“No,” Ridley said plainly and simply. “I’ve got a village and a partner and a kid. You knowwhat I’ve got to protect.”
“Yes, sir, I do know that.”
“On the other hand, you don’t seem to me to have a lot of responsibilities to be protecting. Which leaves me and my partner wondering sort of what you areprotecting, do you follow me?”
“Yes, sir. I truly do. And I’m not good at lying.”
“Oh, you’ve done all right at that.”
“No, sir, if I were as good at being quiet as you are, I wouldn’t have spilled anything. And I’ve probably sounded worse than I am. I’ve wantedto talk to you.”
“You’re not sounding too trustworthy.”
“I lied, all right? I lied to the marshal. I think.” He’d been through so many ins and outs of the story he wasn’t sure where he’d told the truth and where not. And he’d faced a gun before. More than once. He’d never added up how much had happened to him in a very few weeks. “I’d like your advice, sir. I’d have cometo you for advice before I came in the gates, except my friend down there was hurt and I was all there was to take the kids and try to get them here—which I was going to do. But I didn’t plan to do it without talking to you.”
“Do what?”
<Brionne> hit his thoughts. And he knew he’d better come across with the whole Brionne business while he had any credibility with Ridley, and while his chances of riding home with Ridley were at least even.
“Fact is, sir, the <rogue>—” He wasn’t managing his thoughts real well. They were far too colorful with <fire and death in the street> and the horses, neither one, liked the memory. Slip jostled Ridley sharply. But Danny stayed still.
“The girl we brought,” Danny said, “she rode it. She got it into Tarmin. When it died—she became—like she is. And I’ve been scared to death, sir, —” His teeth started chattering. Fool, he said to himself. He wouldsound like a liar. “I didn’t intend to come all the way to Evergreen. I didn’t intendto have a loose horse follow us all the way to the top of the Climb, and I’m afraid it’s after her—”
“Damn you,” Ridley said. “You didn’t intend.”
“I didn’t.”
“How much else isn’t the truth? Chang surviving? Your friend? Aby Dale?”
“I didn’t lie about that. I just—didn’t know what to do about the girl. Tara Chang wanted to shoot her. My friend, Stuart, he said no. She’s been out cold ever since, Ithink she’s dying—I just—didn’t expect the horse. And if you want me to leave, right now, and not come back till I’ve shot it—I’ll do that. I figure—maybe—that’s what I ought to do. I’ve put the village at risk.”
The ambient was full of <anger.> But <doubt> figured there, too. And the gun stayed level in a long moment of silence, while Danny only hoped to God, whatever else happened, Cloud wouldn’t be a target.
“How old are you?” Ridley asked, absolute confirmation he’d acted the junior and the fool.
“Seventeen,” he confessed, scared as hell to turn the situation into that, senior and junior, knowledgeable rider and one whose decisions all along had been wrong. He owedCarlo and Randy to stay responsible for them and not to plead off on being a fool. “Going on eighteen. This winter.”
“From Shamesey.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who in hellput you in charge?”
“There just wasn’t anybody else, sir.” The tremor got away from him. “It wasn’t Tara’s fault. She was in Tarmin when it went, and she wasn’t in good shape. And Guil sure wasn’t. This guy shot him in the craziness down there. The same guy that rode the horse that’s loose—I think. —And I didn’t exactly tell Tara I was going to go up the mountain. She told me the route, but I don’t think she ever thought the girl was going to make it and she didn’t know there was a horse going to close in on us. —So we had to get out of there. And I never planned to go all the way up from midway in one day—so I couldn’t ask you about the girl. But I had to leave there—the weather was closing in, and I didn’t know how to judge how bad it was going to get. I just—left the shelter and it got worse and we kept going because I didn’t know where I was on the mountain.”
“Bloody hell,” Ridley said, and slowly set the rifle back on his hip so it aimed at the sky. Danny let go a breath. Cloud liked it a lotbetter and was on the edge of <mad horse.>
Danny thumped him with a heel, patted his neck, wanting <quiet water.> For a moment the ambient was completely charged, completely volatile.
Then Danny ventured: “I’m sorry, sir. All I can say. I should have trusted you when I came in.”
Ridley’s face was absolutely grim.
“I’ll go after that horse,” Danny said.
“Let’s just use a little better sense than we’ve had around here,” Ridley said sternly. “ Allof us.”
“Yes, sir.” Meekness was called for. Ridley had met him with a great deal of restraint—well short of shooting him, which Ridley could have done with no village marshal calling him to account for it. “Another thing, sir.”
<Scene in the barracks that first night, Brionne by the wall, Carlo sitting against the wall, Randy asleep. Himself—sitting against the fireside.> He didn’t want to tell things he knew but he thought Ridley, if he trusted him now, might be an ally and. if otherwise— he didn’t know what he might have brought on the interests he was trying to protect.
“Carlo Goss,” he said, feeling as if he had something stuck in his throat. “Carlo said he shot his father. The whole town was going crazy. The rogue was coming down on them—it was his sister. And there was a family fight. I don’t say it was even Carlo’s idea to shoot. I can’t say it wasn’t. I don’t know what the reason was. I just know he’s no killer. He survived the swarm in the jail. He and the kid— that’s where they were, and Randy’s only fourteen. I figured—figured with what they’d been through—I didn’t need to bring that up. Let him start over again. Let him take care of the kid and the sister. That’s what I thought.”
Ridley drew a slow, deep breath and let it go, a cloud in the frosty morning.
“Any morecards you want to lay on the table?”
“No, sir. That’s all.”
“I think,” Ridley said, “that you did pretty damn well under the circumstances.”
Danny asked himself if he felt that about himself, and he thought not.
And as Ridley imaged them <going on through the woods,> he thought it might be well to keep the ambient very quiet, very subdued while he and Ridley went side by side, and until he was certain what Ridley was thinking.
He didn’t look forward to going back to the barracks until Ridley had gotten his mind made up what to do. Callie might vote for shooting him.
And he didn’t ever want to see an accusing look in Jennie’s eyes, Jennie who had as much reason as Callie not to trust him anymore.
“We’re after <a horse,”> Ridley said.
“Yes, sir.” He tried to call <Spook-horse,> then, but he couldn’t put the conviction of harmlessness into his own image that he needed to.
“I don’t like this any better than you do,” Ridley said shortly. “None of us like this.”
“Yes, sir.” He was completely rattled. He felt like a traitor to a decent man on the one hand and a thoroughgoing traitor to an unlucky horse on the other—a horse who’d never actually threatened, who’d tagged on to them but never done them harm, who just for God’s sake wanted the only humans in reach to do something to straighten out the mess it had fallen into. Its sending was lonely, most of all, just terribly lonely.
“We all feel sorry!” Ridley snapped at him.
“Yes, sir,” he said in real contrition, and for a while there was quiet.