by Stephen King
Avery looked at him a moment longer, as if to make sure the subject was closed, then switched his gaze back to Roland. His fat face was once more radiant with his broad, untrustworthy smile.
“Mayor Thorin has asked me to extend ye his very best greetings, and convey his regrets for not bein here today—very busy is our Lord Mayor, very busy indeed. But he’s laid on a dinner-party at Mayor’s House tomorrow evening—seven o’ the clock for most folk, eight for you young fellows . . . so you can make a bit of an entrance, I imagine, add a touch o’ drama, like. And I need not tell such as yourselves, who’ve probably attended more such parties than I’ve had hot dinners, that it would be best to arrive pretty much on the dot.”
“Is it fancy-dress?” Cuthbert asked uneasily. “Because we’ve come a long way, almost four hundred wheels, and we didn’t pack formal wear and sashes, none of us.”
Avery was chuckling—more honestly this time, Roland thought, perhaps because he felt “Arthur” had displayed a streak of unsophistication and insecurity. “Nay, young master, Thorin understands ye’ve come to do a job—next door to workin cowboys, ye be! ’Ware they don’t have ye out draggin nets in the bay next!”
From the corner, Dave—the deputy with the monocle—honked unexpected laughter. Perhaps it was the sort of joke you had to be local to understand, Roland thought.
“Wear the best ye have, and ye’ll be fine. There’ll be no one there in sashes, in any case—that’s not how things are done in Hambry.” Again Roland was struck by the man’s constant smiling denigration of his town and Barony . . . and the resentment of the outsiders which lay just beneath it.
“In any case, ye’ll find yerselves working more than playing tomorrow night, I imagine. Hart’s invited all the large ranchers, stockliners, and livestock owners from this part of the Barony . . . not that there’s so many, you understand, bein as how Mejis is next door to desert once you get west o’ the Drop. But everyone whose goods and chattel you’ve been sent to count will be there, and I think you’ll find all of them loyal Affiliation men, ready and eager to help. There’s Francis Lengyll of the Rocking B . . . John Croydon of the Piano Ranch . . . Henry Wertner, who’s the Barony’s stockliner as well as a horsebreeder in his own right . . . Hash Renfrew, who owns the Lazy Susan, the biggest horse-ranch in Mejis (not that it’s much by the standards you fellows are used to, I wot) . . . and there’ll be others, as well. Rimer’ll introduce you, and get you about your business right smart.”
Ronald nodded and turned to Cuthbert. “You’ll want to be on your mettle tomorrow night.”
Cuthbert nodded. “Don’t fear me, Will, I’ll note em all.”
Avery sipped more tea, eyeing them over his glass with a roguish expression so false it made Roland want to squirm.
“Most of em’s got daughters of marriageable age, and they’ll bring em. You boys want to look out.”
Roland decided he’d had enough tea and hypocrisy for one morning. He nodded, emptied his glass, smiled (hoping his looked more genuine than Avery’s now looked to him), and got to his feet. Cuthbert and Alain took the cue and did likewise.
“Thank you for the tea, and for the welcome,” Roland said. “Please send a message to Mayor Thorin, thanking him for his kindness and telling him that he’ll see us tomorrow, at eight o’ the clock, prompt.”
“Aye. So I will.”
Roland then turned to Dave. That worthy was so surprised to be noticed again that he recoiled, almost bumping his head on the notice-board. “And please thank your wife for the tea. It was wonderful.”
“I will. Thankee-sai.”
They went back outside, High Sheriff Avery herding them along like a genial, overweight sheepdog.
“As to where you’ll locate—” he began as they descended the steps and started down the walk. As soon as they hit the sunshine, he began to sweat.
“Oh, land, I forgot to ask you about that,” Roland said, knocking the heel of his hand against his forehead. “We’ve camped out on that long slope, lots of horses as you go down the turf, I’m sure you know where I mean—”
“The Drop, aye.”
“—but without permission, because we don’t yet know who to ask.”
“That’d be John Croydon’s land, and I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge ye, but we mean to do ye better than that. There’s a spread northwest of here, the Bar K. Used to b’long to the Garber family, but they gave it up and moved on after a fire. Now it b’longs to the Horsemen’s Association—that’s a little local group of farmers and ranchers. I spoke to Francis Lengyll about you fellows—he’s the H.A. president just current—and he said ‘We’ll put em out to the old Garber place, why not?’ ”
“Why not?” Cuthbert agreed in a gentle, musing voice. Roland shot him a sharp glance, but Cuthbert was looking down at the harbor, where the small fishing boats skittered to and fro like waterbugs.
“Aye, just what I said, ‘Why not, indeed?’ I said. The home place burned to a cinder, but the bunkhouse still stands; so does the stable and the cook-shack next door to it. On Mayor Thorin’s orders, I’ve taken the liberty of stocking the larder and having the bunkhouse swept out and spruced up a little. Ye may see the occasional bug, but nothing that’ll bite or sting . . . and no snakes, unless there’s a few under the floor, and if there are, let em stay there’s what I say. Hey, boys? Let em stay there!”
“Let em stay there, right under the floor where they’re happy,” Cuthbert agreed, still gazing down at the harbor with his arms folded over his chest.
Avery gave him a brief, uncertain glance, his smile flickering a bit at the corners. Then he turned back to Roland, and the smile shone out strongly once more. “There’s no holes in the roof, lad, and if it rains, ye’ll be dry. What think ye of that? Does it sound well to ye?”
“Better than we deserve. I think that you’ve been very efficient and Mayor Thorin’s been far too kind.” And he did think that. The question was why. “But we appreciate his thoughtfulness. Don’t we, boys?”
Cuthbert and Alain made vigorous assent.
“And we accept with thanks.”
Avery nodded. “I’ll tell him. Go safely, boys.”
They had reached the hitching rail. Avery once more shook hands all around, this time saving his keenest looks for their horses.
“Until tomorrow night, then, young gents?”
“Tomorrow night,” Roland agreed.
“Will ye be able to find the Bar K on your own, do yer think?”
Again Roland was struck by the man’s unspoken contempt and unconscious condescension. Yet perhaps it was to the good. If the High Sheriff thought they were stupid, who knew what might come of it?
“We’ll find it,” Cuthbert said, mounting up. Avery was looking suspiciously at the rook’s skull on the horn of Cuthbert’s saddle. Cuthbert saw him looking, but for once managed to keep his mouth shut. Roland was both amazed and pleased by this unexpected reticence. “Fare you well, Sheriff.”
“And you, boy.”
He stood there by the hitching post, a large man in a khaki shirt with sweat-stains around the armpits and black boots that looked too shiny for a working sheriff’s feet. And where’s the horse that could support him through a day of range-riding? Roland thought. I’d like to see the cut of that Cayuse.
Avery waved to them as they went. The other deputies came down the walk, Deputy Dave in the forefront. They waved, too.
3
The moment the Affliation brats mounted on their fathers’ expensive horseflesh were around the corner and headed downhill to the High Street, the sheriff and the deputies stopped waving. Avery turned to Dave Hollis, whose expression of slightly stupid awe had been replaced by one marginally more intelligent.
“What think ye, Dave?”
Dave lifted his monocle to his mouth and began to nibble nervously at its brass edging, a habit about which Sheriff Avery had long since ceased to nag him. Even Dave’s wife, Judy, had given up on that score, and Judy Hollis—Judy Wertne
r that was—was a fair engine when it came to getting her own way.
“Soft,” Dave said. “Soft as eggs just dropped out of a chicken’s ass.”
“Mayhap,” Avery said, putting his thumbs in his belt and rocking enormously back and forth, “but the one did most of the talking, him in the flathead hat, he doesn’t think he’s soft.”
“Don’t matter what he thinks,” Dave said, still nibbling at his eyeglass. “He’s in Hambry, now. He may have to change his way of thinking to our’n.”
Behind him, the other deputies laughed. Even Avery smiled. They would leave the rich boys alone if the rich boys left them alone—those were orders, straight from Mayor’s House—but Avery had to admit that he wouldn’t mind a little dust-up with them, so he wouldn’t. He would enjoy putting his boot into the balls of the one with that idiotic bird’s skull on his saddle-horn—standing there and mocking him, he’d been, thinking all the while that Herk Avery was too country-dumb to know what he was up to—but the thing he’d really enjoy would be beating the cool look from the eyes of the boy in the flathead preacher’s hat, seeing a hotter expression of fear rise up in them as Mr. Will Dearborn of Hemphill realized that New Canaan was far away and his rich father couldn’t help him.
“Aye,” he said, clapping Dave on the shoulder. “Mayhap he’ll have to change his way of thinking.” He smiled—one very different from any of those he had shown the Affiliation counters. “Mayhap they all will.”
4
The three boys rode in single file until they were past the Travellers’ Rest (a young and obviously retarded man with kinky black hair looked up from scrubbing the brick stoop and waved to them; they waved back). Then they moved up abreast, Roland in the middle.
“What did you think of our new friend, the High Sheriff?” Roland asked.
“I have no opinion,” Cuthbert said brightly. “No, none at all. Opinion is politics, and politics is an evil which has caused many a fellow to be hung while he’s still young and pretty.” He leaned forward and tapped the rook’s skull with his knuckles. “The lookout didn’t care for him, though. I’m sorry to say that our faithful lookout thought Sheriff Avery a fat bag of guts without a trustworthy bone in his body.”
Roland turned to Alain. “And you, young Master Stockworth?”
Alain considered it for some time, as was his way, chewing a piece of grass he’d bent oversaddle to pluck from his side of the road. At last he said: “If he came upon us burning in the street, I don’t think he’d piss on us to put us out.”
Cuthbert laughed heartily at that. “And you, Will? How do you say, dear captain?”
“He doesn’t interest me much . . . but one thing he said does. Given that the horse-meadow they call the Drop has to be at least thirty wheels long and runs five or more to the dusty desert, how do you suppose Sheriff Avery knew we were on the part of it that belongs to Croydon’s Piano Ranch?”
They looked at him, first with surprise, then speculation. After a moment Cuthbert leaned forward and rapped once more on the rook’s skull. “We’re being watched, and you never reported it? No supper for you, sir, and it’ll be the stockade the next time it happens!”
But before they had gone much farther, Roland’s thoughts of Sheriff Avery gave way to more pleasant ones of Susan Delgado. He would see her the following night, of that he was sure. He wondered if her hair would be down.
He couldn’t wait to find out.
5
Now here they were, at Mayor’s House. Let the game begin, Roland thought, not clear on what that meant even as the phrase went through his mind, surely not thinking of Castles . . . not then.
The hostlers led their mounts away, and for a moment the three of them stood at the foot of the steps—huddled, almost, as horses do in unfriendly weather—their beardless faces washed by the light of the torches. From inside, the guitars played and voices were raised in a fresh eddy of laughter.
“Do we knock?” Cuthbert asked. “Or just open and march in?”
Roland was spared answering. The main door of the haci was thrown open and two women stepped out, both wearing long white-collared dresses that reminded all three boys of the dresses stockmen’s wives wore in their own part of the world. Their hair was caught back in snoods that sparkled with some bright diamondy stuff in the light of the torches.
The plumper of the two stepped forward, smiling, and dropped them a deep curtsey. Her earrings, which looked like square-cut firedims, flashed and bobbed. “You are the young men from the Affiliation, so you are, and welcome you are, as well. Goodeven, sirs, and may your days be long upon the earth!”
They bowed in unison, boots forward, and thanked her in an unintended chorus that made her laugh and clap her hands. The tall woman beside her offered them a smile as spare as her frame.
“I am Olive Thorin,” the plump woman said, “the Mayor’s wife. This is my sister-in-law, Coral.”
Coral Thorin, still with that narrow smile (it barely creased her lips and touched her eyes not at all), dipped them a token curtsey. Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain bowed again over their outstretched legs.
“I welcome you to Seafront,” Olive Thorin said, her dignity leavened and made pleasant by her artless smile, her obvious dazzlement at the appearance of her young visitors from In-World. “Come to our house with joy. I say so with all my heart, so I do.”
“And so we will, madam,” Roland said, “for your greeting has made us joyful.” He took her hand, and, with no calculation whatever, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Her delighted laughter made him smile. He liked Olive Thorin on sight, and it was perhaps well he met someone of that sort early on, for, with the problematic exception of Susan Delgado, he met no one else he liked, no one else he trusted, all that night.
6
It was warm enough even with the seabreeze, and the cloak-and coat-collector in the foyer looked as though he’d had little or no custom. Roland wasn’t entirely surprised to see that it was Deputy Dave, his remaining bits of hair slicked back with some sort of gleaming grease and his monocle now lying on the snow-white breast of a houseman’s jacket. Roland gave him a nod. Dave, his hands clasped behind his back, returned it.
Two men—Sheriff Avery and an elderly gent as gaunt as Old Doctor Death in a cartoon—came toward them. Beyond, through a pair of double doors now open wide, a whole roomful of people stood about with crystal punch-cups in their hands, talking and taking little bits of food from the trays which were circulating.
Roland had time for just one narrow-eyed glance toward Cuthbert: Everything. Every name, every face . . . every nuance. Especially those.
Cuthbert raised an eyebrow—his discreet version of a nod—and then Roland was pulled, willy-nilly, into the evening, his first real evening of service as a working gunslinger. And he had rarely worked harder.
Old Doctor Death turned out to be Kimba Rimer, Thorin’s Chancellor and Minister of Inventory (Roland suspected the title had been made up special for their visit). He was easily five inches taller than Roland, who was considered tall in Gilead, and his skin was pale as candlewax. Not unhealthy-looking; just pale. Wings of iron-gray hair floated away from either side of his head, gossamer as cobwebs. The top of his skull was completely bald. Balanced on his whelk of a nose was a pince-nez.
“My boys!” he said, when the introductions had been made. He had the smooth, sadly sincere voice of a politician or an undertaker. “Welcome to Mejis! To Hambry! And to Seafront, our humble Mayor’s House!”
“If this is humble, I should wonder at the palace your folk might build,” Roland said. It was a mild enough remark, more pleasantry than witticism (he ordinarily left the wit to Bert), but Chancellor Rimer laughed hard. So did Sheriff Avery.
“Come, boys!” Rimer said, when he apparently felt he had expressed enough amusement. “The Mayor awaits you with impatience, I’m sure.”
“Aye,” said a timid voice from behind them. The skinny sister-in-law, Coral, had disappeared, but Olive Thorin was still there
, looking up at the newcomers with her hands decorously clasped before that area of her body which might once have been her waist. She was still smiling her hopeful, pleasant smile. “Very eager to meet you, Hart is, very eager, indeed. Shall I conduct them, Kimba, or—”
“Nay, nay, you mustn’t trouble yourself with so many other guests to attend,” Rimer said.
“I suppose you’re right.” She curtseyed to Roland and his companions a final time, and although she still smiled and although the smile looked completely genuine to Roland, he thought: She’s unhappy about something, all the same. Desperately so, I think.
“Gentlemen?” Rimer asked. The teeth in his smile were almost disconcertingly huge. “Will ye come?”
He led them past the grinning Sheriff and into the reception hall.
7
Roland was hardly overwhelmed by it; he had, after all, been in the Great Hall of Gilead—the Hall of the Grandfathers, it was sometimes called—and had even peeped down on the great party which was held there each year, the so-called Dance of Easterling, which marked the end of Wide Earth and the advent of Sowing. There were five chandeliers in the Great Hall instead of just one, and lit with electric bulbs rather than oil lamps. The dress of the partygoers (many of them expensive young men and women who had never done a hand’s turn of work in their lives, a fact of which John Farson spoke at every opportunity) had been richer, the music had been fuller, the company of older and nobler lines which grew closer and closer together as they stretched back toward Arthur Eld, he of the white horse and unifying sword.
Yet there was life here, and plenty of it. There was a robustness that had been missing in Gilead, and not just at Easterling, either. The texture he felt as he stepped into the Mayor’s House reception room was the sort of thing, Roland reflected, that you didn’t entirely miss when it was gone, because it slipped away quietly and painlessly. Like blood from a vein cut in a tub filled with hot water.
