Cloud's Rider

He just—just hoped to God it went away.

He didn’t want to be listening to it when they shot it.

He had a fistful of pillow, doing violence to it without realizing it, and let it go, and let go another sigh, this time consciously, purposefully releasing all the pent-up worry.

He ought to take care of the rest of the pending business he had in town, pay off all the emotional debts and pin down the uncertainties.

Meaning going finally and finding out about their sister, what the doctor thought of her chances, what the outlook was, what the debtmight be that she’d accumulated. He was responsible for her. He had to be. There was no one else.

Chapter 15

That’s right, darling. Take another spoonful. There’s sugar in it.”

The girl swallowed down the cereal, and after three or four such spoonfuls, the girl heaved a little sigh and blinked and blinked again. “You’re in Evergreen, honey,” Darcy said. She offered that information every time she thought the girl might have come close to hearing anything or truly absorbing the things she said—because there’d been that moment of lucidity—and then it had gone for the rest of the day. But she knew that if it had come once, it could come back—to the right lure, to the promise of safety and comfort. “You’re in the village up the mountain. My name’s Darcy. How are you doing?”

“I’m tired,” the girl said unexpectedly and matter of factly. But Darcy didn’t let herself show surprise at all.

“I imagine you are, honey. Do you want some more?”

“All right,” the girl said, and ate the rest of the bowl before she shut her eyes and seemed to drift away.

Darcy was trembling as she set the spoon and the bowl down. She sat there by the girl’s bedside telling herself she might really have won this one, and seeing in that wind-burned face, still lovely after the long trek up the mountain, and the hands all broken-nailed and cut, the evidences of a suffering and struggle her Faye had never known except in the few minutes of her death.

This child would never know privation in Evergreen, not while she was taking care of her. This child would grow up safe and have all the things a beautiful young girl should have, and she’d see to it.

She went downstairs and went on tidying up. She arranged things in Mark’s office, and sterilized the instruments in boiling water, against the arrival of clients.

Then she went out on the snowy balcony of the second floor and opened the storm shutters. People about in the winter evening, the few who weren’t using the tu

But two—two, while she watched, came from the street onto the walk, and stamped their boots on the porch and disappeared under the angle of the porch roof.

She heard a knocking at her door. Miners, she thought. Maybe clients.

It was bitter cold out on the balcony and she gladly went inside and down. She opened the door and set herself in the doorway in such a way that they couldn’t just brush past her without explaining themselves, because some such clients were the sort that deserved sending right down to the pharmacist with an order for sugar pills or strong purgative.

“Ma’am,” the tall one said. “Are you the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“My name’s Carlo Goss. This is my brother Randy. How’s our sister doing?”

The girl’s brothers. It came to her like a thunderstroke that theseboys could take the girl away. It wasn’t fair. They couldn’t. Not now. They hadn’t even asked how she was. They didn’t care—

But in the same heartbeat and in deep confusion she had to amend that harsh judgment. They’d carried the girl to her with heroic effort. There were frost burns on their faces. How did they love her enough to do that—and not come to see her?

“She’s doing pretty well,” she said—hardly a breath having passed in those thoughts. Their arrival disturbed her for reasons she didn’t even want to look at in herself. She didn’t want to let them through the door to talk to them, much less admit them to the girl’s room— but she couldn’t say go away. They had rights. They could go to the marshal and complain, and Eli would have to come back and say, Darcy, you have to let them see her, and how would that look? And how would that feel?

“Come in,” she said. She wondered whether she should ask them to take off their coats. She wondered whether she should offer tea. She wanted them outof the way, out of this house, but how fast could she push them and how much could she keep secret that wouldn’t ultimately get back to them and color how they dealt with her?

Friendly. Friendly seemed the best approach. Court the boys. Make them comfortable so they couldn’tturn on her.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “Would you like to sit down?”

“To see our sister,” Carlo said—and very businesslike, very much in possession of his rights over the situation. She was afraid.

“Come along upstairs,” she said, then, constrained to cooperate.

“Nice house,” the younger brother said as if he was estimating the value of the set-abouts.

“Thank you,” she said, while her mind was racing over what they wanted and whether they meant to take Brio

There they took off hats and gloves and loosened scarves. They brought deep cold with them. It clung to their clothing, on which snow didn’t melt. They brought noise. They brought foolish fears into her heart—even to think of them taking her back. The brothers didn’t know how to deal with her. They didn’t understand how to take care of the girl—they’d failed. They stood above a sleeping sister—having failed.

And then—then—maybe a creak of the floorboards, or maybe just a sense the girl at times seemed to have—she opened her eyes and stared at them.

“Carlo?”

“Yeah,” he said, and got down on one knee and took her hand. “Hi. How’re you doing, Bri

Dreadful nickname.

“All right,” she said. Her hand rested listlessly in her brother’s as he squeezed it.

“You slept all the way up,” the younger brother said, and squatted down by the older. The girl lay on her prop of pillows and gazed into their faces.

“I don’t remember.” Her hand moved on the lace and yellow ribbons of the coverlet. “Isn’t it a pretty room?”

“It’s real pretty,” the older boy said and squeezed her hand again. “—Listen, Bri

“Where’s mama?”

“Mama and papa are gone, Bri

The blue eyes clouded. She turned her face into the pillow and tore her hand from her brother’s fingers.

“Bri

“I want mama.”

“Yeah. I know, I know.” Carlo patted her shoulder as he got up from his knees and looked at Darcy. “I don’t know what I can pay you right now, ma’am, but I will, as soon as I come by any money. As could happen.”

“I’d like her to stay here. No charge. I have the room. I don’t mind her using it.”

“That’s awfully kind of you.”

“I’d be glad to take care of her.” She became desperate, fearing she’d led herself into a dangerous dead end of reason, and having lost all her sense of what anyone truly wanted, she had nothing left to throw to the hunters but a tidbit of her privacy, to make them think they were friends and to make logical to them her position. “I had a girl about her age. She died. The house has been real empty. The girl needs someone all the time—a stable environment. She can’t be moved to still one more strange place.”