1
While a certain whore and certain bartender were still gaping up at the bloody moon, Kimba Rimer awoke sneezing.
Damn, a cold for Reaping, he thought. As much as I have to be out over the next two days, I'll be lucky if it doesn't turn into -
Something fluffed the end of his nose, and he sneezed again. Coming out of his narrow chest and dry slot of a mouth, it sounded like a small-caliber pistol-shot in the black room.
"Who's there?" he cried.
No answer. Rimer suddenly imagined a bird, something nasty and bad-tempered, that had gotten in here in daylight and was now flying around in the dark, fluttering against his face as he slept. His skin crawled - birds, bugs, bats, he hated them all - and he fumbled so energetically for the gas-lamp on the table by his bed that he almost knocked it off onto the floor.
As he drew it toward him, that flutter came again. This time puffing at his cheek. Rimer screamed and recoiled against the pillows, clutching the lamp to his chest. He turned the switch on the side, heard the hiss of gas, then pushed the spark. The lamp lit, and in the thin circle of its radiance, he saw not a fluttering bird but Clay Reynolds sitting on the edge of the bed. In one hand Reynolds held the feather with which he had been tickling Mejia's Chancellor. His other was hidden in his cloak, which lay in his lap.
Reynolds had disliked Rimer from their first meeting in the woods far west of town - those same woods, beyond Eyebolt Canyon, where Far-son's man Latigo now quartered the main contingent of his troops. It had been a windy night, and as he and the other Coffin Hunters entered the little glade where Rimer, accompanied by Lengyll and Croydon, were sitting by a small fire, Reynolds's cloak swirled around him. "Sai Manto," Rimer had said, and the other two had laughed. It had been meant as a harmless joke, but it hadn't seemed harmless to Reynolds. In many of the lands where he had travelled, manto meant not "cloak" but "leaner" or "bender." It was, in fact, a slang term for homosexual. That Rimer (a provincial man under his veneer of cynical sophistication) didn't know this never crossed Reynolds's mind. He knew when people were making small of him, and if he could make such a person pay, he did so.
For Kimba Rimer, payday had come.
"Reynolds? What are you doing? How did you get in h - "
"You got to be thinking of the wrong cowboy," the man sitting on the bed replied. "No Reynolds here. Just Senor Manto." He took out the hand which had been under his cloak. In it was a keenly honed cuchillo. Reynolds had purchased it in Low Market with this chore in mind. He raised it now and drove the twelve-inch blade into Rimer's chest. It went all the way through, pinning him like a bug. A bedbug, Reynolds thought.
The lamp fell out of Rimer's hands and rolled off the bed. It landed on the foot-runner, but did not break. On the far wall was Kimba Rimer's distorted, struggling shadow. The shadow of the other man bent over it like a hungry vulture.
Reynolds lifted the hand which had held the knife. He turned it so the small blue tattooed coffin between thumb and forefinger was in front of Rimer's eyes. He wanted it to be the last thing Rimer saw on this side of the clearing.
"Let's hear you make fun of me now," Reynolds said. He smiled. "Come on. Let's just hear you."
2
Shortly before five o'clock, Mayor Thorin woke from a terrible dream. In it, a bird with pink eyes had been cruising slowly back and forth above the Barony. Wherever its shadow fell, the grass turned yellow, the leaves fell shocked from the trees, and the crops died. The shadow was turning his green and pleasant Barony into a waste land. It may be my Barony, but it's my bird, too, he thought just before awakening, huddled into a shuddery ball on one side of his bed. My bird, I brought it here, I let it out of its cage. There would be no more sleep for him this night, and Thorin knew it. He poured himself a glass of water, drank it, then walked into his study, absently picking his nightgown from the cleft of his bony old ass as he went. The puff on the end of his nightcap bobbed between his shoulder blades; his knees cracked at every step.
As for the guilty feelings expressed by the dream . . . well, what was done was done. Jonas and his friends would have what they'd come for (and paid so handsomely for) in another day; a day after that, they'd be gone. Fly away, bird with the pink eyes and pestilent shadow; fly away to wherever you came from and take the Big Coffin Boys with you. He had an idea that by Year's End he'd be too busy dipping his wick to think much about such things. Or to dream such dreams.
Besides, dreams without visible sign were just dreams, not omens.
The visible sign might have been the boots beneath the study drapes - just the scuffed tips of them showing - but Thorin never looked in that direction. His eyes were fixed on the bottle beside his favorite chair. Drinking claret at five in the morning was no sort of habit to get into, but this once wouldn't hurt. He'd had a terrible dream, for gods' sake, and after all -
"Tomorrow's Reaping," he said, sitting in the wing-chair on the edge of the hearth. "I guess a man can jump a fence or two, come Reap."
He poured himself a drink, the last he'd ever take in this world, and coughed as the fire hit his belly and then climbed back up his throat, warming it. Better, aye, much. No giant birds now, no plaguey shadows. He stretched out his arms, laced his long and bony fingers together, and cracked them viciously.
"I hate it when you do that, you scrawny git," spoke a voice directly into Thorin's left ear.
Thorin jumped. His heart took its own tremendous leap in his chest. The empty glass flew from his hand, and there was no foot-runner to cushion its landing. It smashed on the hearth.
Before Thorin could scream, Roy Depape brushed off the mayoral nightcap, seized the gauzy remains of the mayoral mane, and yanked the mayoral head back. The knife Depape held in his other hand was much humbler than the one Reynolds had used, but it cut the old man's throat efficiently enough. Blood sprayed scarlet in the dim room. Depape let go of Thorin's hair, went back to the drapes he had been hiding behind, and picked something up off the floor. It was Cuthbert's lookout. Depape brought it back to the chair and put it in the dying Mayor's lap.
"Bird . .." Thorin gargled through a mouthful of blood. "Bird!"
"Yar, old fella, and trig o' you to notice at a time like this, I will say." Depape pulled Thorin's head back again and took the old man's eyes out with two quick flips of his knife. One went into the dead fireplace; the other hit the wall and slid down behind the fire-tools. Thorin's right foot trembled briefly and was still.
One more job to do.
Depape looked around, saw Thorin's nightcap, and decided the ball on the end would serve. He picked it up, dipped it in the puddle of blood in the Mayor's lap, and drew the Good Man's sigul -
- on the wall.
"There," he murmured, standing back. "If that don't finish em, nothing on earth will."
True enough. The only question left unanswered was whether or not Roland's ka-tet could be taken alive.
3
Jonas had told Fran Lengyll exactly where to place his men, two inside the stable and six more out, three of these latter gents hidden behind rusty old implements, two hidden in the burnt-out remains of the home place, one - Dave Hollis - crouched on top of the stable itself, spying over the roofpeak. Lengyll was glad to see that the men in the posse took their job seriously. They were only boys, it was true, but boys who had on one occasion come off ahead of the Big Coffin Hunters.
Sheriff Avery gave a fair impression of being in charge of things until they got within a good shout of the Bar K. Then Lengyll, machine-gun slung over one shoulder (and as straight-hacked in the saddle as he had been at twenty), took command. Avery, who looked nervous and sounded out of breath, seemed relieved rather than offended.
"I'll tell ye where to go as was (old to me, for it's a good plan, and I've no quarrel with it," Lengyll had told his posse. In the dark, their faces were little more than dim blurs. "Only one thing I'll say to ye on my own hook. We don't need em alive, but it's best we have em so - it's the Barony we want to put paid to em, the common folk, and so put paid to this whole business, as well. Shut the door on it, if ye will. So I say this: if there's cause to shoot, shoot. But I'll flay the skin off the face of any man who shoots without cause. Do ye understand?"
No response. It seemed they did.
"All right," Lengyll had said. His face was stony. "I'll give ye a minute to make sure your gear's muffled, and then on we go. Not another' word from here on out."
4
Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain came out of the bunkhouse at quarter past six that morning, and stood a-row on the porch. Alain was finishing his coffee. Cuthbert was yawning and stretching. Roland was buttoning his shirt and looking southwest, toward the Bad Grass. He was thinking not of ambushes but of Susan. Her tears. Greedy old ka, how I hate it, she had said.
His instincts did not awake; Alain's touch, which had sensed Jonas on the day Jonas had killed the pigeons, did not so much as quiver. As for Cuthbert -
"One more day of quiet!" that worthy exclaimed to the dawning sky. "One more day of grace! One more day of silence, broken only by the lover's sigh and the tattoo of horses' hoofs!"
"One more day of your bullshit," Alain said. "Come on."
They set off across the dooryard, sensing the eight pairs of eyes on them not at all. They walked into the stable past the two men flanking the door, one hidden behind an ancient harrow, the other tucked behind an untidy stack of hay, both with guns drawn.
Only Rusher sensed something was wrong. He stamped his feet, rolled his eyes, and, as Roland backed him out of his stall, tried to rear.
"Hey, boy," he said, and looked around. "Spiders, I reckon. He hates them."
Outside, Lengyll stood up and waved both hands forward. Men moved silently toward the front of the stable. On the roof, Dave Hollis stood with his gun drawn. His monocle was tucked away in his vest pocket, so it should blink no badly timed reflection.
Cuthbert led his mount out of the stable. Alain followed. Roland came last, short-leading the nervous, prancy gelding.
"Look," Cuthbert said cheerily, still unaware of the men standing directly behind him and his friends. He was pointing north. "A cloud in the shape of a bear! Good luck for - "
"Don't move, cullies," Fran Lengyll called. "Don't so much as shuffle yer god-pounding feet."
Alain did begin to turn - in startlement more than anything else - and there was a ripple of small clicking sounds, like many dry twigs all snapping at once. The sound of cocking pistols and musketoons.
"No, Al!" Roland said. "Don't move! Don't!" In his throat despair rose like poison, and tears of rage stung at the comers of his eyes ... yet he stood quiet. Cuthbert and Alain must stand quiet, too. If they moved, they'd be killed. "Don't move!" he called again. "Either of you!"
"Wise, cully." Lengyll's voice was closer now, and accompanied by several pairs of footfalls. "Put yer hands behind ye."
Two shadows flanked Roland, long in the first light. Judging by the bulk of the one on his left, he guessed it was being thrown by Sheriff Avery. He probably wouldn't be offering them any white tea this day. Lengyll would belong to the other shadow.
"Hurry up, Dearborn, or whatever yer name may be. Get em behind ye. Small of yer back. There's guns pointed at your pards, and if we end up taking in only two of yer instead of three, life'll go on."
Not taking any chances with us, Roland thought, and felt a moment of perverse pride. With it came a taste of something that was almost amusement. Bitter, though; that taste continued very bitter.
"Roland!" It was Cuthbert, and there was agony in his voice. "Roland, don't!"
But there was no choice. Roland put his hands behind his back. Rusher uttered a small, reproving whinny as if to say all this was highly improper - and trotted away to stand beside the bunkhouse porch.
"You're going to feel metal on your wrists," Lengyll said. "Esposas. "
Two cold circles slipped over Roland's hands. I here was a click and suddenly the arcs of the handcuffs were tight against his wrists.
"All right," said another voice. "Now you, son,"
"Be damned if I will!" Cuthbert's voice wavered on the edge of hysteria
There was a thud and a muffled cry of pain. Roland turned around and saw Alain down on one knee, the heel of his left hand pressed against his forehead. Blood ran down his face.
"Ye want me to deal him another 'un?" Jake White asked. He had an old pistol in his hand, reversed so the butt was forward. "I can, you know; my arm is feeling wery limber for this early in the day."
"No!" Cuthbert was twitching with horror and something like grief. Ranged behind him were three armed men, looking on with nervous avidity.
"Then be a good boy an' get yer hands behind yer."
Cuthbert, still fighting tears, did as he was told. Esposas were put on him by Deputy Bridger. The other two men yanked Alain to his feet. He reeled a little, then stood firm as he was handcuffed. His eyes met Roland's, and Al tried to smile. In some ways it was the worst moment of that terrible ambush morning. Roland nodded back and made himself a promise: he would never be taken like this again, not if he lived to be a thousand years old.
Lengyll was wearing a trailscarf instead of a string tie this morning, but Roland thought he was inside the same box-tail coat he'd worn to the Mayor's welcoming party, all those weeks ago. Standing beside him, puffing with excitement, anxiety, and self-importance, was Sheriff Avery.
"Boys," the Sheriff said, "ye're arrested for transgressing the Barony. The specific charges are treason and murder."
"Who did we murder?" Alain asked mildly, and one of the posse uttered a laugh either shocked or cynical, Roland couldn't tell which.
"The Mayor and his Chancellor, as ye know quite well," Avery said. "Now - "
"How can you do this?" Roland asked curiously. It was Lengyll to whom he spoke. "Mejis is your home place; I've seen the line of your fathers in the town cemetery. How can you do this to your home place, sai Lengyll?"
"I've no intention of standing out here and making palaver with ye," Lengyll said. He glanced over Roland's shoulder. "Alvarez! Get his horse! Boys as trig as this bunch should have no problem riding with their hands behind their - "
"No, tell me," Roland interposed. "Don't hold back, sai Lengyll - these are your friends you've come with, and not a one who isn't inside your circle. How can you do it? Would you rape your own mother if you came upon her sleeping with her dress up?"
Lengyll's mouth twitched - not with shame or embarrassment but momentary prudish distaste, and then the old rancher looked at Avery. "They teach em to talk pretty in Gilead, don't they?"
Avery had a rifle. Now he stepped toward the handcuffed gunslinger with the butt raised. "I'll teach 'im how to talk proper to a man of the gentry, so I will! Knock the teef straight out of his head, if you say aye, Fran!"
Lengyll held him back, looking tired. "Don't be a fool. I don't want to bring him back laying over a saddle unless he's dead."
Avery lowered his gun. Lengyll turned to Roland.
"Ye're not going to live long enough to profit from advice, Dearborn," he said, "but I'll give'ee some, anyway: stick with the winners in this world. And know how the wind blows, so ye can tell when it changes direction."
"You've forgotten the face of your father, you scurrying little maggot," Cuthbert said clearly.
This got to Lengyll in a way Roland's remark about his mother had not - it showed in the sudden bloom of color in his weathered cheeks.
"Get em mounted!" he said. "I want em locked up tight within the hour!"
5
Roland was boosted into Rusher's saddle so hard he almost flew off on the other side - would have, if Dave Hollis had not been there to steady him and then to wedge Roland's boot into the stirrup. Dave offered the gunslinger a nervous, half-embarrassed smile.
"I'm sorry to see you here," Roland said gravely.
"It's sorry I am to be here," the deputy said. "If murder was your business, I wish you'd gotten to it sooner. And your friend shouldn't have been so arrogant as to leave his calling-card." He nodded toward Cuthbert.
Roland hadn't the slightest idea what Deputy Dave was referring to, but it didn't matter. It was just part of the frame, and none of these men believed much of it, Dave likely included. Although, Roland supposed, they would come to believe it in later years and tell it to their children and grandchildren as gospel. The glorious day they'd ridden with the posse and taken down the traitors.
The gunslinger used his knees to turn Rusher . . . and there, standing by the gate between the Bar K's dooryard and the lane leading to the Great Road, was Jonas himself. He sat astride a deep-chested bay, wearing a green felt drover's hat and an old gray duster. There was a rifle in the scabbard beside his right knee. The left side of the duster was pulled back to expose the butt of his revolver. Jonas's white hair, untied today, lay over his shoulders.
He doffed his hat and held it out to Roland in courtly greeting. "A good game," he said. "You played very well for someone who was taking his milk out of a tit not so long ago."
"Old man," Roland said, "you've lived too long."
Jonas smiled. "You'd remedy that if you could, wouldn't you? Yar, I reckon." He flicked his eyes at Lengyll. "Get their toys, Fran. Look specially sharp for knives. They've got guns, but not with em. Yet I know a bit more about those shooting irons than they might think. And funny boy's slingshot. Don't forget that, for gods' sake. He like to take Roy's head off with it not so long ago."
"Are you talking about the carrot-top?" Cuthbert asked. His horse was dancing under him; Bert swayed back and forth and from side to side like a circus rider to keep from tumbling off. "He never would have missed his head. His balls, maybe, but not his head."
"Probably true," Jonas agreed, watching as the spears and Roland's shortbow were taken into custody. The slingshot was on the back of Cuthbert's belt, tucked into a holster he had made for it himself. It was very well for Roy Depape that he hadn't tried Bert, Roland knew - Bert could take a bird on the wing at sixty yards. A pouch holding steel shot hung at the boy's left side. Bridger took it, as well.
While this was going on, Jonas fixed Roland with an amiable smile. "What's your real name, brat? Fess up - no harm in telling now; you're going to ride the handsome, and we both know it."
Roland said nothing. Lengyll looked at Jonas, eyebrows raised. Jonas shrugged, then jerked his head in the direction of town. Lengyll nodded and poked Roland with one hard, chapped finger. "Come on, boy. Let's ride."
Roland squeezed Rusher's sides; the horse trotted toward Jonas. And suddenly Roland knew something. As with all his best and truest intuitions, it came from nowhere and everywhere - absent at one second, all there and fully dressed at the next.
"Who sent you west, maggot?" he asked as he passed Jonas. "Couldn't have been Cort - you're too old. Was it his father?"
The look of slightly bored amusement left Jonas's face - flew from his face, as if slapped away. For one amazing moment the man with the white hair was a child again: shocked, shamed, and hurt.
"Yes, Cort's da - I see it in your eyes. And now you're here, on the Clean Sea ... except you're really in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west."
Jonas's gun was out and cocked in his hand with such speed that only Roland's extraordinary eyes were capable of marking the movement. There was a murmur from the men behind them - partly shock, mostly awe.
"Jonas, don't be a fool!" Lengyll snarled. "You ain't killin em after we took the time and risk to hood em and tie their hooks, are ye?"
Jonas seemed to take no notice. His eyes were wide; the comers of his seamed mouth were trembling. "Watch your words, Will Dearborn," he said in a low, hoarse voice. "You want to watch em ever so close. I got two pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger right this second."
"Fine, shoot me," Roland said. He lifted his head and looked down at Jonas. "Shoot, exile. Shoot, worm. Shoot, you failure. You'll still live in exile and die as you lived."
For a moment he was sure Jonas would shoot, and in that moment Roland felt death would be enough, an acceptable end after the shame of being caught so easily. In that moment Susan was absent from his mind. Nothing breathed in that moment, nothing called, nothing moved. The shadows of the men watching this confrontation, both on foot and on horseback, were printed depthless on the dirt.
Then Jonas dropped the hammer of his gun and slipped it back into its holster.
"Take em to town and jug em," he said to Lengyll. "And when I show up, I don't want to see one hair harmed on one head. If I could keep from killing this one, you can keep from hurting the rest. Now go on."
"Move," Lengyll said. His voice had lost some of its bluff authority. It was now the voice of a man who realizes (too late) that he has bought chips in a game where the stakes are likely much too high.
They rode. As they did, Roland turned one last time. The contempt Jonas saw in those cool young eyes stung him worse than the whips that had scarred his back in Garlan years ago.
6
When they were out of sight, Jonas went into the bunkhouse, pulled up the board which concealed their little armory, and found only two guns. The matched set of six-shooters with the dark handles - Dearborn's guns, surely - were gone.
You 're in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west. You'll live in exile and die as you lived.
Jonas's hands went to work, disassembling the revolvers Cuthbert and Alain had brought west. Alain's had never even been worn, save on the practice-range. Outside, Jonas threw the pieces, scattering them every which way. He threw as hard as he could, trying to rid himself of that cool blue gaze and the shock of hearing what he'd believed no man had known. Roy and Clay suspected, but even they hadn't known for sure.
Before the sun went down, everyone in Mejis would know that Eldred Jonas, the white-haired regulator with the tattooed coffin on his hand, was nothing but a failed gunslinger.
You'll live in exile and die as you lived.
"P'raps," he said, looking at the burned-out ranch house without really seeing it. "But I'll live longer than you, young Dearborn, and die long after your bones are rusting in the ground."
He mounted up and swung his horse around, sawing viciously at the reins. He rode for Citgo, where Roy and Clay would be waiting, and he rode hard, but Roland's eyes rode with him.
7
"Wake up! Wake up, sai! Wake up! Wake up!"
At first the words seemed to be coming from far away, drifting down by some magical means to the dark place where she lay. Even when the voice was joined by a rudely shaking hand and Susan knew she must wake up, it was a long, hard struggle.
It had been weeks since she'd gotten a decent night's sleep, and she had expected more of the same last night. . . especially last night. She had lain awake in her luxurious bedchamber at Seafront, tossing from side to side, possibilities - none good - crowding her mind. The nightgown she wore crept up to her hips and bunched at the small of her back. When she got up to use the commode, she took the hateful thing off, hurled it into a comer, and crawled back into bed naked.
Being out of the heavy silk nightgown had done the trick. She dropped off almost at once . . . and in this case, dropped off was, exactly right: it was less like falling asleep than falling into some thoughtless, dreamless crack in the earth.
Now this intruding voice. This intruding arm, shaking her so hard that her head rolled from side to side on the pillow. Susan tried to slide away from it, pulling her knees up to her chest and mouthing fuzzy protests, but the arm followed. The shaking recommenced; the nagging, calling voice never stopped.
"Wake up, sai! Wake up! In the name of the Turtle and the Bear, wake up!"
Maria's voice. Susan hadn't recognized it at first because Maria was so upset. Susan had never heard her so, or expected to. Yet it was so; the maid sounded on the verge of hysteria.
Susan sat up. For a moment so much input - all of it wrong - crashed in on her that she was incapable of moving. The duvet beneath which she had slept tumbled into her lap, exposing her breasts, and she could do no more than pluck weakly at it with the tips of her fingers.
The first wrong thing was the light. It flooded through the windows more strongly than it ever had before . . . because, she realized, she had never been in this room so late before. Gods, it had to be ten o' the clock, perhaps later.
The second wrong thing was the sounds from below. Mayor's House was ordinarily a peaceful place in the morning; until noon one heard little but casa vaqueros leading the horses out for their morning exercise, the whicker-whicker-whick of Miguel sweeping the courtyard, and the constant boom and shush of the waves. This morning there were shouts, curses, galloping horses, the occasional burst of strange, jagged laughter. Somewhere outside her room - perhaps not in this wing, but close - Susan heard the running thud of booted feet.
The wrongest thing of all was Maria herself, cheeks ashy beneath her olive skin-tone, and her usually neat hair tangled and unbound. Susan would have guessed only an earthquake could make her look so, if that.