He hadn’t thought <Carlo in jail.> He resolved he wasn’t going to. He picked up Carlo’s confusion, turned and pushed Carlo back into the warmth and the light.
“That your friend?” Carlo asked.
“Did it feel like it?”
“No,” Carlo said.
“Friends of my friend. Real sons of bitches. But they’re all right sons of bitches. They’re high country riders. Borderers. We’ve got help.”
Carlo didn’t quite seem to trust it. Carlo stayed scared, and worried about <jail.>
“I’m not going to tell him. It could slip—won’t guarantee that it won’t. But village law’s not rider law.” He had a thought and got Carlo’s attention with a knuckle against the arm. “These guys? Don’t let them bluff you.”
Carlo didn’t like to hear that. He cast a nervous glance as if he could still see Jonas.
“They’ll try,” Danny said. “They’re not leaving you and the kid here. Or if they do—depend on it, I’mnot running. Think of <them running away> if they think about it. You don’t have to say a thing. Think <scared riders.> They’ll hate it like sin.”
They made biscuits—Carlo had never cooked in his life, but he tried; Randy waked with all the commotion and sat up bleary-eyed.
“Riders are here,” Carlo told him. “We’re going to be all right, Randy. You hear?” Randy sat there looking numb and shaky, maybe a little sick from the beer—the ambient was queasy and scared, but Cloud wouldn’t put up with it. Cloud thought <horses with cattle-tails> and <horses standing outside in the cold> and Cloud wasn’t happy with the arrival.
Going to be all right was a little early, too. Cloud’s rider didn’t count on it, because Jonas was an argumentative son of a bitch and Cloud’s rider wasn’t going to take it.
Well, Cloud’s rider thought—maybe Danny Fisher could tuck down a little and listen to Jonas, whose disagreeable advice had kept him alive. He’d learned a bit. He’d been desperate enough to learn, and he could try being—not ducked down and quiet, but maybe not quite so touchy.
He didn’t have to feel as if Jonas was threatening him. He’d had guns aimed at him. Jonas was a lot different.
Jonas, who was coming in asking for supper and shelter in what was, Jonas could figure, hiscamp, which he’d set up and where Jonas was asking charity.
Cloud was first in. Boss horse. Cloud should be <nice,> but the store was <Cloud’s den> and <Shadow-horse standing on the porch in the snow> if Shadow had <fight> in mind.
He’d fairly well built the picture when assorted footsteps arrived on the porch and Jonas’ bunch knocked, wanting entry.
Danny opened the door. “Pretty crowded in here. Room and food for your horses if they’re quiet.”
<Cold horses smelling ham> came back to him, from at least a couple of the horses in the street. Heads were up and nostrils working, in that veil of snow. Jonas was his sullen self, but Luke and Hawley looked exhausted.
“Come on in,” Danny said, and held the door, imaging <sacks to sit on, horses lying down. Ham and biscuits.>
“Were you here when it happened?” Jonas asked, taking off his hat.
“They were.” Danny nodded toward the two boys, and made the introductions: “Jonas Westman, Luke Westman, Hawley Antrim— Carlo and Randy Goss. Only ones alive. Their sister Brionne’s on the rogue.”
That got attention. Hats that had been coming off in courtesy to the house got tucked in hand and everybody stared at Carlo and Randy for a heartbeat, then wanted <girl on horse.>
He filled in the blonde hair, the red coat, the fact it was a kid looking for dead parents.
“Shit,” Hawley said. Hawley was upset. Something about <trucks and rocks and a rider, > that went blurred as Hawley’s thinking skittered away to <rocks.>
Jonas bumped Danny’s arm. “Kid opened the gates?”
He didn’t want to think. He didn’t. He said, “Carlo, ham’s burning.” It wasn’t. But it was close. Cloud was on the far side of the room, by the cold locker door; Cloud was closest to the stove, and put his nose out, smelling <ham.> The other horses were near the door, crowded in the narrow room, growing argumentative; but human presence gave them no more room.
“Kids are upset enough,” Danny said under his breath, and Jonas didn’t push it. “Bad time,” Danny amplified the image of <dead village. Pieces of bodies.> But Jonas had seen it.
“You shouldn’t have left that side gate. The outside rider gate was standing open wide.”
Damn. But he had it coming. Jonas was telling him what he had done that was stupid. That wasn’t an unfriendly act in this country.
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think. I knew it the second I knew somebody was there. Scared hell out of me.”
Jonas was standing close in the crowded quarters. Jonas laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it. He wasn’t sure he liked it, wasn’t sure what it meant. Jonas had turned his back and gone over to investigate the stovetop cooking, where Carlo looked to have too few hands available for too many pans and Danny still wondered what that had meant—from Jonas’ disposition. Hawley was sitting on a barrel, the source of a glum pressure in the ambient: upset with what he’d seen outside in the street and trying to keep it quiet.
Luke—Luke was sitting on pile of sacks talking to Randy, asking him questions in Luke’s quiet way. Randy sneezed, exhausted, probably sick from the beer, and stared at Luke somewhere between reassured and scared: too many horses, besides which Shadow and Cloud together weren’t an easy presence in a confined space.
But four horses, four armed riders and two village boys, well-armed and fed, holding a wide walled perimeter with a lot of fuel against the cold were much better odds than he’d hoped for against the rogue. They didn’t needanother village until spring, if they had to hold out.
“Is there a phone?” Jonas asked. And it was like the business with the gate: he just hadn’t thought—they were still in the process of getting a camp in order. But he hadn’t thought.
He said, calmly, “Carlo, where’s a phone?”
“Mayor’s office,” Carlo said. <Dark streets. Snow and dead.> Carlo didn’t want to go tonight. It was one too many dark buildings, but Carlo was willing if they had guns. “Don’t know if it’s working.”
“Do what we can,” Jonas said. “We’re all right. But villages up on the High Loop need to know.”
“Yeah,” Danny said. He was embarrassed about the phone. But he didn’t know how to use one, anyway. It wasn’t quite as bad a mistake as he’d made with the gate. “I’ll go see about it. What building and what do you do with it?”
The morning came crisp and clear, sunlight striking the tops of the evergreens—Guil put his head out of the shelter, shut the door and took his time in the warmth. He had two dry blankets, dry fire-warmed boots, everything warm from the fireside, and Burn and he had breakfast on the bacon they’d brought and on the dry supplies the villages supplied the riders that served them: biscuits and sugar syrup, firewood already cut, an assortment of small blades and cords and such that riders might need—you took out, sometimes you put in, if you had a surplus; it was just an oddments box, always on the fireside. They made the shelters so much alike on purpose—so you didn’t have to wonder. There were bandages. There were matches. You left them alone if you didn’t need them.
He sterilized his own needle in the lamp-flame and got a nasty splinter out of the heel of his hand, a few minor ones out of his fingers. He’d lantern light and firelight this morning, the room was warm—he’d had time to warm himself and his dry blanket last night and even wash off before he went to bed on a decent supper. Then he’d gone out, just out, until he waked with the fire gone to coals and staggered out to put a couple of more small logs on.