Something cold and smooth nuzzled the small of her back, and she wasn't quite able to stifle a little shriek. Will Dearborn wheeled toward her, his hands dropping toward his belt. Then he relaxed and smiled.
"Rusher's way of saying he feels ignored. I'm sorry, Miss Delgado."
She looked at the horse. Rusher looked back mildly, then dipped his head as if to say he was also sorry for having startled her.
Foolishness, girl, she thought, hearing the hearty, no-nonsense voice of her father. He wants to know why you 're being so standoffy, that's all. And so do I. 'Tisn't like you, so it's not.
"Mr. Dearborn, I've changed my mind," she said. "I'd like to ride."
3
He turned his back and stood looking out at Citgo with his hands in his pockets while Susan first laid the poncho over the cantle of the saddle (the plain black saddle of a working cowboy, without a Barony brand or even a ranch brand to mark it), and then mounted into the stirrup. She lifted her skirt and glanced around sharply, sure he would be stealing a peek, but his back was still to her. He seemed fascinated with the rusty oil derricks.
What's so interesting about them, cully? she thought, a trifle crossly - it was the lateness of the hour and the residue of her stirred-up emotions, she supposed. Filthy old things have been there six centuries and more, and I've been smelling their stink my whole life.
"Stand easy now, my boy," she said once she had her foot fixed in the stirrup. One hand held the top of the saddle's pommel, the other the reins. Rusher, meanwhile, flicked his ears as if to say he would stand easy all night, were that what she required.
She swung up, one long bare thigh flashing in the starlight, and felt the exhilaration of being horsed that she always felt . . . only tonight it seemed a little stronger, a little sweeter, a little sharper. Perhaps because the horse was such a beauty, perhaps because the horse was a stranger .. .
Perhaps because the horse's owner is a stranger, she thought, and fair.
That was nonsense, of course . . . and potentially dangerous nonsense. Yet it was also true. He was fair.
As she opened the poncho and spread it over her legs, Dearborn began to whistle. And she realized, with a mixture of surprise and superstitious fear, what the tune was: "Careless Love." The very lay she had been singing on her way up to Rhea's hut.
Mayhap it's ka, girl, her father's voice whispered.
No such thing, she thought right back at him. I'llnot see ka in every passing wind and shadow, like the old ladies who gather in Green Heart of a summer's evening. It's an old tune: everyone knows it.
Mayhap better if you're right. Pat Delgado's voice returned. For if it's ka, it 'II come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than my da's barn stood before the cyclone when it came.
Not ka; she would not be seduced by the dark and the shadows and the grim shapes of the oil derricks into believing it was. Not ka but only a chance meeting with a nice young man on the lonely road back to town.
"I've made myself decent," she said in a dry voice that didn't sound much like her own. "Ye may turn back if you like, Mr. Dearborn."
He did turn and gazed at her. For a moment he said nothing, but she could see the look in his eyes well enough to know that he found her fair as well. And although this disquieted her - perhaps because of what he'd been whistling - she was also glad. Then he said, "You look well up there. You sit well."
"And I shall have horses of my own to sit before long," she said. Now the questions will come, she thought.
But he only nodded, as though he had known this about her already, and began to walk toward town again. Feeling a little disappointed and not knowing exactly why, she clucked sidemouth at Rusher and twitched her knees at him. He got moving, catching up with his master, who gave Rusher's muzzle a companionable little caress.
"What do they call that place yonder?" he asked, pointing at the derricks.
"The oil patch? Citgo."
"Some of the derricks still pump?"
"Aye, and no way to stop them. Not that anyone still knows."
"Oh," he said, and that was all - just oh. But he left his place by Rusher's head for a moment when they came to the weedy track leading into Citgo, walking across to look at the old disused guard-hut. In her childhood there had been a sign on it reading authorized personnel only, but it had blown away in some windstorm or other. Will Dearborn had his look and then came ambling back to the horse, boots puffing up summer dust, easy in his new clothes.
They went toward town, a young walking man in a flat-crowned hat, a young riding woman with a poncho spread over her lap and legs. The starlight rained down on them as it has on young men and women since time's first hour, and once she looked up and saw a meteor flash overhead - a brief and brilliant orange streak across the vault of heaven. Susan thought to wish on it, and then, with something like panic, realized she had no idea what to wish for. None at all.