>—Da

Which said to him that was the comparison he’d instinctively made.

Another rider.

Another horse.

And notone that was supposed to behere.

Rain had stopped still, head lifted, nostrils flared. Shimmer looked toward the wall. Cloud did.

<Blood on snow. Lonely.>

“Damn!” Callie cried, fists clenched. <“Get outof here! Damn you! Go away!”>

Rain was protecting Je

But Brio

But before he could get there, Ridley was coming back, at a dead run if he could judge. Slip was <at the rider gate to meet him,> and Da

<Je

“Are you all right?” was Ridley’s first question to his daughter.

“I rode Rain, I rode Rain and he let me!”

Ridley picked his daughter up and hugged her tight.

Rain was throwing out the same <horse with rider> that would underlay every communication to a riderless horse from now on— and whatever was wrong out there went away.

Da

Next thing, papa said at supper that night, Je

“Just can’t depend on those mangers being everywhere available,” papa said, and Je

“You’ll learn,” papa said then. “Got to grow a bit first, though. Eat those potatoes.”

“I want to go out to the den.”

“It’s dark out,” mama said, and then—then there was a difference in mama’s tone. “Well, —finish your potatoes first.” Je

Because she belonged where Rain was. It was a thought so wonderful she didn’t linger at all complaining about the potatoes. She bolted them down as fast as she could, got up from table—said, “Excuse me,” the way mama and papa were always scolding her to say. Tonight when she was grown up, she said it just because she wantedto, and tonight all the rules weren’t walls around her, they were part of the familiar way things were and she hadn’t any interest in being a kid and doing things the wrongway. She was Je

She went and got her coat and her scarf, her hat and her gloves, she wrapped up and snugged down her cuffs herself, while her family and Dan sat at the table eating and trying not to watch her too obviously.

But there wouldn’t be a thing in the world mama could find fault with in the way she dressed or acted, not a thing.

“I’ll come back before I get chilled,” she a

She hadn’texpected the relief she saw, like everybody at the table had let go a breath all at once, even when the ambient wasn’t including them, just her and Rain and the other horses. She was puzzled.

But she had Rain <wanting her,> and it was a clear night. She went out the outside door, and shut it tight, and walked down the porch—mama was always saying not to run on the steps, she’d slip on the ice. So she got all the way down to the yard. But by that time Rain was outside the den, coming to meet her, and she hadn’t another thought but Rain’s thoughts, the way snow smelled and the way things looked—Rain had never really seen the stars, either, that shethought were wonderful, and Rain seemed a little confused where and what they were.

But mostly Rain wanted <Je

Callie was trying not to be disturbed about the situation. She was doing, Da

“I’ll go to bed,” he said quietly, that being the only refuge he’d discovered where he could take his influence out of the family.

“No,” Callie said. “You were trying to say something this afternoon. What?”

He honestly couldn’t reconstruct where he’d been in his approach to Callie. Or what he’d said. “Just that—I hoped not to disrupt your lives. That I never meant to.”

“She’s gone,” Callie said. “She’s made her choice. There’s nothing to do about it.”

“Seems to me,” Ridley said quietly, “she isn’t gone, and the colt was on his way to making a choice. She’s that age. So’s the horse. Fisher, you’ve probably seen more pairings than either of us have. Seventeen and all.”

Shamesey being the huge camp that it was, Ridley was right: you saw about everything in every combination of human and horse there’d ever been—some good, some you wondered about. “Good horse,” Da

“What?” Callie snapped.

“It—sort of indicates to me that when Spook showed up… Rain might have gotten just a little more protective of her. I think it would havehappened. But when an older horse came around looking for a rider, I think that pushed Rain into claiming hisbefore he could risk losing her—and so he hada rider to help him fend this other horse off.” The last thing he wanted was to lecture seniors regarding horses and theirdaughter. It was real dangerous territory to venture.