But Ridley hadn’t proposed going out on a Sunday, maybe village custom: Danny didn’t ask. He spent a lot of time out in the den, taking the occasion to do some clean-up around the place, raking and turning the bedding, doing a lot of things that weren’t needful, exactly, but they’d have to be done later, if he didn’t do them sooner, and he really wanted to make Ridley and Callie happier with him than he’d merited.
He didn’t know what Ridley might have said to Callie. His spending time out at the den at least gave Ridley and Callie a chance to talk matters over without him hearing it in any sense, and he figured if he’d moderately won Ridley’s better opinion, he couldn’t have a better lawyer with Callie.
He hadn’t heard any explosions.
Cloud followed him about, getting him to <scratch Cloud’s chin> and finally to <brush Cloud,> of which Cloud never, ever tired.
Jennie came outside to tend to Rain, and brushed Rain—well, as high as Jennie could reach.
“Was that girl bad?” Jennie wanted to know, and the ambient carried thoughts of <girl on floor in furs> and <mama and papa talking and yelling.>
“That girl didn’t mind the way she was supposed to,” Danny said. Having a kid brother, he knew the tracks an eight-year-old mind wandered, and knew not to make it too complicated—or too lacking in detail. “A rider who knew told her to stay inside the gate and she went out anyway. And that’s what happened.”
“I wouldn’t go out the gate,” Jennie said.
“You’re smart.” Compliments never hurt. In his experience. Once you were praised as good for one thing, you didn’t so readily do the opposite. “That horse out there is dangerous. If a gate got open Rain might go out to fight him.”
“Why?”
“Because boy horses do that. And if Rain got in a fight, that’s a big mean horse, and he might hurt Rain real bad. So we have to be real careful that one of the boy horses doesn’t get out the gate.”
“What about Shimmer?”
“Shimmer, too. The horse out there might try to come inside where Shimmer’s den is, and she’d fight him, and she might lose the baby.”
“I’d get the hoe. I’d hit him.”
“If that horse ever gets in here, you get into the barracks and you bolt the door and you let the horses handle it. Our three boy horses together can put a strange horse out of the yard. And they would. But Shimmer could still get hurt. That’s why your papa and I want that horse to leave.”
“Would you shoot him?”
Delicate question. “Wouldn’t you shoot him,” he asked, “if he was going to kill Rain?”
“Yeah.” A reluctant and unhappy yeah, that was, but Jennie did agree to the premise.
“Your papa would never shoot anything if he didn’t have to. He’s real smart. So if he ever did, you’d know he did the right thing.”
“Yeah.” Not enthusiastically.
He applied himself to a vigorous brushing of Cloud’s far side in hopes Jennie and her questions would go inside the barracks again.
But in the same moment Slip went outside, and from there Jennie caught an impression of <Ridley going to the rider gate> and <Slip wandering along after him.>
“Where’s your papa going?” Danny wondered.
“To the hunters,” Jennie said.
“To go out?”
“To the village,” Jennie said. “To talk to the hunters.”
Ridley hadn’t asked him to go along. Which said something, he supposed. He hoped that it didn’t say Ridley was filling the hunters in on his and Carlo’s problems.
He applied his frustration to the tangles that crept into Cloud’s mane. He kept quiet in the ambient and was aware of Ridley leaving it, the other side of the wall.
Jennie flitted off. And he eventually ran out of tangles.
He thought—maybe he should go to the barracks and try to talk to Callie, personally, reasonably. Nothing worse could happen to him than what had happened yesterday with Ridley.
Well… on the other hand, she might pull the trigger.
Cloud wasn’t enthusiastic. He didn’t want <Callie shooting.>
“It’s all right, silly.” Danny gave Cloud a pat on the shoulder, put away the brushes and went out into the yard.
But Callie had come out onto the porch, dressed for a stay in the cold, and had called Shimmer to her.
Callie spotted him, then, and the ambient went—tense, if not foreboding. Callie, he was sure, didn’t want the meeting with him; but there he was, and Callie knew he was there and knew he was looking to deal with her, he was also reasonably sure. Shimmer, maybe because she was pregnant or maybe because she was protective of Callie with Slip upset, was touchy and standoffish. Slip was occupied trotting up and down along a track beside the village wall, listening for what he could hear out of that strange full-of-people place Ridley went that a horse couldn’t. Slip was frustrated and anxious. But Shimmer was wary in particular of <Danny.>
So was Callie.
Danny walked toward the barracks, necessarily on a course to intercept Callie and Shimmer.
“I’d like to talk,” he said. “Mind?”
“About what?”
“About my being here. About my not telling the truth first off.”
“What about it?”
“That I’m sorry. You knew I was holding back. And I knew I was in trouble, but fact was—”
Jennie came running up. “I finished my problems,” she said. “I’m going to brush Rain.”
“That’s fine,” Callie said.
“Can I go over to the grocery and get some candy?”
“No.”
“Just one piece?”
“It’s Sunday and the grocery’s closed.”
“But papa went to the village!”
“That’s fine. Papa’s talking to some people. I’m talking to Dan. All right? Run away.”
“Papa’s talking about shooting that horse. Isn’t he?”
“Jennie, do you have lessons to do?”
“I don’t want him to shoot that horse!”
“Jennie—”
“I don’t want him to!”
“I’ll bet I can find you something to do inside if you’ve nothing better to do.”
“I’ll brush Rain.”
“Good. Go do that,” Callie said, frowning, and Jennie ran off to the den.
“I,” Danny said carefully, “just wanted to explain. I don’t know how much Ridley told you about what I said. But I did offer to go out and deal with the horse. I know I shouldn’t have brought the girl here. I knew it then and I didn’t plan to go all the way to the village until I was in a position to talk to the riders here and find out what I didn’t know. I made a mistake. A lot of mistakes. I don’t know that does anything—”
“You’re full of dark spots, aren’t you?”
“I don’t intend to be. I know you’d have been within your rights to have tossed me out. I just—”
“Just kind of miscalculated.”
“More than once. But—”
He could see Jennie making another try at Rain, off in the doorway of the den. Jennie was using the manger wall to stand on and the support post to hold on to in case Rain moved out from under her.
But this time Rain didn’t move.
This time Jennie slid on, and got a fistful of mane, and sat there. Cloud, out in the yard, turned his head. The ambient went full of <Jennie on Rain> and Danny held his breath between fear that Rain would pitch her off on her head and fear that Callie, catching the scene first from the ambient and from him and then from <Jennie and Rain,> was going to explode in a shouting fit that wouldn’t help junior nerves at all.
Callie didn’t. Callie was very quiet. He caught intense <unhappiness> and <fear,> enough to upset the neighborhood if it broke loose, but she remained very, very quiet. So did Shimmer.