Maybe some sense of obligation had actually gotten to Jonas, Aby having paid her life for it.
Or maybe—maybe Cassivey had talked to more than one man, made a deal with more than one man regarding that cargo.
Damn.
Damn!
That distracting notion took the trail-sense out of his legs. His foot wobbled into a hidden hole. He recovered himself a few steps, but he’d hurt the sore leg. The cold had clearly gotten to his brain. He was frozen between the consideration that maybe he ought to go back and find out what Jonas wanted—and the equally valid thought that that had been no signaling shot that had blasted bark off a tree. Jonas hadn’t fired at him when he’d chased him…
Burn swung his head around and bit him above the knee, not hard, but enough to wake him up. <Guil riding,> Burn insisted. <Warm Guil on warm nighthorse back.>
Wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair to weight Burn down. <Guil walking,> he thought: the shelter couldn’t be far. He’d cut across the mountain where a horse could go and a truck couldn’t, and he didn’t know how much time he’d taken off the trek, but he had to be far closer now to the next way-stop than he was to go back to the village.
Didn’t dare to do it again, how-so-ever. Shaky legs had no business on a mountain. Damn near killed themselves doing it once.
And there was a chance of coming down to the road a second time some distance past the shelter. A chance, if the storm worsened, of freezing to death on the mountainside.
But he was limping. And speed was harder and harder.
<Burn carrying baggage,> he imaged; and Burn didn’t want to. Burn would carry him carrying it. Burn didn’t like the pack. It tickled.
He argued, he imaged <bacon and biscuits in the baggage,> but Burn, remembering that, just wanted <bacon cooking> right then.
<Shelter,> Guil insisted. <Burn carrying baggage. Us walking,> and Burn still wouldn’t.
He stopped. <Guil sitting down.> Burn offered to bite him on the leg again and he offered, <Guil walking. Burn carrying baggages
Burn wasn’t happy, but Burn finally carried it—<nasty ice lumps bumping at cold nighthorse ribs. Us in snow. Us in dark. Snow on us.>
<Warm fire in the shelter,> he sent back, <bacon frying in the shelter.>
For a considerable distance further that even dominated <females > in Burn’s searching the scents the storm brought. But <evergreen and ice> was what Burn smelled. <Willy-wisps> once. The ambient was healthier where they were.
But night was also coming down fast. The sunglow was leaving the sky behind the mountain wall. The temperature was dropping fast and the wind had a shriller voice as it howled among the evergreens.
<Nasty willy-wisps,> Burn imaged. <Nasty falling-down lean-to.>
But a high-country shelter was, Guil swore, going to be there— ransacked like the last one or whole, he didn’t care, as long as it was whole walls, a door that would latch, and a supply of wood.
Jonas would probably be after them; Jonas could show once the weather cleared and they’d talk and have some answers.
They’d talk with him behind a wall with a gun-port and Jonas out in the yard telling him what the deal was with Cassivey, that was how they’d talk.
But he had to get there. Had to get there. Legs had to last. Lungs had to last.
As the light dimmed and dimmed, until they were walking in a murk defined by tree-shadow and the ghostly white of the clear-cut.
There was ham, there was yeast bread. Danny knew how to make it, and nobody else claimed the knack. He hoped Harper could smell it out there on the wind and Harper was real, real hungry.
He truly, truly hoped Stuart had made it to the next shelter.
Jonas thought something he couldn’t catch. Luke had another slice of bread.
“I’ll bet,” Luke said, “that Harper’s pulled back to the north-next shelter.”
“Could,” Jonas said.
The boys just ate their supper.
There wasn’t a sign of Harper, though he thought they all kept an ear to the ambient. He ate his supper without a qualm.
It was only afterward when he began to think again about <man in the gate, snow blowing> and that man vanishing in the jolt the gun made—that he really worried he’d hit Quig.
He didn’t think he ought to worry. But he did.
He sat in a warm spot near enough the stove it overheated his knees. He rubbed the warmth of overheated cloth into his hands, and didn’t want to move.
“You think you did shoot him after all?” Carlo asked, squatting down near him.
“I don’t know. I could have.”
Carlo didn’t say anything else about it. Carlo was thinking about his father. About <gun going off.> About <anger> he couldn’t deal with. Carlo was quiet, and Randy came up and sat down by him, all of them scared. The banging went on down the street, where the wind hadn’t yet hammered whatever-it-was to flinders.
“When the snow stops,” Carlo said, “are they going to go after this Stuart guy again?”
“Probably.” He rubbed his knees again. The heat was back. It was almost too uncomfortable.
“What happens to you,” Carlo asked then, careful around his edges, “—if you go with a rogue and they shoot it?”
“Dunno. I really don’t.”
“Do they know?” A slide of Carlo’s eyes toward Jonas and the others. “I mean—”
Cloud moved in, put his head on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny scratched Cloud’s chin without thinking about it.
“Yeah,” Danny said. <Blonde girl in red coat> was insistent in the air. “It’s not a good time to think about it, all right? I don’t know what happens. Harper isn’t any genius. He just got spooked bad.” <Man Harper knew. Rogue in the ambient. Shooting man.>
<Shooting Brionne came through, and upset ran the whole room, horses shifting, heads coming up.
“Go to sleep,” Jonas said, and it was like a bucket of ice water on the ambient. Things just—stopped, the way old Wesson could get your attention.
But it scared everybody. Cloud had jerked his head up, too, and Cloud was surly, feeling it as <attack.>
Jonas got up and walked over to the stove, towering over them, his face and himself half in shadow from the flue pipe.
“No gain,” Jonas said, “to some questions. She could freeze. She could fall off. Could be she’s sane. Could be she isn’t. But if you get her back she won’t be the same as she was. Plain truth.”
The air was cold around the fire. Just—cold.
“She’s thirteen,” Carlo said in a shaky voice. “She’s just thirteen.”
“Horse can’t count,” Jonas said. “Rogue doesn’t care, mountain doesn’t care. Storm out there doesn’t care. And we won’t know.”
“Ease off him,” Danny said. “Jonas, it’s their sister, for God’s sake.”
“No difference.”
“Maybe riders get dropped under a damn bush, but village kids come with sisters, Jonas—sisters and brothers and <family, > and damned right it matters! You grow up with somebody and you got ’em even if you don’t damn well like ’em!”
<Sam. Sitting at the kitchen table. Having a mouthful of beans.>
<Wrench, settling on a thin, crooked pipe fitting. Open air. Cold air. Gravel underfoot.>
Didn’t know who that was. Jonas all of a sudden flared up—was just <there,> and <mad> and they were <on the floor>; Danny couldn’t make sense of it, but his heart had jumped.
“Clean up,” Jonas said.