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
“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
