“Why? Of what?”
“Because there’s folks here poor as poor, there’s miners don’t own anything but a no-pay claim and owe the suppliers their shirts and the nails in their boots. It’s the chance of their lifetimes. These are rough people, kid. And that guy who stopped us on the way out—”
“Mister Earnest Riggs?”
“Listen, you. Take it seriously. We’re in their way. We’re owners, you figure it? And more than the Mackeys might want us for partners.”
“Why?”
“Kid, figure it. We’re the only way that the Mackeys or somebody else could have a real, legitimate claim to the forge and the house and everything down there. If we sold it to them or if we partnered with them somehow—”
“Not with the Mackeys!”
“I’m not going to sell and I’m not partners with them. Just let me handle it. Danny said don’t sign anything. And that’s real good advice, because, to tell you the truth, right now I’m not sure where we’re better off. There’s no guarantee there’ll even bean Evergreen if half the village moves down the mountain and there’s nothing here but miners.”
“You think they would?”
“Maybe.” They’d almost reached the forge-shed. He stopped Randy where he and Danny had talked, by the scrap-heap and the big tree. “Listen,” he said. “If they’re up to anything they’ll be eavesdropping on us, especially Rick. So if for some reason you have to talk to me about something Rick shouldn’t hear, you say, ‘I think I’ll go outside.’ Just exactly those words. Hear?”
“ ‘I think I’ll go outside.’ That’s stupid.”
“It’s smarter than ‘I want to talk secrets’!”
“Maybe we could go over to the rider camp. Maybe they’d let us live there till spring. I mean, we’renot afraid of the horses, are we?”
“Forget it.”
“If I was a rider we’d have money. And you could be.”
“I’m a blacksmith. That’s what I want to be. That’s what I want to do. And forget this stupid notion. We’ve got rightsto a hell of a lot of property down in Tarmin.”
“We could sell it and go to Shamesey.”
“What’d we sell it for? Smiths here have got everything tied up in their property. What’s this business about Shamesey all of a sudden? What’s wrong with here on the mountain?”
“Rick’s a pig.”
“Yeah, well, and if we don’t go to Tarmin and take our stuff back pig Rick is going to get our house and live there till he dies of stupidity. I don’t want them to be rummaging through our stuff, either. I don’t want them living in our house. You want that?”
“No.”
“Then don’t talk stupid. You only go to the rider camp if something happens to me—”
“Nothing’ll happen to you.”
“Oh, ‘nothing will happen.’ ‘Nothing will happen.’ God! Did we look for anything to happen down in Tarmin?”
“I’m not stupid! Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“Then don’t talk like it! You’re a minor! You’re fourteen! If something happened to me, the Mackeys could get custody of you andthe property down there, you understand? I don’t want that!”
Randy ducked his head. “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he muttered, not because he was stupid, Carlo thought, but because Randy had lost enough, that was what he was trying to say; he didn’t want to go down to Tarmin where everybody was dead; and Carlo hugged him hard.
“Not if I can help it, no. I’ll take care of you.”
Randy cried. Randy wasn’t in the habit. And he couldn’t go into the shop like that: Rick would make capital on it, for sure, if Rick happened to be lurking about inside.
So they stood out in the snow with no one around them until Randy got himself in order.
It was a chancy evening. Maybe it was the spookiness of a strange place. Maybe it was just suddenly realizing the person he was trying to do everything for was justifiably upset with the choices he was being handed. He pushed the latch up and went with Randy into the warmth and the firelight, our of the wind and the cold—but not clear of the leaden upset in his stomach and the feeling that shivered along his nerves.
He needed Danny, not just for his professional services, but—because he needed someonewho wasn’t his kid brother. Foolish that it was, he’d been vastly surprised Danny had really come across to warn him in the first place.
And that Danny had crossed all the lines to come tonight.
He still felt warmed by that gesture, in ways no fire could touch. He looked forward to getting together with Danny maybe next Saturday—and he’d gladly have gone over to the rider camp himself this evening—if he didn’t have Randy and his silly notions in tow.
But Randy—Randy just didn’t have anybody else. Fourteen was a hell of an age. Everybody was looking at you (as if they had the time), you were obsessed with your own stupidity and you were just so damn knowledgeable about what other people were thinking— fact was, nobody was interested in your opinions and it was a hell of a time to lose every friend you owned. Randy was going through his own grief, and it hurt, too.
Randy sat down and sulked on the stone wall where the heat was, and he could just walk over and hit the kid. That was what he felt like. God, he hated that expression.
“I could be a rider,” Randy muttered.
It was the one thing that just sent whiteout over his reasoning. “No,” he said for the hundredth time. “No. You can’t.”
“You won’t even talk about it!”
“I just told you not to talk in here!”
“It’s not about that. It’s about what I want to do!”
“Well, you’re not going to.”
“Who made youmy papa?”
He crossed the intervening space in two strides and grabbed the kid by the shirt.
And didn’t—didn’t hit the kid. Their father had done far too much of that. For a lifetime.
Randy stared at him, surly, full of his own notions, full of confidence he could go out there and tame a horse that might be a killer like the last one.
“Damn fool is all,” he said, and walked off and got a rag and wiped soot off the water barrel. There was always soot in this place. The chimney didn’t draw as well as theirs down in Tarmin. They breathed it. It got on their clothes, on everything they touched.
“You’re always so damn right!” Randy said. “You aren’t, you know? Somebody else knows something besides you.”
He didn’t say a thing, even an advisement to shut up. He didn’t go back and hit the kid. That was what Randy was following him, begging for—so he’dbe in the right.
That was the kind of argument Randy had grown up understanding.
Now hewas the villain. He didn’t know what to do about that.
He truly didn’t know what to do.
Danny sat by the fire and braided leather coil for Ridley’s leather-work—which was really very good. He’d mastered round-braiding now, himself, though he still counted and got confused if Jennie interrupted him.
Jennie thought she’d learn, and after a while of his instruction, turned out to have more fingers than she thought.
Jennie was growing discouraged, and short-tempered, about the time Callie decided to send the kid to bed.
“I want to stay up,” the refrain began. Which didn’t work.
“To bed,” Callie said. “Or you don’t go outside tomorrow.”
Jennie got up, put away her leatherwork and solemnly kissed Ridley, and Callie, and then, new idea, came over and put a big kiss on Danny’s cheek.