And ask where Hawley putthe funds—maybe the cold air was waking his brain up—but he bet to hellthere was another bank account. Hawley Antrim could have one. The bank women didn’t ask about brains, just if you had money. Hawley could have put most of it right back in hisaccount, right there in Anveney.
And ask why Aby had used a bank at Anveney—and why Hawley knew it.
She hadn’t been able to level with her partner—that was what. She’d hammered home to her partner that the account existed and he should use it. He hadn’t known—God!—that it was in event of something happening to her, as if she’d knownshe ran risks more than the ordinary. Just so casual—Use the bank, Guil. It’s safe.
In the absence of her partner on her end-of-season run, she’d had to get a crew she could trust not only not to make off with the cargo but not to spill every damn thing they knew in village camps; granted there wasn’t anybody closer-mouthed or closer-minded than Jonas and Luke. Hawley—Hawley was moderately discreet because he didn’t have two thoughts a day—but he supposed, hell, he’d probably have picked Jonas and his lot himself, given Aby’s situation and Jonas showing up.
Jonas in breaking the news to him had told him about the rogue, imaging just <Aby dead.> That was how he’d gotten it. The <trucks racing down mountain> he’d gotten from Luke, but no real chain of events from Jonas. No side information—and that was typical Jonas: you got things through that horse of his that flitted, that shifted, that you just couldn’t quite focus on. A nest of willy-wisps wasn’t as echoey as Jonas when he and that horse shaped you something out of memory. Clear and crisp-edged—Shadow wasn’t. Shadow enjoyed <blood,> Shadow enjoyed <fight.> You didn’t want to linger in Shadow’s ambient in a situation like that with Burn in striking range.
Two damn dominant males, Burn and Shadow.
Burn took high offense at the mere comparison with Shadow. <Biting and kicking. Females. Autumn and snow.>
“Easy.” He gave a tug at Burn’s mane, set his hand on the back of Burn’s neck and shook it as Burn sucked winter air into his nostrils, <looking for females.>
God.
<Nightmares,> Burn imaged happily, sniffing the wind and looking for mates while the wind blasted at them cold as the floors of hell. He was trying to figure who’d just tried to kill them, and Burn skittered off onto <snow> and <autumn,> running on nervous energy by now—while his was flagging. Hell, he thought, maybe he and Jonas werecrazy as the horses.
God knew if Aby and Jonas had had anything going between them. He couldn’t imagine it. But maybe there was thatin the ambient. He’d not picked it up.
He wouldn’t be offended—he didn’t think he was. Jonas was potentially more seriousthan Aby’s occasional others.
But—no. He didn’t think so. Not Jonas. For the damn-all major thing—Jonas wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t put himself that close and that off-guard to Aby’s questions.
A wally-boo called. He took it for reassurance. He had the rifle slung to his shoulders, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He took one out, in the wicked gust of snow-laden wind down a fold of the mountain, to pull his breath-sodden scarf up around his nose. It was freezing with the moisture of his breath and sagging down to his mouth. He jerked it behind his head, tugged it down tight inside his collar, thinking about that sweater he could have bought in Anveney—thinking about frostbite, and asking himself whether the oil on his boots was holding out.
Maybe some sense of obligation had actually gotten to Jonas, Aby having paid her life for it.
Or maybe—maybe Cassivey had talked to more than one man, made a deal with more than one man regarding that cargo.
Damn.
Damn!
That distracting notion took the trail-sense out of his legs. His foot wobbled into a hidden hole. He recovered himself a few steps, but he’d hurt the sore leg. The cold had clearly gotten to his brain. He was frozen between the consideration that maybe he ought to go back and find out what Jonas wanted—and the equally valid thought that that had been no signaling shot that had blasted bark off a tree. Jonas hadn’tfired at him when he’d chased him…
Burn swung his head around and bit him above the knee, not hard, but enough to wake him up. <Guil riding,> Burn insisted. <Warm Guil on warm nighthorse back.>
Wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair to weight Burn down. <Guil walking,> he thought: the shelter couldn’t be far. He’d cut across the mountain where a horse could go and a truck couldn’t, and he didn’t know how much time he’d taken off the trek, but he had to be far closer now to the next way-stop than he was to go back to the village.
Didn’t dare to do it again, how-so-ever. Shaky legs had no business on a mountain. Damn near killed themselves doing it once.
And there was a chance of coming down to the road a second time some distance past the shelter. A chance, if the storm worsened, of freezing to death on the mountainside.
But he was limping. And speed was harder and harder.
<Burn carrying baggage,> he imaged; and Burn didn’t want to. Burn would carry himcarrying it. Burn didn’t like the pack. It tickled.
He argued, he imaged <bacon and biscuits in the baggage,> but Burn, remembering that, just wanted <bacon cooking> right then.
<Shelter,> Guil insisted. <Burn carrying baggage. Us walking,> and Burn still wouldn’t.
He stopped. <Guil sitting down.> Burn offered to bite him on the leg again and he offered, <Guil walking. Burn carrying baggages
Burn wasn’t happy, but Burn finally carried it—<nasty ice lumps bumping at cold nighthorse ribs. Us in snow. Us in dark. Snow on us.>
<Warm fire in the shelter,> he sent back, <bacon frying in the shelter.>
For a considerable distance further that even dominated <females > in Burn’s searching the scents the storm brought. But <evergreen and ice> was what Burn smelled. <Willy-wisps> once. The ambient was healthier where they were.
But night was also coming down fast. The sunglow was leaving the sky behind the mountain wall. The temperature was dropping fast and the wind had a shriller voice as it howled among the evergreens.
<Nasty willy-wisps,> Burn imaged. <Nasty falling-down lean-to.>
But a high-country shelter was, Guil swore, going to be there— ransacked like the last one or whole, he didn’t care, as long as it was whole walls, a door that would latch, and a supply of wood.
Jonas would probably be after them; Jonas could show once the weather cleared and they’d talk and have some answers.
They’d talk with him behind a wall with a gun-port and Jonas out in the yard telling him what the deal was with Cassivey, that was how they’d talk.
But he had to get there. Had to get there. Legs had to last. Lungs had to last.
As the light dimmed and dimmed, until they were walking in a murk defined by tree-shadow and the ghostly white of the clear-cut.
There was ham, there was yeast bread. Danny knew how to make it, and nobody else claimed the knack. He hoped Harper could smell it out there on the wind and Harper was real, real hungry.
He truly, truly hoped Stuart had made it to the next shelter.
Jonas thought something he couldn’t catch. Luke had another slice of bread.
“I’ll bet,” Luke said, “that Harper’s pulled back to the north-next shelter.”
“Could,” Jonas said.
The boys just ate their supper.
There wasn’t a sign of Harper, though he thought they all kept an ear to the ambient. He ate his supper without a qualm.