“I think we may go back early today, if that’s any satisfaction to you,” Roland said, and rode away. Alain watched him. He’d always wondered what went on in Roland’s head, but never more than now.

5

Creak. Creak-creak.

Here was what he’d been listening for, and just as Jonas was about to give up the hunt. He had expected to find their hidey-hole a little closer to their beds, but they were trig, all right.

He went to one knee and used the blade of his knife to pry up the board which had creaked. Under it were three bundles, each swaddled in dark strips of cotton cloth. These strips were damp to the touch and smelled fragrantly of gun-oil. Jonas took the bundles out and unwrapped each, curious to see what sort of calibers the youngsters had brought. The answer turned out to be serviceable but undistinguished. Two of the bundles contained single five-shot revolvers of a type then called (for no reason I know) “carvers.” The third contained two guns, six-shooters of higher quality than the carvers. In fact, for one heart-stopping moment, Jonas thought he had found the big revolvers of a gunslinger-true-blue steel barrels, sandalwood grips, bores like mineshafts. Such guns he could not have left, no matter what the cost to his plans. Seeing the plain grips was thus something of a relief. Disappointment was never a thing you looked for, but it had a wonderful way of clearing the mind.

He rewrapped the guns and put them back, put the board back as well. A gang of ne'er-do-well clots from town might possibly come out here, and might possibly vandalize the unguarded bunkhouse, scattering what they didn’t tear up, but find a hiding place such as this? No, my son. Not likely.

Do you really think they’ll believe it was hooligans from town that did this?

They might; just because he had underestimated them to start with didn’t mean he should turn about-face and begin overestimating them now. And he had the luxury of not needing to care. Either way, it would make them angry. Angry enough to rush full-tilt around their Hillock, perhaps. To throw caution to the wind… and reap the whirlwind.

Jonas poked the end of the severed dog’s tail into one of the pigeon-cages, so it stuck up like a huge, mocking feather. He used the paint to write such charmingly boyish slogans as

and

on the walls. Then he left, standing on the porch for a moment to verify he still had the Bar K to himself. Of course he did. Yet for a blink or two, there at the end, he’d felt uneasy-almost as though he’d been scented. By some sort of In-World telepathy, mayhap.

There is such; you know it. The touch, it’s called.

Aye, but that was the tool of gunslingers, artists, and lunatics. Not of boys, be they lords or just lads.

Jonas went back to his horse at a near-trot nevertheless, mounted, and rode toward town. Things were reaching the boil, and there would be a lot to do before Demon Moon rose full in the sky.

6

Rhea’s hut, its stone walls and the cracked guijarros of its roof slimed with moss, huddled on the last hill of the Coos. Beyond it was a magnificent view northwest-the Bad Grass, the desert, Hanging Rock, Eyebolt Canyon-but scenic vistas were the last thing on Sheemie’s mind as he led Capriccioso cautiously into Rhea’s yard not long after noon. He’d been hungry for the last hour or so, but now the pangs were gone. He hated this place worse than any other in Barony, even more than Citgo with its big towers always going creakedy-creak and clangety-clang.

“Sai?” he called, leading the mule into the yard. Capi balked as they neared the hut, planting his feet and lowering his neck, but when Sheemie tugged the halter, he came on again. Sheemie was almost sorry.

“Ma’am? Nice old lady that wouldn’t hurt a fly? You therey-air? It’s good old Sheemie with your graf.” He smiled and held out his free hand, palm up, to demonstrate his exquisite harmlessness, but from the hut there was still no response. Sheemie felt his guts first coil, then cramp. For a moment he thought he was going to shit in his pants just like a babby; then he passed wind and felt a little better. In his bowels, at least.

He walked on, liking this less at every step. The yard was rocky and the straggling weeds yellowish, as if the hut’s resident had blighted the very earth with her touch. There was a garden, and Sheemie saw that the vegetables still in it-pumpkins and sharproot, mostly-were muties. Then he noticed the garden’s stuffy-guy. It was also a mutie, a nasty thing with two straw heads instead of one and what appeared to be a stuffed hand in a woman’s satin glove poking out of the chest area.

Sai Thorin’ll never talk me up here again, he thought. Not for all the pennies in the world.

The hut’s door stood open. To Sheemie it looked like a gaping mouth. A sickish dank smell drifted out.

Sheemie stopped about fifteen paces from the house, and when Capi nuzzled his bottom (as if to ask what was keeping them), the boy uttered a brief screech. The sound of it almost set him running, and it was only by exercising all his willpower that he was able to stand his ground. The day was bright, but up here on this hill, the sun seemed meaningless. This wasn’t his first trip up here, and Rhea’s hill had never been pleasant, but it was somehow worse now. It made him feel the way the sound of the thinny made him feel when he woke and heard it in the middle of the night. As if something awful was sliding toward him-something that was all insane eyes and red, reaching claws.

“S-S-Sai? Is anyone here? Is-”

“Come closer.” The voice drifted out of the open door. “Come to where I can see you, idiot boy.”

Trying not to moan or cry, Sheemie did as the voice said. He had an idea that he was never going back down the hill again. Capriccioso, perhaps, but not him. Poor old Sheemie was going to end up in the cookpot-hot dinner tonight, soup tomorrow, cold snacks until Year’s End. That’s what he would be.

He made his reluctant way to Rhea’s stoop on rubbery legs-if his knees had been closer together, they would have knocked like castanets. She didn’t even sound the same.

“S-Sai? I’m afraid. So I a-a-am.”

“So ye should be,” the voice said. It drifted and drifted, slipping out into the sunlight like a sick puff of smoke. “Never mind, though-just do as I say. Come closer, Sheemie, son of Stanley.”

Sheemie did so, although terror dragged at every step he took. The mule followed, head down. Capi had honked like a goose all the way up here-honked ceaselessly-but now he had fallen silent.

“So here ye be,” the voice buried in those shadows whispered. “Here ye be, indeed.”

She stepped into the sunlight falling through the open door, wincing for a moment as it dazzled her eyes. Clasped in her arms was the empty graf barrel. Coiled around her throat like a necklace was Ermot.

Sheemie had seen the snake before, and on previous occasions had never failed to wonder what sort of agonies he might suffer before he died if he happened to be bitten by such. Today he had no such thoughts. Compared to Rhea, Ermot looked normal. The old woman’s face had sunken at the cheeks, giving the rest of her head the look of a skull. Brown spots swarmed out of her thin hair and over her bulging brow like an army of invading insects. Below her left eye was an open sore, and her grin showed only a few remaining teeth.

“Don’t like the way I look, do’ee?” she asked. “Makes yer heart cold, don’t it?”

“N-No,” Sheemie said, and then, because that didn’t sound right: “I mean yes!” But gods, that sounded even worse. “You’re beautiful, sai!” he blurted.

She chuffed nearly soundless laughter and thrust the empty tun into his arms almost hard enough to knock him on his ass. The touch of her fingers was brief, but long enough to make his flesh crawl.