“They skated off the other way from where I was,” Ridley said. “Playing games. She hit the thin ice. I yelled at her to go flat, and she maybe started to, but the ice split, and the fool boy tried to grab her—which put twice the weight on it. They both went under. He climbed out. She didn’t come up. Her father went in looking for her, without a rope, and he nearly drowned. The marshal and his deputy got her out, sucked into the waterbaby den, right where the water flows out. Just too late. Wasn’t anything to do. Sometimes the drowned ones will come around. But this one didn’t.” Ridley shook his head. “Her father went along quiet till spring and the ice started melting, just made his call on an old man who’d died, and then he went home and locked the office door and blew his brains out.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah,” Ridley said. “Darcy Schaffer, that’s his wife, she’s the surgeon for us and all the miners, only doctor we’ve got since her husband died, but she just isn’t opening her doors. I don’t know how the marshal talked her into it. I know what they were thinking when they took the girl there. But—”
“Hard on her, then, if the girl dies.”
“Yeah,” Ridley said. “Real hard. I’ll tell you, she was in the house when her husband killed himself. Middle of a storm, the windows were shuttered—she never unshuttered them after, just stayed like that since last spring. If you get a cut that’s not near your heart, you go to the druggist, that’s all. The Sumners—they own the pharmacy—they’ve gotten real good at first aid. And,” Ridley said with a sigh, “single women and doctors both being scarce here on the peak, God knows there’s been a lot of men on her doorstep this year—one guy, a real nice fellow, everybody thought sure she’d take to—and one night this last summer three drunk loggers carved each other up on her porch, trying to get clear space to talk to her on the subject. Didn’t impress her in the least. She’ll see to a birthing or go over to Irma Quarles’ place—the preacher’s mother. She’s got a chronic lung condition, and Darcy’ll come out and see her, but that’s about the limit.”
“Doesn’t sound as if the woman needs more grief,” Danny said, thinking to himself that he wouldn’t give a spit in hell’s furnace for the chance Brionne Goss would wake up and answer to the doctor rather than to her own brothers.
And God help the doctor if she did. God hope she never did.
But that was an ugly thought, an ugly wish, and he didn’t want to think it, because they were reaching the gate that led into the rider camp, where the horses might pick it up.
He buried his thoughts real fast in the meeting, and the argument, and the lawyers, none of which Cloud would understand, as Ridley pulled the chain that lifted the latch on the gate—a simple affair, a gate with a free-standing post that a human could walk around and a horse couldn’t—same arrangement as in the board and earth tunnel that ran as a snow-covered mound and windbreak beside them, like a little hill, the only structure that went right through the camp wall—or that the camp wall humped over. They went through into the rider camp, to home, at least for the next several months, into that warm bath of the horse-carried ambient, with <we’re here,> and <we’re here,> on either hand, human and horse.
That caused a nighthorse excursion out into the cold, Cloud and Ridley’s Slip immediately, and Rain, who seemed to have his inquisitive nose into every event. More leisurely out of the dim light and close warmth came pregnant Shimmer, and then with a thump of a wide-flung barracks door, came the human offspring, half into her coat and trailing a scarf, onto the porch and down the steps, to be caught by her father and swung aloft.
“Getting too big,” Ridley complained, setting her down; and Jennie said, “I bet Danny can lift me.”
“Not on your life,” Danny said, far from willing to provoke jealous competitions with father and daughter. “I’m not as big as he is. I’m a junior rider.”
“I’m a junior rider, too,” Jennie said.
“Yeah,” Ridley said. “When you get a horse, miss, and you don’t count Rain.”
“I love Rain,” Jennie cried, “and Rain loves me!”
And before that could flare into an argument Callie came out with her coat wrapped around her, asked if they’d break the ice on the barrel.
“I can!” Jennie declared, and was off with Rain kicking up his heels across the yard.
So he and Ridley followed and took a heavy log and broke up the ice as Callie went back inside.
Came a heavy thump behind their backs and a burst of nighthorse hooves on the frozen snow. As Ridley looked up and Danny turned Jennie was on the ground flat on her back beside the porch and Rain was still dancing off with his tail in the air. Ridley ran, he ran, but Jennie was already getting up, brushing herself off.
“Have you lost your mind?” Ridley asked. “Stay off him!”
The pieces of the situation were all there to figure: the porch, the skittish and indignant colt—who’d probably been willing to have Jennie on his back until it felt weird. She’d used the porch edge for a mounting-block, the corner post of the porch for a handhold, and Rain had shied right out from under her—luckily she hadn’t hurt her back—or her head; it was crusted snow below and a thick coat and a heavy knitted cap. She’d just had the breath knocked out of her, minor crisis, a lot of gasping and trying, red-faced, not to cry.
“See?” Ridley said, angry; Ridley already had not had a good morning, in the meeting, and Jennie cried and stormed and went running off to Rain.
To Rain, not to her mother who was working indoors. Danny marked that fact.
So, he thought, did Ridley.
“Damn!” Ridley stormed off toward the den, to his daughter and to Rain, with Slip trailing after. The ambient was full of <Jennie and Rain> and <unhappy male human and unhappy Jennie.> Rain was thinking <mating,> Shimmer was thinking <bite,> and Slip and Cloud were understandably on edge.
But it was peace-making Ridley was after, and Danny saw him standing in the doorway of the den, leaning against the post, talking to his daughter.
Maybe Ridley believed he could stop nature and growing up from taking its course. Danny didn’t know. Maybe Ridley was trying to explain the facts of life to an eight-year-old.
They’d talked about maybe taking Rain to another camp next spring. Maybe Rain leaving of his own accord when the foal was born—a colt horse often did take out on his own at that point. But to say so to Jennie… that well could be the frown, the downcast look, the refusal to look at her father.
He felt sorry for the kid. And the colt.
And while he was thinking it, Cloud nudged him in the side. Cloud thought if human hands were otherwise unoccupied they could be <scratching itchy chin and itchy ears.>
He did. Cloud rewarded his charity by licking his ear.
He was ever so glad to have the interview in town behind him. Now he had absolutely nothing in front of him but a winter in this camp, with the reserved but congenial company of Ridley and Callie, and he didn’t need to worry. Down in Shamesey his family might worry about him—and figure he was staying out the winter because of the fight they’d had in parting. They might even guess he’d gone off into the hills and gotten snowed in—
Fornicating all winter in some village was what his father would think.
Less chance than Rain had, was the fact.
And his own family would miss him. The money he’d brought would have run out come spring. They’d be back on what profit his father and mother earned from their own business, but they’d survive very handily till he got back; they had before. And then maybe he’d come back with enough in his pockets to set his father up with the kind of tools the shop needed.