The Wind Through the Keyhole Read online

  Next came a bit of time which needs no telling--a good thing, too, for some moments of joy are beyond description.

  You must give thy father's ax to her.

  Tim fumbled in his belt, brought the hand-ax from it, and placed it beside her on the bed. She looked at it--and saw it, a thing still marvelous to both of them--then touched the handle, which had been worn smooth by long years and much use. She raised her face to him questioningly.

  Tim could only shake his head, smiling. "The man who gave me the drops told me to give it to you. That's all I know."

  "Who, Tim? What man?"

  "That's a long story, and one that would go better with some breakfast."

  "Eggs!" she said, starting to rise. "At least a dozen! And the pork side from the cold pantry!"

  Still smiling, Tim gripped her shoulders and pushed her gently back to the pillow. "I can scramble eggs and fry meat. I'll even bring it to you." A thought occurred to him. "Sai Smack can eat with us. It's a wonder all the shouting didn't wake her."

  "She came when the wind began to blow, and was up all through the storm, feeding the fire," Nell said. "We thought the house would blow over, but it stood. She must be so tired. Wake her, Tim, but be gentle about it."

  Tim kissed his mother's cheek again and left the room. The Widow slept on in the dead man's chair by the fire, her chin upon her breast, too tired even to snore. Tim shook her gently by the shoulder. Her head jiggled and rolled, then fell back to its original position.

  Filled with a horrid certainty, Tim went around to the front of the chair. What he saw stole the strength from his legs and he collapsed to his knees. Her veil had been torn away. The ruin of a face once beautiful hung slack and dead. Her one remaining eye stared blankly at Tim. The bosom of her black dress was rusty with dried blood, for her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

  He drew in breath to scream, but was unable to let it out, for strong hands had closed around his throat.

  Bern Kells had stolen into the main room from the mudroom, where he had been sitting on his trunk and trying to remember why he had killed the old woman. He thought it was the fire. He had spent two nights shivering under a pile of hay in Deaf Rincon's barn, and this old kitty, she who had put all sorts of useless learning into his stepson's head, had been warm as toast the whole time. 'Twasn't right.

  He had watched the boy go into his mother's room. He had heard Nell's cries of joy, and each one was like a nail in his vitals. She had no right to cry out with anything but pain. She was the author of all his misery; had bewitched him with her high breasts, slim waist, long hair, and laughing eyes. He had believed her hold on his mind would lessen over the years, but it never had. Finally he simply had to have her. Why else would he have murdered his best and oldest friend?

  Now came the boy who had turned him into a hunted man. The bitch was bad and the whelp was worse. And what was that jammed into his belt? Was it a gun, by gods? Where had he gotten such a thing?

  Kells choked Tim until the boy's struggles began to weaken and he simply hung from the woodsman's strong hands, rasping. Then he plucked the gun from Tim's belt and tossed it aside.

  "A bullet's too good for a meddler such as you," Kells said. His mouth was against Tim's ear. Distantly--as if all sensation were retreating deep into his body--Tim felt his steppa's beard tickling his skin. "So's the knife I used to cut the diseased old bitch's throat. It's the fire for you, whelp. There's plenty of coals yet. Enough to fry your eyeballs and boil the skin from your--"

  There was a low, meaty sound, and suddenly the choking hands were gone. Tim turned, gasping in air that burned like fire.

  Kells stood beside Big Ross's chair, looking unbelievingly over Tim's head at the gray fieldstone chimney. Blood pattered down on the right sleeve of his flannel woodsman's shirt, which was still speckled with hay from his fugitive nights in Deaf Rincon's barn. Above his right ear, his head had grown an ax-handle. Nell Ross stood behind him, the front of her nightgown spattered with blood.

  Slowly, slowly, Big Kells shuffled around to face her. He touched the buried blade of the ax, and held his hand out to her, the palm full of blood.

  "I cut the rope so, chary man!" Nell screamed into his face, and as if the words rather than the ax had done it, Bern Kells collapsed dead on the floor.

  Tim put his hands to his face, as if to blot from sight and memory the thing he had just seen . . . although he knew even then it would be with him the rest of his life.

  Nell put her arms around him and led him out onto the porch. The morning was bright, the frost on the fields beginning to melt, a misty haze rising in the air.

  "Are you all right, Tim?" she asked.

  He drew in a deep breath. The air in his throat was still warm, but no longer burning. "Yes. Are you?"

  "I'll be fine," said she. "We'll be fine. It's a beautiful morning, and we're alive to see it."

  "But the Widow . . ." Tim began to cry.

  They sat down on the porch steps and looked out on the yard where, not long ago, the Barony Covenanter had sat astride his tall black horse. Black horse, black heart, Tim thought.

  "We'll pray for Ardelia Smack," Nell said, "and all of Tree will come to her burying. I'll not say Kells did her a favor--murder's never a favor--but she suffered terribly for the last three years, and her life would not have been long, in any case. I think we should go to town, and see if the constable's back from Taveres. On the way, you can tell me everything. Can thee help me hitch Misty and Bitsy to the wagon?"

  "Yes, Mama. But I have to get something, first. Something she gave me."

  "All right. Try not to look at what's left in there, Tim."

  Nor did he. But he picked up the gun, and put it in his belt. . . .

  *Which sounds like S, in the Low Speech.

  THE SKIN-MAN

  (Part 2)

  "She told him not to look at what was left inside--the body of his steppa, you ken--and he said he wouldn't. Nor did he, but he picked up the gun, and put it in his belt--"

  "The four-shot the widow-woman gave him," Young Bill Streeter said. He was sitting against the cell wall below the chalked map of Debaria with his chin on his chest, he had said little, and in truth, I thought the lad had fallen asleep and I was telling the tale only to myself. But he had been listening all along, it seemed. Outside, the rising wind of the simoom rose to a brief shriek, then settled back to a low and steady moan.

  "Aye, Young Bill. He picked up the gun, put it in his belt on the left side, and carried it there for the next ten years of his life. After that he carried bigger ones--six-shooters." That was the story, and I ended it just as my mother had ended all the stories she read me when I was but a sma' one in my tower room. It made me sad to hear those words from my own mouth. "And so it happened, once upon a bye, long before your grandfather's grandfather was born."

  Outside, the light was beginning to fail. I thought it would be tomorrow after all before the deputation that had gone up to the foothills would return with the salties who could sit a horse. And really, did it matter so much? For an uncomfortable thought had come to me while I was telling Young Bill the story of Young Tim. If I were the skin-man, and if the sheriff and a bunch of deputies (not to mention a young gunslinger all the way from Gilead) came asking if I could saddle, mount, and ride, would I admit it? Not likely. Jamie and I should have seen this right away, but of course we were still new to the lawman's way of thinking.

  "Sai?"

  "Yes, Bill."

  "Did Tim ever become a real gunslinger? He did, didn't he?"

  "When he was twenty-one, three men carrying hard calibers came through Tree. They were bound for Tavares and hoping to raise a posse, but Tim was the only one who would go with them. They called him 'the lefthanded gun,' for that was the way he drew.

  "He rode with them, and acquitted himself well, for he was both fearless and a dead shot. They called him tet-fa, or friend of the tet. But there came a day when he became ka-tet, one of the
very, very few gunslingers not from the proven line of Eld. Although who knows? Don't they say that Arthur had many sons from three wives, and moity-more born on the dark side of the blanket?"

  "I dunno what that means."

  With that I could sympathize; until two days before, I hadn't known what was meant by "the longstick."

  "Never mind. He was known first as Lefty Ross, then--after a great battle on the shores of Lake Cawn--as Tim Stoutheart. His mother finished her days in Gilead as a great lady, or so my mother said. But all those things are--"

  "--a tale for another day," Bill finished. "That's what my da' always says when I ask for more." His face drew in on itself and his mouth trembled at the corners as he remembered the bloody bunkhouse and the cook who had died with his apron over his face. "What he said."

  I put my arm around his shoulders again, a thing that felt a little more natural this time. I'd made my mind up to take him back to Gilead with us if Everlynne of Serenity refused to take him in . . . but I thought she would not refuse. He was a good boy.

  Outside the wind whined and howled. I kept an ear out for the jing-jang, but it stayed silent. The lines were surely down somewhere.

  "Sai, how long was Maerlyn caged as a tyger?"

  "I don't know, but a very long time, surely."

  "What did he eat?"

  Cuthbert would have made something up on the spot, but I was stumped.

  "If he was shitting in the hole, he must have eaten," Bill said, and reasonably enough. "If you don't eat, you can't shit."

  "I don't know what he ate, Bill."

  "P'raps he had enough magic left--even as a tyger--to make his own dinner. Out of thin air, like."

  "Yes, that's probably it."

  "Did Tim ever reach the Tower? For there are stories about that, too, aren't there?"

  Before I could answer, Strother--the fat deputy with the rattlesnake hatband--came into the jail. When he saw me sitting with my arm around the boy, he gave a smirk. I considered wiping it off his face--it wouldn't have taken long--but forgot the idea when I heard what he had to say.

  "Riders comin. Must be a moit, and wagons, because we can hear em even over the damn beastly wind. People is steppin out into the grit to see."

  I got up and let myself out of the cell.

  "Can I come?" Bill asked.

  "Better that you bide here yet awhile," I said, and locked him in. "I won't be long."

  "I hate it here, sai!"

  "I know," I told him. "It'll be over soon enough."

  I hoped I was right about that.

  *

  When I stepped out of the sheriff's office, the wind made me stagger and alkali grit stung my cheeks. In spite of the rising gale, both boardwalks of the high street were lined with spectators. The men had pulled their bandannas over their mouths and noses; the women were using their kerchiefs. I saw one lady-sai wearing her bonnet backwards, which looked strange but was probably quite useful against the dust.

  To my left, horses began to emerge from the whitish clouds of alkali. Sheriff Peavy and Canfield of the Jefferson were in the van, with their hats yanked low and their neckcloths pulled high, so only their eyes showed. Behind them came three long flatbed wagons, open to the wind. They were painted blue, but their sides and decks were rimed white with salt. On the side of each the words DEBARIA SALT COMBYNE had been daubed in yellow paint. On each deck sat six or eight fellows in overalls and the straw workingmen's hats known as clobbers (or clumpets, I disremember which). On one side of this caravan rode Jamie DeCurry, Kellin Frye, and Kellin's son, Vikka. On the other were Snip and Arn from the Jefferson spread and a big fellow with a sand-colored handlebar mustache and a yellow duster to match. This turned out to be the man who served as constable in Little Debaria . . . at least when he wasn't otherwise occupied at the faro or Watch Me tables.

  None of the new arrivals looked happy, but the salties looked least happy of all. It was easy to regard them with suspicion and dislike; I had to remind myself that only one was a monster (assuming, that was, the skin-man hadn't slipped our net entirely). Most of the others had probably come of their own free will when told they could help put an end to the scourge by doing so.

  I stepped into the street and raised my hands over my head. Sheriff Peavy reined up in front of me, but I ignored him for the time being, looking instead at the huddled miners in the flatbed wagons. A swift count made their number twenty-one. That was twenty more suspects than I wanted, but far fewer than I had feared.

  I shouted to make myself heard over the wind. "You men have come to help us, and on behalf of Gilead, I say thankya!"

  They were easier to hear, because the wind was blowing toward me. "Balls to your Gilead," said one. "Snot-nosed brat," said another. "Lick my johnny on behalf of Gilead," said a third.

  "I can smarten em up anytime you'd like," said the man with the handlebar mustache. "Say the word, young'un, for I'm constable of the shithole they come from, and that makes em my fill. Will Wegg." He put a perfunctory fist to his brow.

  "Never in life," I said, and raised my voice again. "How many of you men want a drink?"

  That stopped their grumbling in its tracks, and they raised a cheer instead.

  "Then climb down and line up!" I shouted. "By twos, if you will!" I grinned at them. "And if you won't, go to hell and go there thirsty!"

  That made most of them laugh.

  "Sai Deschain," Wegg said, "puttin drink in these fellers ain't a good idea."

  But I thought it was. I motioned Kellin Frye to me and dropped two gold knucks into his hand. His eyes widened.

  "You're the trail-boss of this herd," I told him. "What you've got there should buy them two whiskeys apiece, if they're short shots, and that's all I want them to have. Take Canfield with you, and that one there." I pointed to one of the pokies. "Is it Arn?"

  "Snip," the fellow said. "T'other one's Arn."

  "Aye, good. Snip, you at one end of the bar, Canfield at the other. Frye, you stand behind them at the door and watch their backs."

  "I won't be taking my son into the Busted Luck," Kellin Frye said. "It's a whore-hole, so it is."

  "You won't need to. Soh Vikka goes around back with the other pokie." I cocked my thumb at Arn. "All you two fellows need to do is watch for any saltie trying to sneak out the back door. If you do, let loose a yell and then scat, because he'll probably be our man. Understand?"

  "Yep," Arn said. "Come on, kid, off we go. Maybe if I get out of this wind, I can get a smoke to stay lit."

  "Not just yet," I said, and beckoned to the boy.

  "Hey, gunbunny!" one of the miners yelled. "You gonna let us out of this wind before nightfall? I'm fuckin thirsty!"

  The others agreed.

  "Hold your gabber," I said. "Do that, and you get to wet your throat. Run your gums at me while I'm doing my job and you'll sit out here in the back of a wagon and lick salt."

  That quieted them, and I bent to Vikka Frye. "You were to tell someone something while you were up there at the Salt Rocks. Did you do it?"

  "Yar, I--" His father elbowed him almost hard enough to knock him over. The boy remembered his manners and started again, this time with a fist to his brow. "Yes, sai, do it please you."

  "Who did you speak to?"

  "Puck DeLong. He's a boy I know from Reap Fairday. He's just a miner's kid, but we palled around some, and did the three-leg race together. His da's foreman of the nightwork crew. That's what Puck says, anyways."

  "And what did you tell him?"

  "That it was Billy Streeter who seen the skin-man in his human shape. I said how Billy hid under a pile of old tack, and that was what saved him. Puck knew who I was talking about, because Billy was at Reap Fairday, too. It was Billy who won the Goose Dash. Do you know the Goose Dash, sai gunslinger?"

  "Yes," I said. I had run it myself on more than one Reap Fairday, and not that long ago, either.

  Vikka Frye swallowed hard, and his eyes filled with tears. "Billy's da' cheered like to
bust his throat when Billy come in first," he whispered.

  "I'm sure he did. Did this Puck DeLong put the story on its way, do you think?"

  "Dunno, do I? But I would've, if it'd been me."

  I thought that was good enough, and clapped Vikka on the shoulder. "Go on, now. And if anyone tries to take it on the sneak, raise a shout. A good loud one, so to be heard over the wind."

  He and Arn struck off for the alley that would take them behind the Busted Luck. The salties paid them no mind; they only had eyes for the batwing doors and thoughts for the rotgut waiting behind them.

  "Men!" I shouted. And when they turned to me: "Wet thy whistles!"

  That brought another cheer, and they set off for the saloon. But walking, not running, and still two by two. They had been well trained. I guessed that their lives as miners were little more than slavery, and I was thankful ka had pointed me along a different path . . . although, when I look back on it, I wonder how much difference there might be between the slavery of the mine and the slavery of the gun. Perhaps one: I've always had the sky to look at, and for that I tell Gan, the Man Jesus, and all the other gods that may be, thankya.

  *

  I motioned Jamie, Sheriff Peavy, and the new one--Wegg--to the far side of the street. We stood beneath the overhang that shielded the sheriff's office. Strother and Pickens, the not-so-good deputies, were crowded into the doorway, fair goggling.

  "Go inside, you two," I told them.

  "We don't take orders from you," Pickens said, just as haughty as Mary Dame, now that the boss was back.

  "Go inside and shut the door," Peavy said. "Have you thudbrains not kenned even yet who's in charge of this raree?"

  They drew back, Pickens glaring at me and Strother glaring at Jamie. The door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass. For a moment the four of us stood there, watching the great clouds of alkali dust blow up the high street, some of them so thick they made the saltwagons disappear. But there was little time for contemplation; it would be night all too soon, and then one of the salties now drinking in the Busted Luck might be a man no longer.

  "I think we have a problem," I said. I was speaking to all of them, but it was Jamie I was looking at. "It seems to me that a skin-turner who knows what he is would hardly admit to being able to ride."