Rider at the Gate

The hell with that, he thought. Jonas could get used to not getting what he wanted.

Cloud was quite happy with <going away from Jonas > and <looking for place to stop and be warm.> But when, on his thought of <daylight,> Cloud began thinking <going uphill in daylight, us alone, up through evergreens,> then Cloud formed a queasy sort of area <ahead of them, on high mountain, something bad, something shapeless.> Cloud switched his tail and laid back his ears at that, rethinking in Cloud’s way, what to do about that <danger on the mountain.>

Cloud had gotten the rogue-image the same as all the riders and horses had, and, Danny well knew, gotten it from time to time from Jonas’ bunch, but Cloud wasn’t necessarily going to understand it the way a human would—a horse had to know all the sides of something before it didn’t at any random moment surprise him; and the notion of the rogue they might have to deal with—now that Cloud had remembered that danger—still was going spooky-strange on Cloud. They said horses didn’t think in future-time, but Cloud did. The rogue was just kind of a dark blurry spot in the future, dead center in that funny edge-of-vision blind spot horses had right in the middle and top of what humans saw, out of which most scary things came, because of the way a horse’s eyes were set. There was a bad horse in that danger-spot—Cloud didn’t like < shooting horses> but Cloud didn’t like that shivery spot, either.

Cloud also knew (thanks to the dogged tracking of human thoughts, far less skittery than horses’ thinking) about the three men they’d ridden out with being a problem and about men they’d smelled behind them who might become a problem. That was another hazy spot in Cloud’s geography.

In his own way, Cloud even seemed to know about Stuart—a human mind could keep Cloud thinking on a subject and going over and over it and not forgetting any of the pieces of it: that was what Cloud got from human thoughts, the sheer dogged stubbornness to hold on and put pieces together. And Stuart had been a lot in various human thoughts on this trip.

So Cloud had begun, in the mostly-now way Cloud thought, to decide tonight was more complicated than yesterday—and Cloud wasn’t, consequently, acting up on him. Cloud was being disturbingly sensible and doing exactly what he asked, in spite of the fact Cloud had a jittery feel to his slow gait.

<Looking for a sheltered spot. Looking for a place in the trees.>

<Finding Stuart up on the mountain. Riding with Stuart under evergreens.>

That ambition had danced at the edge of his mind for the last couple of days—he’d not dared think it when Jonas was belittling him all the time, but now that he was alone with Cloud he could haul things out of the dark spots of his probably immoral mind and at least look at them and try to sort out the stupid notions from the really stupid ones, and the embarrassing things and all the rest he’d die before he dragged out in front of Jonas.

That <Danny and Stuart> picture was just too stupid, too impossible, too indecent a wish, counting Stuart was grieving over a woman who was, in Stuart’s mind, at least as much a wife to him as his mother was to his father.

More, he hadn’t even thought about partnering yet—hadn’t planned to find anybody until he was older. The juniors he could partner up with were all desperately busy looking out for themselves and handling the horse problem, which didn’t seem to come easily even for kids born to the camp. It was just a hell of a lot of cheek for a junior even to think about Stuart taking him on under any circumstances.

But that day on the porch, with the rain flinging a gray sheet across all the world else, Stuart had trampled right over the defenses of a scared junior’s inmost thoughts and learned more about him in five minutes than his parents or his brothers had figured out about him in a lifetime. Stuart had looked straight into him in one terrifying moment, calmed him down and maintained that calm contact through what remained at once the most devastating and the most exhilarating exchange of his life—Stuart had told him, one after the other, the answers to questions he didn’t remotely know how to ask, questions he didn’t even know he should ask, and in parting, Stuart had wished him luck, honestly wished him luck in his life and even given him a lead on the first real convoy job he’d ever had.

He hadn’t had that feeling figured out when he’d started off with Jonas—that night, with the drink and the craziness running through the camp, he’d been so in awe of Jonas he’d believed he was dealing with Stuart again—but he’d gotten smarter fast on this trip. He’d felt somebody else trying to do with him unwilling what Stuart had done to him in that one shocked moment—the way Stuart had just blazed right on through his normal tongue-tied stammering, faced him at a level of need nobody in his whole life had ever gotten into—and not criticized, not carped at him, not lectured him, just seemed to take him as he was, in spite of his spilling the deepest, most embarrassing secrets of his life into Stuart’s view.

Stuart had thrown advice back at him that had echoed right off his longings and drawn more and more of his secret hopes into the ambient. It gave him to this very moment a sense of disbelief when he reconstructed that hour or so—so vivid it was like meeting God, that was what it had felt like. So vivid it had scared him out of sleep for a week. So accepting of a kid’s stupid ideas and stupid questions he couldn’t believe it had ever really happened, and in a certain sense he’d been scared to death to go near Stuart again, because he didn’t want to find out it wasn’t real—or wasn’t the way he remembered it. He hadn’t gone back to him. He’d wanted to come back wiser and be able to talk to Stuart with some sense in his head.

Then Stuart had disappeared from camp—gone off wherever Stuart normally worked, the summer long.

But all Stuart’s advice had been true. And he’d not even known the man was back in camp this fall until Stuart had brushed by him at the gate.

So, God, yes, he was going up that road. He didn’t need Jonas for a preacher to tell him where right and wrong was. His father, never mind his faults, had taught him what was fair—<papa working late in the shop, papa fixing Koz’s wheezing old sewing ma-chine and not charging his time, because that machine was Koz’s whole living, and they knew the old man couldn’t afford it; papa saying, yeah, well, and not answering Sam’s question about the bill.>

But mama knew. Damn right. Mama who kept the accounts, mama knew. <Mama saying, Shut up, Sam.>

Sam never had figured it out.

There were moments he was damned proud of his parents. They might all fight, except Sam. Papa might be sure he was going to hell, and they might be cheating, dishonest townsmen to rider eyes, but that was the riders’ mistake, to lump everybody together. His father didn’t ever cheat; and he didn’t need moral lessons from a man who let his friend go off alone and hurt into the dark.

And he didn’t need Luke’s tricking Cloud into taking any damn candy, either, not at the price Luke wanted to sell it for. If he wanted to give Cloud candy, he gave it with no conditions, and he didn’t want more than Cloud was willing to give him back.

He picked his spot among the trees at roadside — he rode in among the trees, the branches brushing him with the gentle force of Cloud’s moving. He slid down as Cloud stopped, rubbed Cloud’s nose with gloved fingers, then flung down his packs and set about cutting evergreen boughs to go under their blankets.

He didn’t need Jonas to survive in the Wild, either. He was determined now to show them. He hadn’t had to have their help. He’d turn up not when Jonas decided to collect a terrified kid but whenever he decided to, whenever they really, really needed to know what he could tell them, yes, he might be there, and he might tell them what they asked — if they minded their manners and dealt with him like a human being.