10

Sheriff Avery, Deputy Dave, and Deputy George Riggins were sitting on the porch in front of the Sheriff’s office and jail when Mr. Stockworth and Mr. Heath (the latter with that idiotic bird’s skull still mounted on the horn of his saddle) went past at a steady walk. The bell o’ noon had rung fifteen minutes before, and Sheriff Avery reckoned they were on their way to lunch, perhaps at The Millbank, or perhaps at the Rest, which put on a fair noon meal. Popkins and such. Avery liked something a little more filling; half a chicken or a haunch of beef suited him just fine.

Mr. Heath gave them a wave and a grin. “Good day, gents! Long life! Gentle breezes! Happy siestas!”

They waved and smiled back. When they were out of sight, Dave said: “They spent all mornin down there on the piers, countin nets. Nets! Do you believe it?”

“Yessir,” Sheriff Avery said, lifting one massive cheek a bit out of his rocker and letting off a noisy pre-luncheon fart. “Yessir, I do. Aye.”

George said: “If not for them facing off Jonas’s boys the way they done, I’d think they was a pack of fools.”

“Nor would they likely mind,” Avery said. He looked at Dave, who was twirling his monocle on the end of its ribbon and looking off in the direction the boys had taken. There were folks in town who had begun calling the Affiliation brats Little Coffin Hunters. Avery wasn’t sure what to make of that. He’d soothed it down between them and Thorin’s hard boys, and had gotten both a commendation and a piece of gold from Rimer for his efforts, but still… what to make of them?

“The day they came in,” he said to Dave, “ye thought they were soft. How do ye say now?”

“Now?” Dave twirled his monocle a final time, then popped it in his eye and stared at the Sheriff through it. “Now I think they might have been a little harder than I thought, after all.”

Yes indeed, Avery thought. But hard don’t mean smart, thank the gods. Aye, thank the gods for that.

“I’m hungry as a bull, so I am,” he said, getting up. He bent, put his hands on his knees, and ripped off another loud fart. Dave and George looked at each other. George fanned a hand in front of his face. Sheriff Herkimer Avery, Barony Sheriff, straightened up, looking both relieved and anticipatory. “More room out than there is in,” he said. “Come on, boys. Let’s go downstreet and tuck into a little.”

11

Not even sunset could do much to improve the view from the porch of the Bar K bunkhouse. The building-except for the cook-shack and the stable, the only one still standing on what had been the home acre-was L-shaped, and the porch was built on the inside of the short arm. Left for them on it had been just the right number of seats: two splintery rockers and a wooden crate to which an unstable board back had been nailed.

On this evening. Alain sat in one of the rockers and Cuthbert sat on the box-seat, which he seemed to fancy. On the rail, peering across the beaten dirt of the dooryard and toward the burned-out hulk of the Garber home place, was the lookout.

Alain was bone-tired, and although both of them had bathed in the stream near the west end of the home acre, he thought he still smelled fish and seaweed on himself. They had spent the day counting nets. He was not averse to hard work, even when it was monotonous, but he didn’t like pointless work. Which this was. Hambry came in two parts: the fishers and the horse-breeders. There was nothing for them among the fishers, and after three weeks all three of them knew it. Their answers were out on the Drop, at which they had so far done no more than look. At Roland’s order.

The wind gusted, and for a moment they could hear the low, grumbling, squealing sound of the thinny.

“I hate that sound,” Alain said.

Cuthbert, unusually silent and introspective tonight, nodded and said only “Aye.” They were all saying that now, not to mention So you do and So I am and So it is. Alain suspected the three of them would have Hambry on their tongues long after they had wiped its dust from their boots.

From behind them, inside the bunkhouse door, came a less unpleasant sound-the cooing of pigeons. And then, from around the side of the bunkhouse, a third, for which he and Cuthbert had unconsciously been listening as they sat watching the sun go down: horse’s hoofs. Rusher’s.

Roland came around the comer, riding easy, and as he did, something happened that struck Alain as oddly portentous… a kind of omen. There was a flurry-flutter of wings, a dark shape in the air, and suddenly a bird was roosting on Roland’s shoulder.

He didn’t jump; barely looked around. He rode up to the hitching rail and sat there, holding out his hand. “Hile,” he said softly, and the pigeon stepped into his palm. Bound to one of its legs was a capsule. Roland removed it, opened it, and took out a tiny strip of paper, which had been rolled tight. In his other hand he held the pigeon out.

“Hile,” Alain said, holding out his own hand. The pigeon flew to it. As Roland dismounted, Alain took the pigeon into the bunkhouse, where the cages had been placed beneath an open window. He ungated the center one and held out his hand. The pigeon which had just arrived hopped in; the pigeon in the cage hopped out and into his palm. Alain shut the cage door, latched it, crossed the room, and turned up the pillow of Bert’s bunk. Beneath it was a linen envelope containing a number of blank paper strips and a tiny storage-pen. He took one of the strips and the pen, which held its own small reservoir of ink and did not have to be dipped. He went back out on the porch. Roland and Cuthbert were studying the unrolled strip of paper the pigeon had delivered from Gilead. On it was a line of tiny geometric shapes:

“What does it say?” Alain asked. The code was simple enough, but he could not get it by heart or read it on sight, as Roland and Bert had been able to, almost immediately. Alain’s talents-his ability to track, his easy access to the touch-lay in other directions.

“Farson moves east,'” Cuthbert read.” 'Forces split, one big, one small. Do you see anything unusual.'” He looked at Roland, almost offended. “Anything unusual, what does that mean?”

Roland shook his head. He didn’t know. He doubted if the men who had sent the message-of whom his own father was almost surely one- did, either.

Alain handed Cuthbert the strip and the pen. With one finger Bert stroked the head of the softly cooing pigeon. It ruffled its wings as if already anxious to be off to the west.

“What shall I write?” Cuthbert asked. “The same?”

Roland nodded.

“But we have seen things that are unusual!” Alain said. “And we know things are wrong here! The horses… and at that small ranch way south… I can’t remember the name…”

Cuthbert could. “The Rocking H.”

“Aye, the Rocking H. There are oxen there. Oxen! My gods, I’ve never seen them, except for pictures in a book!”

Roland looked alarmed. “Does anyone know you saw?”

Alain shrugged impatiently. “I don’t think so. There were drovers about-three, maybe four-”

“Four, aye,” Cuthbert said quietly.

“-but they paid no attention to us. Even when we see things, they think we don’t.”

“And that’s the way it must stay.” Roland’s eyes swept them, but there was a kind of absence in his face, as if his thoughts were far away. He turned to look toward the sunset, and Alain saw something on the collar of his shirt. He plucked it, a move made so quickly and nimbly that not even Roland felt it. Bert couldn’t have done that, Alain thought with some pride.

“Aye, but-”

“Same message,” Roland said. He sat down on the top step and looked off toward the evening redness in the west. “Patience, Mr. Richard Stock-worth and Mr. Arthur Heath. We know certain things and we believe certain other things. But would John Farson come all this way simply to resupply horses? I don’t think so. I’m not sure, horses are valuable, aye, so they are… but I’m not sure. So we wait.”