And the respectability of her dealings with Earnest Riggs.
The Goss brothers reached her porch and climbed the steps and that, too, was a scene bound to stick in neighbors’ minds. The Mackeys were coming, too, with hateful Mary Hardesty marching in the lead, and there was no way to go inside and let them and the marshal talk out here in front of the whole village without her knowing what they were saying. She found herself trembling, fearing that the boys were intending publicly to fault her care of Brionne, fearing that someone, somehow, in investigating what might have become of Earnest Riggs, might uncover the financial dealings she’d had with him—God knew who he’d have talked to.
Someone had gotten wind of money—she was sure of the motive and daren’t say anything to the marshal about it. If it got about that she was involved—
She didn’t know what to say.
“What’s happened?” the oldest boy wanted to know. “What’s going on here?”
“Drunken fools,” she said, that being the position she decided to take—total ignorance. But the marshal gave the long account.
“Earnest Riggs,” Eli Peterson said. “The rider didn’t find any trace of him. His bunk wasn’t slept in. Found only his hat, lying sheltered on the porch.”
“He was at the tavern last night,” somebody yelled from the crowd below the porch.
“Ernie was always at the tavern,” another voice yelled. “He’s probably got in a fight and he’s sleepin’ one off!”
“Not with this,” Peterson said. He scratched his chin and looked back at the snowy street. “I’m not finding him, the rider didn’t find him. And there’s a hell of a lot of blood. I’m taking a survey of everybody, searching all the sheds and such.”
“Ask Carlo Goss!” somebody yelled. “He picked a fight with him yesterday. He threatened Riggs. Threatened to kill him! And he was up and about way late—I saw him!”
“That’s a lie,” the younger boy yelled back. “That’s a lie, Rick Pig! He wasn’t anywhere last night but with me. And you were passed out drunk!”
“Goss said he’d kill him!” That was assuredly Rick Mackey from near the fringes. “Riggs was talking loose about his sister and he said he’d kill Riggs. Now he’s done it. Naturally his brother’d give him an alibi.”
“Carlo Goss?” Peterson said, and all of a sudden the Goss boy just jumped off the porch and broke his way through the crowd and ran.
“Carlo!” the younger boy yelled after him.
But Carlo Goss was running breakneck down the street, disappearing into the snowfall.
“Get him!” Peterson yelled. “Bring him back here!” And that was a mistake. A number of miners took out running, chasing the boy, shouting encouragement to each other.
Then the younger brother ducked past people trying to stop him and ran after all of them, in the same moment Brionne, this time shod, came out onto the porch. Darcy put an arm around her as, in the distance, Carlo Goss failed her expectation he would go to the rider camp.
No, the boy was going farther than that, as she could see from her elevated vantage. The miners hadn’t overtaken him. Randy Goss had taken that side street and gone off toward the rider camp. But Carlo, almost faded out in the snow, came to the village gates, and as she strained to see clearly what was going on, or whether Serge, who kept the gate, would catch him—he vanished altogether.
He’d opened the lesser gate and gone outside the walls—maybe to reach the rider camp across to their outside gate. Maybe he’d hoped to draw the miners away from his brother, and then go where they wouldn’t—because from what she could see, nobody else passed that gate.
Gunfire echoed back. Someone had gotten up the steps and shot.
“Stop that,” Peterson said to his deputy, and Burani walked down off the porch, went out into the street and fired his pistol into the air, at which Darcy’s nerves jumped, and Brionne jumped, and the crowd got quiet.
Did they shoot him? she was wondering. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe Carlo Goss had had words with Riggs. Maybe Riggs had come to him trying to solicit more money, and the boy had gotten mad and killed him.
The marshal was shouting to Jeff Burani to go to the riders and get them to go out after the elder boy, and Burani lit out running on the course Randy Goss had taken.
Maybe Carlo had gone toward the rider camp’s outside gate and some overzealous miner had shot him from the wall. Riders wouldn’t necessarily turn him in—not until the marshal had made a case that it was village business and none of theirs.
She hugged Brionne against her side, in the blood-spattered venue of her porch, in the wreckage of the winter’s peace. Brionne was what she kept. Brionne was hers.
“Sorry the girl had to see this,” marshal Peterson said. “Honey, if your brother didn’t do this, we’ll find out. I just want to ask him some questions.”
“He could do it,” Brionne said bitterly. “He shot our father. He shot papa, Mama died. He was in jail down there. He deserved to be.”
“Honey,” Darcy began, hoping to stem the bitter flood, but Brionne wasn’t finished.
“I was scared of him,” Brionne cried. “He was hateful. He was always hateful. He never wanted me to have anything. And he shot papa, I know he did!”
The whole snow-blinded sky was screaming, a condition against which the gunshots were faint noise, and it didn’t stop. Ridley couldn’t get his bearings except by sight, and that was diminished to an insignificant sense in the noise and the fright that raged in Slip, in Shimmer and Rain and Cloud—Jennie was terrified and trying to protect Rain, and in the stubbornness and the skip-to-any-belief character of a youngster, might be the strongest of them. Jennie didn’t equivocate—Jennie didn’t care about anything but what Jennie wanted, and that was <them,> including all the horses.
But her father knew she was no match for that thing in the village, not in age, not in angry tenacity. Ridley kept by Slip’s side, trying to keep him calm, and tried to be the stable center of their camp— but he’d compromised himself. He’d persisted against better sense, he’d tried with all he had in him to do the job his village asked him, even with that darting, unhealthy <presence> there, and he knew he hadn’t made sense to the marshal or to the doctor when he’d suddenly known he couldn’t make headway either against the search or the girl who so doggedly possessed that place. He’d had to get Slip and himself away from there.
There was <death> in that place, there was <blood> and <going apart> and <wanting Slip, wanting so much and so hard> that Slip imaged it as <hunger and fangs and claws, here, there, here and apart> so quickly you couldn’t track it, <goblin-cat in a darkness too deep to see, hungry and lonely and threatened and threatening.>
The rider camp gate had opened for them and now it was shut— Jennie and Callie and Dan had opened it for him, the horses all bunched and sending <us and ours> and <wanting him and Slip> so strongly that presence enfolded him, snatched him into harmony with one breath, one thought, <safe in herd> and <fighting outsiders. >
Now, slowly, they became <quiet falling snow> and <safe in den.>
But something <else> had come into reach, and it was <human> and <boy in snowstorm> first and foremost.