‘Now, now, we had a deal,’ Jesse replied. ‘All I had to do was teach you everything I know about being a cowboy, and I’ve done that. You gotta pull this off by yourself. I had my doubts at first, but you were tellin’ the truth about being a quick learner and I think you’ll probably manage it.’
‘Glad to hear it. Now, let’s go find out.’
They went up the four steps to the porch and walked in through the front doors. Or at least tried to. Just as Lex was about to put his hand on the doorknob, the doors flew open. He and Jesse both managed to jump back in time to avoid being flattened but, when two big cowboys came rushing out, Lex was unable to get out of the way quick enough to avoid one of them barrelling into him. He and the cowboy got tangled up together and ended up rolling down the steps to the ground. By the time they’d managed to disentangle themselves in the dust, the second cowboy had jumped on to his horse and was already riding away fast.
‘Daw-gone it!’ the other cowboy exclaimed as he leapt to his feet. In another moment there was a pistol in his hand and he was aiming shots towards the fleeing cowboy. He missed, which seemed to infuriate him even more. He spun round on his heel, back towards Lex still sprawled in the dust, and the expression on his face as he looked down on him was not at all friendly.
‘That man insulted me!’ he exclaimed. ‘And because of you he got away! Seems to me it’s only right that you should take his place in the duel! What’s your name, boy?’
But before Lex could say so much as a single word, Jesse said conversationally, ‘That’s Slow Sid.’ He sauntered over with his hands in his pockets. The other cowboy might have looked a bit meaner and had a few more scars than Jesse, but they were about the same size. ‘Sad, really,’ Jesse went on. ‘He used to be Sid the Kid? I’m sure you’ve heard of him?? but then, coupla years back, he went and fell off his horse and caught his head a right crack on a rock. And that was that. Sid the Kid was no more and all that was left was poor old Slow Sid. Don’t know who he is or what he’s doing half the time, now. Ain’t that right, Sid?’
Jesse looked down at Lex pointedly. Lex was furious. How dare he? How dare he? He had not spent all those hours practising and practising passing himself off as a half-decent cowboy only to have to play a simpleton the whole time he was here! At the back of his mind he was aware that Jesse was trying to prevent him from getting shot in the face, but that wasn’t the point. Lex could take care of himself? he didn’t need anyone coming to his rescue. But what was done now was done and, if he didn’t want to raise suspicion, he really had no choice but to play along. So Lex lowered his voice, unfocused his gaze slightly, looked up at Jesse with the most gormless expression he could muster on short notice and said, ‘Horse hit Sid onna head.’
‘Well, the horse didn’t hit you; the floor did,’ Jesse replied. ‘But, yeah, you fell off the horse first, so I hear. That’s what happens if you insist on riding horses what ain’t been broken in yet.’
The other cowboy glared down at Lex for a moment, still looking mightily peeved but no longer murderous.
‘Huh,’ he grunted, and then finally walked off.
Once he’d disappeared back into the house, Jesse looked down at Lex, a little smile tugging at one corner of his mouth and, reaching down a hand he said, ‘You need some help there, Sid?’
Lex would have dearly loved to hiss some unpleasantry back at him but, for all he knew, the scar-faced cowboy was watching from the windows. Others’ attention may have been drawn their way by the altercation and Lex couldn’t risk anything that might give him away. This was show time, now. Granted, it might not be the kind of show time he had planned upon, but it was show time just the same. Shouting-at-Jesse time would just have to wait.
So, making a real effort to look mildly confused, Lex gripped Jesse’s hand and allowed the cowboy to haul him to his feet. Then he dusted himself off and gazed around stupidly, as if not too sure of where he was. His hat had fallen off in the kerfuffle and lay on the floor in the dust. Lex purposefully ignored it and started to stagger towards the front doors. Jesse clapped the hat back on his head from behind, as Lex had known that he would. He didn’t bother to adjust the lop-sided angle but simply carried on towards the door. He pulled it open and, this time, managed to get all the way inside.
Once there, he stopped short. The entrance hall was enormous, with a great sweeping staircase going up to the next level. Portraits lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Every single one was of the same person? a rather strange-looking man with greying hair, a thin face, impressively bushy whiskers and an expression of mild puzzlement.
There must have been two hundred portraits there, all of different sizes, all of the same man. Some of the paintings were traditional head-and-shoulder portraits. But others were much larger and showed the entire person. They were? to put it mildly? ridiculous. One picture was of him sitting at a table having tea with a giant fox (who was wearing a waistcoat); in another, he was sitting on a toilet with his trousers around his ankles. One particularly large painting showed him brandishing what looked very much like a smoked trout against an enormous white dragon that seemed set to roast him where he stood at any moment.
In every picture he wore the same dark suit, the same daft monocle, the same bushy whiskers and the same amiable expression of foolish, mild puzzlement.
It was a little hard to see some of the paintings properly, especially those hung lower down, because most of them had a hell of a lot of darts sticking out of them.
‘Nathaniel East,’ Jesse said behind Lex. ‘In every single painting, the mad old coot. Painted them all himself, so they say.’
It must have taken him years. The paintings were so detailed and some of them were so large that Lex thought it must have taken Nathaniel practically his whole life to paint them. He could not have produced all of these during the five years he’d lived in Dry Gulch. For some unknown reason he must have brought them with him when he’d travelled out to the Wild West.
‘Can’t be taken down, see?’ Jesse went on. ‘Because of the witch’s sticking spell. So the fellas just use ’em for dart practice mostly. Let’s go through to the bar.’
Adopting a rambling, shuffling gait, Lex followed him. He would have known where to go, even without Jesse, by following the raucous sounds of talking and laughter and the rather jolly music of a honky-tonk piano.
The bar adjoined the entrance hall to the left. It was a large room, that easily accommodated the twenty or so people there. Everyone in the room was a cowboy. You could tell by the hats and boots. A lot of the furniture had obviously been moved from other rooms, for none of it matched. It seemed that, although the witch’s sticking spell meant that none of the items could be taken out of the house, some of them could be moved from room to room. Any spare table or chair had been brought there. Lex even saw two men drinking at a chess table, the chessmen still fixed firmly in place? glued into a stalemate from the looks of it.
‘Let’s go get ourselves a drink, Sid,’ Jesse said, already striding purposefully towards the bar.
Lex obediently followed along behind him.
‘Hello again, Sam,’ Jesse said to the man behind the bar.
Lex was pleased to note that he was bald and had a waxed moustache that curled at the ends, just like in the books.
‘Howdy, Jesse,’ Sam replied. ‘Back again? Ain’t you got bored of lookin’ for that sword yet?’
Lex almost jumped where he sat. Jesse had told him right back in the jail cell at the Wither City that he didn’t believe the Sword of Life existed. He had neglected to mention that he had searched for it himself.
‘Just passin’ through this time,’ Jesse replied. ‘Needed somewhere to stay for a few days. You got any rooms?’
‘Yep.’ Sam turned around and picked off a key from the board on the wall behind him. He put this on the bar in front of Jesse, glanced at Lex and said, ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘This here is Slow Sid,’ Jesse said. ‘We’re travelling together for a while.’
‘Pleased to know you, Sid. I’m Sam. What can I get you?’
‘Glass of milk, please,’ Lex said, scooping up the nearby beer mats and absently starting to shuffle them.
‘Sid!’ Jesse said sharply. ‘What have I told you about that?’ He looked at Sam and said, ‘He means milk and rum. Obviously.’ He added a nervous laugh at the end of that, which Lex thought was rather a nice touch.
‘Obviously,’ Sam replied, eyebrow raised.
‘Yeah,’ Lex said, giving the barman his best eager-to-please smile. ‘Milk and rum.’ He turned his smile on Jesse, who nodded approvingly. ‘Without the rum,’ Lex added? to which Jesse shook his head despairingly.
‘What are you hanging around with this halfwit for, anyway?’ the barman said suspiciously. ‘You’re a one for
