Cloud's Rider

That, she believed truly shocked John. So many things did. It didn’t mean John didn’t understand them.

“I tell you,” she said, “this child’s been through enough. She deserves to stay up here and be very comfortable.”

“Amen,” John said. “Lord bless, and amen to that.”

That afternoon, with the sun peeking through gray clouds and the office curtains back, and her porch sign saying Openfor the first time in a year, Darcy had her first doors-open customer, when a miner came trailing in with a sliced arm he claimed to have gotten on a nail near the barracks and she knew damned well was a knife cut, likely gotten in the tavern last night, by the color and character of it, the sort of thing knife fighters often got defending themselves, and bad knife fighters at that.

Even before this last year she’d tended to send this sort of patient to the pharmacist for salve and bandages, since the man hadn’t come in directly after the fight (he’d slept it off, she was sure, oblivious to the pain) and the cut was too old for the stitches it could have used. Probably it had been a clean knife. The likeliest contaminant was The Evergreen’s steak sauce.

“I do appreciate this,” the man was saying. Earnest was his name. Earnest Riggs. Miner, of the sort constantly trying to get a stake to hire and provision a couple of his fellows for some hole in the rocks out of which they did a little hunting, a little mining, a little of anything to keep going another season, for, of course, the big find, the vein he just knew was there. She didn’t even ask if he was the down-the-mountain sort, or the up-the-mountain sort, which might have said whether he was pa

She was aware of movement and a whiteness on the stairs a second before calamity—Brio

Earnest leaped up and all but knocked her down getting from the office to the stairs to pick up Brio

“You poor, pretty thing,” Ernest said over and over, and hugged Brio

“Let me see,” Darcy said, anxious, and not alone for the almost fall. “Set her down. Set her down!”

“Poor little girl.” The miner, Ernest, set Brio

And Earnest—

Earnest was clearly entranced. Nothing would do but that Earnest help Brio

“She’s perfectly fine,” Darcy said, taking charge to prevent Earnest carrying the girl into the bedroom. “Downstairs. I’ll be right down to take care of you.”

“Now, don’t you slight that poor little girl. This scrape’s nothin’. You take care of that poor little lady first, and I’ll wait downstairs. It don’t hurt. I promise you, it don’t hurt me none at all.”

It didn’t ease her mind. Earnest clearly had an interest in That Pretty Little Girl, as Earnest called her.

Himself being a big rough miner and of course not in any pain from a knife slice. Damn him.

Meanwhile, Brio

Earnest, she feared, was another matter. Earnest had turned worshipful, and when she came downstairs to deal with Earnest, the deity in Earnest’s universe was clearly upstairs, where Earnest directed soulful looks.

She was ever so relieved to get him out the door.

She was more than a

Ernest wanted to carry the cookies up to The Little Girl’s room, but she wouldn’t have that—no. She wouldn’t let him in. But she took the bouquet and several cookies and a cup of tea upstairs and didn’t tell Brio

But she’d no more than carried the tray downstairs again and begun to wash dishes than came a knock at the streetside door and—

Earnest.

“Now, look, Mr. Riggs,” she began in exasperation, gripping the edge of the door and bracing a foot behind it.

“No, no, ma’am,” Earnest said, and took off his hat, scarf and all, despite the bitter wind starting to veil the street in snow. “I know— I knowI’ve bothered you three times today. But I been thinking.”

She wasn’t about to let him in. She was thinking about the marshal. “Well, I’m working, Mr. Riggs, I’m very busy, and if you don’t mind—”

“Ma’am, I don’t ask to come in. Just a minute of your time. I just was noticing how the porch rail is losin’ paint—”

“You don’t paint in the winter, Mr. Riggs.”

“—and missin’ some pieces. So’s various things. You don’t have anybody regular hired to fix those things—”

“The house will stand through the winter, Mr. Riggs. Then it may be time to think about it.”

“By then ever’body’ll be down to Tarmin, ma’am. And what I hear, what I hear, ma’am, that pretty little girl is from there. And she’s due a lot of property if there was those lookin’ out to protect her—”

“Not your business, Mr. Riggs.”

“Well, them Mackeys have got her brothers, and those brothers is sellin’ her out, ma’am. I don’t know they know what they got into, but there’s lawyers comin’ and goin’ out of Mackeys place—”

She had by no means meant to let Mr. Riggs in. He was just too persistent, and wanted something. He was a fearsome looking sort, with his wild hair and unkept beard, and dealing with miners was dangerous. Some would steal when your back was turned. Some would get ideas of different sort, and his infatuation with her or with, God help them, Brio

But he had information she didn’t have, that she suspected John Quarles didn’t have, and if Simms or Hodges were taking money or promises regarding Tarmin property, forewarned was forearmed.

She opened the door. “Come in, Mr. Riggs.” And stepped back, cautiously, all the while thinking of the gun in Mark’s office.

But Ernest wasprobably harmless. He was very careful to wipe his feet and to dust the snow off.

“So what aboutthe lawyers? Simms? Is it Simms?”

“A woman.”

“That’s Simms.” Simms was the lawyer who wasn’trelated to Judge Hodges. The one she wasn’tmad at for shenanigans with Mark’s father’s property and that damn brother of Mark’s.

“Well, actually the otherone was there, too,” Earnest said. He was a careful man with his hat. He didn’t roll it or crush it. His fingers kept dancing around the careful curves of it, smoothing the bushdevil tail that was its ornament. “I didn’t get his name, either. But I heard say that’s who it was. I kind of hang out at The Evergreen, ma’am, and that’s right next door to the Mackeys. So’s the barracks, for that matter. So, you know, winter settin’ in and strangers come around, what they do, people watch. And gossip about.”

“So what isthe gossip?”

“How them brothers is dealing with the Mackeys for a stake to go down there come spring, and how they been hanging around with that rider lad that brought ’em in, and how there’s just somethin’ sharp goin’ on, if you take my drift.”