This time, though, there was a gathering of the village officers, the clerk and the justice in front of a lot of the village—men, women, and children—and now the mayor and the marshal and, lastly, themselves, up the steps and onto the wooden porch that fronted the marshal’s house and the jail and the court office, that being all the same building. They’d hung lanterns from the porch-posts and set a table and a chair between them. The judge sat at the table. The village clerk sat at a right angle to him, to do writing.
“Say what you said to us,” the marshal said, and Tara couldn’t feel Mina panic, but she saw the flinch. Mina said it again, in a quiet voice:
“The kid had cause.”
“Louder,” the mayor said, and shouted for quiet, and the judge bashed the table with a metal hammer and said he wanted quiet in the hearing. There was the hammer on the judge’s table. Lying near it, jumping when he hammered for order, there were two large-caliber bullets.
That was the way it was. Tara was appalled; and she nudged Mina, saying: “Tell it good.”
So Mina spoke up. “Goss and his wife beat the boys. He could have killed them. It was real clear. They didn’t want Brionne back.”
A woman’s voice—Goss’ wife, Mindy Rath, Tara saw, off to the side of the porch: “They did it!” the woman shouted. “They were always bad boys! They were always a trouble in the house! I want my Brionne! I want my Brionne! What have you done with her, what have you done with her, Carlo? You put her outside the gate, didn’t you? You lied to her, you made her go out there!”
“That’s not so,” Tara said. The magistrate was pounding with the hammer, and the bullets fell off onto the porch. The clerk scooped them up again and put them on the table.
“Say it again, rider Chang,” the marshal said. “Say it louder.”
“I’ll say it,” Luisa said, and raised her voice. “She’s wrong. There were tracks going alone out the gate! Tara saw them!”
The crowd broke out in murmurs, in calls of “Liar!” from the wife, and “Hearken not to the beasts!” from one of the village religious enthusiasts.
“Say what you know!” the mayor said. “Rider Chang?”
People were shouting. The elder boy shouted, too, all but crying, “I didn’t want to shoot him, he made me shoot him!”
Right then Tara got the same impulse Mina had confessed to; and drew in a guilty breath, and remembered at the same instant that nobody could hear what she thought.
The judge pounded the table, to no avail, until the marshal fired off a gun, into the air and off over the walls.
“Rider Chang,” the judge said. “Ordinance of Incorporation, Article Twelve, a rider can’t take oath. But you can give an unsworn deposition. What did you observe?”
“I talked to Brionne Goss in the horse den this morning. I saw her tracks, alone, going out the gate. I saw, at sunset, Andy Goss, Carlo, there, and Randy, coming in to ask about her whereabouts.”
“Fornicator!” the religious yelled.
“—and those tracks.” Tara raised her voice, thinking only of the boys now, the way Mina had thought, and with the queasy notion that she could lie or tell the truth on this side of the wall and the minds in front of her wouldn’t hear the difference. “Were only of the girl. Goss identified them and I personally heard Goss threaten the boys, I personally heard the boys complain of beatings and blame unfairly placed on them.”
“Liar!” the wife shouted.
“Mr. Goss agitated my horse with his behavior. I advised him and his sons quit the camp for their own protection. Vadim and Chad went out the gate in search of Brionne Goss. They aren’t back. They’d promised to come straight back. I can personally report—” There was a rising murmur and she outshouted it with what she’d decided the town had damned well better know, and she needed to be sure the town knew. Two nights and no word from Vadim and Chad meant the odds weren’t in their favor, and the Gosses had already made fatal mistakes. “I can personally report, there’s something out there that scared my horse and me. Evidently Brionne heard it and didn’t have the sense to be scared.”
“You liar!” the mother started shouting—and nothing came through the ambient. It was a curious numbness.
“She wanted the horses!” Tara shouted back. “And thanks to the fact she didn’t tell us, and she went out that gate on her own, and without our advice, she’s probably met something we could have wished she hadn’t. It wasn’t the Goss boys’ fault. I saw the father beating the boys; I saw it in his mind and I saw it in theirs!”
“Blasphemy’s not court evidence!” the religious yelled. “You can’t blaspheme against the almighty human God and call it evidence!”
“God,” Tara muttered in disgust, and cast a look at the judge, who hammered the table furiously.
“She is a liar!” the mother screamed. “She was luring our Brionne to perversions! They’re responsible!”
“Then you can go to bloody hell!” Mina yelled. “There’s a rogue horse out there! Your precious Brionne went out to it! If she’s lucky, it didn’t take her! If she’s not—God knows what we’re in for! So if you want to winter here without riders, you’re on your way, woman! The road crew’s not back and the two that went out looking for your daughter were supposed to be back in a couple of hours—yesterday! So go to hell! We’ll take care of our own, if that’s where we stand!”
People were shouting over the last that Mina had to say, people who were scared about the rogue and scared as hell to have the riders offended, people yelling about God and blasphemy, going quickly from words to shoving and pushing—the judge was getting no attention from anyone with his hammering; and Tara grabbed Mina by the arm to get her away from the edge of the porch before rocks went flying.
“Take it easy, for God’s sake!”
“I’ll be out that gate! I’m not trading us for these fools!” Mina jerked away, headed for the side porch steps, and Tara grabbed her again.
“Mina, use your head!”
“I’ve used my head, I’ve waited. If you’re with them ahead of us, maybe that’s your choice, Tara, but it’s not mine.”
“Mina!”
Mina had jerked to be free, and Tara jerked hard back, realizing in the moment she did it that there was an ambient now. It had come flooding around them subtle as body-temperature water— you didn’t know it was there, and it was, and it ran over the nerves and stole the breath. “Mina, dammit!” Crowd-noise was everywhere. Minds were everywhere. A gunshot went off, right next them, but that was a gun on their side, the marshal firing his pistol off.
“Shut up!” the marshal yelled into a sudden silence, and Tara dragged Mina back to Luisa’s spot near the rear of the porch. The marshal was yelling about law and order and how they’d better listen to the judge or he was going to start making arrests.
“You can’t argue against almighty God,” somebody yelled; and the judge ruled the man in contempt and fined him fifty on the spot. Other howls went up over that, and the mother started yelling about justice again—
“Shut up!” the judge shouted, and banged the hammer, until it had to dent the table top. “It’s clear we’ve got witnesses missing.”
“You can’t take testimony—” —from riders, the religious was clearly about to argue, but the hammer came down again.
“Another fifty! I say I’m not finding cause for a trial until after we’ve got all the principals, and they’re not here. Marshal, lock these boys up until somebody—”