The wind through the keyhole adt-8 Read online

  “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 sherif
f’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.”

  “Thought of that,” Jamie said, and tilted his head to Constable Wegg.

  “We’ve got all of em who can sit a horse,” Wegg said. “Depend on it, sai. Ain’t I seen em myself?”

  “I doubt if you’ve seen all of them,” I said.

  “I think he has,” Jamie said. “Listen, Roland.”

  “There’s one rich fella up in Little Debaria, name of Sam Shunt,” Wegg said. “The miners call him Shunt the Cunt, which ain’t surprising, since he’s got most of em where the hair grows short. He don’t own the Combyne-it’s big bugs in Gilead who’ve got that-but he owns most of the rest: the bars, the whores, the skiddums-”

  I looked at Sheriff Peavy.

  “Shacks in Little Debaria where some of the miners sleep,” he said. “Skiddums ain’t much, but they ain’t underground.”

  I looked back at Wegg, who had hold of his duster’s lapels and was looking pleased with himself.

  “Sammy Shunt owns the company store. Which means he owns the miners.” He grinned. When I didn’t grin back, he took his hands from his lapels and flipped them skyward. “It’s the way of the world, young sai-I didn’t make it, and neither did you.

  “Now Sammy’s a great one for fun n games… always assumin he can turn a few pennies on em, that is. Four times a year, he sets up races for the miners. Some are footraces, and some are obstacle-course races, where they have to jump over wooden barrycades, or leap gullies filled up with mud. It’s pretty comical when they fall in. The whores always come to watch, and that makes em laugh like loons.”

  “Hurry it up,” Peavy growled. “Those fellas won’t take long to get through two drinks.”

  “He has hoss-races, too,” said Wegg, “although he won’t provide nothing but old nags, in case one of them ponies breaks a leg and has to be shot.”

  “If a miner breaks a leg, is he shot?” I asked.

  Wegg laughed and slapped his thigh as if I’d gotten off a good one. Cuthbert could have told him I don’t joke, but of course Cuthbert wasn’t there. And Jamie rarely says anything, if he doesn’t have to.

  “Trig, young gunslinger, very trig ye are! Nay, they’re mended right enough, if they can be mended; there’s a couple of whores that make a little extra coin working as ammies after Sammy Shunt’s little competitions. They don’t mind; it’s servicin em either way, ain’t it?

  “There’s an entry fee, accourse, taken out of wages. That pays Sammy’s expenses. As for the miners, the winner of whatever the particular competition happens to be-dash, obstacle-course, hoss-race-gets a year’s worth of debt forgiven at the company store. Sammy keeps the in’drest s’high on the others that he never loses by it. You see how it works? Quite snick, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Snick as the devil,” I said.

  “Yar! So when it comes to racing those nags around the little track he had made, any miner who can ride, does ride. It’s powerful comical to watch em smashin their nutsacks up n down, set my watch and warrant on that. And I’m allus there to keep order. I’ve seen every race for the last seven years, and every diggerboy who’s ever run in em. For riders, those boys over there are it. There was one more, but in the race Sammy put on this New Earth, that pertic’ler salt-mole fell off his mount and got his guts squashed. Lived a day or two, then goozled. So I don’t think he’s your skin-man, do you?”

  At this, Wegg laughed heartily. Peavy looked at him with resignation, Jamie with a mixture of contempt and wonder.

  Did I believe this man when he said they’d rounded up every saltie who could sit a horse? I would, I decided, if he could answer one question in the affirmative.

  “Do you bet on these horse-races yourself, Wegg?”

  “Made a goodish heap last year,” he said proudly. “Course Shunt only pays in scrip-he’s tight-but it keeps me in whores and whiskey. I like the whores young and the whiskey old.”

  Peavy looked at me over Wegg’s shoulder and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, He’s what they have up there, so don’t blame me for it.

  Nor did I. “Wegg, go on in the office and wait for us. Jamie and Sheriff Peavy, come with me.”

  I explained as we crossed the street. It didn’t take long.

  “You tell them what we want,” I said to Peavy as we stood outside the batwings. I kept it low because we were still being watched by the whole town, although the ones clustered outside the saloon had drawn away from us, as if we might have something that was catching. “They know you.”

  “Not as well as they know Wegg,” he said.

  “Why do you think I wanted him to stay across the street?”

  He grunted a laugh at that, and pushed his way through the batwings. Jamie and I followed.

  The regular patrons had drawn back to the gaming tables, giving the bar over to the salties. Snip and Canfield flanked them; Kellin Frye stood with his back leaning against the barnboard wall and his arms folded over his sheepskin vest. There was a second floor-given over to bump-cribs, I assumed-and the balcony up there was loaded with less-than-charming ladies, looking down at the miners.

  “You men!” Peavy said. “Turn around and face me!”

  They did as he said, and promptly. What was he to them but just another foreman? A few held onto the remains of their short whiskeys, but most had already finished. They looked livelier now, their cheeks flushed with alcohol rather than the scouring wind that had chased them down from the foothills.

  “Now here’s what,” Peavy said. “You’re going to sit up on the bar, every mother’s son of you, and take off your boots so we can see your feet.”

  A muttering of discontent greeted this. “If you want to know who’s spent time in Beelie Stockade, why not just ask?” a graybeard called. “I was there, and I en’t ashamed. I stole a loaf for my old woman and our two babbies. Not that it did the babbies any good; they both died.”

  “What if we won’t?” a younger one asked. “Them gunnies shoot us? Not sure I’d mind. At least I wouldn’t have to go down in the plug nummore.”

  A rumble of agreement met this. Someone said something that sounded like green light.

  Peavy took hold of my arm and pulled me forward. “It was this gunny got you out of a day’s work, then bought you drinks. And unless you’re the man we’re looking for, what the hell are you afraid of?”

  The one that answered this couldn’t have been more than my age. “Sai Sheriff, we’re always afraid.”

  This was truth a little balder than they were used to, and complete silence dropped over the Busted Luck. Outside, the wind moaned. The grit hitting the thin board walls sounded like hail.

  “Boys, listen to me,” Peavy said, now speaking in a lower and more respectful tone of voice. “These gunslingers could draw and make you do what has to be done, but I don’t want that, and you shouldn’t need it. Counting what happened at the Jefferson spread, there’s over three dozen dead in Debaria. Three at the Jefferson was women.” He paused. “Nar, I tell a lie. One was a woman, the other two mere
girls. I know you’ve got hard lives and nothing to gain by doing a good turn, but I’m asking you, anyway. And why not? There’s only one of you with something to hide.”

  “Well, what the fuck,” said the graybeard.

  He reached behind him to the bar and boosted himself up so he was sitting on it. He must have been the Old Fella of the crew, for all the others followed suit. I watched for anyone showing reluctance, but to my eye there was none. Once it was started, they took it as a kind of joke. Soon there were twenty-one overalled salties sitting on the bar, and the boots rained down on the sawdusty floor in a series of thuds. Ay, gods, I can smell the reek of their feet to this day.

  “Oogh, that’s enough for me,” one of the whores said, and when I looked up, I saw our audience vacating the balcony in a storm of feathers and a swirl of pettislips. The bartender joined the others by the gaming tables, holding his nose pinched shut. I’ll bet they didn’t sell many steak dinners in Racey’s Cafe at suppertime; that smell was an appetite-killer if ever there was one.

  “Yank up your cuffs,” Peavy said. “Let me gleep yer ankles.”

  Now that the thing was begun, they complied without argument. I stepped forward. “If I point to you,” I said, “get down off the bar and go stand against the wall. You can take your boots, but don’t bother putting them on. You’ll only be walking across the street, and you can do that barefooty.”

  I walked down the line of extended feet, most pitifully skinny and all but those belonging to the youngest miners clogged with bulging purple veins.

  “You… you… and you…”

  In all, there were ten of them with blue rings around their ankles that meant time in the Beelie Stockade. Jamie drifted over to them. He didn’t draw, but he hooked his thumbs in his crossed gunbelts, with his palms near enough to the butts of his six-shooters to make the point.

  “Barkeep,” I said. “Pour these men who are left another short shot.”

  The miners without stockade tattoos cheered at this and began putting on their boots again.

  “What about us?” the graybeard asked. The tattooed ring above his ankle was faded to a blue ghost. His bare feet were as gnarled as old tree-stumps. How he could walk on them-let alone work on them-was more than I could understand.