Cloud's Rider

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Looking for the Goss boys,” he said. “Hello,” he said cheerfully, walking past the surly, close-clipped kid, him with his hair growing long and a knife in his boot. “How’s it going, guys?”

  The burly kid said, from behind him, “You the new rider, huh?”

  He stopped so as to include the guy in his field of view—not inclined to ignore a provocation behind him, not in Shamesey alleys and not here. “Yeah,” he said. The guy was big, but there was soft fat over the memory of muscle. The gut argued for more acquaintance with the bar than the bellows. “Wintering over, at least.” He didn’t like the tone. At all. And Carlo hadn’t answered his hail—Carlo hadn’t given him a clue what the situation was except to say something low and fast to Randy. But he was getting bored with the threat, and walked on.

  “So what do you want?” the big kid asked, not satisfied with one look back.

  “Friendly call,” he said, just about hoping the guy would pick up one of those iron bars and come at him. He’d not been a thoroughly good kid back in Shamesey streets. He’d been very good since. He’d learned to be smart. But God should give him some satisfaction for his reformation.

  Carlo came to meet him, and Randy stayed. Quiet, real quiet, for Randy.

  “How’s it going for you?” Carlo took his gloves off and offered a handshake.

  “Fine. Want to talk to you. Private. Got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Place to talk?”

  “I’ll get my coat. —Randy, you just keep the heat on. Be back in a minute.”

  “Wait a minute!” Randy began.

  “Back in a minute, hear me?” Carlo tossed the gloves at him and Randy caught them, still not happy.

  “You better get your ass back here,” the other kid said. “Pretty quick. You don’t get paid for talking.”

  “Yeah,” Carlo said. “—Come on.” He nodded toward the door and shot a look at Randy before he picked up his coat off a peg near the door, grabbed his hat, and the two of them went out into the milky white of a snowy morning, near the big evergreen. Carlo led the way over beside it and stopped.

  “Just a real pleasant fellow in there,” Danny said. “Is that the owner’s kid?”

  “Yeah,” Carlo said. “Son of a bitch.” And more cheerfully: “How are you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m doing fine. Nice family folk I’m with. Nice kid. Pleasant place. —Is that guy somebody who stays around? You have any trouble with him?”

  There was a small silence. Carlo ducked his head, arms tucked, then looked up with his jaw tight. “I tell you I’m getting out of here come spring. Me and Randy, we want to go with you when you leave downland, upland, I don’t care. Anywhere we can get work. I’ll have a little by then to pay you with—or owe you. Whatever it takes. I never hired a rider. I don’t know—”

  “Save it. I won’t take your money, long as you don’t want to go off the road I’d take—which is down by east or down by west. Anything else, you’d fell off the mountain.”

  “I swear—” Carlo began.

  “No big favor. I’m going anyway. Might as well have good company-”

  Carlo let go a huge breath. “This guy,” Carlo said. “It’s not just me, understand. I’ve tried.”

  “This Mackey guy—the senior—I don’t gather he’s got a good reputation in town, clear out to the rider camp. Ridley sure doesn’t think much of him.”

  “I tell you,” Carlo said, thin-lipped, “I’d like to pound his head in. But he’ll take it out on Randy. So will the old man. We wouldn’t have a roof over our heads. And I could end up in jail.”

  “I think people in the village know—”

  “I’m the stranger here. This guy has property. Listen—I want to ask you. If it ever got real bad—I mean real bad—or if something happens to me, could Randy come over to the camp? And you take care of him?”

  “If it gets bad—both of you come over. There’ll be breaks in the weather. I can get you on to Mornay or somewhere no matter the weather. Winter’s bad. But it doesn’t mean a horse can’t move.”

  Carlo drew several slow breaths. “That’s real generous.”

  “I’d take you this week if the weather clears. But—” He suddenly remembered the whole reason he’d come—and it dawned on him the import of what he knew and the village’s ambitions, and maybe that it wasn’t a real safe thing for Carlo and Randy to try to leave the village with their news. Respectable people could do some damn dirty things—for less money than was involved—and while there might be some who’d take a chance to see there weren’t any heirs to Tarmin property but themselves—there might also be those who’d kill to be sure no other village heard about it.

  Carlo could be living with one of the chief suspects in either eventuality, to judge by Mackey’s blowhard son and the fact Carlo was talking about refuge.

  But the plain fact was, riders weren’t in great abundance up here. All of Evergreen had better reckon they couldn’t get ten meters through the Wild without a rider to guide them, and that came down to him, and Ridley and Callie—with an eight-year-old they didn’t want in rough circumstances. Things came crystal clear to him of a sudden, just being over here in this environment, that if he made it real clear to the village at large that he and Carlo were close friends, it might be the best protection for Carlo and Randy he could arrange. Nobody had better piss off the only rider-for-hire there was up here.

  “Has the marshal talked with you yet?” he asked Carlo in his new sense of immunity. “About your rights to property?”

  Carlo squinted at him through the blowing snow and went very, very sober. “No.”

  “There’s lawyers involved,” Danny said. “There’s lawyers talking about how you’ve got inheritance rights down in Tarmin. That you own the smith’s shop and the house and all. And there’s a lot of people talking about going down there, families here just sort of homesteading all those vacant buildings.”

  “You’re serious. They’re going to do it.”

  “No joke.” He felt keenly the lack of the ambient that would have made him aware what Carlo was thinking. “And it might work out all right. There’d be plenty of neighbors. Plenty of work fixing up. If you could stand to go back and live there—you’d own your papa’s forge, the shop and the house and maybe more than that. Anything you’d legitimately inherit. Anything your papa’s or your mama’s relatives had. You could be the richest guy in Tarmin.”

  Carlo looked disturbed. He raked a hand through his hair, which had been damp with sweat and which was developing ice crystals in the snowy cold. “Mama’s property. And the forge. And the house.”

  “You could be real comfortable—if you can be comfortable down there. This village has to have Tarmin operating. Only place they can really warehouse goods. You know that better than I do. And until they can get oxen, or trucks and fuel to haul whatever they normally get from Tarmin, they’re probably going to have to port supplies up the Climb on hand-carts. That means it’s going to be a real lean spring up here. Prices are going to go sky-high. Just immediately as soon as the snow melts this village or somebody on the High Loop has got to get somebody down to Shamesey and buy oxen, hire drivers and get some truckloads of hay up here to the top of the treeline, or the Anveney truckers are going to gouge them for everything they’ve got. Not saying what Shamesey will charge—if they get wind of it before they’ve made a deal. They’re not going to wait around. These people have to move fast before word gets out.”

  “Where’d you hear this?”

  “There was a meeting. Actually a couple of meetings. I—should have come sooner—but—” He was embarrassed in the face of Carlo’s questioning look. “I wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure who’d be watching. I get the feeling they haven’t come here to tell you you’ve got rights. I’ll expect they’re going to talk to you. They better talk to you.”

  “They haven’t. I figured—I figured they’d do something about getting the warehouses down there going. But—”

  “I get the idea a lot of people are thinking about claims down there. And you have rights. So’s Randy.” He hesitated. “—How’s your sister?”

  “Don’t know.” Carlo’s whole body s
aid he didn’t want to think about it.

  “You could take care of her. And Randy. This Mackey guy is the only one that would be interested in the forge down there. He might try to buy you out, trade you here for what’s down there.”

  “That wouldn’t be a bad deal—”

  “No. Don’t take it. That’s what I’m hearing: there’s a chance—a real chance—that this village could go under—if the important people, all the people who know how to do anything, head downhill at the first thaw. It’d leave just miners and loggers up here— unless, I guess, people from the next village over decided to come over here and the next claims them—it’s going to be a scramble, is what.”

  Carlo bit his lip. “I could go back down there. I would. Dammit, I would. I could set us up proper. Hell if I couldn’t. Damn Mackey!”

  “If they come to you don’t sign anything. There’s lawyers involved.”

  “Yeah. I hear you plain.” Carlo looked then as if he’d just been stung. “I got to get back to the forge.”

  “Sure. I didn’t tell Ridley I was coming over here and Callie thinks I’m the devil on her doorstep. I didn’t tell ’em I was going.”

  “I owe you a drink. At least. Several, in fact.”

  “No difficulty. Anytime. You can come to the rider camp. No reason not. You get some time off—I can come across. I guess I can. Nobody seemed shocked I was here. —Suppose they’d serve riders in the tavern there?”

  Carlo looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. I’ll ask.”

  “Hey.” It dawned on him that was one of a set of things more that he could do. They needed him. The village might have yet to figure it. But they needed him. The Evergreen riders needed him—or it was going to be an ugly scene, people wanting escort and Ridley and Callie with a kid they wouldn’t want involved. He suddenly resolved he wasn’t as down-and-under the local situation as he’d assumed— and that his situation was in some respects like Carlo’s. “Who’d guide anyone anywhere but me? And there’s horses painted in the church. This isn’t too bad a place. We should have a drink.”

  “I’m supposed to get paid the rest of my wages. He better pay me.”

  Cash money was a problem he hadn’t solved—having not a penny to his name. Villageside, it mattered.

  “Sure,” he said. He had a time to do something. He had somewhere to go. Amazing how that pinned the world down. “Sundown?”

  “We’ll be there.”

  He went with Carlo back to the door, and when it opened the heat inside was stifling and the inside was obscured with shadows and fire.

  The heavyset kid was standing real near that outside door. Randy was still keeping the bellows going, looking their way the while. “See you,” Carlo said, tight and careful. And shut the door between them.

  Danny turned and walked back up the street, through the veiling snow.

  Pretty town, all the evergreens, shadows in the white. Pointed roofs. Nice place.

  He was still a little worried about Carlo. He didn’t know what he personally could do until the day Carlo and Randy showed up and said Get us out of here.

  Well, he did. He could go in there, let a fight start, and beat hell out of Mackey’s offspring. He could tell the whole village to swallow it or choke, so long as they wanted his help. He’d not been a good kid, in town. He had what his Father called real bad tendencies when somebody shoved him.

  But—pushing back too hard and trying to deal his own hand in this apart from Ridley could make him a target for those who didn’t for one reason or another want a rush down to Tarmin. That included Ridley, it included Callie, and probably the marshal and the judge and maybe even people who’d like to go but who didn’t want certain other people to go.

  It could get just real complicated.

  One thing was sure: with gold, furs, and timber and all, Tarmin village wasn’t going to die. Tarmin was going to rise from a bloody grave. He hoped—hoped Carlo and the kid could benefit, and that they wouldn’t get robbed. Or hurt.

  And he hoped Carlo kept the lid on Randy. When the news got out, and it was, he was sure, all over town—except near Carlo and Randy, which he found troubling—it was going to be just real uncomfortable in the Mackey household.

  Because if the rest of the town was going to benefit from claiming free property in Tarmin, the smith couldn’t. Not while Carlo and Randy and Brionne were alive.

  But Carlo wasn’t a fool. Carlo was far from a fool. Carlo had understood everything from the first hint of what was going on.

  And Carlo, who’d swung a hammer for his living, wasn’t defenseless, either. That surly guy crowding him was running a real risk.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  Ť ^ ť

  Van Mackey had been at the tavern all afternoon. Van Mackey had drunk quite a damn lot, as fairly well seemed his habit in the afternoon, and was a fire hazard around the forge when he came down to have a look around and criticize what those who had worked during the day had done.

  Fact was, Carlo said to himself, watching this inspection, and with Danny’s warning racketing all day in his consciousness, there wasn’t any fault to find. He’d worked hard and he’d stayed later than he was agreed to stay, and he was ready to go out to the tavern to catch a cheap bite of supper with his brother, when Van Mackey came in showing the effects of having been there for some time. He’d worked till his shoulders ached and his hands hurt like very hell. He’d hammered and shaped and finished the whole pending job for Mackey’s inspection, a job for which Mackey would get paid a lot more than he’d see. He’d done a day’s work in anybody’s book out of a great deal of pain, and if after he was through and after Randy had cleaned up the place, Van Mackey was going to find any fault or mess up what he’d done, he was going to—

  He was going to have to sit on his temper and not say a thing, that was what, figuring that any other course was going to get them bounced out of the shop and put on Danny’s tab. He’d been building up a real head of resentment where it regarded the Mackeys— and he held it under an especially tight lid, watching the man poke into this and that.

  But after looking it all over, Van Mackey came over to him and said, cheerfully, “Come inside. Have a drink.”

  He really didn’t want to. In two ticks of his heart he knew for dead certain what the deal was, but he didn’t see a way to duck it.

  “My brother, too,” he said. “I don’t want him knocking around the street alone. It’s our suppertime.”

  “All right,” Mackey said, and the way he didn’t object also said a lot.

  So they all went inside the house like good friends, Rick clumping after them, clearly out of sorts and maybe, at least Carlo thought so, puzzled.

  The wife met them in the hallway, a narrow wooden hall with torn and sooty rugs, and they all went into the sitting room, where the rugs were new and not cheap but only slightly cleaner. The wife had a bottle of spirits on the table, and she set out five glasses and started pouring.

  “Not for my brother,” Carlo said, “thank you.” A glass of that and Randy would be flat on the rug. Randy knew it, and didn’t more than sulk.

  “There’s tea,” the wife said, and waved a hand at Rick, who hulked on the fringes. “Tea.”

  Wouldn’t trust him not to spit in it, Carlo thought: he kept an eye on the process through the open door to the kitchen adjacent, and in the midst of a short course of small talk, watched Rick Mackey carry the ready teapot and a cup to the sitting room and the wife pour it. Rick went and slouched in the doorway, a picture of grace, with his hands in his pockets below a sagging belt.

  “I have to tell you,” Van Mackey said for openers as he and his wife sat down with them, “it’s fine work you’re doing. Just gave you a couple of days to prove it and, I tell you boys, I’m real happy with what I’m seeing. Fine work, real fine eye.”

  For damn sure the Mackeys knew what had come out of that meeting. And steam was all but coming out Rick Mackey’s ears, but he was keeping quiet under threat of his father’s hand, Carlo would lay odds on it.

  Mackey poured the drinks, and the wife offered spiced crackers.
“Hey,” Randy said, surprised at the change in things. “First-rate stuff.”

  And after that, for half an hour at least, Van Mackey and his wife sat and chattered idly and in detail about shop business, neighbors, the mayor, the marshal, the whole situation down on the Ridge, and orders they expected and who they dealt with.

  As if they were going into partnership—which, Carlo began to think queasily, just might be the game the Mackey household had in mind, a third possibility that Danny hadn’t named.

  The Mackeys downed two rounds of drinks and poured his glass full the instant it emptied, and considering he hadn’t eaten, Carlo downed crackers at an equally rapid rate. If he and Randy had remotely dreamed of a warm and cordial reception in the village, right down to the crocheted doilies and the tea, the polite asking after their sister and the sympathy the wife—Mary was her first name and the last name turned out to be Hardesty—offered for the demise of their village, they couldn’t have concocted anything as extravagant.

  Right down to the offer of an inside bedroom, as soon as they could refit the pantry and install beds.

  “We’re pretty comfortable out there,” he said, and Randy, with his mouth full of cracker and another in his hand, looked at him in indignation. He went on regardless: “Might rig a couple of cots out there, though. The floor’s warm, but—”

  “I don’t know why we should,” Rick said, which clearly said he didn’t know exactly what was going on, or was stupid enough to ignore it.

  “Shut up.” Van Mackey said to his son, and to them, in a different tone of voice, “You can’t go sleeping on the floor, good God, boy. I tell you, I was just real suspicious Peterson had fallen for some story, until I saw the work you do. And you’re just real fine. Real fine, praise the Lord and His mercy you boys made it in.”

  “Yeah, I could see your position. I could really see that.” Carlo controlled his temper and his bellyful of alcohol and crackers real well, in his own opinion. He didn’t walk out, or even come close.