“If I sound angry, it’s because most of the fishermen are laughing at us behind our backs. We keep coming back and coming back. Roland, they think we’re fools.”
Roland nodded. “All to the good,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Alain said quietly, “but Rimer doesn’t think we’re fools- it’s in the way he looks at us when we pass. Nor does Jonas. And if they don’t think we’re fools, Roland, what do they think?”
Roland stood on the second step, the saddle-blanket hanging forgotten over his arm. For once they actually seemed to have his attention, Cuthbert thought. Glory be and will wonders never cease.
“They think we’re avoiding the Drop because we already know what’s there,” Roland said. “And if they don’t think it, they soon will.”
“Cuthbert has a plan.”
Roland’s gaze-mild, interested, already starting to be not there again-shifted to Cuthbert. Cuthbert the joker. Cuthbert the 'prentice, who had in no way earned the gun he’d carried east to the Outer Crescent. Cuthbert the virgin and eternal second. Gods, I don’t want to hate him. I don’t, but now it’s so easy.
“We two should go and see Sheriff Avery tomorrow,” Cuthbert said. “We will present it as a courtesy visit. We have already established ourselves as three courteous, if slightly stupid, young fellows, have we not?”
“To a fault,” Roland agreed, smiling.
“We’ll say that we’ve finally finished with the seacoast side of Hambry, and we hope to be every bit as meticulous on the farm and cowboy side. But we certainly don’t want to cause trouble or be in anyone’s way. It is, after all, the busiest time of year-for ranchers as well as farmers- and even citified fools such as ourselves will be aware of that. So we’ll give the good Sheriff a list-”
Roland’s eyes lit up. He tossed the blanket over the porch rail, grabbed Cuthbert around the shoulders, and gave him a rough hug. Cuthbert could smell a lilac scent around Roland’s collar and felt an insane but powerful urge to clamp his hands around Roland’s throat and try to strangle him. Instead, he gave him a perfunctory clap on the back in return.
Roland drew away, grinning widely. “A list of the ranches we’ll be visiting,” he said. “Aye! And with forewarning, they can move any stock they’d like us not to see on to the next ranch, or the last one. The same for tack, feed, equipment… it’s masterful, Cuthbert! You’re a genius!”
“Far from that,” Cuthbert said. “I’ve just spared a little time to think about a problem that concerns us all. That concerns the entire Affiliation, mayhap. We need to think. Wouldn’t you say?”
Alain winced, but Roland didn’t seem to notice. He was still grinning. Even at fourteen, such an expression on his face was troubling. The truth was that when Roland grinned, he looked slightly mad. “Do you know, they may even move in a fair number of muties for us to look at, just so we’ll continue to believe the lies they’ve already told about the impurity of their stocklines.” He paused, seeming to think, and then said: “Why don’t you and Alain go and see the Sheriff, Bert? That would do very well, I think.”
At this point Cuthbert nearly threw himself at Roland, wanting to scream Yes, why not? Then you could spend tomorrow morning pronging her as well as tomorrow afternoon! You idiot! You thoughtless lovestruck idiot!
It was Al who saved him-saved them all, perhaps.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said sharply, and Roland wheeled toward him, looking surprised. He wasn’t used to sharpness from that quarter. “You’re our leader, Roland-seen that way by Thorin, by Avery, by the townsfolk. Seen that way by us as well.”
“No one appointed me-”
“No one needed to!” Cuthbert shouted. “You won your guns! These folk would hardly believe it-I hardly believe it myself just lately-but you are a gunslinger. You have to go! Plain as the nose on your face! It doesn’t matter which of us accompanies you, but you have to go!” He could say more, much more, but if he did, where would it end? With their fellowship broken beyond repair, likely. So he clamped his mouth shut- no need for Alain to kick him this time-and once again waited for the explosion. Once again, none came.
“All right,” Roland said in his new way-that mild it-doesn’t-much-matter way that made Cuthbert feel like biting him to wake him up. “Tomorrow morning. You and I, Bert. Will eight suit you?”
“Down to the ground,” Cuthbert said. Now that the discussion was over and the decision made, Bert’s heart was beating wildly and the muscles in his upper thighs felt like rubber. It was the way he’d felt after their confrontation with the Big Coffin Hunters.
“We’ll be at our prettiest,” Roland said. “Nice boys from the Inners with good intentions but not many brains. Fine.” And he went inside, no longer grinning (which was a relief) but smiling gently.
Cuthbert and Alain looked at each other and let out their breath in a mutual rush. Cuthbert cocked his head toward the yard, and went down the steps. Alain followed, and the two boys stood in the center of the dirt rectangle with the bunkhouse at their backs. To the east, the rising full moon was hidden behind a scrim of clouds. '
“She’s tranced him,” Cuthbert said. “Whether she means to or not, she’ll kill us all in the end. Wait and see if she don’t.”
“You shouldn’t say such, even in jest.”
“All right, she’ll crown us with the jewels of Eld and we’ll live forever.”
“You have to stop being angry at him, Bert. You have to.”
Cuthbert looked at him bleakly. “I can’t.”
4
The great storms of autumn were still a month or more distant, but the following morning dawned drizzly and gray. Roland and Cuthbert wrapped themselves in scrapes and headed for town, leaving Alain to the few home place chores. Tucked in Roland’s belt was the schedule of farms and ranches-beginning with the three small spreads owned by the Barony-the three of them had worked out the previous evening. The pace this schedule suggested was almost ludicrously slow-it would keep them on the Drop and in the orchards almost until Year’s End Fair-but it conformed to the pace they had already set on the docks.
Now the two of them rode silently toward town, both lost in their own thoughts. Their way took them past the Delgado house. Roland looked up and saw Susan sitting in her window, a bright vision in the gray light of that fall morning. His heart leaped up and although he didn’t know it then, it was how he would remember her most clearly forever after-lovely Susan, the girl at the window. So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the comers of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.
Roland raised a hand to her. It went toward his mouth at first, wanting to send her a kiss, but that would be madness. He lifted the hand before it could touch his lips and ticked a finger off his forehead instead, offering a saucy little salute.
Susan smiled and returned it in kind. None saw Cordelia, who had gone out in the drizzle to check on the last of her squash and sharproot. That lady stood where she was, a sombrero yanked down on her head almost to the eyeline, half-hidden by the stuffy-guy guarding the pumpkin patch. She watched Roland and Cuthbert pass (Cuthbert she barely saw; her interest was in the other one). From the boy on horseback she looked up to Susan, sitting there in her window, humming as blithely as a bird in a gilded cage.
A sharp splinter of suspicion whispered its way into Cordelia’s heart. Susan’s change of temperament-from alternating bouts of sorrow and fearful anger to a kind of dazed but mainly cheerful acceptance-had been so sudden. Mayhap it wasn’t acceptance at all.