She served him without a word. He ate rapidly, chewing, swallowing, chasing each bite with hot coffee. Allie went to the batwings and stood staring out at the morning, at the silent battalions of slow-moving clouds.
“It’s going to dust up today. “
“I’m not surprised.”
“Are you ever?” She asked ironically, and turned to watch him get his hat. He clapped it on his head and brushed past her.
“Sometimes,” he told her. He only saw her once more alive.
XV
By the time he reached Sylvia Pittston’s shack, the wind had died utterly and the whole world seemed to wait. He had been in desert country long enough to know that the longer the lull, the harder the wind would blow when it finally decided to start up. A queer, flat light hung over everything.
There was a large wooden cross nailed to the door of the place, which was leaning and tired. He rapped and waited. No answer. He rapped again. No answer. He drew back and kicked in the door with one hard shot of his right boot. A small bolt on the inside ripped free. The door banged against a haphazardly planked wall and scared rats into skittering flight Sylvia Pittston sat in the hall, sat in a mammoth darkwood rocker, and looked at him calmly with those great and dark eyes. The stormlight fell on her cheeks in terrifying half—tones. She wore a shawl. The rocker made tiny squeaking noises.
They looked at each other for a long, clockless moment.
“You will never catch him,” she said. “You walk in the way of evil.”
“He came to you,” the gunslinger said.
“And to my bed. He spoke to me in the Tongue. He — “
“He screwed you. “
She did not flinch. “You walk an evil way, gunslinger. You stand in shadows. You stood in the shadows of the holy
place last night Did you think I couldn’t see you?”
“Why did he heal the weed—eater?”
“He was an angel of God. He said so.”
“I hope he smiled when he said it.”
She drew her lip back from her teeth in an unconsciously feral gesture. “He told me you would follow. He told me what to do. He said you are the Antichrist”
The gunslinger shook his head. “He didn’t say that.”
She smiled up at him lazily. “He said you would want to bed me. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“The price is your life, gunslinger. He has got me with child… the child of an angel. If you invade me — “ She let the lazy smile complete her thought At the same time she gestured with her huge, mountainous thighs. They stretched beneath her garment like pure marble slabs. The effect was dizzying.
The gunslinger dropped his hands to the butts of his pistols. “You have a demon, woman. I can remove it”
The effect was instantaneous. She recoiled against the chair, and a weasel look flashed on her face. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! You dare not touch the Bride of God!”
“Want to bet?” the gunslinger said, grinning. He stepped toward her.
The flesh on the huge frame quaked. Her face had be— come a caricature of crazed terror, and she stabbed the sign of the Eye at him with pronged fingers.
“The desert,” the gunslinger said. “What after the desert?”
“You’ll never catch him! Never! Never! You’ll burn! He told me so!”
“I’ll catch him,” the gunslinger said. “We both know it. What is beyond the desert?”
“No!”
“Answer me!”
“No!”
He slid forward, dropped to his knees, and grabbed her thighs. Her legs locked like a vise. She made strange, lustful keening noises.
“The demon, then,” he said.
“No — “
He pried the legs apart and upholstered one of his guns.
“No! No! No!” Her breath came in short, savage grunts.
“Answer me. “
She rocked in the chair and the floor trembled. Prayers and garbled bits of jargon flew from her lips.
He rammed the barrel of the gun forward. He could feel the terrified wind sucked into her lungs more than he could hear it Her hands beat at his head; her legs drummed against the floor. And at the same time the huge body tried to take the invader and enwomb it. Outside nothing watched them but the bruised sky.
She screamed something, high and inarticulate.
“What?”
“Mountains!”
“What about them?”
“He stops… on the other side… s—s—sweet Jesus!… to in—make his strength. Med—in—meditation, do you under— stand? Oh . .. I’m . .. I’m . . . “
The whole huge mountain of flesh suddenly strained forward and upward, yet he was careful not to let her secret flesh touch him.
Then she seemed to wilt and grow smaller, and she wept with her hands in her lap.
“So,” he said, getting up. “The demon is served, eh?”
“Get out. You’ve killed the child. Get out Get out.”
He stopped at the door and looked back. “No child,” he said briefly. “No angel, no demon.”
“Leave me alone.”
He did.
XVI
By the time he arrived at Kennerly’s, a queer obscurity had come over the northern horizon and he knew it was dust. Over Tull the air was still dead quiet.
Kennerly was waiting for him on the chaff—strewn stage that was the floor of his barn. “Leaving?” He grinned abjectly at the gunslinger.
“Yes.”
“Not before the storm?”
“Ahead of it”
“The wind goes faster than a man on a mule. In the open it can kill you.”
“I’ll want the mule now,” the gunslinger said simply.
“Sure.” But Kennerly did not turn away, merely stood as if searching for something further to say, grinning his groveling, hate—filled grin, and his eyes flicked up and over the gunslinger’s shoulder.
The gunslinger sidestepped and turned at the same time, and the heavy stick of stovewood that the girl Soobie held swished through the air, grazing his elbow only. She lost hold of it with the force of her swing and it clattered over the floor. In the explosive height of the loft, barn swallows took shadowed wing.
The girl looked at him bovinely. Her breasts thrust with overripe grandeur at the wash—faded shirt she
