A strange, thumping hum began at the rear of the stable, and the gunslinger raised his head alertly, hands going to gunbutts. The sound lasted for perhaps fifteen seconds and then quit. The boy came back with the can — filled now.
The gunslinger drank sparingly again, and this time it was a little better. The ache in his head was fading.
“I didn’t know what to do with you when you fell down,” Jake said. “For a couple of seconds there, I thought you were going to shoot me.”
“I thought you were somebody else.”
“The priest?”
The gunslinger looked up sharply. “What priest?”
The boy looked at him, frowning lightly. “The priest He camped in the yard. I was in the house over there. I didn’t like him, so I didn’t come out He came in the night and went on the next day. I would have hidden from you, but I was sleepin’ when you came.” He looked darkly over the gunslinger’s head. “I don’t like people. They fuck me up.”
“What did the priest look like?”
The boy shrugged. “Like a priest. He was wearing black things.”
“Like a hood and a cassock?”
“What’s a cassock?”
“A robe.”
The boy nodded. “A robe and a hood.”
The gunslinger leaned forward, and something in his face made the boy recoil a little. “How long ago?”
“I — I — “
Patiently, the gunslinger said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember time. Every day is the same.”
For the first time the gunslinger wondered consciously how the boy had come to this place, with dry and man killing leagues of desert all around it. But he would not make it his concern; not yet, at least. “Make a guess. Long ago?”
“No. Not long. I haven’t been here long.”
The fire lit in him again. He grabbed the can and drank from it with hands that trembled the smallest bit. A snatch of the cradle song recurred, but this time, instead of his mother’s face, he saw the scarred face of Alice, who had been his woman in the now-defunct town of Tull. “How long? A week? Two? three?”
The boy looked at him distractedly. “Yes.”
“Which one?”
“A week. Or two. I didn’t come out. He didn’t even drink. I thought he might be the ghost of a priest I was scared. I’ve been scared almost all the time.” His face quivered like crystal on the edge of the ultimate, destructive high note. “He didn’t even build a fire. He just sat there. I don’t even know if he went to sleep.”
Close! He was closer than he had ever been. In spite of his extreme dehydration, his hands felt faintly moist; greasy.
“There’s some dried meat,” the boy said.
“All right” The gunslinger nodded. “Good.”
The boy got up to fetch it, his knees popping slightly. He made a fine straight figure. The desert had not yet sapped him. His arms were thin, but the skin, although tanned, had not dried and cracked. He’s got juice, the gunslinger thought He drank from the can again. He’s got juice and he didn’t come from this place.
Jake came back with a pile of dried jerky on what looked like a sun-scoured breadboard. The meat was tough, stringy, and salty enough to make the cankered lining of the gunslinger’s mouth sing. He ate and drank until he felt logy, and then settled back. The boy ate only a little.
The gunslinger regarded him steadily, and the boy looked back at him. “Where did you come from, Jake?” He asked finally.
“I don’t know.” The boy frowned. “I did know. I knew when I came here, but it’s all fuzzy now, like a bad dream when you wake up. I have lots of bad dreams.”
“Did somebody bring you?”
“No,” the boy said. “I was just here.”
“You’re not making any sense,” the gunslinger said flatly.
Quite suddenly the boy seemed on the verge of tears. “I can’t help it. I was just here. And now you’ll go away and I’ll starve because you ate up almost all my food. I didn’t ask to be here. I don’t like it. It’s spooky.”
“Don’t feel so sorry for yourself. Make do.”
“I didn’t ask to be here,” the boy repeated bewildered defiance.
The gunslinger ate another piece of the meat, chewing the salt out of it before swallowing. The boy had become part of it, and the gunslinger was convinced he told the truth —he had not asked for it. It was too bad. He himself … he had asked for it But he had not asked for the game to become this dirty. He had not asked to be allowed to turn his guns on the unarmed populace of Tull; had not asked to shoot Allie, her face marked by that strange, shining scar; had not asked to be faced with a choice between the obsession of his duty and his quest and criminal amorality. The man in black had begun to pull bad strings in his desperation, if it was the man in black who had pulled this par ticular string. It was not fair to ring in innocent bystanders and make them speak lines they didn’t understand on a strange stage. Allie, he thought Allie at least had been into the world in her own self-illusory way. But this boy… this God-damned boy….
“Tell me what you can remember,” he told Jake.
“It’s only a little. It doesn’t seem to make any sense any more.”
“Tell me. Maybe I can pick up the sense.
“There was a place… the one before this one. A high
place with lots of rooms and a patio where you could look at tall buildings and water. There was a statue that stood in the water.”
“A statue in the water?”
“Yes. A lady with a crown and a torch.”
“Are you making this up?”
“I guess I must be,” the boy said hopelessly. “There were things to ride in on the streets. Big ones and little ones. Yellow ones. A lot of yellow ones. I walked to school. There were cement paths beside the streets. Windows to look in and more statues wearing clothes. The statues sold the clothes. I know it sounds crazy, but the statues sold the clothes.”
The gunslinger shook his head and looked for a lie on the boy’s face. He saw none.
“I walked to school,” the boy repeated fixedly. “And I had a — “His eyes tilted closed and his lips moved gropingly.” — a brown… book… bag. I carried a lunch. And I wore — “the groping again, agonized groping” — a tie.”
“A what?”
“I don’t know.” The boy’s fingers made a slow, unconscious clinching motion at his throat — a gesture the gun-
slinger associated with hanging. “I don’t know. It’s just all gone.” And he looked away.
“May I put you to sleep?” The gunslinger asked. “I’m not sleepy.”
“I can make you sleepy, and I can make you remember.”
Doubtfully, Jake asked, “How could you do that?”
“With this.”
The gunslinger removed one of the shells from his gunbelt and twirled it in his fingers. The movement was dexterous, as flowing as oil. The shell cartwheeled effortlessly from thumb and index and index and second, to second and ring, to ring and pinky. It popped out of sight and reappeared; seemed to float briefly, and then reversed. The shell walked across the gunslinger’s fingers. The fingers themselves moved like a beaded curtain in a breeze. The boy watched, his initial doubt replaced with plain delight, then by raptness, then by a dawning mute blankness. The eyes slipped shut The shell danced back and forth. Jake’s eyes opened again, caught the steady, limpid dance between the gunslinger’s fingers for a while longer, and then his eyes closed once more. The
