by Stephen King
“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 Café 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.
“Nine of you will get long shots,” I said, and that wiped the gloom from their faces. “The tenth will get something else.”
“A yank of rope,” Canfield of the Jefferson said in a low voice. “And after what I seen out t’ranch, I hope he dances at the end of it a long time.”
* * *
We left Snip and Canfield to watch the eleven salties drinking at the bar, and marched the other ten across the street. The graybeard led the way and walked briskly on his tree-stump feet. That day’s light had drained to a weird yellow I had never seen before, and it would be dark all too soon. The wind blew and the dust flew. I was watching for one of them to make a break—hoping for it, if only to spare the child waiting in the jail—but none did.
Jamie fell in beside me. “If
he’s here, he’s hoping the kiddo didn’t see any higher than his ankles. He means to face it out, Roland.”
“I know,” I said. “And since that’s all the kiddo did see, he’ll probably ride the bluff.”
“What then?”
“Lock em all up, I suppose, and wait for one of em to change his skin.”
“What if it’s not just something that comes over him? What if he can keep it from happening?”
“Then I don’t know,” I said.
* * *
Wegg had started a penny-in, three-to-stay Watch Me game with Pickens and Strother. I thumped the table with one hand, scattering the matchsticks they were using as counters. “Wegg, you’ll accompany these men into the jail with the sheriff. It’ll be a few minutes yet. There’s a few more things to attend to.”
“What’s in the jail?” Wegg asked, looking at the scattered matchsticks with some regret. I guessed he’d been winning. “The boy, I suppose?”
“The boy and the end of this sorry business,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
I took the graybeard by the elbow—gently—and pulled him aside. “What’s your name, sai?”
“Steg Luka. What’s it to you? You think I’m the one?”
“No,” I said, and I didn’t. No reason; just a feeling. “But if you know which one it is—if you even think you know—you ought to tell me. There’s a frightened boy in there, locked in a cell for his own good. He saw something that looked like a giant bear kill his father, and I’d spare him any more pain if I could. He’s a good boy.”
He considered, then it was him who took my elbow . . . and with a hand that felt like iron. He drew me into the corner. “I can’t say, gunslinger, for we’ve all been down there, deep in the new plug, and we all saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“A crack in the salt with a green light shining through. Bright, then dim. Bright, then dim. Like a heartbeat. And . . . it speaks to your face.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t understand myself. The only thing I know is we’ve all seen it, and we’ve all felt it. It speaks to your face and tells you to come in. It’s bitter.”
“The light, or the voice?”
“Both. It’s of the Old People, I’ve no doubt of that. We told Banderly—him that’s the bull foreman—and he went down himself. Saw it for himself. Felt it for himself. But was he going to close the plug for that? Balls he was. He’s got his own bosses to answer to, and they know there’s a moit of salt left down there. So he ordered a crew to close it up with rocks, which they did. I know, because I was one of em. But rocks that are put in can be pulled out. And they have been, I’d swear to it. They were one way then, now they’re another. Someone went in there, gunslinger, and whatever’s on the other side . . . it changed him.”
“But you don’t know who.”
Luka shook his head. “All I can say is it must’ve been between twelve o’ the clock and six in the morning, for then all’s quiet.”
“Go on back to your mates, and say thankee. You’ll be drinking soon enough, and welcome.” But sai Luka’s drinking days were over. We never know, do we?
He went back and I surveyed them. Luka was the oldest by far. Most of the others were middle-aged, and a couple were still young. They looked interested and excited rather than afraid, and I could understand that; they’d had a couple of drinks to perk them up, and this made a change in the drudgery of their ordinary days. None of them looked shifty or guilty. None looked like anything more or less than what they were: salties in a dying mining town where the rails ended.
“Jamie,” I said. “A word with you.”
I walked him to the door, and spoke directly into his ear. I gave him an errand, and told him to do it as fast as ever he could. He nodded and slipped out into the stormy afternoon. Or perhaps by then it was early evening.
“Where’s he off to?” Wegg asked.
“That’s nonnies to you,” I said, and turned to the men with the blue tattoos on their ankles. “Line up, if you please. Oldest to youngest.”
“I dunno how old I am, do I?” said a balding man wearing a wrist-clock with a rusty string-mended band. Some of the others laughed and nodded.
“Just do the best you can,” I said.
I had no interest in their ages, but the discussion and argument took up some time, which was the main object. If the blacksmith had fulfilled his commission, all would be well. If not, I would improvise. A gunslinger who can’t do that dies early.
The miners shuffled around like kids playing When the Music Stops, swapping spots until they were in some rough approximation of age. The line started at the door to the jail and ended at the door to the street. Luka was first; Wrist-Clock was in the middle; the one who looked about my age—the one who’d said they were always afraid—was last.
“Sheriff, will you get their names?” I asked. “I want to speak to the Streeter boy.”
* * *
Billy was standing at the bars of the drunk-and-disorderly cell. He’d heard our palaver, and looked frightened. “Is it here?” he asked. “The skin-man?”
“I think so,” I said, “but there’s no way to be sure.”
“Sai, I’m ascairt.”
“I don’t blame you. But the cell’s locked and the bars are good steel. He can’t get at you, Billy.”
“You ain’t seen him when he’s a bear,” Billy whispered. His eyes were huge and shiny, fixed in place. I’ve seen men with eyes like that after they’ve been punched hard on the jaw. It’s the look that comes over them just before their knees go soft. Outside, the wind gave a thin shriek along the underside of the jail roof.
“Tim Stoutheart was afraid, too,” I said. “But he went on. I expect you to do the same.”
“Will you be here?”
“Aye. My mate, Jamie, too.”
As if I had summoned him, the door to the office opened and Jamie hurried in, slapping alkali dust from his shirt. The sight of him gladdened me. The smell of dirty feet that accompanied him was less welcome.
“Did you get it?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s a pretty enough thing. And here’s the list of names.”
He handed both over.
“Are you ready, son?” Jamie asked Billy.
“I guess so,” Billy said. “I’m going to pretend I’m Tim Stoutheart.”
Jamie nodded gravely. “That’s a fine idea. May you do well.”
A particularly strong gust of wind blew past. Bitter dust puffed in through the barred window of the drunk-and-disorderly cell. Again came that eerie shriek along the eaves. The light was fading, fading. It crossed my mind that it might be better—safer—to jail the waiting salties and leave this part for tomorrow, but nine of them had done nothing. Neither had the boy. Best to have it done. If it could be done, that was.
“Hear me, Billy,” I said. “I’m going to walk them through nice and slow. Maybe nothing will happen.”
“A-All right.” His voice was faint.
“Do you need a drink of water first? Or to have a piss?”
“I’m fine,” he said, but of course he didn’t look fine; he looked terrified. “Sai? How many of them have blue rings on their ankles?”
“All,” I said.
“Then how—”
“They don’t know how much you saw. Just look at each one as he passes. And stand back a little, doya.” Out of reaching-distance was what I meant, but I didn’t want to say it out loud.
“What should I say?”
“Nothing. Unless you see something that sets off a recollection, that is.” I had little hope of that. “Bring them in, Jamie. Sheriff Peavy at the head of the line and Wegg at the end.”
He nodded and left. Billy reached through the bars. For a second I didn’t know what he wanted, then I did. I gave his hand a brief squeeze. “Stand back now, Billy. And remember the face of your father. He watches you from the clearing.”
He obeyed. I glanced at the list, running
over names (probably misspelled) that meant nothing to me, with my hand on the butt of my righthand gun. That one now contained a very special load. According to Vannay, there was only one sure way to kill a skin-man: with a piercing object of the holy metal. I had paid the blacksmith in gold, but the bullet he’d made me—the one that would roll under the hammer at first cock—was pure silver. Perhaps it would work.
If not, I would follow with lead.
* * *
The door opened. In came Sheriff Peavy. He had a two-foot ironwood headknocker in his right hand, the rawhide drop cord looped around his wrist. He was patting the business end gently against his left palm as he stepped through the door. His eyes found the white-faced lad in the cell, and he smiled.
“Hey-up, Billy, son of Bill,” he said. “We’re with ye, and all’s fine. Fear nothing.”
Billy tried to smile, but looked like he feared much.
Steg Luka came next, rocking from side to side on those tree-stump feet of his. After him came a man nearly as old, with a mangy white mustache, dirty gray hair falling to his shoulders, and a sinister, squinted look in his eyes. Or perhaps he was only nearsighted. The list named him as Bobby Frane.
“Come slow,” I said, “and give this boy a good look at you.”
They came. As each one passed, Bill Streeter looked anxiously into his face.
“G’d eve’n to’ee, boy,” Luka said as he went by. Bobby Frane tipped an invisible cap. One of the younger ones—Jake Marsh, according to the list—stuck out a tongue yellow from bingo-weed tobacco. The others just shuffled past. A couple kept their heads lowered until Wegg barked at them to raise up and look the kiddo in the eye.
There was no dawning recognition on Bill Streeter’s face, only a mixture of fright and perplexity. I kept my own face blank, but I was losing hope. Why, after all, would the skin-man break? He had nothing to lose by playing out his string, and he must know it.
Now there were only four left . . . then two . . . then only the kid who in the Busted Luck had spoken of being afraid. I saw change on Billy’s face as that one went by, and for a moment I thought we had something, then realized it was nothing more than the recognition of one young person for another.
