1
Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain came out onto the porch of the Bar K bunkhouse almost two hours after Jonas had left Coral's room at the Travellers' Rest. By then the sun was well up over the horizon. They weren't late risers by nature, but as Cuthbert put it, "We have a certain In-World image to maintain. Not laziness but lounginess."
Roland stretched, arms spread toward the sky in a wide Y, then bent and grasped the toes of his boots. This caused his back to crackle.
"I hate that noise," Alain said. He sounded morose and sleepy. In fact, he had been troubled by odd dreams and premonitions all night - things which, of the three of them, only he was prey to. Because of the touch, perhaps - with him it had always been strong.
"That's why he does it," Cuthbert said, then clapped Alain on the shoulder. "Cheer up, old boy. You're too handsome to be downhearted."
Roland straightened, and they walked across the dusty yard toward the stables. Halfway there, he came to a stop so sudden that Alain almost ran into his back. Roland was looking east. "Oh," he said in a funny, bemused voice. He even smiled a little.
"Oh?" Cuthbert echoed. "Oh what, great leader? Oh joy, I shall see the perfumed lady anon, or oh rats, I must work with my smelly male companions all the livelong day?"
Alain looked down at his boots, new and uncomfortable when they had left Gilead, now sprung, trailworn, a little down at the heels, and as comfortable as workboots ever got. Looking at them was better than looking at his friends, for the time being. There was always an edge to Cuthbert's teasing these days; the old sense of fun had been replaced by something that was mean and unpleasant. Alain kept expecting Roland to flash up at one of Cuthbert's jibes, like steel that has been struck by sharp flint, and knock Bert sprawling. In a way, Alain almost wished for it. It might clear the air.
But not the air of this morning.
"Just oh," Roland said mildly, and walked on.
"Cry your pardon, for I know you'll not want to hear it, but I'd speak a further word about the pigeons," Cuthbert said as they saddled their mounts. "I still believe that a message - "
"I'll make you a promise," Roland said, smiling.
Cuthbert looked at him with some mistrust. "Aye?"
"If you still want to send by flight tomorrow morning, we'll do so. The one you choose shall be sent west to Gilead with a message of your devising banded to its leg. What do you say, Arthur Heath? Is it fair?"
Cuthbert looked at him for a moment with a suspicion that hurt Alain's heart. Then he also smiled. "Fair," he said. "Thank you."
And then Roland said something which struck Alain as odd and made that prescient part of him quiver with disquiet. "Don't thank me yet."
2
"I don't want to go up there, sai Thorin," Sheemie said. An unusual expression had creased his normally smooth face - a troubled and fearful frown. "She's a scary lady. Scary as a beary, she is. Got a wart on her nose, right here." He thumbed the tip of his own nose, which was small and smooth and well molded.
Coral, who might have bitten his head off for such hesitation only yesterday, was unusually patient today. "So true," she said. "But Sheemie, she asked for ye special, and she tips. Ye know she does, and well."
"Won't help if she turns me into a beetle," Sheemie said morosely. "Beetles can't spend coppers."
Nevertheless, he let himself be led to where Caprichoso, the inn's pack-mule, was tied. Barkie had loaded two small tuns over the mule's back. One, filled with sand, was just there for balance. The other held a fresh pressing of the graf Rhea had a taste for.
"Fair-Day's coming," Coral said brightly. "Why, it's not three weeks now."
"Aye." Sheemie looked happier at this. He loved Fair-Days passionately - the lights, the firecrackers, the dancing, the games, the laughter. When Fair-Day came, everyone was happy and no one spoke mean.
"A young man with coppers in his pocket is sure to have a good time at the Fair," Coral said.
"That's true, sai Thorin." Sheemie looked like someone who has just discovered one of life's great principles. "Aye, truey-true, so it is."
Coral put Caprichoso's rope halter into Sheemie's palm and closed the fingers over it. "Have a nice trip, lad. Be polite to the old crow, bow yer best bow .. . and make sure ye're back down the hill before dark."
"Long before, aye," Sheemie said, shivering at the very thought of still being up in the Coos after nightfall. "Long before, sure as loaves 'n fishes."
"Good lad." Coral watched him off, his pink sombrero now clapped on his head, leading the grumpy old pack-mule by its rope. And, as he disappeared over the brow of the first mild hill, she said it again: "Good lad."
3
Jonas waited on the flank of a ridge, belly-down in the tall grass, until the brats were an hour gone from the Bar K. He then rode to the ridgetop and picked them out, three dots four miles away on the brown slope. Off to do their daily duty. No sign they suspected anything. They were smarter than he had at first given them credit for ... but nowhere near as smart as they thought they were.
He rode to within a quarter mile of the Bar K - except for the bunk-house and stable, a burned-out hulk in the bright sunlight of this early autumn day - and tethered his horse in a copse of cottonwoods that grew around the ranch house spring. Here the boys had left some washing to dry. Jonas stripped the pants and shirts off the low branches upon which they had been hung, made a pile of them, pissed on them, and then went back to his horse.
The animal stamped the ground emphatically when Jonas pulled the dog's tail from one of his saddlebags, as if saying he was glad to be rid of it. Jonas would be glad to be rid of it, too. It had begun giving off an unmistakable aroma. From the other saddlebag he took a small glass jar of red paint, and a brush. These he had obtained from Brian Hockey's eldest son, who was minding the livery stable today. Sai Hookey himself would be out to Citgo by now, no doubt.
Jonas walked to the bunkhouse with no effort at concealment . . . not that there was much in the way of concealment to be had out here. And no one to hide from, anyway, now that the boys were gone.
One of them had left an actual book - Mercer's Homilies and Meditations- on the seat of a rocking chair on the porch. Books were things of exquisite rarity in Mid-World, especially as one travelled out from the center. This was the first one, except for the few kept in Seafront, that Jonas had seen since coming to Mejis. He opened it. In a firm woman's hand he read: To my dearest son, from his loving MOTHER. Jonas tore j (Ins page out, opened his jar of paint, and dipped the tips of his last two lingers inside. He blotted out the word MOTHER with the pad of his third linger, then, using the nail of his pinky as a makeshift pen, printed CUNT above MOTHER. He poked this sheet on a rusty nailhead where it was sure to be seen, then tore the book up and stamped on the pieces. Which boy had it belonged to? He hoped it was Dearborn's, but it didn't really matter.
The first thing Jonas noticed when he went inside was the pigeons, cooing in their cages. He had thought they might be using a helio to send (heir messages, but pigeons! My! That was ever so much more trig!
"I'll get to you in a few minutes," he said. "Be patient, darlings; peck and shit while you still can."
He looked around with some curiosity, the soft coo of the pigeons soothing in his ears. Lads or lords? Roy had asked the old man in Ritzy. The old man had said maybe both. Neat lads, at the very least, from the way they kept their quarters, Jonas thought. Well trained. Three bunks, all made. Three piles of goods at the foot of each, stacked up just as neat. In each pile he found a picture of a mother - oh, such good fellows they were - and in one he found a picture of both parents. He had hoped for names, possibly documents of some kind (even love letters from the girl, mayhap), but there was nothing like that. Lads or lords, they were careful enough. Jonas removed the pictures from their frames and shredded them. The goods he scattered to all points of the compass, destroying as much as he could in the limited time he had. When he found a linen handkerchief in the pocket of a pair of dress pants, he blew his nose on it and then spread it carefully on the toes of the boy's dress boots, so that the green splat would show to good advantage. What could be more aggravating - more unsettling - than to come home after a hard day spent tallying stock and find some stranger's snot on one of your personals?
The pigeons were upset now; they were incapable of scolding like jays or rooks, but they tried to flutter away from him when he opened their cages. It did no good, of course. He caught them one by one and twisted their heads off. That much accomplished, Jonas popped one bird beneath the strawtick pillow of each boy.
Beneath one of these pillows he found a small bonus: paper strips and a storage-pen, undoubtedly kept for the composition of messages. He broke the pen and flung it across the room. The strips he put in his own pocket. Paper always came in handy.
With the pigeons seen to, he could hear better. He began walking slowly back and forth on the board floor, head cocked, listening.
4
When Alain came riding up to him at a gallop, Roland ignored the boy's strained white face and burning, frightened eyes. "I make it thirty-one on my side," he said, "all with the Barony brand, crown and shield. You?"
"We have to go back," Alain said. "Something's wrong. It's the touch. I've never felt it so clear."
"Your count?" Roland asked again. There were times, such as now, when he found Alain's ability to use the touch more annoying than helpful.
"Forty. Or forty-one, I forget. And what does it matter? They've moved what they don't want us to count. Roland, didn't you hear me? We have to go back! Something's wrong! Something's wrong at our place /"
Roland glanced toward Bert, riding peaceably some five hundred yards away. Then he looked back at Alain, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.
"Bert? He's numb to the touch and always has been - you know it. I'm not. You know I'm not! Roland, please! Whoever it is will see the pigeons! Maybe find our guns!" The normally phlegmatic Alain was nearly crying in his excitement and dismay. "If you won't go back with me, give me leave to go back by myself! Give me leave, Roland, for your father's sake!"
"For your father's sake, I give you none," Roland said. "My count is thirty-one. Yours is forty. Yes, we'll say forty. Forty's a good number - good as any, I wot. Now we'll change sides and count again."
"What's wrong with you?" Alain almost whispered. He was looking at Roland as if Roland had gone mad.
"Nothing."
"You knew! You knew when we left this morning!"
"Oh, I might have seen something," Roland said. "A reflection, perhaps, but ... do you trust me, Al? That's what matters, I think. Do you trust me, or do you think I lost my wits when I lost my heart? As he does?" He jerked his head in Cuthbert's direction. Roland was looking at Alain with a faint smile on his lips, but his eyes were ruthless and distant it was Roland's over-the-horizon look. Alain wondered if Susan Delgado had seen that expression yet, and if she had, what she made of it.
"I trust you." By now Alain was so confused that he didn't know for Mire if that was a lie or the truth.
"Good. Then switch sides with me. My count is thirty-one, mind."
"Thirty-one," Alain agreed. He raised his hands, then dropped them hack to his thighs with a slap so sharp his normally stolid mount laid his cars back and jigged a bit under him. "Thirty-one."
"I think we may go back early today, if that's any satisfaction to you," Roland said, and rode away. Alain watched him. He'd always wondered what went on in Roland's head, but never more than now.
5
Creak. Creak-creak.
Here was what he'd been listening for, and just as Jonas was about to give up the hunt. He had expected to find their hidey-hole a little closer to their beds, but they were trig, all right.
He went to one knee and used the blade of his knife to pry up the board which had creaked. Under it were three bundles, each swaddled in dark strips of cotton cloth. These strips were damp to the touch and smelled fragrantly of gun-oil. Jonas took the bundles out and unwrapped each, curious to see what sort of calibers the youngsters had brought. The answer turned out to be serviceable but undistinguished. Two of the bundles contained single five-shot revolvers of a type then called (for no reason I know) "carvers." The third contained two guns, six-shooters of higher quality than the carvers. In fact, for one heart-stopping moment, Jonas thought he had found the big revolvers of a gunslinger - true-blue steel barrels, sandalwood grips, bores like mineshafts. Such guns he could not have left, no matter what the cost to his plans. Seeing the plain grips was thus something of a relief. Disappointment was never a thing you looked for, but it had a wonderful way of clearing the mind.
He rewrapped the guns and put them back, put the board back as well. A gang of ne'er-do-well clots from town might possibly come out here, and might possibly vandalize the unguarded bunkhouse, scattering what they didn't tear up, but find a hiding place such as this? No, my son. Not likely.
Do you really think they'll believe it was hooligans from town that did this?
They might; just because he had underestimated them to start with didn't mean he should turn about-face and begin overestimating them now. And he had the luxury of not needing to care. Either way, it would make them angry. Angry enough to rush full-tilt around their Hillock, perhaps. To throw caution to the wind . . . and reap the whirlwind.
Jonas poked the end of the severed dog's tail into one of the pigeon-cages, so it stuck up like a huge, mocking feather. He used the paint to write such charmingly boyish slogans as
and
on the walls. Then he left, standing on the porch for a moment to verify he still had the Bar K to himself. Of course he did. Yet for a blink or two, there at the end, he'd felt uneasy - almost as though he'd been scented. By some sort of In-World telepathy, mayhap.
There is such; you know it. The touch, it's called.
Aye, but that was the tool of gunslingers, artists, and lunatics. Not of boys, be they lords or just lads.
Jonas went back to his horse at a near-trot nevertheless, mounted, and rode toward town. Things were reaching the boil, and there would be a lot to do before Demon Moon rose full in the sky.
6
Rhea's hut, its stone walls and the cracked guijarros of its roof slimed with moss, huddled on the last hill of the Coos. Beyond it was a magnificent view northwest - the Bad Grass, the desert, Hanging Rock, Eyebolt Canyon - but scenic vistas were the last thing on Sheemie's mind as he led Capriccioso cautiously into Rhea's yard not long after noon. He'd been hungry for the last hour or so, but now the pangs were gone. He hated this place worse than any other in Barony, even more than Citgo with its big towers always going creakedy-creak and clangety-clang.
"Sai?" he called, leading the mule into the yard. Capi balked as they neared the hut, planting his feet and lowering his neck, but when Sheemie tugged the halter, he came on again. Sheemie was almost sorry.
"Ma'am? Nice old lady that wouldn't hurt a fly? You therey-air? It's good old Sheemie with your graf." He smiled and held out his free hand, palm up, to demonstrate his exquisite harmlessness, but from the hut there was still no response. Sheemie felt his guts first coil, then cramp. For a moment he thought he was going to shit in his pants just like a babby; then he passed wind and felt a little better. In his bowels, at least.
He walked on, liking this less at every step. The yard was rocky and the straggling weeds yellowish, as if the hut's resident had blighted the very earth with her touch. There was a garden, and Sheemie saw that the vegetables still in it - pumpkins and sharproot, mostly - were muties. Then he noticed the garden's stuffy-guy. It was also a mutie, a nasty thing with two straw heads instead of one and what appeared to be a stuffed hand in a woman's satin glove poking out of the chest area.
Sai Thorin'll never talk me up here again, he thought. Not for all the pennies in the world.
The hut's door stood open. To Sheemie it looked like a gaping mouth. A sickish dank smell drifted out.
Sheemie stopped about fifteen paces from the house, and when Capi nuzzled his bottom (as if to ask what was keeping them), the boy uttered a brief screech. The sound of it almost set him running, and it was only by exercising all his willpower that he was able to stand his ground. The day was bright, but up here on this hill, the sun seemed meaningless. This wasn't his first trip up here, and Rhea's hill had never been pleasant, but it was somehow worse now. It made him feel the way the sound of the thinny made him feel when he woke and heard it in the middle of the night. As if something awful was sliding toward him - something that was all insane eyes and red, reaching claws.
"S-S-Sai? Is anyone here? Is - "
"Come closer." The voice drifted out of the open door. "Come to where I can see you, idiot boy."
Trying not to moan or cry, Sheemie did as the voice said. He had an idea that he was never going back down the hill again. Capriccioso, perhaps, but not him. Poor old Sheemie was going to end up in the cookpot - hot dinner tonight, soup tomorrow, cold snacks until Year's End. That's what he would be.
He made his reluctant way to Rhea's stoop on rubbery legs - if his knees had been closer together, they would have knocked like castanets. She didn't even sound the same.
"S-Sai? I'm afraid. So I a-a-am."
"So ye should be," the voice said. It drifted and drifted, slipping out into the sunlight like a sick puff of smoke. "Never mind, though - just do as I say. Come closer, Sheemie, son of Stanley."
Sheemie did so, although terror dragged at every step he took. The mule followed, head down. Capi had honked like a goose all the way up here - honked ceaselessly - but now he had fallen silent.
"So here ye be," the voice buried in those shadows whispered. "Here ye be, indeed."
She stepped into the sunlight falling through the open door, wincing for a moment as it dazzled her eyes. Clasped in her arms was the empty graf barrel. Coiled around her throat like a necklace was Ermot.
Sheemie had seen the snake before, and on previous occasions had never failed to wonder what sort of agonies he might suffer before he died if he happened to be bitten by such. Today he had no such thoughts. Compared to Rhea, Ermot looked normal. The old woman's face had sunken at the cheeks, giving the rest of her head the look of a skull. Brown spots swarmed out of her thin hair and over her bulging brow like an army of invading insects. Below her left eye was an open sore, and her grin showed only a few remaining teeth.
"Don't like the way I look, do'ee?" she asked. "Makes yer heart cold, don't it?"
"N-No," Sheemie said, and then, because that didn't sound right: "I mean yes!" But gods, that sounded even worse. "You're beautiful, sai!" he blurted.
She chuffed nearly soundless laughter and thrust the empty tun into his arms almost hard enough to knock him on his ass. The touch of her fingers was brief, but long enough to make his flesh crawl.
"Well-a-day. They say handsome is as handsome does, don't they?
And that suits me. Aye, right down to the ground. Bring me my graf, idiot child."
"Y-yes, sai! Right away, sai!" He took the empty tun back to the mule, set it down, then fumbled loose the cordage holding the little barrel of graf . He was very aware of her watching him, and it made him clumsy, hut finally he got the barrel loose. It almost slid through his grasp, and there was a nightmarish moment when he thought it would fall to the stony ground and smash, but he caught his grip again at the last second. He took it to her, had just a second to realize she was no longer wearing the snake, then felt it crawling on his boots. Ermot looked up at him, hissing and baring a double set of fangs in an eerie grin.
"Don't move too fast, my boy. 'Twouldn't be wise - Ermot's grumpy today. Set the barrel just inside the door, here. It's too heavy for me. Missed a few meals of late, I have."
Sheemie bent from the waist (bow yer best bow, Sai Thorin had said, and here he was, doing just that), grimacing, not daring to ease the pressure on his back by moving his feet because the snake was still on them. When he straightened, Rhea was holding out an old and stained envelope. The flap had been sealed with a blob of red wax. Sheemie dreaded to think what might have been rendered down to make wax such as that.
"Take this and give it to Cordelia Delgado. Do ye know her?"
"A-Aye," Sheemie managed. "Susan-sai's auntie."
"That's right." Sheemie reached tentatively for the envelope, but she held it back a moment. "Can't read, can ye, idiot boy?"
"Nay. Words 'n letters go right out of my head."
"Good. Mind ye show this to no one who can, or some night ye'll find Ermot waiting under yer pillow. I see far, Sheemie, d'ye mark me? I see far"
It was just an envelope, but it felt heavy and somehow dreadful in Sheemie's fingers, as if it were made out of human skin instead of paper. And what sort of letter could Rhea be sending Cordelia Delgado, anyway? Sheemie thought back to the day he'd seen sai Delgado's face all covered with cobwebbies, and shivered. The horrid creature lurking before him in the doorway of her hut could have been the very creature who'd spun those webs.
"Lose it and I'll know," Rhea whispered. "Show my business to another, and I'll know. Remember, son of Stanley, I see far."
"I'll be careful, sai." It might be better if he did lose the envelope, but he wouldn't. Sheemie was dim in the head, everyone said so, but not so dim that he didn't understand why he had been called up here: not to deliver a barrel ofgraf, but to receive this letter and pass it on.
"Would ye care to come in for a bit?" she whispered, and then pointed a ringer at his crotch. "If I give ye a little bit of mushroom to eat - special to me, it is - I can look like anyone ye fancy."
"Oh, I can't," he said, clutching his trousers and smiling a huge broad smile that felt like a scream trying to get out of his skin. "That pesky thing fell off last week, that did."
For a moment Rhea only gawped at him, genuinely surprised for one of the few times in her life, and then she once more broke out in chuffing bursts of laughter. She held her stomach in her waxy hands and rocked back and forth with glee. Ermot, startled, streaked into the house on his lengthy green belly. From somewhere in its depths, her cat hissed at it.
"Go on," Rhea said, still laughing. She leaned forward and dropped three or four pennies into his shirt pocket. "Get out of here, ye great galoophus! Don't ye linger, either, looking at flowers!"
"No, sai - "
Before he could say more, the door clapped to so hard that dust puffed out of the cracks between the boards.
7
Roland surprised Cuthbert by suggesting at two o' the clock that they go back to the Bar K. When Bert asked why, Roland only shrugged and would say nothing more. Bert looked at Alain and saw a queer, musing expression on the boy's face.
As they drew closer to the bunkhouse, a sense of foreboding filled Cuthbert. They topped a rise, and looked down at the Bar K. The bunk-house door stood open.
"Roland!" Alain cried. He was pointing to the cottonwood grove where the ranch's spring was. Their clothes, neatly hung to dry when they left, were now scattered hell-to-breakfast.
Cuthbert dismounted and ran to them. Picked up a shirt, sniffed it, flung it away. "Pissed on!" he cried indignantly.
"Come on," Roland said. "Let's look at the damage."
8
There was a lot of damage to look at. As you expected, Cuthbert thought, gazing at Roland. Then he turned to Alain, who appeared gloomy but not really surprised. As you both expected.
Roland bent toward one of the dead pigeons, and plucked at something so fine Cuthbert at first couldn't see what it was. Then he straightened up and held it out to his friends. A single hair. Very long, very white. He opened the pinch of his thumb and forefinger and let it waft to the floor. There it lay amid the shredded remains of Cuthbert Allgood's mother and father.
"If you knew that old corbie was here, why didn't we come back and end his breath?" Cuthbert heard himself ask.
"Because the time was wrong," Roland said mildly.
"He would have done it, had it been one of us in his place, destroying his things."
"We're not like him," Roland said mildly.
"I'm going to find him and blow his teeth out the back of his head."
"Not at all," Roland said mildly.
If Bert had to listen to one more mild word from Roland's mouth, he would run mad. All thoughts of fellowship and ka-tet left his mind, which sank back into his body and was at once obliterated by simple red fury. Jonas had been here. Jonas had pissed on their clothes, called Alain's mother a cunt, torn up their most treasured pictures, painted childish obscenities on their walls, killed their pigeons. Roland had known . . . done nothing . . . intended to continue doing nothing. Except fuck his gilly-girl. He would do plenty of that, aye, because now that was all he cared about.
But she won't like the look of your face the next time you climb into the saddle, Cuthbert thought. I'll see to that.
He drew back his fist. Alain caught his wrist. Roland turned away and began picking up scattered blankets, as if Cuthbert's furious face and cocked fist were simply of no account to him.
Cuthbert balled up his other fist, meaning to make Alain let go of him, one way or the other, but the sight of his friend's round and honest face, so guileless and dismayed, quieted his rage a little. His argument wasn't with Alain. Cuthbert was sure the other boy had known something bad was happening here, but he was also sure that Roland had insisted Alain do nothing until Jonas was gone.
"Come with me," Alain muttered, slinging an arm around Bert's shoulders. "Outside. For your father's sake, come. You have to cool off. This is no time to be fighting among ourselves."
"It's no time for our leader's brains to drain down into his prick, either," Cuthbert said, making no effort to lower his voice. But the second time Alain tugged him, Bert allowed himself to be led toward the door.
I'll stay my rage at him this one last time, he thought, but I think - I know - that is all I can manage. I'll have Alain tell him so.
The idea of using Alain as a go-between to his best friend - of knowing that things had come to such a pass - filled Cuthbert with an angry, despairing rage, and at the door to the porch he turned back to Roland. "She has made you a coward, " he said in the High Speech. Beside him, Alain drew in his breath sharply.
Roland stopped as if suddenly turned to stone, his back to them, his arms full of blankets. In that moment Cuthbert was sure Roland would turn and rush toward him. They would fight, likely until one of them was dead or blind or unconscious. Likely that one would be him, but he no longer cared.
But Roland never turned. Instead, in the same speech, he said: "He came to steal our guile and our caution. With you, he has succeeded. "
"No," Cuthbert said, lapsing back into the low speech. "I know that part of you really believes that, but it's not so. The truth is, you've lost your compass. You've called your carelessness love and made a virtue of irresponsibility. I - "
"For gods' sake, come!" Alain nearly snarled, and yanked him out the door.
9
With Roland out of sight, Cuthbert felt his rage veering toward Alain in spite of himself; it turned like a weathervane when the wind shifts. The two of them stood facing each other in the sunshiny dooryard, Alain looking unhappy and distracted, Cuthbert with his hands knotted into fists so tight they trembled at his sides.
"Why do you always excuse him? Why?"
"Out on the Drop, he asked if I trusted him. I said I did. And I do."
"Then you're a fool."
"And he's a gunslinger. It he says we must wait longer, we must."
"He's a gunslinger by accident! A freak! A mutie!"
Alain stared at him in silent shock.
"Come with me, Alain. It's time to end this mad game. We'll find Jonas and kill him. Our ka-tet is broken. We'll make a new one, you and I."
"It's not broken. If it does break, it'll be you responsible. And for that I'll never forgive you."
Now it was Cuthbert's turn to be silent.
"Go for a ride, why don't you? A long one. Give yourself time to cool off. So much depends on our fellowship - "
"Tell him that!"
"No, I'm telling you. Jonas wrote a foul word about my mother. Don't you think I'd go with you just to avenge that, if I didn't think that Roland was right? That it's what Jonas wants? For us to lose our wits and come charging blindly around our Hillock?"
"That's right, but it's wrong, too," Cuthbert said. Yet his hands were slowly unrolling, fists becoming fingers again. "You don't see and I don't have the words to explain. If I say that Susan has poisoned the well of our ka-tet, you would call me jealous. Yet I think she has, all unknowing and unmeaning. She's poisoned his mind, and the door to hell has opened. Roland feels the heat from that open door and thinks it's only his feeling for her . . . but we must do better, Al. We must think better. For him as well as for ourselves and our fathers."
"Are you calling her our enemy?"
"No! It would be easier if she was." He took a deep breath, let it out, took another, let it out, took a third and let it out. With each one he felt a little saner, a little more himself. "Never mind. There's no more to say on't for now. Your advice is good - I think I will take a ride. A long one."
Bert started toward his horse, then turned back.
"Tell him he's wrong. Tell him that even if he's right about waiting, he's right for the wrong reasons, and that makes him all the way wrong." He hesitated. "Tell him what I said about the door to hell. Say that's my piece of the touch. Will you tell him?"
"Yes. Stay away from Jonas, Bert."
Cuthbert mounted up. "I promise nothing."
"You're not a man." Alain sounded sorrowful; on the point of tears, in fact. "None of us are men."
"You better be wrong about that," Cuthbert said, "because men's work is coming."
He turned his mount and rode away at a gallop.
10
He went far up the Seacoast Road, to begin with trying not to think at all. He'd found that sometimes unexpected things wandered into your head if you left the door open for them. Useful things, often.
This afternoon that didn't happen. Confused, miserable, and without a fresh idea in his head (or even the hope of one), Bert at last turned back to Hambry. He rode the High Street from end to end, waving or speaking to people who hiled him. The three of them had met a lot of good people here. Some he counted as friends, and he rather felt the common folk of Hambrytown had adopted them - young fellows who were far from their own homes and families. And the more Bert knew and saw of these common folk, the less he suspected that they were a part of Rimer's and Jonas's nasty little game. Why else had the Good Man chosen Hambry in the first place, if not because it provided such excellent cover?
There were plenty of folk out today. The farmers' market was booming, the street-stalls were crowded, children were laughing at a Pinch and Jilly show (Jilly was currently chasing Pinch back and forth and bashing the poor old longsuffering fellow with her broom), and the Reaping Fair decorations were going forward at speed. Yet Cuthbert felt only a little joy and anticipation at the thought of the Fair. Because it wasn't his own, wasn't Gilead Reaping? Perhaps . . . but mostly just because his mind and heart were so heavy. If this was what growing up was like, he thought he could have skipped the experience.
He rode on out of town, the ocean now at his back, the sun full in his face, his shadow growing ever longer behind him. He thought he'd soon veer off the Great Road and ride across the Drop to the Bar K. But before he could, here came his old friend, Sheemie, leading a mule. Sheemie's head was down, his shoulders slumped, his pink 'brera askew, his boots dusty. To Cuthbert he looked as though he had walked all the way from the tip of the earth.
"Sheemie!" Cuthbert cried, already anticipating the boy's cheery grin and loony patter. "Long days and pleasant nights! How are y - "
Sheemie lifted his head, and as the brim of his sombrero came up, Cuthbert fell silent. He saw the dreadful fear on the boy's face - the pale checks, the haunted eyes, the trembling mouth.
11
Sheemie could have been at the Delgado place two hours ago, if he'd wanted, but he had trudged along at a turtle's pace, the letter inside his shirt seeming to drag at his every step. It was awful, so awful. He couldn't even think about it, because his thinker was mostly broken, so it was.
Cuthbert was off his horse in a flash, and hurrying to Sheemie. He put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "What's wrong? Tell your old pal. He won't laugh, not a bit."
At the sound of "Arthur Heath's" kind voice and the sight of his concerned face, Sheemie began to weep. Rhea's strict command that he should tell no one flew out of his head. Still sobbing, he recounted everything that had happened since that morning. Twice Cuthbert had to ask him to slow down, and when Bert led the boy to a tree in whose shade the two of them sat together, Sheemie was finally able to do so. Cuthbert listened with growing unease. At the end of his tale, Sheemie produced an envelope from inside his shirt.
Cuthbert broke the seal and read what was inside, his eyes growing large.
12
Roy Depape was waiting for him at the Travellers' Rest when Jonas returned in good spirits from his trip to the Bar K. An outrider had finally shown up, Depape announced, and Jonas's spirits rose another notch. Only Roy didn't look as happy about it as Jonas would have expected. Not happy at all.
"Fellow's gone on to Seafront, where I guess he's expected," Depape said. "He wants you right away. I wouldn't linger here to eat, not even a popkin, if I were you. I wouldn't take a drink, either. You'll want a clear head to deal with this one."
"Free with your advice today, ain't you, Roy?" Jonas said. He spoke in a heavily sarcastic tone, but when Pettie brought him a tot of whiskey, he sent it back and asked for water instead. Roy had a bit of a look to him, Jonas decided. Too pale by half, was good old Roy. And when Sheb sat down at his piano-bench and struck a chord, Depape jerked in that direction, one hand dropping to the butt of his gun. Interesting. And a little disquieting.
"Spill it, son - what's got your back hair up?"
Roy shook his head sullenly. "Don't rightly know."
"What's this fellow's name?"
"I didn't ask, he didn't say. He showed me Farson's sigul, though. You know." Depape lowered his voice a little. "The eye."
Jonas knew, all right. He hated that wide-open staring eye, couldn't imagine what had possessed Farson to pick it in the first place. Why not a mailed fist? Crossed swords? Or a bird? A falcon, for instance - a falcon would have made a fine sigul. But that eye -
"All right," he said, finishing the glass of water. It went down better than whiskey would have done, anyway - dry as a bone, he'd been. "I'll find out the rest for myself, shall I?"
As he reached the batwing doors and pushed them open, Depape called his name. Jonas turned back.
"He looks like other people," Depape said. "What do you mean?"
"I don't hardly know." Depape looked embarrassed and bewildered... but dogged, too. Sticking to his guns. "We only talked five minutes in all, but once I looked at him and thought it was the old bastard from Ritzy - the one I shot. Little bit later I th'ow him a glance and think, 'Hellfire, it's my old pa standin there.' Then that went by, too, and he looked like himself again."
"And how's that?"
"You'll see for yourself, I reckon. I don't know if you'll like it much, though."
Jonas stood with one batwing pushed open, thinking. "Roy, 'twasn't Farson himself, was it? The Good Man in some sort of disguise?" Depape hesitated, frowning, and then shook his head. "No." "Are you sure? We only saw him the once, remember, and not close-to." Latigo had pointed him out. Sixteen months ago that had been, give or take.
"I'm sure. You remember how big he was?"
Jonas nodded. Farson was no Lord Perth, but he was six feet or more, and broad across at both brace and basket.