Another spin. Cloud and Shadow. Heels flew past him and he jumped back barely in time.
“Shadow!” Jonas shouted.
It just stopped, horses jogged past each other in abortive attack. Shadow’s teeth snapped on empty air. Cloud’s heels kicked up and managed to miss.
He was shaking. <Cloud and Danny walking,> he insisted, furiously, and <quiet horses grazing,> but he couldn’t call their true names in his head, not with the knowledge their riders had; and meanwhile their riders were having an argument at the fireside. They wanted him out of the way because he was loud—and the horses were on edge, with each other and with Cloud on general principle. He tried to calm tempers all around, imaging <quiet grass,> but he couldn’t call the silent names, not the way their riders could.
He’d seen Shadow’s name when the fight started, that fluttering succession of treacherous shadow-shapes. It was a dreadful name— he truly didn’t mean to think in that hostile way of Jonas’ horse, but it wasn’t a name that slid easily past the nerves. He’d mistrusted that horse from the first moment he’d dealt with it, and he didn’t turn his back on it—he was scared of that horse in a way he’d never had to be scared of a horse.
And in the aftermath of the encounter he’d just had, when he recalled Shadow’s heels flying past his head, he was twice afraid. He didn’t want to think of what could have happened to him if he’d not moved fast enough or if the fight had gotten serious with him in the midst of the horses.
Which wasn’t the way to deal with horses at all. He fought his townbred nerves. He tried to separate them out, put Cloud to one side and keep the other three from snapping at each other or him, and they kept getting around him to make another sniping attack.
“Here.” Luke Westman came to help him, clapped him on the shoulder, which did nothing to help his knees, and shoved Shadow out of a not-entirely-inquisitive approach with the back of his fist—swatted Shadow hard on the rump when he didn’t retreat. <Danny swatting Shadow,> came into Danny’s head—he for God’s sake hadn’t thought it, he was scared even to think of hitting that horse—Luke had launched that threat into the ambient on his behalf, Behave or the kid will hit you.
He didn’t think it a help. But Luke waved Froth away from him and came close up on Cloud.
“What’s his name?” Luke asked, meaning the inside name, the real name Cloud called himself—but he wasn’t sure that Cloud wanted Luke to know that name. Cloud was laying his ears back and wrinkling his nose as was, and he didn’t answer Luke. He just shoved at Cloud’s chest and wanted him apart from the seniors and their horses.
“Be careful of him,” Danny said. “Cloud, behave. Don’t bite.”
“He won’t bite,” Luke said, taking something from his pocket.
He held it out. Froth muscled in and got the treat. Candy. Cloud wanted it. But Ice sneaked his head in and got the next one Luke magicked out of his pocket.
<Cattle,> Cloud sulked, and then Shadow intruded, slipped up behind Froth and Ice so slyly and so smoothly Danny didn’t see him until Shadow’s neck snaked out and Shadow nipped the third candy Luke’s pocket produced. Cloud was outraged.
But immediately Luke’s other hand was out, offering one to Cloud… < sweet, delicious sweet > was the image in the ambient, from Luke and the horses, Danny realized, and felt Cloud wanting it, inching toward it. Sugar-candy was what he’d promised Cloud for good behavior, when he hadn’t had one, and there it was, not from his hand, but from Luke’s.
Cloud’s mouth was watering, <Cloud sneaking it right off that hand, hating that cattle horse licking the man’s other fingers, ugly shifty horse… >
Cloud was going to—
“Fingers!” Danny said, earliest manners-lesson Cloud had had to learn, where treats stopped and a rider’s fingers began.
But Luke had curled his hand around to hide the treat for a second, then showed it again, just halfway, teasing, did it twice, blink of an eye, had something else out of his other pocket, in his other hand, that Shadow got before Shadow created a fuss.
Cloud’s head darted out, Luke’s hand wasn’t there, and Cloud jerked… except there was the candy again, quick as a blink, right there, <sugar-smelling, fruit-smelling, sweet—>
Cloud nabbed it, jerked away, and backed off, jaws working on his prize. Hostile. Enjoying the sweet. Thinking he’d gotten away with it.
“He’s fine,” Luke said. “You ought to let that horse of yours around people more. It’s good for him.”
<Mad.> Danny didn’t know what he felt: he was glad Luke hadn’t lost a finger, glad it hadn’t sparked a horse-fight—<mad> that Cloud had fallen for it…
“Kid,” Luke said. “What is your grief?”
“Nothing.” He couldn’t own to what he felt. He didn’t know why he was mad, except Luke knew he’d promised Cloud that candy and Luke had no right.
“Nothing,” Luke echoed him, and <mad> was in the ambient now, horses milling about, Luke growing irritated with him, Danny felt it. “Kid, —why’d you take up for Stuart?”
That came from out of nowhere, when he was ready for an accusation. “I don’t know.”
“Man did you a petty little favor. You’re traipsing clear to hell paying him. Why? What’s it to you?”
<High country. Papa hitting him. Mama yelling. Snow and trees in Cloud’s mind. Stuart on the tavern porch talking to him as if he was really somebody.>
“Who hit you? A relative?”
“None of your damn business.”
“Yeah, none of our business. Till you screw up and need somebody to come after you, none of our business.”
<Stuart. Surly and mad. Him, Danny Fisher, same expression, exactly the same stance.>
“Like Stuart?” Danny retorted. “Me? I don’t even know him, all right? I don’t see where he screwed up. He was doing fine till you came along with your lousy news.” <Stuart talking to him. —Luke, standing there in the dark blaming him for being mad. Giving candy to Cloud.> A lump came into his throat. So he found one man who’d talk to him like a human being, one man in the whole universe who helped him who didn’t have to. He’d thought a couple of nights ago he’d found another in Jonas. He’d thought he’d found somebody else who stood by his friends. Which was a joke. <Stuart running up the hill, away from the three of them.>
That didn’t sound like friends to him. And he’d had friends, one or two, no matter what Jonas said—well, at least the boys he’d hung around with in town, until he’d gone and taken up with Cloud.
They’d even tried to get past that, his town friends had. At least they’d tried. Gone on seeing him and hanging about with him, when he came back into town, maybe to shock their other friends, but, hell, it was more than he could say for Jonas and the rest of them, sitting smug on their horses, watching Stuart lose his grip on sanity in the upset they’d brought him.
<Stuart running up the hill. Them sitting watching. Rogue-feeling spreading like poison in the camp.>
Suddenly it was a resolve and a certainty to him: he couldn’t stand any more of their company. He stalked back to the fireside, grabbed up his gear and started hanging thongs from his shoulder and stuffing gloves in his pocket as he walked back to Cloud—<us leaving this place.>
“Can’t take it?” Jonas sniped at him, from the fireside. “This the way you honor contracts? Is this what you do to drivers you’re hired to?”
It was an attack the same way his mother attacked him. He was used to it. He jammed his hat on, reached for Cloud’s mane, the lump in his throat grown to painful size.