Cloud hadn’t had a rider who fell off, the last time guns had fired at him, and nobody had wanted Cloud to come toward them under that circumstance, either, the way these men wanted him to do. Cloud was mad, and confused, and the ambient was thick with nighthorse threats, the Hallanslake horses’ and Cloud’s.
“So what do you want?” Danny asked, trying to sound madder and more confident than he was scared—but it didn’t work at all. His voice wobbled.
“Sitting out here all alone,” Harper said, and the gun in Harper’s hand never wavered. “No place for a kid. Where are the Westmans?”
“I don’t know. Tell the truth, I don’t care. I’m tired of being bossed.”
“Are you?” Harper said flatly.
“I’m tired of people acting crazy. What’s the matter with everybody, anyway?” He managed high indignation, and told himself that Harper wasn’t ‘sir.’ Nobody who pointed guns at him was ever voluntarily ‘sir.’ He made up his mind to that right then, as scared as he was.
“Friend of Stuart’s, are you?”
“No.” He managed to be surprised and mad. “I know the man, that’s all. I never dealt with him.”
“Not what I picked up in Meeting. Not what anybody in Shamesey camp picked up. What’s your name, kid?”
“Dan—” He almost said Danny. “Dan Fisher. Yours is Harper.”
“We know each other?”
“Same place as you know me.” Thoroughly bad odds, Danny thought. He fell back on his bad-boy days, his town days, old friends and a habitual insolence to seniors—before papa had jerked him sideways. “I’ve got no personal stake in this. Jonas tried to hire me, but he didn’t pay me and I got tired of being told when to breathe. I’m going home.”
Harper slid his pistol back into the holster, threw a leg over and slipped easily down from his horse’s back. “So he hired you, did he? For what?”
You didn’t lie, near a horse. “I heard Stuart the night they were shooting. Jonas thought I could hear him loud enough on the trail to help out. I couldn’t. So I left.”
“Maybe you’d like to travel with us.”
“You paying?”
“Yeah,” Harper said. “Your neck, if you follow orders. And maybe a junior’s share of the bounty, if ever happens they put one on the rogue. Not unlikely they will. So you could go back with pocket money.”
What was smart to do? Say go to hell, to three borderers with guns? Danny shoved his hands in his belt. “I keep my gun, collect my gear back there… yeah, I’ll go for a junior’s share.”
“Gun’s not part of it,” Harper said. “Kid like you, a cannon like that? You ever fired that thing?”
“I’m not going up there with no gun!”
“Kid, you haven’t figured it yet. You’re going up there stark naked if you want to argue with us, but you are going. No gun. You want a strip search while we’re at it? Or you want to hand the gun over? You don’t need it. Blow you right off your horse, the kick it’s got. Guy like Watt, here, that’s his size gun.”
The man named Watt grinned. Big as a boulder and built like one. Horse as big as any Danny had ever seen.
And Cloud thought <fight.>
Danny snatched a handful of Cloud’s mane, patted his shoulder, bodily pressing against him for a moment, imaging <gun in holster, man talking with Danny, > trying the forced calm-down from Jonas he’d resented yesterday. <Quiet water, > he insisted, sweating, trying to lower the force in the ambient. <Clouds reflecting in water.>
Cloud’s ears were flat to his skull.
“Yeah,” Danny said quietly, quickly, and started unbuckling the gun before Cloud got himself killed. “I’ve got my gear and supplies back there.” He concentrated on the quiet. It kept his mind busy, kept his knees from shaking and wobbling. He imaged his camp downhill. Cloud nipped at his knee, caught a lipful of leather, still wanting <fight> and arguing about it.
But he let the gun and holster fall to the ground.
Harper motioned back the way they’d come. “Quig, get his stuff.”
“Yeah,” the other man said, and turned his horse about on the hill and went after the stuff while the big guy, Watt, got off and collected the gun he’d dropped.
In the deepest well of his thoughts he was sorry now he hadn’t stuck tight to Jonas and said yes, sir, no matter what. Harper left no doubt who gave the orders with this bunch, and who was meaner, or smarter, or whatever it took to get that obedience out of men both bigger and stronger than Harper was.
“Get on your horse,” Harper said, and Danny turned Cloud around on the hill to put his preferred side uphill.
Cloud moved as he was about to get up.
“Cloud!” he hissed, scared, because he wasn’t all that steady in his knees, and wasn’t sure his nerves weren’t most of the reason for the upset he felt in Cloud. “Stand still, all right? Just stand still.”
Cloud’s ears were still flat. <Bite,> Cloud imaged, a shivery, angry sort of image, and Danny took a double fistful of mane, wanting him quiet, quiet, quiet. Please God. <Going to mountains. Harper and these men and us going to mountains up the road.>
He made it onto Cloud’s back, and Harper and the others led the way to the site downhill, where the man called Quig was putting his blanket rolls together and gathering up his supplies.
They stopped there. Quig handed him up his packets and his blankets. He sat there between Watt and Harper until Quig had finished and gotten back on his horse.
Harper brushed close to him. “You ride alongside me, hear?”
Cloud didn’t want be close to Harper or his horse, Cloud was consistently thinking <bite,> but Danny gave Cloud a mild kick to get him moving. <Quiet water,> he thought. The kick made Cloud mad. Everything did. But they went out into the morning sun and onto the road.
Following Jonas and company.
Not on Stuart’s trail, he was relieved to think, Stuart having gone—
Shit! he thought, remembering the look of that town—heart sinking.
“… Anveney, is it?” Harper asked him.
“Yeah, well, that’s what Jonas Westman thinks. That’s all I know.”
“Why does Westman think that?”
Try not to think of something. <Hawley patting his pocket,> image of < money.>
He truly didn’t know what more he could do to foul things up.
Chapter X
IN THE BUSY DAYS OF SUMMER, BEFORE HARVEST AND AFTER SPRING and open market, riders took hires as many as they could and went wherever along the roads their commissions took them, traveling with steady partners if they could, but if that wasn’t possible, and a convoy had only so many berths, you took the job, that was all— because you always had a winter to get through, three dead-white months when nothing moved, when only the juniors made any money at all, and that was paltry change. If you were a high country rider, you made very good money during the summer itself, often the highest paying convoy right at the risky edge of autumn, when some last moment situation or late-realized shortage mandated that goods move somewhere fast.
The reliable riders got those offers—the shippers gave priority to the riders who gave them priority over other shippers, and if you had such a regular hire, depend on it—rather than risk losing a customer, you arranged a place to meet your partner for wintering-over, and you satisfied that special customer. Aby and he had end-season requests enough, usually separately, and they’d always arranged a place…