Most of all he’d finally paid off his promise to Cloud, who’d wanted this winter in the High Wild, from the beginning of their partnership, two years ago, when a crazy young horse had played tag with gunmen atop Shamesey walls getting the rider he wanted, which for some reason happened to be Danny Fisher. Cloud had surely been foaled in the mountains, the camp-boss had told him that, and he thought it might have been on Rogers Peak itself, in the wild herd— he had no images of villages out of Cloud and never had had any. Cloud had wanted his winter in the High Wild, and, Cloud having brought him up this mountain, well, here they were: their duty was done to the village folk, Ridley said he could work for his keep and even said he’d talk to the marshal, meaning he’d go on the village tab.
That was generous, very generous. He’d help Ridley for his room and board; he’d cut leather, he’d mend roofs, he’d ride guard on villagers who had to go out, and most of all he’d hunt and gather hides and meat for the village.
He couldn’t imagine a happier situation than he’d found for himself. He’d had his doubts when he was coming up the mountain, half-frozen; he’d had his doubts in that meeting in there and even walking back from it—but this wasn’t at all a bad place for a young rider to stay for a summer—help Guil out, for that matter, and let his family worry.
Or not, if they got the phone lines spliced again and if he could get a phone call through to Shamesey. He thought maybe they’d let him do that. Maybe—he had to factor that unpleasantness into the picture, too—he’d be available to guide a number of people down to Tarmin around spring melt. He might well get that job—having been there recently, and not being senior, and Ridley and Callie being burdened down with Jennie.
He didn’t at all want the job. He’d accepted the one with Guil and Tara. He’d plead that and the villagers could wait.
Meanwhile Ridley and Jennie had made peace. The ambient was quieter. <Jennie and Rain> was the sense of things as Ridley came walking across the yard toward him.
“I don’t want that,” Ridley said to him. “Girl-kid and a colt horse. What in hell is she going to do?”
“There were pairs like that in Shamesey. I don’t know—” He didn’t want to discuss sex and an eight-year-old with the eight-year-old’s father. “I don’t know exactly how all of them got along. But I know two mismatches that paired up and they seemed happy.”
Ridley didn’t discuss it. “Worries us,” was all he said. And about that time <Jennie!> went through the ambient like a scream and Ridley and Danny ran as Rain first bolted out of the den in a spray of snow and then came back, <upset> and upsetting Cloud and the other horses.
Jennie was on the ground again with the breath knocked out of her. This time she didn’t get up so quickly—hardly moved until Ridley picked her up and set her on her feet.
About that time Callie came running, and a guest and a stranger in the rider barracks could only stand and keep his mouth shut.
The little girl wanted that horse so bad, and was anxious to be with that horse, for reasons a rider who wanted to understand could well figure out and could feel not just in his heart, but in his gut. Equally, Rain wanted her. he was also very upset about <hurt Jennie> and wanted to defend her—it wasn’t Rain’s fault he’d dumped Jennie twice in ten minutes and didn’t quite put it together in his horsey brain that he was the cause of Jennie falling.
It wasn’t really Jennie’s fault, either. She loved that horse. And Rain loved her, in his adolescent way. Rain, male, in mating season, didn’t know what to do about something light landing on his back, boy-horses being especially skittish in that regard, and young ones more skittish than they’d ever be in the rest of their lives.
And what did you tell an eight-year-old about her horse’s reasons for dumping her? How much did the kid know and what did her parents want her to know?
The truth, if they were smart.
But he damn sure wasn’t going to argue that point with Jennie’s parents. He just hoped Jennie’s skull held out.
Chapter 11
It was blue sky and scattered clouds overhead, snow blowing off the trees and sunmelt glistening on the surface of the crags. <Horses,> was Burn’s occasional impression, and Flicker’s; but nothing close or threatening, nothing that would, Guil thought, make Burn jog, which he truly didn’t want this morning, considering the aches in his side.
The woman beside him was much more cheerful than she had been when they’d set out. Tara had begun to mope and to lose appetite yesterday—maybe understandable if she had never been anything except a village rider, and unaccustomed to lying snowbound all winter in an isolated cabin.
But she wasn’t; she’d been a free rider over on Darwin, and the ambient told him it wasn’t the closeness of the cabin that was bothering her. It was an occasional, uneasy, and angry despair that he didn’t want to invade with his advice or even his good will. Right now it felt like approaching storm.
He didn’t want to acknowledge it. She had a gun, an indispensable part of their job. He’d seen a crash coming—he knew it was inevitable, and when it came, it helped that they both had a place to go and something yet to do. It was a dangerous search, a perilous venture for a woman whose method of dealing with her loss had been to shut down and shut in for a while. He’d wanted to go up here from the hour they’d agreed they were going and she’d placed all sorts of interpretations on that haste, from his disapproval of her actions with the kids to a need to prove something to her on her mountain.
The latter had switched about to her need to prove something to him, and come down to an hours’-long fight, their first real partner-style disagreement.
But increasingly since their agreement to come up here she’d started thinking about those kids, and about Tarmin, and she was riding on a mission, not just tagging him. He could stay back in the cabin and she’d undertake this to prove something to herself, was what it sounded like to him.
Angry. She was that. It was an anger flying about and trying to find a place to nest. She blamed the Goss family, not the boys, by the rags and tags he picked out of the ambient. She was mad and she had no place to turn it.
And if there was one place that anger could still fasten it was the girl who’d opened the gates, whose selfish whim had ridden the streets of Tarmin, looking for satisfaction. That wasn’t just his guess. It was what they’d both gotten out of the ambient while the boys were there, it was what had roused Tara’s outrage even before the girl had waked, and that outrage had almost pulled the trigger in the instant when sensible fear had drawn the gun—and Danny Fisher had intervened to the hazard of his own life.
She’d put the brake on the temper—and lost her forward motion. Lost the moral justification to do what in her mind wanted doing.
Lost her way, in a world suddenly lacking everyone she’d known.
Well, and there was him, out of his head with painkillers.
And there was this chance, today, to try again to deal with those kids.
The blue sky and the cold air, though, could lighten anyone’s mood. He was too sore to have Burn frisking about like a fool and too sore to think about climbing up and down—but on a day like this Burn found it very hard to behave, and jolted him now and again. Tara’s Flicker had her mind divided between Tara’s purpose and the skittish self-awareness of a mare in heat—which just didn’t raise the common sense to any high level.