“Yeah,” Randy said; and took a deep breath. “Are they going to shoot? Are they going to find this Harper guy?”
“Just be ready to open the gate,” Danny said to the boys; he kept thinking of <Harper> and ambush. “Fast.”
But <Harper> was gone from the ambient and had been since the gunshot at the gate, spooked out, elusive as any four-footed ghosty.
“Have they found the man?” Randy asked. “The man Harper was shooting at?”
“Stuart?” he said. “No, the blurry one’s probably Jonas. He’s not real noisy. They’re coming up on the gates. Be ready. They’ll come in and we shut it behind them fast as we can. Harper’s a coward. He’ll lie low if he’s outnumbered. But he could try shooting at them.” He was sending <Harper with gun. Harper’s face,> as clearly as he could—he couldn’t put any time sense with it, he couldn’t tell Jonas it was now and not then he was worried about. <Man with rifle. Shooting at gate.>
Randy handled the latch, and he and Carlo hauled at the door, moving a blanket of snow along with it. They hauled hard, making a horse-wide fan of it as Luke and then Hawley rode in, their faces stung red with cold above their scarves, snow thick on them and their horses. Then Jonas came in last and <not happy.>
“Harper was here!” Danny said. “Harper and Quig. We shot at them.”
“Explains the gunshot,” Jonas said, and slid down.
“What about Stuart?”
“Man’s a damn spook,” Jonas said. “Couldn’t stop him. Wouldn’t listen.”
“He thinks we were shooting at him,” Luke said. “Lit out up and over a slope somewhere—couldn’t track him in this stew.”
<Steep rocks, brush, blowing snow> came through. So did the fear of <Stuart shooting from ambush.>
And from Hawley, Danny thought, the more pleasant image of <ham and biscuits and a warm fire.>
<Danny shooting at Harper?> Jonas asked.
<Harper at front gate, gate shut, Jonas and Luke and Hawley off on road. Danny talking to Carlo, Carlo running for rider gate—>
He didn’t want to confess how entirely stupid he’d been, but <Harper or Quig maybe being shot, thick snow, gate coming open> was something Jonas needed to know.
“Hit him?”
“Could have. Could have hit Quig. That’s the other guy. But I’m not sure.”
“You’d know,” Jonas said matter of factly, and the ambient went queasy with <pain, anger, horse going crazy> while Jonas’ personal shell around it was cold as ice. Jonas took his hat off and dusted it against his leg. “Get us inside. Damn near frozen.”
<Cattle,> was Burn’s judgment on the situation, and Guil patted Burn on the neck as he walked beside him, too numb and too sore to be coherent.
Snowed on. Shot at. Chased. Yelled at for a spooky fool. His feet were numb. His head hurt.
<Box on the lead truck. The truck that had gone over the edge.
Burn snorted, shook his neck, throwing off a warning to the neighborhood — a dangerously loud sending out into the ambient, considering the danger they knew was on the loose up here.
But Burn always thought he owned the territory. Guil caught a fistful of mane in the middle of Burn’s neck and yanked it to distract him from challenging everything in reach.
<Shooting at him.> He was still damned mad.
Wouldn’t really have thought it of Jonas — wouldn’t have thought that Jonas would miss, for one thing, but the snow had been blowing hard. Gust of wind, snow in the eyes… nobody was perfect.
Or it could have been an overexcited villager, thinking that he was the rogue: spooked villagers could shoot at any damn thing they thought they saw.
Could have, could have. The fact was Aby was dead and he didn’t know he was in any sense justified in his increasingly dark suspicions of Jonas — but somewhere between the headache and the ache in his leg, he was on the irrational edge of very damned mad.
Give Jonas credit—he’d lay odds Hawley hadn’t run straight to inform his partners about the bank. On a day in town with the horses a long way off, even dimbrain Hawley could conceivably have done something Jonas and Luke didn’t know about.
And ask where Hawley put the funds—maybe the cold air was waking his brain up—but he bet to hell there was another bank account. Hawley Antrim could have one. The bank women didn’t ask about brains, just if you had money. Hawley could have put most of it right back in his account, right there in Anveney.
And ask why Aby had used a bank at Anveney—and why Hawley knew it.
She hadn’t been able to level with her partner—that was what. She’d hammered home to her partner that the account existed and he should use it. He hadn’t known—God!—that it was in event of something happening to her, as if she’d known she ran risks more than the ordinary. Just so casual—Use the bank, Guil. It’s safe.
In the absence of her partner on her end-of-season run, she’d had to get a crew she could trust not only not to make off with the cargo but not to spill every damn thing they knew in village camps; granted there wasn’t anybody closer-mouthed or closer-minded than Jonas and Luke. Hawley—Hawley was moderately discreet because he didn’t have two thoughts a day—but he supposed, hell, he’d probably have picked Jonas and his lot himself, given Aby’s situation and Jonas showing up.
Jonas in breaking the news to him had told him about the rogue, imaging just <Aby dead.> That was how he’d gotten it. The <trucks racing down mountain> he’d gotten from Luke, but no real chain of events from Jonas. No side information—and that was typical Jonas: you got things through that horse of his that flitted, that shifted, that you just couldn’t quite focus on. A nest of willy-wisps wasn’t as echoey as Jonas when he and that horse shaped you something out of memory. Clear and crisp-edged—Shadow wasn’t. Shadow enjoyed <blood,> Shadow enjoyed <fight.> You didn’t want to linger in Shadow’s ambient in a situation like that with Burn in striking range.
Two damn dominant males, Burn and Shadow.
Burn took high offense at the mere comparison with Shadow. <Biting and kicking. Females. Autumn and snow.>
“Easy.” He gave a tug at Burn’s mane, set his hand on the back of Burn’s neck and shook it as Burn sucked winter air into his nostrils, <looking for females.>
God.
<Nightmares,> Burn imaged happily, sniffing the wind and looking for mates while the wind blasted at them cold as the floors of hell. He was trying to figure who’d just tried to kill them, and Burn skittered off onto <snow> and <autumn,> running on nervous energy by now—while his was flagging. Hell, he thought, maybe he and Jonas were crazy as the horses.
God knew if Aby and Jonas had had anything going between them. He couldn’t imagine it. But maybe there was that in the ambient. He’d not picked it up.
He wouldn’t be offended—he didn’t think he was. Jonas was potentially more serious than Aby’s occasional others.
But—no. He didn’t think so. Not Jonas. For the damn-all major thing—Jonas wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t put himself that close and that off-guard to Aby’s questions.
A wally-boo called. He took it for reassurance. He had the rifle slung to his shoulders, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He took one out, in the wicked gust of snow-laden wind down a fold of the mountain, to pull his breath-sodden scarf up around his nose. It was freezing with the moisture of his breath and sagging down to his mouth. He jerked it behind his head, tugged it down tight inside his collar, thinking about that sweater he could have bought in Anveney—thinking about frostbite, and asking himself whether the oil on his boots was holding out.