“Doesn’t help the thinking,” he said on a heavy breath.
“Not damn much,” she said.
But the horses wanted in, at that point. Having had their fling they wanted to get warm and muddy up the floor.
He made supper for the two of them plus horse-treats. He figured he could do that: she’d done everything in the day including putting him on his horse.
“They’d have gotten caught by weather at the midway shelter,” he said during supper. “They could be holed be there. Suppose we ought to try the road?”
“Windchill on those high turns is too fierce. Uphill’s easier. Longer. But easier. They can come back down a lot easier than they can go up. Surely they’ve got that sense, if they’re stuck there.”
“No sign of it yet,” he said.
“Maybe they made it up before the weather. Just pushed on.”
Maybe they didn’t make it. He had to think that, too.
In that case he’d be sorrier than he could say. And he and Tara would be wintering in Evergreen.
But they had to go there anyway.
There was nothing right now in the ambient but themselves. There was that silence all around them, a mountain swept clean of life. Or life gone underground, gone into hibernation, as happened in deep, foodless winter.
But there’d been more food on Tarmin Height, grisly thought, than anywhere he’d ever heard of.
“You suppose,” he said, “everything’s eaten so much they’ve all gone to burrows?”
“Possible,” she said. “Possible, too, they remember the rogue, and they’re scaring each other, one to the next. Or possibly—that horse is out there. I don’t think it belonged to my partners. I’d know.”
“Harper’s horse,” Guil said.
“Yeah,” she said. “No question in my mind.”
And long, long after they’d settled down to sleep, tucked down by the fire, in all the blankets they’d brought and found, came a strange, spooky sending that drew an alarm from the horses.
Ghosty thing, just a shiver over the nerves. Guil lay still, but Tara sat up, and got up, and he stirred onto the side that didn’t hurt and sat up, too.
The horses were upset.
“Something’s wrong,” Tara said, with her hands on Flicker’s neck.
Burn came over and stood right over him, <hearing trouble. Nasty shapeless thing. Lot of things.>
Burn was going to defend him, that was clear. A shiver ran up Burn’s leg and over his hide and Burn snorted and hissed at an unseen enemy.
“Can you make it out?” Tara asked. “It’s not a swarm.”
“Don’t think so.” He made an effort to get up and did, leaning on Burn’s shoulder. From Burn there was another snort and a violent shake of his mane.
Not good, whatever it was.
Tara was <upset. Haze of snow, night, terror, horses running> came from her and from Flicker, he couldn’t mistake that.
They were armed. They had supplies. But there was that notice on the board that Danny Fisher had written, that <bad horse> warning.
The kid hadn’t been a rider that long. The kid hadn’t ever been into the High Wild. And if he’d heard something real damn confusing—he might not know what he heard. But two experienced riders and their horses—
—didn’t know, either.
It was a moral question to Danny—whether his responsibility for Carlo and Randy continued or ought to continue; and it was still a common-sense kind of question whether he could get Carlo in some kind of trouble by running over there to inform Carlo on what lawyers were doing, and including Carlo into matters that obviously involved the rich and powerful people in the village. Such people weren’t as rich and powerful as they might be down in Shamesey, granted, but seeing Carlo was accidentally between these people and a lot of money, he’d spent some extensive worry on the matter, at some times concluding he shouldn’t go, then thinking that while some were for protecting Carlo’s rights, some weren’t. And then again thinking—if Carlo was seen not to know, Carlo had a certain amount of protection, in that ignorance—if ignorance was ever protection, and his own experience said it wasn’t as much as the ignorant thought it was.
Most of all he didn’t know at what point of their own morality these people from the pretty blue-muraled church would conclude they were doing wrong. He was scared of lawyers. He was scared of courts.
Most of all he didn’t want to mess up Carlo’s future by making a decision that he didn’t have the information to make, and he’d held off till this morning hoping he’d hear some kind of wisdom out of Ridley or Callie during their evening talks.
“You suppose they’re going to treat the Goss boys all right?” he’d asked finally in desperation. “Are the lawyers honest?”
“They’re fools,” was all he’d been able to get out of Ridley last night. Ridley was mad about the situation, and that was what Ridley had on his mind: losing people from his village. And to the question of the lawyers being honest— “At poker,” Callie said, which didn’t tell him much about Carlo’s chances with them.
“You suppose I ought to tell Carlo?” he’d asked Ridley then, deciding on the direct approach.
“Don’t know what he could do about it,” was Ridley’s answer.
That put him in mind of what his father had always said about the law, which seemed the only wisdom that applied—just don’t sign anything.
He’d slept with it, and waked with it, and worried over it.
His first trip this morning had to be out to the den, and he left the breakfast table, dressed for the cold—a light snow was falling— and took Cloud a biscuit from breakfast. The other horses, crowding him as he came into the den from the open-air approach, were obliged to wait: Ridley encouraged him to do that, saying that waiting their turn was good for them: they’d gotten out of their summer manners, meaning when they regularly had strange horses in the den, and they could learn they hadn’t a right to every biscuit that came into their sight.
So while Ridley was helping Callie clear the dishes, he fed Cloud his treat and rubbed him down from head to tail and oiled his feet, quiet in his mind for the first time since he’d come to Evergreen.
Cloud was satisfied, making that curious contentment sound, enjoying the importance of the first and only biscuit of the day. Cloud ducked his head around while he was working and licked the inside of his ear, which Cloud knew he hated.
Both of them were moving a little more freely now, on feet less tender and joints less sore, and, able to go to Cloud and do such basic, ordinary things, Danny felt a great knot of tension that had been in him unravel. Conclusions hard to come to in the guarded ambient in the barracks were far clearer to him when he’d gotten out here to ordinary work.
The truly difficult things were over and done with, the emergencies were all settled, and there was almost nothing to do but brush Cloud’s tail and feed Cloud and bring him biscuits.
Cloud liked that idea. If there’d been females available, the winter would be absolutely perfect. But, next best thing to please his horse, Danny thought about <hunting,> and expected Cloud to approve that idea.
Cloud wasn’t as enthusiastic about it as he might have been. Cloud lifted his head and looked toward the walls and shivered.
Danny found that very odd. He stopped the brushing with his fist still full of Cloud’s tail, and he looked in that direction without even thinking he’d done it.
He’d never been wintered-in anywhere before. Shamesey didn’t have weather to require it, although a lot of riders arrived there to winter-over and the trade died down: Shamesey never felt isolated.