Cloud ambled up into the firelight, snuffing at the ground, insinuated his big head over Danny’s shoulder and rested it there, imaging <grass in the sunlight. Sweet-smelling.>
Danny patted Cloud’s cheek, and Cloud’s soft nose investigated his pockets, wanting <sugar-lumps> he was sure his rider ought to have.
Cloud didn’t do things totally unselfishly.
“What I still can’t figure,” Hawley said, “is what he’s doing.”
He meant Stuart.
“Maybe he thinks the camp’s sent out hunters,” Luke said.
“They have, of course,” Jonas said, and it took Danny a second and more to realize Jonas meant themselves, that that was what they were. It didn’t even count whoever was following them. He told himself what he’d perceived was real, no matter what Jonas thought. It was a damned stupid mess, over a rider who hadn’t done anything—anything but go to the gate trying to get his belongings back.
Which they had brought with them. Supposedly to give Stuart’s belongings back to him when they found him.
But he wasn’t so sure what Jonas’ personal motives were.
He was probably sending again, but Jonas ignored it, just kicked the cook pan into the fire for the fire to clean. There wasn’t much grease. It made a flare, and the flare died quickly. He’d have to wipe it down in the morning, with a twist of grass, nasty job. But the youngest rider always got those jobs, it was a law of the universe.
“Suppose he did get hit worse than we thought?” Luke asked.
“I don’t think so,” Danny muttered without even thinking about it, and wished he hadn’t opened his mouth on any of their business, but Luke asking was different from Jonas asking, in his estimation, and by that comment, he’d committed himself. He found his hand resting on his leg above the knee, remembered the pain of the gunshot across the skin, the shock to the knee bones and tendons, vivid memory—he’d played it out a dozen times in his head and he did it for them, the whole image, to answer Luke’s question.
“Didn’t go through,” Hawley judged with a grimace. “Went past. Burned him good, knocked him down, is all.”
“Good,” Jonas said, not meaning about knocking Stuart down, meaning him: he suddenly figured he’d just done exactly what Jonas had been trying to get out of him, exactly the way that Jonas expected, and he hated Jonas for the satisfied look Jonas cast in his direction. But he held onto Cloud’s forelock long enough to distract Cloud when Cloud jerked his head up. Cloud’s hair burned through his hand. And Jonas won. Jonas was used to winning.
“Kid’s damned good when he wants to be,” Hawley said, which doubly confused him, about whether Hawley was serious or sarcastic, as Hawley, immediately off on another tangent, imaged <steep mountains, rider on dangerous slope.> It looked like Guil.
“Maybe not,” Luke said, not about him being good when he wanted to be: it was the rider-image Luke shook apart, in favor of < level trail >; a definite place, it seemed to be, but it could be any place. They knew what they were imaging. He didn’t. He sat there with places he’d never seen flying back and forth through his vision and no knowledge what the question was.
From out of nowhere Jonas put his hand on Danny’s knee— scared hell out of him, that too personal, powerful touch—shook him right out of his thoughts. “Gone across to Anveney?” Jonas asked without paying further attention to him, and the image of town and smokestacks Danny had never seen in person was certainly Anveney the way he’d seen it before, in his head. It was a place, he’d learned, that riders didn’t like, except Anveney paid well… and it was the only place of all the places in the world besides Shamesey he could have identified without their help.
Jonas hit his knee, meaning Shut up, Danny thought; stop thinking into the ambient.
“Man’s got no supplies,” Luke said.
“Question is if he’s got money,” Jonas said.
“I wouldn’t leave my stash under any hostel mattress,” Hawley said. “Not in Shamesey town.”
Insult his town, while he was at it. There were limits.
Another pat of Jonas’ unwelcome hand, and Jonas wasn’t even talking to him. Jonas was thinking about a building somewhere else, a place with bars on the windows, a jail, Danny thought at first, and then thought not, it was a business. “Has he,” Jonas asked, “got a draw on Aby’s account?”
The question surprised Hawley, angered Hawley. Danny didn’t know why. Then it seemed to perplex Hawley, who scratched his stubbled chin. “Hell. She never said.”
Jonas asked: “How much was in there?”
“Healthy amount,” Hawley said sullenly. “It’s not his.”
What did they do? Danny wondered. It sounded like an account at a bank, and money the dead rider had had there—that they thought Stuart might have gone to get.
There was an uneasiness in the air, Hawley’s Ice, Cloud, Jonas’ Shadow all suddenly on edge. Jonas wasn’t at all happy.
Hawley wasn’t.
Hawley had gotten the money the dead rider owned, out of a bank, somewhere not in Shamesey—which was maybe Anveney. Danny didn’t know about banks or how you got money out of them. He’d never been inside one. Papa kept his money on him, or in the hiding-place under the floor, which he didn’t want to think about with these men seeing it…
“Kid,” Jonas said sharply, and laid a hard hand on his knee. Shook at him.
“Sorry.” He knew he’d slipped this time, and dangerous men were close to anger with each other all around him, a long lonely way from anywhere.
“No,” Jonas said. “We’re not angry, boy. Hawley has a right to the money. He’s her kin. He evidently proved it to the bank.” <Jonas and Hawley at a counter, or something like, a woman talking to them.> “Just, it’s a damn complication.” <Stuart with his back turned, Stuart walking somewhere in town streets. Stuart with this same bank employee woman.>
<Aby Dale,> another sending imaged. <Red-haired little girl, big black horse.> But the sending stopped in anger.
“Everybody calm down,” Luke said. “Just calm down.”
“The damn kid’s a distraction,” Hawley muttered.
“You went in there,” Jonas said, “you took that money out.”
“I had a right!”
“You could have by-damn said, Hawley!”
“I’m on that account. Look, I’m her cousin.”
“Dammit, Hawley!”
“If you had a word you could have said it, Jonas. You knew I was going to the bank. What did you think I was going to do? I got the card. She give me the card.”
“Calm down,” Luke said. “Hawley, it’s all right. You did all right.”
“Yeah, all right,” Jonas said. “If he goes there, if he knows about the money—”
“I had a right!” Hawley said.
“You had a right,” Luke said. “There’s no question you had a right. —Danny, you want to get up and move the horses back? Do us a favor?”
“Yes, sir,” Danny said, and got up—the horses were crowding in, snappish and pushy with the argument. He gave a shove at Cloud. <Cloud in the dark, away from the fire. Danny, too.> That was easy, another, harder push on Cloud’s shoulder, Cloud’s understanding that they were both to leave the fireside, but dealing with the other horses was a scary matter. The seniors’ horses didn’t want any town kid pushing them around, didn’t want to take orders from him—
He walked in among them and suddenly a queasy darkness flittered through his mind, shapes and shadows and a violence that sent him a step back, disoriented. <Bite. Kick> was in the ambient, from two sides. “Cloud!” he said, and made a futile grab at Cloud’s mane as horses squealed and heads darted past him, teeth bared, big bodies swinging about perilously close to him as shoulder hit shoulder.