Breakfast wasn’t sitting well. It was probably the ham-dripping gravy.
Probably it wasn’t sitting well on Rick Mackey’s stomach, either. He heard the house door slam. He heard the door to the main passage slam. He didn’t need to ask Rick what he thought of the business, when Rick’s parents were suddenly showering good will on two strangers who were a real threat. Rick had never had competition in his life, and now Rick had a couple of strangers move in who were probably better smiths than he was—if they’d ever seen Rick Mackey do any work—who were more polite than he was, brighter than he was, and worst of all, rich enough to buy what Rick Mackey had sort of hoped to slide into ass-backwards and without lifting a hand.
Bad news for Rick. His papa didn’t need him anymore.
Bad news for two strangers that turned their backs on Rick Mackey, Carlo said to himself. Randy could gloat over Rick’s discomfort. Hecouldn’t. Randy to this day didn’t understand about stupidity and danger.
He did. Much too well.
The hunters stayed for breakfast, no second thoughts there—Ridley and Callie had served up a healthy portion of biscuits and a small portion of ham, which was, in the light of what he understood about the economy of the villages, a generous act, and an increasingly expensive gesture. The village could reliably freeze meat for the winter. It just took what the barracks had: a strong unheated shed, in the village’s case vermin-proof, in the case of the barracks— horse-proof. But if there was nothing to freeze—that was that.
And if there wasn’t game in reach of the village, Ridley was going to have to take the hunters out on a much farther hike than they were accustomed to.
There was talk, during breakfast, that the horse’s presence and the game having migrated elsewhere could be related in another way, that the horse might have gotten confused as the game moved and swarmed. Swarmwas a bad and a dangerous word—one that couldn’t give comfort to men whose business was going where they couldn’t retreat as fast as riders could and without the kind of protection riders could get during a retreat by staying physically against their horses.
A real bad situation, Danny said to himself; and when after breakfast the men agreed that they should leave the hunt for the horse to riders, and left, Danny didn’t even question that he and Ridley were going out today.
Ridley went back into his and Callie’s room, advising him without any discussion of the matter to put on his cold weather gear. Nothing Callie had heard this morning had made her happier, Jennie was very much in a down mood and angry, for reasons young Jennie probably couldn’t even figure out—
But, Danny thought, if Jennie had asked him whether he was angry, he would have had to say that he was—both angry and sad. But nasty business that it was, it was hisbusiness, it had come up the mountain with him, and he had finally to see to it as he should have done back down at first-stage.
So he went to his room and put on everything he owned, everything he’d worn up the Climb, and came out lacking only the sweaters he’d kept hanging on a peg in the main room as something he needed when he went out to the den.
He put those on, catching the ambient from horses who’d perceived <men burrowing back under the wall> and who’d hung about the cabin, aware of <hunting.> Jennie was still <upset> and Callie was holding her feelings to a very low level, cleaning up after breakfast.
He had a foolhardy streak. But not enough to go over there right now, when a woman was probably thinking that if she didn’t like him sleeping under the same roof she sure didn’t fancy staying here and sending her partner out with him.
He very quietly put on his outdoor gear.
“You shouldn’t shoot it,” Jennie said.
“You mind your business,” Callie said sternly, and for just a moment that veil lifted on a worried, angry woman.
“I won’t be a fool,” Danny ventured very softly, “remembering he’sgot a kid to come back to.”
He didn’t wait for Callie’s answer. He, took up the rifle and ducked out the door and out to the porch and down, to give Cloud and the rest of the horses a light before-dawn breakfast. Cloud understood <going hunting,> which Cloud was greatly in favor of— but <hunting male horse> was a lot chancier feeling, involving Shimmer and foals and his rider’s worry.
He’d ducked this, Danny thought, just too long. But he hadn’t villager kids in his care now, and he and Cloud wouldn’t be alone trying to deal with Spook-horse.
Ridley came out after a delay Danny suspected had nothing to do with dressing or putting his coat on, and everything to do with partners and daughters. Ridley was not in a cheerful mood when he came into the den, and Danny volunteered to go shovel the gate clear.
The sun was well up, casting full daylight barred with evergreen shadow on snow lying white and untracked along the road. In the stillness of the morning they were the only presence—and even a town-born rider could feel the vacancy about them.
The mountain was gone, as far as the ambient was concerned. Or at least wrapped in a silence like some vast fog in which the mountain might be there—but no one could see it, no one could hear it, and all the life that ought to be there didn’t talk to them.
A normal horse, a wild one or a horse that had known a rider, ought to have made its territory clear to them. And it didn’t challenge them, either.
“I knew the man that rode this horse,” Danny said quietly as he rode. “He wasn’t too reasonable. Once he took a notion into his head—he could get real stubborn. This horse coming back again makes sense in that regard.”
“Not a Tarmin rider.”
“Not Shamesey, either. Out of the south. That’s all I know.”
“Fisher, —”
Ridley was <not happy with him.> It was down to the moment Danny had dreaded. He’d called their bluff in showing he knew about the <yellowflower in his drink.> He knew that was dangerous. But <last night going after Spook-horse> he’d done the most he could <protecting the camp—> to show he meant to do just that. Just—
Cloud went light-footed, <scared,> and Danny didn’t see what of, except that there was something in Ridley’s mind he couldn’t penetrate. Ridley wasa senior, and didthings in the ambient Danny didn’t always expect. All of a sudden, out in the woods alone with the man, Danny’s horse was picking up some uneasiness between them, after some unspoken dissatisfaction on Ridley’s part. He feared, considering the matter, that he’d assumed all along that his enemy was <Callie> and that the surface of Ridley’s intentions was the whole truth. Good humor didn’t answer everything—and he never had thought that Ridley believed everything he heard.
Slip likewise wasn’t easy to figure—Slip’s image was a lotlike Spook’s, just went sideways on you when you were most trying to get a fix on that horse, there and there and there and there, until you didn’t know whereSlip was within a few feet of distance, and then—
Then Slip stopped and Cloud stopped and swung around and Ridley very deliberately lowered the rifle he’d been holding aimed generally skyward for safety.
The barrel came down toward him.
“Need some answers,” Ridley said. “Fisher. Just you and me.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, and Cloud wanted <fight,> but he didn’t, and kept sending <still water,> like a poor silly kid—because with somebody he didn’t want to shoot, he wasn’t much better armed than that. He was truly, deeply embarrassed to be so outright helpless, and so taken in by the man.
“You’re pretty sharp,” Danny said, while Cloud’s withers rippled in a shiver of fight-flight stymied by <confusion> about the danger.
“I’m asking again,” Ridley said with all his ordinary calm. “Fisher.”
“I don’t know exactly what you want to know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Danny heaved a sigh. “Can you put that thing down?”