Fawn, atop Magpie, raised an eyebrow at him. “Speaking from experience, Dag? ”
He touched one finger to his temple in wry acknowledgment. “Just don’t try to pull the returning-son trick too often, is all. It does wear out with repetition.”
Barr eased his horse forward and observed, “With this leg of mine, we can each take credit for getting the other home. I guarantee to hobble and yelp a lot. You’ll look good.”
“Home camp’s not going to look the same, I promise you,” said Dag.
Both of you.
“Neither does the view in my shaving mirror,” Barr muttered, and maybe it wasn’t just the leg making him sober. He turned his head and said seriously to Dag, “I’ve learned a lot, since that night in the rain when I first caught up with the Fetch, so mad and cold I could hardly stutter. Thank you.”
Dag’s head cocked back in surprise. And, he had to admit, sneaking gratification.
“Yeah, Dag has a way, that way,” said Whit. “I daresay he’s been teaching me new things ever since that first night my sister dragged him into the kitchen at West Blue. Did I ever say, Good work, Sis? ”
“It was luck, mostly,” said Fawn. “That, and grabbing onto my luck with both hands and not letting go again.”
Or even one hand. Dag nudged Copperhead around next to Magpie.
Sumac, by now well acquainted with Remo’s darker moods and listening with some amusement, put in, “It’ll be fine, Remo. And if it’s not-Fairbolt’s always looking for healthy young patrollers. He’ll need at least two to replace me, I figure. I’ll put in a word there if you should need it.”
Remo brightened slightly at this prospect of an honorable bolt hole if his return went ill, which Dag thought profoundly unlikely. In any case, when Barr shook his reins and started off, Remo followed. Finch and Ash called their good-byes and fell in behind, pack animals trailing.
Dag watched them out of earshot before he said to Sumac, “You really intend to inflict that pair on Fairbolt? ”
“Fairbolt has nothing to do with it. I promised the Crow girls when I exchanged last fall that I would bring them back some cute men. As it seems Rase is bespoke already, I have to make my word good somehow.”
Dag considered Fairbolt and Massape’s array of black-haired granddaughters, lovely one by one, formidable in a mob.
“There’s enough of them, one’s bound to like a gloomy boy and another a flitter-wit,” Sumac went on cheerfully. “Feed them to the Crows, I say.”
“What a fate,” murmured Dag, brows rising at this riveting vision.
“Just so’s the girls don’t get them switched the wrong way around,” said Fawn. “Again.”
“I trust Massape,” said Sumac.
–-
Berry was by this time wildly anxious for Clearcreek, so they picked up the pace.
“I hope the place is still standing,” she said, kicking her horse along between Copperhead and Magpie. “Papa leaves-left-two of his cousins to look after it-aunts, I call them, ’cause they’re older than me, one’s a widow and one’s never married. The widow has a son who comes around a couple of times in the week to help with the heavy work.”
Fawn pictured a Clearcreek version of Ash Tanner, and nodded encouragement.
“I wrote two letters-Whit helped me-one after Crooked Elbow and one after we was married in Graymouth, and sent them upriver with keeler friends. Bad news and good. I hope they got there.” She added after a reflective moment, “In the right order.”
“If Clearcreek’s as much of a river town as you say, the word about Crooked Elbow will have got there one way or another ages ago,” Fawn pointed out. “They’ll have had months to get over the bad news. If the good news only arrives when you do, well, that’ll likely be all right.”
Berry nodded, and slowed good-naturedly when Fawn complained that if they did any more trotting, either she or Nattie-Mari was going to start hiccupping.
Nevertheless, Clearcreek came into view over the lip of a steep wooded climb the next afternoon, with two hours to spare till sunset.
The valley spread out in gold-green splendor before Fawn’s eager eyes, with long blue shadows growing from the western hills. Off to the left, the broad Grace River gleamed beyond the feeder-creek’s mouth. A tidy village… homesteads scattered up the vale with evening cook fires sending up gilded threads of smoke… and a stream, Fawn saw as they descended the long slope and clopped across it on a timber span, that earned its name. Fawn stood in her stirrups and gazed out under the flat of her hand as Berry eagerly pointed out landmarks of her childhood.
Even Sumac and Arkady, riding behind engrossed mainly in each other, closed up to listen.
They rode along a split-rail fence enclosing a narrow pasture, with a craggy, tree-clad hill rising behind. “Look, there’s the pond!” Fawn said in delight. And a placid-looking cow, a few goats, and some chickens.
They rounded a stand of chestnut trees into a short lane also lined with split rails, and the house spilled into view.
It was an unpainted warren, looking as if a hive of flatboat carpenters had worked on it for years. Instead of having its stories neatly stacked, like the house in West Blue, it was as if a load of crates had been tossed down the hill, connected by chance one to another. Half a dozen chimneys stuck up here and there. It must have held a much larger family a few generations ago, and looked as if it hoped to again. What a splendid place to grow up in. For all its rambling oddity, it had quite a proper front porch, long and railed and roofed, and if it looked a little like a boat deck, well, that was all right.
Hawthorn whooped and galloped ahead. Hod stuck close to Bo, looking shy and hopeful. Fawn could only think that Berry’s letters must have got here in the right order, because two stout women ran out onto the porch, both looking excited but not surprised, and waved vigorously. Hawthorn jumped from his horse and bounded up the steps, and one of the women dried her hands on her apron, hugged him, and made universal signs to head and hip and heart, My, how you’ve grown!
The other shaded her eyes; Berry grinned fit to split her face and pointed emphatically at Whit, This one’s the husband!
The aunt in the apron clasped her hands over her head and shook them in a gesture of shared, if not downright lewd, female triumph that actually made Whit blush. As they rode close enough at last for voices to carry, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called, “Welcome home!”
Fawn glanced at Dag, who was looking very bemused and a little bit wary-just like a Lakewalker dropped down among strange farmers.
Welcome home to a place we’ve never seen before. But if a place was home because it held your past, wasn’t it equally so if it held your future?
She stretched out her hand to him; he shifted his reins to his hook and grasped it in a swift squeeze.
In the sunset light, his gold eyes glinted like fire.
Epilogue
Footsteps clumped on the stoop; at the knock on the kitchen door, Fawn grabbed a cloth, pulled her pot on its iron hook away from the hearth fire, and hurried to answer. She hoped it wasn’t another emergency. But the door swung open onto a damp and chilly afternoon, and Barr. He wore patroller togs, smelled of horse and the outdoors, and walked without a stick. Mist beaded in his dun-blond hair, gleaming in the watery light.
“Hey, Fawn!”
“Well! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes! Come in, come in!”
He shouldered through into the pungent warmth, staring around.
Fawn spared a look-see out at the sodden brown landscape. Warmer air had moved up the valley of the Grace last night, breathing wisps of lowlying fog across the sad streaks of dirty snow. The gray tailings wouldn’t be lasting much longer. If not quite spring, this was definitely the tag end of winter. No other riders were waiting in the yard, nor approaching on the part of the road she could see from here. She shut the door and turned to her
