Cloud's Rider

And there was a chance the Gross boys might— mighttry to prevent her gaining custody of Brio

And she didn’t need to put a thousand in cash into Riggs’ hands so he could drink it up by spring and ask for another.

“This spring,” she said, “I’ll have the cash for you.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but spring’ll be a rush on supplies, prices are bound to go up. We’ll need more if we wait till spring.”

“Then I’ll put it on account at the store and they’ll reserve you supplies, but they won’t deliver until I say so.”

“Ma’am, you’re one sharp woman.”

“Yes, I am. You turn in your list to me. Can you write?”

“No, ma’am. But one of my guys can. We’ll get a list.”

“The other matter, Mr. Riggs, is—don’t talk outside your group about my supporting you. If this becomes gossip around town, I’ll know I can’t trust you, and you won’t get a sack of flour or a foot of rope.”

“I do understand. And you don’t have no doubts: I’m the one can get that little girl her rights. I can lay claim down there for her, fix up the place—what needs fixin’. I mean, if them houses was swarmed, it’s going to be pretty messy inside. But I can do that. Prettylittle girl.”

“She’s thirteen,” Darcy said coldly, seeing exactly where that was going.

It set him back. Maybe. For about two seconds. “Well, that’d be about right, a few years on. Pretty little thing. Awful pretty. You got to watch out, them rough guys, you know.”

“I’ll tell you plain, Mr. Riggs, she’ll never be any miner’s wife. She might hiresomebody. As I might. He might do all right for himself. If he was honest—he could be verywell-set. Possibly go into business.”

She had a big house, and all the equipment, and everything. But if Tarmin proved more viable, if Brio

Ernest might in fact be very useful to two women trying to get theirshare of what everyone else was scrambling to get.

And it was going to happen this spring. The treasure-seekers and the looters and ordinary citizens trying to stake claims to businesses and shops were going to be down that road like a nest of willy-wisps stirred with a stick.

“You know, Mr. Riggs, there was a doctor in Tarmin. Probably all the instruments are still there.”

“Sure won’t be, ma’am, if them loggers get there first.”

“Yeah, well, how many properties do you think you can preserve unlooted? Would another thousand make sure thatoffice was mine?” It was unreal to her to be asking a question of a practice she and Mark had never been able to dream of.

But it could be hers. Completely logical. No one elsecould use that office, that equipment. There was a doctor at Mornay. But he was old. She could seeto it there were both options—and if it proved necessary to move to Tarmin, if it was necessary to do that to assure a good life, without the girl being subjected to winters up there, she would have a foot in either village. And assets which would be worth a great deal. She could becomewealthy.

Wealth would protect herself and her baby girl, herdaughter, against a world that was not and would never be the way John Quarles saw it. Wealth to buy the likes of Earnest Riggs, a small debt now to own a major part of Tarmin and a future for herself and her daughter.

“I’d think,” Earnest Riggs said, “that’s a lot to protect. I got to hire more men.”

“Three thousand,” she said, and got to her feet to give Earnest Riggs the cue she was through, on that point, and he could leave very soon upon her making it. “Free doctoring. My respectable reputation behind your claim on whatever property you fancy down there. You can allbe well-to-do by next fall. That’s all you’ll see from me. You don’t talk about it, don’t let your hirees gossip drunk or sober.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Earnest got up, hat in hand. “Three thousand and we don’t talk for nothing.”

Tara did the woodcutting for the coming night. Guil had done the fire-building with the first small load Tara had provided him for the shelter’s fireplace. He also did the cooking and the currying of snow out of nighthorse manes and tails, and he was damned tired of horses wanting in and horses wanting out of the cabin. Horses could stand out there in the next snowstorm if horses didn’t make up their minds.

Thump. “Dammit, let me in!”

Thatwasn’t Burn. Guil left the soup-pot simmering and got up and got the door, admitting a snowy Tara with a huge armful of wood; and, right behind her, head lowered, figuring to warm himself from the cold, but notquite sure whether he wanted in or out, came Burn.

“Are you coming?” he asked Flicker, who lurked coyly behind Burn’s rump and who put forth a nose, but just at the threshold and while he was waiting with the door, Flicker kicked up her heels and gave the high-pitched squeal of a nighthorse wanting <male.>

Burn wanted out, then, and went right past him with a whip of a snow-caked tail that hit like a pelting of snowballs.

< Snowon Burn,> he sent in no uncertain force, and got back a completely distracted < female,> and < sex.>

There was snow in clumps all over the boards of the floor. And unless one wanted to walk barefoot over unexpected puddles in the evening, there was nothing to do but get the broom and sweep the lumps over to the fire where it might evaporate—melting streaks all the way across the dusty boards. These particular miners were sloppy campers, and they’d notcleaned up, they’d not stocked the cabin with wood against winter emergency—seeing themselves as their only concern—and they’d not left provisions, for the very good reason that it was a flimsy shelter and food inside would have invited predators to dig their way in and destroy the little furniture there was.

So it was a good idea they’d lugged supplies up the mountain.

Tara had dumped her firewood beside the fireplace. She’d been across the slope with Flicker and Burn for protection. The shelter had an axe, its one amenity besides the snow shovel and a single pot, and the axe instead of the hatchet they’d brought had meant larger firewood quicker. He’d been hearing the sound of the axe fairly steadily while he was arranging supper, and the pile she’d brought in was enough for the night.

“Quiet up there,” she said as he picked out a couple of pieces to add to the cookfire. “Just real, real quiet. I sat out there a few moments, being nothing, trying to shape the mountain in my head. And the hole is back. I can’t locate it—but up. Definitely somewhere up.”

The thing they’d felt before, especially in the nights down in the lonely, lifeless woods at first stage—it came and it went above them. The thought of it showing up made him damn nervous in the afterthought of Tara having possibly taken out up this trail without him. There had continually felt to be places up above them on the mountain—not always the same places—where life didn’t exist. And they still didn’t know why.

Neither of them had ever seen a swarm on the scale that had happened at Tarmin. Maybe, they’d reasoned when they’d considered the question down at first-stage, creatures drawn into the events at Tarmin hadn’t really ever gotten outof the swarm. Maybe groups were still spooking each other off at minor alarms, moving out of their territories in panic and not yet able to reestablish boundaries for themselves and settle down to a normal winter.