In the past couple of days, he said to himself, among things Ridley hadn’t told them—Spook-horse hadn’t shown up. That was a benefit. Spook-horse hadn’t come into range or made itself a trouble to the village and, by the lack of questions this morning, apparently nobody had heard it.
That could mean the horse had gone down the mountain again, or in feckless grief slipped off a cliff and broken its neck, or that, with the only humans it wanted out of reach, it had just given up and frozen to death in the storm. He was more sorry for it than scared now that he had the solidity of village walls between Cloud and a horse that wanted company enough to fight for it.
And even to this moment he wasn’t entirely sure they’d not all imagined it, on the strength of Randy’s desires and his and Carlo’s fears—all hallucinating the creature, including the riders in Evergreen. Real and not-real had gotten very disconnected during the last of their hard journey, enough so that they’d missed not one but two shelters, and he could well believe they’d imagined its presence and scared each other into some very stupid and fortunately survivable choices. Ridley and Callie declared they’d heard something exceedingly faint that had disturbed the morning they’d arrived, but he’d been nursing a headache and couldn’t figure whether he heard it or whether his apprehensions were contagious, maybe from young Jennie’s apprehensions of <bad horse> that she’d caught from her parents or from him. And then he’d drunk the vodka and gone out.
Well, if Ridley hadn’t told them, he wouldn’t mention it, not until that horse did pose a danger. Which it hadn’t.
And until and unless Brionne Goss came to, nothing from down in Tarmin meant anything but hurtful gossip to anyone in Evergreen. That might be a very high and wide decision for a junior rider to take on his own advisement, but, dammit, the two boys he’d guided up here had been through hell enough, they weren’t bad on the scale of bad he’d met in his short experience; and if he could make their acceptance by this village more likely just by keeping his mouth shut on the details of Tarmin’s fall and watching the situation, yes, he’d take that option. He was wintering here in Evergreen and the truth was always available from him to the village on a moment’s notice if it became critical for them to know before he left.
He’d tell Ridley and Callie—soon—about Brionne. Maybe. Or maybe they’d never need to know. If she died—they wouldn’t need to know. He guessed, in the absence of anyone available to ask, being a man meant not spreading the worry about for something two more worriers couldn’t fix.
So it was his to hold. On his own. If spooky stuff once started to spread where horses and an eight-year-old kid were involved, it could turn scary for sure. And no one would ever figure out who had contributed what to the pot.
So he answered the villagers’ questions, at a safe remove from Tarmin or the intruder on the mountain slopes, and the Evergreen marshal’s office provided hot tea and the preacher provided cookies until they seemed to have run out of questions.
He was free and clear.
“We’d like,” the marshal said then, “for you to come back tomorrow.”
If there’d been a horse near at that moment of distress it would have told everything in the district he’d just panicked.
“I told you all I know,” he said.
“We’d like you to tell the council,” the marshal said. “Won’t take too long. General meeting.”
There wasn’t a way to say no. It wasn’t as if he had a tight schedule.
And the weather today had certainly proved a storm didn’t stop Evergreen officials and their meetings.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “No trouble.” He collected his hat, his scarf, his gloves, and a couple of cookies for Cloud, for a peace-making.
Ridley nipped a few for, he was sure, deserving horses who would expect the same of someone who came remembering <cookies,> and the same for Jennie and Callie, too.
“Oh, we provided,” the preacher said, and came up with a whole sackful, which Ridley took with a grin and a thank-you.
So they went out into the passages with the bag of cookies, and trekked back through the echoing boards toward the camp.
“What do you suppose they want?” he ventured to ask Ridley, and Ridley shrugged.
“Got to tell it firsthand,” Ridley said. “The village wants to know. And the miners and loggers, they have their rights to know. It’s just the way they do things. It’s their rules with the miners association.”
“Huh,” he said, and tried instead, in preparation for coming into camp, to think about cookies—good cookies. And he let himself think how his feet hurt, and he let himself limp and think about his sore knees, which didn’t take any pretending at all.
They walked back through the passage and past the post-and-jog that was the horse-barrier, after which they were in the rider camp, and through the door that let them out into the yard.
Jennie ambushed them out of the snowstorm, having been listening to the horses. So did Cloud, who was lurking near the den and not pushing too much against the horses that owned the place. Cloud came trotting over, black turned gray in the driving snow, and when Danny thought of the taste of <sugar cookies> Cloud switched his ears forward and Cloud’s nostrils dilated.
Then Cloud caught the notion of <cookies> in Ridley’s possession. So had Jennie, who danced about Ridley, trying for the bag, as Slip and Shimmer moved in to assert their claim.
“Pig,” Danny said laughing, when the ambient went to <bag of cookies in Ridley’s hand> as opposed to cookies his rider had. <Cookies,> Danny sent, and held them out, which seduced Cloud right back before heels started flying around Jennie’s short and unpredictably located self.
Jennie got cookies along with a scolding from her father about antics around hungry horses, and one of Jennie’s went to Rain, so Jennie naturally had to have another; Slip made off with one, and well, Rain and Slip had had one apiece from her, so she had to have one to give Shimmer and one for Cloud.
Callie came out into the yard before the bag was gone, and got one, at least, before Shimmer persuaded Callie fairness dictated she was due the other one.
Danny took his chance and left for the porch while it was all happiness and horses high on sugar. He limped up the steps and went to sit by the fire, figuring Jennie would distract Cloud at least long enough—Jennie was good at scratching chins and had not a troubling image in her young head: Cloud seemed to like her, and that hadn’t been the case with his own brother Denis.
His feet did hurt. He hadn’t lied so much in that.
But, God, he wished there weren’t tomorrow to deal with. He’d thought he was free and clear: he’d thought he could go back to camp and dismiss Tarmin from his mind for good and all—at least until spring, when he could get out of here. Dirty trick on their part.
Very dirty trick. So in a concentrated effort to empty his head of everything he didn’t want broadcast, he just stared at the stones and the fire and thought about Shamesey, where things were safe, and about Carlo, whose company he missed, and about—but there were reasons he couldn’t go and talk to Carlo.
The marshal and the village would imagine their questions going to Carlo’s ears, for one thing; they might trust a young rider who was under the orders of a camp-boss they knew, but they’d have no way to know Carlo’s self-restraint, or lack of it.
He wondered if Carlo would be at the meeting tomorrow. Maybe he’d see him there and have a chance to know how he was getting along.