Cloud's Rider

Silent in the ambient.

Slip sucked in a breath and blew it out again. <Bad smell.> There was thatto track it by, a muskiness Slip amplified for his senses.

Je

“Horses don’t know what it is,” Callie said to her. “They’ve no clear image. We’ve never seen those tracks before, and they’ve never smelled it.”

“Let’s go back up the street,” Ridley said. “Get away from the overhangs.”

They did that, and rode up again past The Evergreen. “Fool-time,” Ridley said. He slid down, his dismount bringing Slip to a halt, and with Callie and Je

Locked, at least. Light came brightly through the frosted glass. He could see patrons inside through the clear lines in the etching. He could hear the talking stop as he knocked.

“It’s Ridley Vincint!” he called out to the occupants. “You don’t have to open the door—just take your drinks and get away from the glass! Get into the back room and lock the doors! Don’t come out! Something’s inside the walls and it’s traveling on the roofs! It’s killed Serge Lasierre! We don’t know what it is!”

A buzz of dismay broke out inside. They’d heard him. He didn’t wait for anyone to acknowledge the warning and he didn’t wait to argue or provide details. He went quickly down the steps and vaulted onto Slip’s back.

Telling the marshal had to be the next step.

Then all of them had to patrol the street until they had daylight to help them find a target.

And they could only hope daylight didn’t signal it to hole up somewhere in the village.

It was twenty-one and a stack of counters. Poker and twenty-one was what Darcy had played with Mark when they’d courted. She played twenty-one with Brio

At such moments Brio

“Go away!” Brio

“Come back to the table, dear.”

“They’re hunting, is what they’re doing! The horses are hunting. But it’s too clever for them!”

“Dear—”

“I hope my brother dies!” Brio

“Dear—”

“Get away from me!”

Possibly hysterics had worked in a family that didn’t have normal mechanisms for a young girl getting attention. Perhaps that had been the mother’s tactic. Or perhaps shattering the other party’s nerves had been the way to win acquiescence or attention in that family. She refused to react at all. “Pick up your hand, honey. This could go on a long time. Sit down and concentrate.”

“My brother’s out there. My little brother. I can hearhim.”

“If the horses have come over, I do imagine they’ve brought him, too. I don’t need to hear the horses to understand that.”

“I hear them! I hear everything they’re thinking. They’re thinking, Let’s not let Brio

Pans littered the kitchen. This time Brio

It hit the bottom cupboards and dented the door.

“Your deal,” Darcy said calmly. “Don’t pay attention to disagreeable people, dear. That’s the way to handle such things.”

“Do youhear them?”

“No, dear, I’m sure I don’t. I don’t hear horses.”

“I do. I hear them perfectly clearly. You hear me, Randy? You’re a brat! You’re an unspeakable little brat!”

“ Dosit down. I’d rather play cards than listen to them. Hadn’t you? They’re not important people.”

“They’re hateful. ”

“I know, dear, but it’s just no good worrying about other people. No one else in town can hear them. Whatever they think. So just tell them they’re hateful and sit down and let’s play cards.”

“I don’t like cards.”

“Well, what wouldyou like to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we go into the sitting room and I’ll read to you.”

“Because I don’t want to!”

“You’d rather sit here and mope.”

“Yes!”

“What would make you happy? —Would you like to go to the store tomorrow? I’ll bet some of Faye’s things would fit you. And then you and I can go to the store and buy anything you like.”

Brio

“The finest things in Evergreen. You and I will go to the tavern Saturday night and we’ll get a table. That’s where everyonecomes. And we’ll have the nicest clothes and all the young people will think you’re the prettiest girl on the mountain.”

Brio

“Oh, very nice. And if you don’t see what you like, we’ll go to the tailor and pick out patterns.”

“I want a fringed jacket. Just like the riders.”

“Well, I’m sure no village girl ever had a fringed jacket.”

“I wantone.”

A social disaster, Darcy thought. A religious calamity. Or a fashion. “We can haveone made. Of red suede. Would you like that?”

There were gunshots. She knew gunshots. She flinched in spite of herself, and dealt out cards, not asking a girl who didn’t know her own mind whether or not she would play.

“Someone’s shooting,” Brio

“I’m sure it’s the riders after vermin. It’s perfectly fine.” She arranged her cards. “Oh, I think I can beat you with this.”

Brio

Brio

Gunshots again. A lot of them. Brio

And very quietly she went and got the gun from Mark’s office, and put it in the pocket of her robe, and came back to find Brio

At least the bells had stopped, one by one. She hoped it meant all clear.

There’d been nervous fingers on triggers toward the forest wall— that had proved nothing, after they’d ridden breakneck to the site: the Jorgensons, opening their front door and shouting at them there’d been something trying their downstairs back window, but whether they’d fired first in a set of three houses claiming disturbance, was impossible to say. No one was killed and, in Ridley’s earnest hopes, the nervous trigger fingers had scared the intruder back over the wall.

But their initial search had turned up nothing, and they’d been all the way back up to the marshal’s office and, leaving Randy with the marshal’s wife, picked up the marshal, the deputy, and the hunters, all armed with shotguns and rifles, to go on a house-by-house patrol.

In Ridley’s hopes, too, no one would mistake themfor intruders as they made their slow pass down the street, knocking on doors and giving out verbal warnings building by building and house by house—at least Peterson and Burani did that duty, the hunters escorting them with rifles and watching the perimeters of the porches while the three of them stayed on horseback in the middle of the street and watched the roof edges. He was aware of <fear> in the houses. He knew the horses made themselves felt when they went near a building—and he was glad to have two of the town guards and the marshal’s wife and daughter, all with guns, to keep watch in the upper end of the village, near the Schaffer house, where he didn’twant to take the horses.