“You had an obligation to tell us about the girl before we made certain decisions!”
“What would you have done different—besides not put that girl with Darcy?”
“That’s about it.”
“Then that’s the one we’ve got to deal with, isn’t it? If the Goss boy takes to that loose horse—it could be settled and we could have a peaceful winter, once that attraction is away from her. I told Fisher get him on to Mornay if he can catch him, and that’s still the best thing to do.”
“Do you hear him now?”
“I’m not near the horses.”
Villagers never seemed to get that straight. Or cases like the Goss girl confused them. He just wished Darcy Schaffer’s house was on the other side of the street because, knowing there was trouble in the village, Slip was a curious and a suspicious horse who might put out extra effort to know what That Girl was up to.
And that meant horses carrying the girl’s troublesome images further than ordinary into the Wild. Get a panic started among the horses and they’d hear it in distant Anveney.
“Well, keep me posted,” Peterson said.
“I will,” he said, uneasy in knowing the man on the villageside who knew him best and who had the village version of his job didn’t really to this day know what the abilities and the limits of the horses were. John Quarles was, ironically, his other best phone line to the village—but John just trusted the Lord and didn’t try to understand things. You went and told Peterson when you wanted somebody on villageside to worry. You told John when you wanted somebody to nod sagely and assure you things would be all right.
Neither worked in this case.
So he had had nothing to do but go back to the camp, and to stay around the den where he could keep his finger on the pulse of the ambient, and that meant currying Slip, since his hands were idle, and trying to keep him calm. Callie and Jennie did the same, all of them hanging about the den where rumors could fly—or be sat upon, fast, before they spread to the village on the impulse of several nervous horses.
The younger Goss boy, Randy, hung about there, too, being very quiet.
And very unhappy.
“You think he’s still alive?” Randy asked finally, coming up to him as he was brushing Slip’s tail.
“Pretty sure so,” he said. “Pretty sure he’s with that horse.”
“I hope he is,” Randy said. And he heard from the kid right then <wanting that horse> and <wanting his brother> and knew that both choices came with real pain.
“A rider’s pretty damn selfish,” he said to Randy, “when it’s him and his horse. If you can let that horse go, he’d never be yours. That’s the truth, kid.”
“If Danny finds Carlo he’ll get him to Mornay.”
“He’ll get him there if he can. You stay here. No going back to the Mackeys.”
“I’ve got to get the house down in Tarmin. That’s Carlo’s house.”
“If Carlo’s gone to be a rider, son, there’s nobody but the Mackeys to go with you.”
“But he wants to be a blacksmith.”
“Not now. You hear it out there.” Couldn’t hear it now too distinctly: horse-sense said it had gone on in the general direction of Mornay, which was very good news. “You don’t ever unchoose that. Lose one horse—you’ve got to find one and some horse has got to find you, or you’re better off dead.”
There was a long silence, Randy sitting on a rail by the manger, wiped his eyes. “He won’t want me if he’s got that horse.”
“Not the same way, maybe. A horse happens along and a partner happens along both for reasons you don’t exactly choose to happen, and sometimes who happens and why just doesn’t make sense to you. Don’t say won’t. Don’t say can’t. Say—there’s something waiting for you.” It was what he’d said to himself before he met Callie. It was what he’d said to Jennie. And Jennie had proved that true, no question about it.
The boy looked up at him. “You think? You think maybe?”
“I think you better be ready if it comes. Can’t say when. Neither could your brother. Just think good thoughts about him now and most of all think about him staying on that horse. It won’t leave him. But it’s bad country to get thrown. Worry about that if you want to worry about something.”
“He’ll show Rick Pig. He’ll come back and he’ll show him.”
“If he comes back with that horse he’ll take orders like any rider in this camp, kid. The way he’ll take orders over at Mornay if Danny can get him there.” He liked the boy. But you never let a kid think he was on equal footing when you might have to lay the law down and make it stick. “You get one thing straight: you don’t do anything toward the village without consulting the camp-boss, including insulting the village folk. That’s the first lesson you learn, or you better clear out and stay out of my sight, right down that road you took to get up here. Danny Fisher ran that line right close, and I know why he did it; and he knows he’s on my tolerance. So you get it straight: if you stay in this camp, you do what you’re told and you do it when you’re told, and if you don’t, Slip here will tell me.”
“Yes, sir,” Randy said.
“Good you learn that.”
Chapter 20
The afternoon had gone to that strange daylight afternoons had in the woods, in the mountains, and the trail was going the same way it had—Cloud’s burst of speed flagged in a high altitude gasping for breath. Out of condition, Cloud was. Born up here, maybe, but they were both a little soft, and settled to an unheroic amble through the woods, along the road to Mornay. He walked at times, rode at times. Cloud had carried him quite a lot to start with, and he didn’t want to push Cloud to foolishness in his enthusiasm: it was possible to get a whole list of ailments from too much exertion at altitude and he’d heard them all from Ridley as well as Tara and Guil.
Miraculously, in Danny’s opinion, there hadn’t been any more Carlo-shaped holes in the snow, and the horse was traveling at a fair clip along the road, faster through the trees, which was generally a good idea, considering the habit of lorrie-lies and other such tree-dwellers that liked to fall on you from above. Cloud did much the same as he tracked Carlo and Spook.
He was resolved not to scare the horse twice. It hadn’t been the brightest move he’d made, coming up on that horse ambivalent about shooting. Now he was sure he wouldn’t. He tried, because Cloud could be a fairly loud horse when he wanted to be, to encourage Cloud to send out friendliness and goodwill to the ambient at large and an image of <Danny and Carlo riding side by side.> But no, Cloud wouldn’t. <Danny and Carlo> was the best he could manage, and Cloud gave a shiver and a twitch, just thinking about <male horse.>
There were tracks of game—though sign was rare, and totally absent along one area of the road, well-shaded and sheltered from the snow-fall, where he would have thought small tracks might have persisted. Nothing but themselves was moving about—he didn’t pick up the <rider on horse> view of things at ground level that the little spooks sent. But the snow had fallen thick and swirled in under the trees, while the little game, undisturbed by hunters, was in burrows. The silence was deep and wide across the mountain, a kind of breathless slumber, except for the track Spook laid down and the track he laid over it.