“Carlo!” the younger boy yelled after him.

But Carlo Goss was running breakneck down the street, disappearing into the snowfall.

“Get him!” Peterson yelled. “Bring him back here!” And thatwas a mistake. A number of miners took out running, chasing the boy, shouting encouragement to each other.

Then the younger brother ducked past people trying to stop him and ran after all of them, in the same moment Brionne, this time shod, came out onto the porch. Darcy put an arm around her as, in the distance, Carlo Goss failed her expectation he would go to the rider camp.

No, the boy was going farther than that, as she could see from her elevated vantage. The miners hadn’t overtaken him. RandyGoss had taken that side street and gone off toward the rider camp. But Carlo, almost faded out in the snow, came to the village gates, and as she strained to see clearly what was going on, or whether Serge, who kept the gate, would catch him—he vanished altogether.

He’d opened the lesser gate and gone outside the walls—maybe to reach the rider camp across to theiroutside gate. Maybe he’d hoped to draw the miners away from his brother, and then go where they wouldn’t—because from what she could see, nobody else passed that gate.

Gunfire echoed back. Someone had gotten up the steps and shot.

“Stop that,” Peterson said to his deputy, and Burani walked down off the porch, went out into the street and fired his pistol into the air, at which Darcy’s nerves jumped, and Brionne jumped, and the crowd got quiet.

Did they shoot him? she was wondering. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe Carlo Goss hadhad words with Riggs. Maybe Riggs had come to him trying to solicit more money, and the boy had gotten mad and killed him.

The marshal was shouting to Jeff Burani to go to the riders and get them to go out after the elder boy, and Burani lit out running on the course Randy Goss had taken.

Maybe Carlo hadgone toward the rider camp’s outside gate and some overzealous miner had shot him from the wall. Riders wouldn’t necessarily turn him in—not until the marshal had made a case that it was village business and none of theirs.

She hugged Brionne against her side, in the blood-spattered venue of her porch, in the wreckage of the winter’s peace. Brionne was what she kept. Brionne was hers.

“Sorry the girl had to see this,” marshal Peterson said. “Honey, if your brother didn’t do this, we’ll find out. I just want to ask him some questions.”

“He could do it,” Brionne said bitterly. “He shot our father. He shot papa, Mama died. He was in jaildown there. He deserved to be.”

“Honey,” Darcy began, hoping to stem the bitter flood, but Brionne wasn’t finished.

“I was scared of him,” Brionne cried. “He was hateful. He was always hateful. He never wanted me to have anything. And he shot papa, I know he did!”

The whole snow-blinded sky was screaming, a condition against which the gunshots were faint noise, and it didn’t stop. Ridley couldn’t get his bearings except by sight, and that was diminished to an insignificant sense in the noise and the fright that raged in Slip, in Shimmer and Rain and Cloud—Jennie was terrified and trying to protect Rain, and in the stubbornness and the skip-to-any-belief character of a youngster, might be the strongest of them. Jennie didn’t equivocate— Jenniedidn’t care about anything but what Jennie wanted, and that was <them,> including all the horses.

But her father knew she was no match for that thingin the village, not in age, not in angry tenacity. Ridley kept by Slip’s side, trying to keep himcalm, and tried to be the stable center of their camp— but he’d compromised himself. He’d persisted against better sense, he’d tried with all he had in him to do the job his village asked him, even with that darting, unhealthy <presence> there, and he knew he hadn’t made sense to the marshal or to the doctor when he’d suddenly known he couldn’t make headway either against the search or the girl who so doggedly possessed that place. He’d had to get Slip and himself away from there.

There was <death> in that place, there was <blood> and <going apart> and <wanting Slip, wanting so much and so hard>that Slip imaged it as <hunger and fangs and claws, here, there, here and apart> so quickly you couldn’t track it, <goblin-cat in a darkness too deep to see, hungry and lonely and threatened and threatening.>

The rider camp gate had opened for them and now it was shut— Jennie and Callie and Dan had opened it for him, the horses all bunched and sending <us and ours> and <wanting him and Slip> so strongly that presence enfolded him, snatched him into harmony with one breath, one thought, <safe in herd> and <fighting outsiders. >

Now, slowly, they became <quiet falling snow> and <safe in den.>

But something <else> had come into reach, and it was <human> and <boy in snowstorm> first and foremost.

“Randy Goss,” Dan Fisher/Cloud identified that presence, and they weren’t afraid of it, skittish and angry mess that they all were. Dan was steady and Ridley held fast as Dan wanted <going to Randy in the yard.>

Ridley didn’t want anything to do with the intruders in his village. He wanted <Callie and Jennie safe in den.> But he was sane, now, and he had a partner and a daughter with him that he wasn’t going to let down. He separated Dan out of <us> and let him go, even while he walked to the door of the den and Slip and the rest of <his own> trailed him.

He wanted no part of the boy who came toward them—the girl’s brother, it was. The young one. Who blurted out, spilling images right and left,

<“Carlo’s run. Miners chasing him.> You got to help him!”

Dan didn’t stop to question further. He wanted <Randy standing still with Ridley and Callie> and he ran alone for the gate, and into the village.

Ridley didn’t know what they were supposed to do with a village boy. The boy was crying and trying not to show it. And Jennie was upset, and wanting <Rain> near her, where her hands could feel him.

Shimmer was <pregnant mare> and hanging back behind the others, both more and less afraid. Shimmer would kill if the kid made the wrong move, and on the instant of the realization how fragile Shimmer’s truce with the situation was, Ridley moved, and Callie moved, him to take the boy under his protection and Callie to hold Shimmer’s temper under her calming hands.

“It’s crazy,” the boy gasped. “It’s crazyout there. They want to kill him, and he didn’t do it!”

“We’ll prove it, then,” Ridley said: the village called on them and the horses to untangle conflicting testimonies, sometimes outright scaring the guilty into confession—but they weren’t usually as clear to the mind as this boy’s impressions came, <Carlo and Randy in the tavern, Rick Mackey slumped at the table, blood on the porch, and the girl—the girl that Slip hated—>

<Jennie and Rain> came very loud just then. <Jennie and Rain> couldn’t be still against the challenge that was pouring around them, and the boy just stared toward the rider-gate until Dan came running back, out of breath, with—

“He’s gone outside!”

“You’ve got to go after him!” the boy cried. “Danny, you got to find him—he didn’t doit! I was with him! They’re lying!”

“You,” Dan said, already running for the barracks, “stay in the camp.”

Dan intended to go find the kid. Ridley had no doubt of that— at the same time that another certainty was running over his nerves,  and < blood on snow> shivered through the ambient.

“That damn horse!” Callie cried.

Dan Fisher was headed to get his gun and his gear. It didn’t take him long to run back again. Fisher was going after the horse and the boy—and he, dammit, had a camp and a village in his charge with a real problem outside his walls and a worse one in the middle of the village. He was staying behind, he had no question of it, same as if a chain bound him here.