It seemed not but an hour or so ago that they’d settled to rest, unable to go on, Burn aching from the effort and unwilling to take another step. Burn had settled on the ground to sleep, not Burn’s habit when the ground was this cold, but Burn’s legs were tired.
So, having been so bright as to have left his pocket matches and his glass with his guns and his trail gear (God, it was slovenly camp habits he’d fallen into lately, having no glass and no matches on him; but, hell, he hadn’t expected to be on his own in the Wild in what he stood in, either) he’d done the best he could. He’d cut the tall plains grass for a mat to keep Burn’s belly warm and for a cover for himself. He’d been too tired to weave strip-and-tie mats—the cold hadn’t been that bad, and his eyes had kept shutting while he worked.
But he’d worked up a sweat doing it. And hurt the leg, like a fool. But it was numb with the morning cold, not too bad. The side of him next to Burn was downright warm.
If he didn’t move, Burn wouldn’t.
Aby died, and the morning after, the uncaring sun came up, and the man who, alone in the world, ought to be broken-hearted, was busy preserving his own warm spot in the frosty dawn, moving his toes in his boots to be sure they would move… first small venture of his mind out of its deliberate search for pain and distraction, and it wasn’t so bad, the world wasn’t, the cold wasn’t, the sun wasn’t. It was incredible it all went on, but it did, and he found he did, miraculously sitting on the other side of a black pit he just couldn’t look into yet.
He wasn’t interested to look. Aby was gone and there wasn’t anything profitable in that dark, crazed night past, the night he could remember only because some fool townsmen had tried to blow his leg off.
Fool rider, far more to the point. He’d risked Burn, going down there in the mood he was in, and he was bitterly angry with himself for that. He’d lost all his gear but the knives he carried, but, hell, he deserved to lose it for what he’d done, and Shamesey could keep it for good, before he’d go whimpering back to Shamesey camp gates, saying he was all right now and could he have his guns back? He knew why the gate-guards had fired at him—it wasn’t a justified fear: he hadn’t been beyond controlling himself until they’d shot at him, but that didn’t matter in townsman accounts. They just wanted what they wanted, thought what they wanted to think, and they could go to hell and keep what they wanted.
His frame of mind didn’t matter much to the camp-boss either, who just wanted peace in his camp, and no troubles. Wesson might even agree to take him back into camp, but there’d be somebody tagging him the entire winter, and there’d be quarrels lurking. He’d been surprised to find Harper and his cronies in camp when he’d gotten there. He hadn’t liked it, and he wasn’t limping back there to try to restrain his temper in Harper’s case, not this season. Figure that Harper would push until he got something. There was too much between them.
Death happened. Riders died. Mostly they died young and by surprise, a nasty quick accident in storm or slide or some hole in a river-bottom. Moon had gone along with Aby, which was the best way, rider and horse at once, nothing untidy, a minimum of pain… Aby couldn’t leave Moon. That pair couldn’t be split.
He could take to the road and go on down toward the coast, to Malvey town. He knew riders who might winter there, and he liked them better than he knew or liked folk in huge Shamesey camp.
Ava Cassey might be at Malvey, freckled Ava, who…
… who wasn’t Aby, dammit, who was far short of Aby’s measure, and who, good-natured as she was, didn’t deserve to put up with a man constantly moping about that fact. The horses didn’t leave you much illusion. No polite lies. No self-deceit, for that matter.
A lump gathered in his throat. The stinging in his eyes wasn’t the cold. The rime-ice showed white crystals on the grass as the sun slowly widened its eye—showed white on his boot-seams, on his toes, but Burn was a warm lump against him, and under Burn’s mane he had a warm place for his fingers.
He sat there watching the sun come up, watching the sky become pinkly opaque, and the autumn grass go to golds and pale browns, with here and there the dark brown seed-spikes of what was, in summer, gold and red-flowering fireweed.
The frosts came steadily now. Most mornings like this one showed rime. Green and gold-green died. The browns and the reds came into their own season, on the foothills first, then on the rolling plains.
So very few times anybody could count on seeing that change. You thought you’d see it forever. You thought you were immortal. But what had Aby gotten? Twenty-six times the seasons turned, twenty-six autumns, twenty-six times to see the fireweed die and the snows fall, and three and four and five of those times being a clingy brat kid who didn’t pay attention.
You got only so many nights to see the stars. You got only so many sunrises. Shouldn’t a man go out from under roofs and look at them?
Maybe that was the poison in towns like Shamesey, or grim, gray Malvey, where factories smoked the pristine sky.
Only so many times to make love. Only so many frosty mornings.
A man should wake up and know he couldn’t buy one, not for all the townsmen’s money. The days came to you and you didn’t know how many you’d get.
He couldn’t know, for instance, if he’d ever see the seeds of those brown spikes grow up gold again, or the flowers flaming red. He should have looked more carefully at the summer fields.
He should pay attention to the frost this morning. He should look at the wispy pink of the clouds and know he was using up his ration of them.
<Bacon frying. >
That was the happiest thing Burn knew. By which he knew that Burn was awake and pigs were in danger.
<Fat bacon. Smoky taste. Warm on a winter morning. >
“Haven’t got any bacon,” Guil muttered, and moved a hand to scratch beneath Burn’s abundant mane. “Wish I had.” He could taste it. He began to ask himself was it fair to Burn to go up to the privations of the highlands for the winter, and not to go back to Shamesey town, to comfort he could, at cost to his pride, bargain for.
<Snow falling,> Burn imaged. <Deep and thick and clean. Blizzard in the High Wild. Us in a snug warm cabin. Bacon frying. >
Burn had such faith in him. He didn’t know where to procure the death of pigs.
Except… there was a place on the way to the upland, the high passes. There was a factor Aby’d taken hire with; and there was, in the way of towns, a bank in Anveney.
They said if you put funds in at Shamesey you could get them out at Anveney; or down in Malvey; or clear to Darwin.
He’d never tested that idea before. He’d always carried all he owned, until he got to camp, put funds in with the camp he’d winter in—and had this year; but there was an account he and Aby held, Aby’s idea; and he’d put his carrying-cash in it, the way Aby had said. He’d been relatively sure he could get that out again at Shamesey, if he walked into that Shamesey office and said hand it over… now. The Shamesey camp-boss had said it was as good as having it on account with him, and as safe.