Cloud's Rider

“I’m not going to,” Randy said. “Let go. That hurts.”

He’d held too hard. He bent over and hugged his brother. Ruffled his hair in the dark. “I love you,” he said. He didn’t know if he’d ever said it to anybody. He didn’t know if anyone had ever said it to him. “You’re a good kid.”

“Not a kid,” Randy complained.

“Not grown yet, either. I want to see you get there. All right?”

“Yeah,” Randy said, embarrassed, Carlo was sure, and hegot back on his own cot and pulled the covers over him.

Randy should have something good out of his life. Randy was smart. He was quick with people—like in church. Randy’d realized what he had to do, and he’d done it with a passion, and madepeople like him.

That was a gift. That was a real gift. He wished he had it.

Hellwith this horse business, Randy was cut out for dealing with people and having a wife and kids he’d spoil rotten, if he just figured out that was the way families were supposed to work.

Because there wasgoodness in Randy. Randy was going through that stage of being too tough to think straight, but there was a good kid there, a good heart that deserved friends like he’d been lucky enough to have, guys that were dead down in Tarmin, names that just—didn’t exist anymore.

He gave a long breath, realizing it was the first time he’d been able to think calmly about what had happened, having learned fast in all those days with Da

He hadn’t realized until now he’d been scared of that. But he had been. Fear was a good teacher.

And when Da

—probably thought that it was a good thing, finally, to bein the rider camp, among people with whom he’d been able to tell the truth. And a good thing that he and Randy and Brio

He’d no doubt that Da

Damn lonely.

But he’d get the shop back. He’d train Randy in the trade. The neighbors couldn’t tell what they’d known. They were dead. There was no one—

A jolt hit his heart.

The jail record. Court records. All of that was intact down in Tarmin. Food and leather was gone. Paper—wouldn’t be unless weather got to it.

All of those records. The court clerk had been writing that night, and that record was down there, in the judge’s office.

He thought he might throw up.

Everythingwas ruined if that record was there. He had to get there. First. Somehow. Somebody had to, that he could trust—somebody like Da

He knew they’d written him down for murder. He didn’t know, on account of Randy’s age and his statement, whether they’d written him down the same. But they’d locked Randy up with him. Age hadn’t deterred the law from that.

And the Mackeys—if they had that to use—they’d have no scruples.

All right, he said to himself. All right. There was time. There was all winter to figure it out. He could trust Da

The whole night had assumed a chancy, awful feeling. As if—as if the veneer of recent days had started to peel away a layer at a time—and tonight the undersurface was showing through.

He didn’t hear the <blood on snow> sending now. He heard a single, faraway shot, but didn’t think the shot had hit anything. It felt scary out there. Real scary.

He’d rather be afraid of the dark out there than think the thoughts he was left with tonight. He all but wished the horse wouldcome back, and give him some other worry tonight, and give him some excuse to go to the rider camp with something other than what he could think of to say, like—

Da

A really big favor.

Like—get meto Tarmin. And notthe rest of the village.

He felt—a falling, then. Tasted <blood> very strongly. He twitched, maybe the remnant of the shivers—maybe just the edge of a nightmare.

After that, there was just <dark> and <ru

After Tarmin he dreamed of that smell—and didn’t want to, tonight.

Didn’t want to sleep at all. Just wanted to ride that feeling, <on and on, across the snow.>

Then he didsee <blood on snow,> and he knew what had caught him in his dreams, and what carried him along, buffeted by evergreens and blinded by falling snow.

It remembered <blood,> too. And it carried him in a long, dizzy, heart-pounding flight along the snowbound road, back the way they’d come, he was sure of it.

It had a den there, where a slide had taken trees down. It had a shelter. That was where it was going—until it faded on him, and left him wandering that wilderness and then the dark of the forge, with his eyes wide open.

A sound rasped breathily in the night beside him. Randy was snoring.

Chapter 17

The sun did come up.

There’d been no gunfire in the Mackey house. Rick showed up for work sullen and sulking, but cowed and not saying a word— so, charitably, Carlo didn’t. The water still soaked the floor, but it wasn’t standing in puddles, and it went away when they stoked up the furnace and the heat got up.

There was work to do. Winter was a time for large orders from the various logging companies and a time to make odds and ends of hardware and other items the miners called for, ranging from ordinary metalwork to things that would have been better welded—if they’d had the means. They were the manufactory for metal and wooden barrels, mining rockers and screens, water tanks and fuel storage. They made chain and hooks. They made latches and braces, tie rods and occasional machine parts for which they had a few special tools, but not the quality that Tarmin, which had an actual machine shop, could turn out. That was anotherbusiness lying vacant down there, among other odds and ends about which Carlo didn’t want to think, this morning.

Van even showed up to do actual work instead of leaving the shop to Rick’s slovenly management this morning. Van even wanted to talk, and once they got down to business, it developed they each knew things the other didn’t—there were tricks Van Mackey knew that their father hadn’t. He could learn from this man, Carlo thought, unlikely as it seemed, and after the storm of the night before, things were relatively peaceful. Randy had something on his mind—that meant the bellows worked with unusual steadiness while Randy stared off into space.

But Randy was no more cheerful than he was. It was a grim look. He tried to keep his own face as pleasant as possible.