The owner himself came over when he'd finished the task, looking muddy and swearing under his breath. Horses didn't like having their mouths held open and things pushed down their throats; despite steel-toed boots he limped a bit where this one had stepped on his foot accidentally-on purpose.
"Mae govannen," he said, which sounded odd in a ranch-country twang.
Then he dropped back into English, since that exhausted his Sindarin: "Pleased to see you ladies again."
"Good to see you again too, Mr. Denks," Ritva said, mentally pushing the lever that switched her thoughts to English likewise. "You don't look too busy."
"Still the quiet time of year," Denks said as she leaned over to shake his hand; he hitched at his suspenders and then ran a hand over his glistening bald scalp. "We get some traffic down from the Columbia in winter, and from out east, but you're early to come over Highway
20."
Then, cocking an eye at the horses and making a tsk sound: "Look rid hard and put away wet, these 'uns."
Epona was doing a circuit of the five-acre field, tail and head high, followed by her progeny. The others headed straight for the water and feed. There wasn't much grazing in the high country this time of year, and anyway horses like these couldn't get by on grass alone.
"Nice-lookin' critters if you like 'em big," Denks went on.
"Well, we'll be here long enough for you to feed them up a bit," Mary said; they'd slung bags of milled oats over each horse's back to get them over the moun tains. "And have them reshod. We'll be needing some more stock-nothing fancy, enough to pull a Conestoga; harness-broke mules would do. And we'll be having a good deal of stuff dropped off here."
The man nodded without asking questions, which was welcome but not unexpected; he'd done business with the Rangers for years. They stored most of their gear with him in a hayloft as well, taking only their swords, some money and documents, and a change of clothes into the city proper.
That involved a half-hour walk through the outskirts-places where suburban tracts had lain, burned over or torn down for their materials. Now they housed everything from truck gardens to warehouses full of raw hides to the tanyards that turned them into leather with a stink of lye and acrid bark juice to plain weeds and sage brush and greasewood and stubs of wreckage. The city walls were the usual type, concrete and rubble around a core of salvaged steel girders; they were thick and strong, but the inhabitants hadn't bothered to smooth the outside as much as some places did, leaving it rough and gray-brown with edges of rock sticking out.
Which was a good metaphor for Bend in general. The clotted knot of would be entrants on the road outside the eastern gate wasn't very big, but it wasn't moving much either, besides yelling and waving their arms and making their horses rear and snort. Being on foot the twins could push forward until they saw the reason; a Rancher and his cowboy-retainers arguing with the gate guard. Ritva smiled to herself as he grumbled and eventually paid over the entrance tax the city charged.
The CORA-the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association-was as much of a government as this area had; its assembly met here in Bend, and its lariat-and branding iron flag flew over the gatehouse. But though the city of Bend had shrunk drastically, there were still fifteen thousand souls living within the circuit of the walls in a bend of the Deschutes River. Its town council was scrap pily independent of the big herding spreads, and so were the small farmers of the irrigated areas north and south of town.
Just to add spice to life in these parts, the ranchers all quarreled with one another regularly too, partly from things like strayed unbranded mavericks ending in the wrong roundup and partly from sheer bullheaded cuss edness. They got the essentials like defense and keeping up the dams and canals done, somehow, but you always wondered how when you saw their usual barroom-brawl notion of governance.
"Not much like Corvallis," Mary observed.
" They're organized down to their bootlaces," Ritva agreed. "I'm glad Bend doesn't do that peace-bonding nonsense on your sword."
Inside the streets were more crowded, as was inevitable in a walled town; empty spaces had been built up, and some of the single story buildings raised a story or two. More people were on horseback than in a town west of the mountains, but by way of compensation there were good if thronged brick or board sidewalks, and squads of dung scoopers.
They walked past cobblers' and harness makers' shops-Bend was famous for its leather goods-and bookstores, furniture makers, stores selling pre-Change and modern cutlery and pottery, clothiers and tailors with a hum of pedal driven sewing machines, a print shop, cookhouses and taverns, and an entertainer strum ming his guitar and singing with a bowl in front of him. They didn't drop any change in it; he used the whining nasal style of singing popular around here, and neither of them liked it.
"Mah horse is gone bad lame, mah dog done died, my woman don't love me no more and I ain't got no money for beeeeeeerrr, " Mary crooned, in the same fashion.
Ritva laughed. It sounded a lot funnier when you said it in the Noble Tongue.
"You've created a new style, sis," she said. "Country and Elvish."
For a moment Mary's face turned sad. "The reason I don't like that type of song is it reminds me of Dad," she said. " He liked it-or something a lot like it, I think."
"Yeah," Ritva said, putting an arm around her sister's shoulders for an instant. "I miss him too."
They'd been two years short of ten when he rode away to war and never came back, only his body in a box, and their mother was different after that. These days their recollections of him felt faded somehow, as if they were memories of the memories rather than the thing itself. But she could remember the effortless strength as he scooped both of them up, one under each arm, and twirled them around until they were all breathless and laughing…
Then they passed a school where children sat on the steps eating from their lunch boxes.
"Meren aes," Mary said.
Ritva could feel she was making herself cheerful; she nodded agreement as she realized she was hungry too. Time dulled grief, which was a kindness of the Lord and Lady to humankind. The smells of grilling and roasting and frying from the cookshops and taverns and street vendors were making her mouth water.
"E yaxe olgaren nubast gwasolch," Mary went on.
"Yeah, I could use a hamburger and fries," Ritva replied.
The phrase translated strictly as cut-up cow beneath bread with edible roots, but usage had made the modern meaning plain.
"I like that spicy ketchup they make here."
Macy's Traveler's Rest was familiar too; it had been a motel before the Change, though now the courtyard parking spaces held a timber bunkhouse for those with out the rather stiff charge required to rent a room for themselves. The same people owned the grill/bar next door, and beyond that was a public bathhouse with a good reputation and plenty of hot water; between them an alleyway had been turned into a bowling alley-cum- shooting gallery. Voices and an occasional shout and hard thunk came from there as they walked down from their room-the Traveler's Rest was safe enough to leave ordinary gear unattended.
A hopeful voice called out, "You girls new in town?"
The words were unexceptional, but the tone wasn't and neither was the low whistle; from his worn leather clothes, the man was from the outback, probably in town for a spree, and it was only too apparent he and his friends hadn't visited the bathhouse yet. He wasn't much older than they were. Ritva sighed internally; that wouldn't have happened back west over the mountains, but the Rangers weren't quite as familiar here. They both turned so the loungers could see the trees-stars crown on the front of their jerkins and take in the left hands resting casually on the long hilts of their swords. Another of the men started whispering in the ear of the one who'd spoken, but the speaker pushed him aside.