Fighting with fire

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

On questioning Lady Luck, Lex learnt that the library tree had housed only originals. Some of the books had been copied but Herman had ordered these all burned when he first banned the books. However, just because the God had ordered it so, didn’t necessarily mean that it had actually happened.

‘So, theoretically, there could be copies of a forbidden book out there?’ Lex said.

‘Yes, dear, I suppose so. They’d risk a lot of trouble if they were found out, though.’

Well, if there was anything worth risking trouble for, Desareth’s Wishing Creatures was surely one of them. Lex nurtured a faint hope that he was the only one who knew about them, but he strongly suspected there must be others out there who knew of the Creatures and were looking for them, too.

He would just have to put them out of his mind for now. He needed to have all his attention focused on infiltrating Dry Gulch House as a cowboy and then finding the Sword of Life. And then he was going to win the third round, and the Game. After he’d done all that, then he would turn his attention back to the Wishing Creatures of Desareth. He would track them down somehow and he would have them for himself. If they belonged to someone else then he would pinch them; if they were lost then he would find them; and if they were long buried then he would dig them up. Between the information in Erasmus Grey’s book and Lex’s own natural talent for getting what he wanted, he would have those Creatures? as many of them as he possibly could.

The enchanted ship took three days to reach Dry Gulch. They soon left the sea behind them and, as they journeyed on, the landscape became less green and more brown and scrubby. Lex knew they were getting close when cactuses and tumbleweed started to appear an awful lot.

He used the first day to fine-tune the skills Jesse had taught him back at the Majestic: card-shuffling, poker-playing, pistol-twirling, knife-spinning, coffee-drinking, bean-eating and so on. Of all these things, it was bean-eating that Lex disliked the most. Not because he had anything against beans per se, it was simply that Jesse insisted he eat them without a spoon.

‘Don’t find spoons out in the desert,’ he’d said.

Which was all very well, but eating a can of beans without a spoon meant getting yourself in a terrible mess. With a hell of a lot of effort, Lex might have been able to do it neatly but the problem was that no cowboy would make any effort whatsoever, and that meant that Lex couldn’t either. He would even be expected to wipe his mouth with his sleeve and belch loudly once he’d finished!

‘For such a pernickety fella, I’m surprised you chose this line of work,’ Jesse remarked.

Lex’s obsession with cleanliness was his one flaw as a conman, but he kept his feelings under control? he was disciplined enough to grit his teeth and bear it. He’d always had a thing about being clean, even as a small child. When his grandfather had taken Lex and his brother to the fair, Lex had wanted to do anything and everything there was to do? except for the goo slide. Kids could go down a slide and land in a big pool full of slimy goo at the bottom. It was extremely popular but Lex threw a very loud tantrum as soon as his grandfather merely suggested he might like to go on it.

After the first day of travelling, Lex had his first go on Rusty. They were confining the griffins inside several times a day so that Jesse could take the horse up on deck and let him get some fresh air and exercise. Lex had never been on a horse before in his life (unless you counted the pony at the fair). There had been a horse back at the family farm but that had just pulled the wagon. And now Lex had only two days to learn how to ride.

It did not quite turn out to be the piece of cake he’d expected. There was more to it than just sitting there on the horse’s back. It had to look right, too.

‘You gotta look like you were practically born in the saddle,’ Jesse said. ‘Like you and the horse are one living thing. Don’t hold the reins so high. Lean back in the saddle more. And don’t be lookin’ down at the horse like that all the time? look straight ahead at where you’re goin’.’

After an hour of walking around the deck, Lex began to feel more comfortable in the saddle. It was what came next that was more tricky. Walking was one thing? the other three gaits were something else altogether. First, Lex had to learn how to squeeze with his legs so that Rusty would pick up into a trot and, later, a canter. This required more strength than he would have thought. Fortunately, Lex did have fairly strong legs as a result of all the rope-climbing and building-scaling he did all the time as the Wizard. But the other problem? the most major one? was trying to stay on the horse’s back. It turned out that trotting and cantering were much bouncier gaits than walking.

Lex fell off. A lot.

The first time it happened, he’d taken a corner too sharply, his foot had fallen out of the stirrup and then he’d lost his balance. Over the side of the horse he went, landing on the deck on his back with a horrible thump. It was like all the air had been driven out of his body with a club. Lex would never have believed that falling from such a relatively-low height could hurt so much. Thankfully, he’d managed to avoid hitting his head but pain shot through his back and his right arm. He’d heard of people falling from horses and breaking their backs or snapping their necks, paralysing themselves for the rest of their lives and, for an unpleasant moment, he had a clear vision in his mind of that happening to him. Lex knew he would never be able to live life in a wheelchair? never!

A shadow fell across him, and Jesse’s unconcerned voice said, ‘Well, get up then. Ain’t no use just lying there gasping like that. Best thing to do when you fall off is to pick yourself up and get right back on. That’s if you want to carry on at all, of course.’

Lex dragged himself to his feet. Aside from being stiff and sore he appeared to be unharmed. He practically snatched the reins from Jesse and said, ‘Of course I want to carry on!’

He put his foot into the stirrup and swung himself back up into the saddle.

‘It probably ain’t strictly necessary, y’know,’ Jesse said, watching him. ‘I mean, you won’t be on horseback once you’re inside Dry Gulch House, will you? It just looks better if you turn up on one, that’s all. And you can get away with walkin’ for that. You don’t have to go galloping right up to the front door.’

But that wasn’t good enough for Lex. He knew full well how important first impressions were. He’d read enough cowboy books to know that the single most important part of pulling this scam off successfully would be for him to be at ease with his horse. Whether that ended up being a five minute performance or a five day one, Lex didn’t care. Jesse was right? going to all this bother was probably unnecessary. Probably. But Lex didn’t work with ‘ probablys ’. And that was why he always won.

He had no intention whatsoever of arriving at Dry Gulch House any way other than on horseback. He might only have one shot at this and he wasn’t going to blow it just because mastering horse riding was difficult for a city kid. He would dearly love to be able to leap out of the saddle mid-ride and actually stand on the horse’s back whilst holding the reins as it cantered along. But if he didn’t have time to learn how to do that then, by heck, he was at least going to learn how to canter and gallop.

He fell off Rusty quite a lot that day. Time and time again, in fact. But he sustained no serious injuries and was rather annoyed when, about five hours after he’d started, Jesse announced that it was, ‘Time for a break.’

‘I don’t want a break!’ Lex snapped. ‘I want to carry on until I get it right!’

‘That may be,’ Jesse replied calmly. ‘But Rusty needs to have a break and get some food and water in him. After he’s had a rest, you can carry on in the afternoon. If you still want to.’

Lex thought that last sentence had been spoken in rather an odd tone and he found out why a moment later when he dismounted. His legs were like jelly. As soon as his feet hit the deck, his knees buckled and he collapsed into an untidy heap on the ground. Jesse laughed heartily. ‘Always strikes newbies like that,’ he said. ‘Not used to it, see?’

‘I’ll get used to it fast enough!’ Lex snapped, dragging himself upright with some difficulty. The truth was that every muscle in his body ached? both from the numerous falls and from the extended amount of time he’d spent on Rusty’s back.

‘Go take a hot bath while I see to Rusty,’ Jesse said. ‘I know you’re right fond of soap and if you have a bit of a soak in the tub then your muscles won’t seize up so bad.’

Lex stomped off to the bathroom feeling annoyed, no less because of the fact that Jesse was right. If he ended up so stiff he could hardly move then that wouldn’t exactly help his image as a cowboy, either.

After having a long bath, he went back on deck that afternoon and spent another few hours on Rusty. By the end of that day he had improved immensely? and was able to get the horse to trot and canter on command, whilst managing not to fall off. He still bounced around in the saddle a lot. But he didn’t fall off. It was a start, and he still had all of the next day to practise. Lex would have liked to keep on riding all night but Jesse, blast him, insisted that Rusty ought to rest, and so should Lex. But Lex had no time for resting. He spent much of that night practising with his cards, knives and pistols. He even had another crack at eating beans straight from the tin and drinking some ridiculously strong black coffee.

After a couple of hours’ sleep, Lex was up bright and early the next day to get back to work on Rusty. He no longer fell off? now it was just a question of getting it to look right. Cantering in particular took Lex some time to get the hang of. It wouldn’t do for him to be bouncing around in the saddle, perilously close to falling off at any moment.

‘You gotta move with the horse,’ Jesse kept saying.

‘Yes, I understand that!’ Lex snapped. ‘It’s what I’m trying to do!’

He had not expected learning horsemanship to be so difficult. He’d seen people on horses before and it had always looked so easy? like the horse was the one doing all the work and the rider simply sat there. The reality was not like that at all. But, at around five o’clock that afternoon, something shifted and suddenly it all seemed to click.

‘There!’ Jesse yelled. ‘That’s it! You’re doing it!’

But Lex didn’t need Jesse to tell him. He could feel the difference. Now he was moving in perfect time with Rusty like they really were just one animal. It was simply a matter of getting the rhythm right and now, finally, Lex had got it.

‘Nothing to it, really,’ he said as he slid off Rusty’s back. His legs were killing him but he managed to grit his teeth and bear it.

‘I gotta say you seem to have picked it up pretty quick,’ Jesse replied.

‘I told you I was a fast learner,’ Lex said. ‘I’m going back to my room now to practise the other stuff.’

Lex spent the rest of the day doing just that. After so many hours of practice, he had mastered all eight card shuffles and could spin the pistols and twirl the knives with no danger of dropping them. He could spit almost from one side of the room to the other and be sure of hitting whatever target he aimed at. And he could even drink the horrible sludge they called coffee, without gagging. Now that he had horse riding down, too, Lex felt pleasantly well prepared for cheating his way into Dry Gulch House the next day.

They arrived at Dry Gulch a little after three o’clock in the afternoon. Lex set the ship down on a patch of desert beside the inn the players were supposed to be staying at. It was conveniently located right in the middle of the town, which was actually rather a boring one. Lex had expected it to be full of cowboys but, in fact, it seemed instead to be full of peasants and townsfolk walking around with horses and baskets of apples and the like. Lex pulled a face in disgust at the dull scene. It was like being at a country fete. They might as well set up a stall selling punch and have done with it. The people did not even seem particularly excited? or even interested? at the arrival of the players.

‘What’s the matter with these people?’ Lex said to Jesse. ‘Don’t they know who we are? Why aren’t they cheering? You told me you had Games out here.’

‘Sure, we do,’ Jesse replied. ‘But there ain’t many folk what goes to ’em. You need money to bet on players and that’s somethin’ that tends to be in short supply around these parts. Besides, most people round here are farmers. They ain’t got time to waste watching Games.’

‘What about the cowboys?’

‘Well, we don’t mind a bit of gamblin’ when we’ve got cash in our pockets, but most of us would rather bet on cards than people.’

Lex supposed that was fair enough. After all, you relied on your own skill when playing poker, not on the skill of a person you had never met and didn’t know. And it worked in his favour not to have to worry overly much about one of the cowboys at Dry Gulch House seeing through his disguise and recognising him.

The enchanted ship was to remain in the town. Lex couldn’t very well take it with him when he was trying to pass himself off as a cowboy. Jesse led Rusty down the gangplank and on to solid land, which must have been a welcome relief to the horse when it had had to make do with exercising up on deck for the last two weeks.

They paused in the town only long enough to shop for supplies. Lex needed a costume and he needed a horse. Both turned out to be a little more complicated than they had expected. The clothes store sold suitable items: the hat and the shirt and the neckerchief and the trousers and the boots. But they didn’t stock them in Lex’s size. Most cowboys tended to be large, brawny men? not skinny teenagers.

‘But this is ridiculous!’ Lex exclaimed in frustration, as he stood before the mirror in an outfit that was far too big for him. ‘Surely all cowboys start out as teenagers, don’t they?’ He looked at Jesse and said, ‘I mean you didn’t just hatch out of an egg looking like that, did you? Do people here just walk around naked until they’re twenty-one?’

Jesse shrugged. ‘Like I said? it’s all farming land. Most teenagers round here are of the strapping kind.’

Fortunately, the store owner said they would be able to alter the clothes so that they would fit Lex. This involved a bit more expense and delay but was, at least, a solution. They left the tailor to it and made their way to the stables in search of a horse. Beside the others, Lex was able to see just how handsome Rusty really was. He had a glossy sheen to his coat and a bright look in his eyes that not all the other horses had.

‘How come he’s in such good condition?’ Lex asked Jesse suspiciously. ‘When you’re a down-and-out cowboy, on the run half the time and in jail the rest?’

‘Never stayed in jail for very long,’ Jesse replied. ‘Me and Rusty might have a wanderin’ sorta life but I always exercise him every day, keep him well groomed and feed him the finest food, even if it means I have to go hungry myself. The horse has to come first.’

Putting another’s needs before his own was something of an alien notion to Lex. He did not know horses like Jesse did, so he let the cowboy look them all over and pick one out. In the end, he chose a dappled grey mare called Sally.

‘Sally?’ Lex said, pulling a face. ‘Are you sure that’s the right horse? She’s a bit small, isn’t she?’

‘Strong, though, and healthy,’ Jesse replied. ‘No jitters. Besides, you’ll want a small horse. A big one would only make you look even shorter and skinnier than you really are.’

Lex supposed that made sense. It was, at least, much easier getting on to Sally’s back than it had been getting on to Rusty’s. They made their way back to the clothes store so that Lex could change into his new outfit and ditch his old one. By the time he was kitted out and back on the horse, he was starting to feel like a real cowboy. He could feel Sid the Kid coming to life inside him. To a true fraud and conman, it wasn’t a case of pretending to be Sid the Kid, it was a case of becoming him. The hat and the boots helped a lot. Looking the part always helped. And, whilst Lex may not have been the usual beefy, brawny sort of cowboy, with the horse and outfit he looked like a cowboy just the same. Now all that was left was for him to act like one convincingly enough to get into Dry Gulch House. Once he was inside, he was sure that the sword would be as good as his. For surely, if anyone were capable of discovering its secret hiding place, that person must be Lex Trent.

As they rode out of town, Lex thought he could come to like horse riding. It was a handy skill to have for someone like him because, if he got caught and had to run, he could only go so fast on his own two legs. If he were able to pinch a horse, on the other hand, then he would practically fly out of there and his pursuers would be left choking on the dust!

‘How many times have you been to Dry Gulch House?’ Lex asked, as they continued on at a sedate walk.

‘Let’s see. First time I went was two years ago, now. Then I went back twice last year and once this year. So that’s four. It ain’t a bad place to stop at, if you happen to be passin’ through Dry Gulch.’

‘It’s not expensive? I mean, it is a mansion, after all.’

‘Not too shiny inside anymore, though,’ Jesse replied. ‘Just because you can’t take anything outta the house, don’t mean you can’t ruin what’s already in it.’

Lex winced. Doubtless the house had once been full of wonderful, beautiful things until those idiot cowboys had gone and spoilt it all. It was approaching dark when they finally neared the house. It was one of the ugliest things Lex had ever seen in his life. It seemed to have been constructed from several different materials, including wood, brick and limestone. You could tell, just by looking at it, that it had been designed by a madman. There was no logic, no structure, no order. In some places the building was four storeys high, in others it was barely half a storey. Some parts of the house had no windows at all, others had ones that were hardly bigger than a man’s thumb. Chimneys were dotted around in a very odd manner across the uneven roof. And what looked very much like a bath-tub was sticking out of the corner of the house all by itself on the third floor. In fact, there was a cowboy in it now, still wearing his hat, splashing about and singing noisily, pausing only long enough to take long swigs from a liquor bottle.

‘How the heck,’ Lex said, ‘did he get into that tub?’

‘You gotta climb out through a window above it,’ Jesse replied. ‘You think that’s weird, just wait till you see the rest of the house.’

Bright lights shone from the windows, whatever their size, and Lex thought he could hear the faint notes of a honky-tonk piano coming from inside.

‘Well,’ Jesse said, ‘shall we?’

They dismounted their horses and tied them up at one of the long posts outside.

‘Someone’ll come and take ’em round to the stables once they know we’re stayin’ here,’ Jesse replied. ‘They almost always have spare rooms but I guess it’ll depend on whether your little act is good enough to cut the mustard.’

‘You’d better hope it is,’ Lex replied.

‘Now, now, we had a deal,’ Jesse replied. ‘All I had to do was teach you everything I know about being a cowboy, and I’ve done that. You gotta pull this off by yourself. I had my doubts at first, but you were tellin’ the truth about being a quick learner and I think you’ll probably manage it.’

‘Glad to hear it. Now, let’s go find out.’

They went up the four steps to the porch and walked in through the front doors. Or at least tried to. Just as Lex was about to put his hand on the doorknob, the doors flew open. He and Jesse both managed to jump back in time to avoid being flattened but, when two big cowboys came rushing out, Lex was unable to get out of the way quick enough to avoid one of them barrelling into him. He and the cowboy got tangled up together and ended up rolling down the steps to the ground. By the time they’d managed to disentangle themselves in the dust, the second cowboy had jumped on to his horse and was already riding away fast.

‘Daw-gone it!’ the other cowboy exclaimed as he leapt to his feet. In another moment there was a pistol in his hand and he was aiming shots towards the fleeing cowboy. He missed, which seemed to infuriate him even more. He spun round on his heel, back towards Lex still sprawled in the dust, and the expression on his face as he looked down on him was not at all friendly.

‘That man insulted me!’ he exclaimed. ‘And because of you he got away! Seems to me it’s only right that you should take his place in the duel! What’s your name, boy?’

But before Lex could say so much as a single word, Jesse said conversationally, ‘That’s Slow Sid.’ He sauntered over with his hands in his pockets. The other cowboy might have looked a bit meaner and had a few more scars than Jesse, but they were about the same size. ‘Sad, really,’ Jesse went on. ‘He used to be Sid the Kid? I’m sure you’ve heard of him?? but then, coupla years back, he went and fell off his horse and caught his head a right crack on a rock. And that was that. Sid the Kid was no more and all that was left was poor old Slow Sid. Don’t know who he is or what he’s doing half the time, now. Ain’t that right, Sid?’

Jesse looked down at Lex pointedly. Lex was furious. How dare he? How dare he? He had not spent all those hours practising and practising passing himself off as a half-decent cowboy only to have to play a simpleton the whole time he was here! At the back of his mind he was aware that Jesse was trying to prevent him from getting shot in the face, but that wasn’t the point. Lex could take care of himself? he didn’t need anyone coming to his rescue. But what was done now was done and, if he didn’t want to raise suspicion, he really had no choice but to play along. So Lex lowered his voice, unfocused his gaze slightly, looked up at Jesse with the most gormless expression he could muster on short notice and said, ‘Horse hit Sid onna head.’

‘Well, the horse didn’t hit you; the floor did,’ Jesse replied. ‘But, yeah, you fell off the horse first, so I hear. That’s what happens if you insist on riding horses what ain’t been broken in yet.’

The other cowboy glared down at Lex for a moment, still looking mightily peeved but no longer murderous.

‘Huh,’ he grunted, and then finally walked off.

Once he’d disappeared back into the house, Jesse looked down at Lex, a little smile tugging at one corner of his mouth and, reaching down a hand he said, ‘You need some help there, Sid?’

Lex would have dearly loved to hiss some unpleasantry back at him but, for all he knew, the scar-faced cowboy was watching from the windows. Others’ attention may have been drawn their way by the altercation and Lex couldn’t risk anything that might give him away. This was show time, now. Granted, it might not be the kind of show time he had planned upon, but it was show time just the same. Shouting-at-Jesse time would just have to wait.

So, making a real effort to look mildly confused, Lex gripped Jesse’s hand and allowed the cowboy to haul him to his feet. Then he dusted himself off and gazed around stupidly, as if not too sure of where he was. His hat had fallen off in the kerfuffle and lay on the floor in the dust. Lex purposefully ignored it and started to stagger towards the front doors. Jesse clapped the hat back on his head from behind, as Lex had known that he would. He didn’t bother to adjust the lop-sided angle but simply carried on towards the door. He pulled it open and, this time, managed to get all the way inside.

Once there, he stopped short. The entrance hall was enormous, with a great sweeping staircase going up to the next level. Portraits lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Every single one was of the same person? a rather strange-looking man with greying hair, a thin face, impressively bushy whiskers and an expression of mild puzzlement.

There must have been two hundred portraits there, all of different sizes, all of the same man. Some of the paintings were traditional head-and-shoulder portraits. But others were much larger and showed the entire person. They were? to put it mildly? ridiculous. One picture was of him sitting at a table having tea with a giant fox (who was wearing a waistcoat); in another, he was sitting on a toilet with his trousers around his ankles. One particularly large painting showed him brandishing what looked very much like a smoked trout against an enormous white dragon that seemed set to roast him where he stood at any moment.

In every picture he wore the same dark suit, the same daft monocle, the same bushy whiskers and the same amiable expression of foolish, mild puzzlement.

It was a little hard to see some of the paintings properly, especially those hung lower down, because most of them had a hell of a lot of darts sticking out of them.

‘Nathaniel East,’ Jesse said behind Lex. ‘In every single painting, the mad old coot. Painted them all himself, so they say.’

It must have taken him years. The paintings were so detailed and some of them were so large that Lex thought it must have taken Nathaniel practically his whole life to paint them. He could not have produced all of these during the five years he’d lived in Dry Gulch. For some unknown reason he must have brought them with him when he’d travelled out to the Wild West.

‘Can’t be taken down, see?’ Jesse went on. ‘Because of the witch’s sticking spell. So the fellas just use ’em for dart practice mostly. Let’s go through to the bar.’

Adopting a rambling, shuffling gait, Lex followed him. He would have known where to go, even without Jesse, by following the raucous sounds of talking and laughter and the rather jolly music of a honky-tonk piano.

The bar adjoined the entrance hall to the left. It was a large room, that easily accommodated the twenty or so people there. Everyone in the room was a cowboy. You could tell by the hats and boots. A lot of the furniture had obviously been moved from other rooms, for none of it matched. It seemed that, although the witch’s sticking spell meant that none of the items could be taken out of the house, some of them could be moved from room to room. Any spare table or chair had been brought there. Lex even saw two men drinking at a chess table, the chessmen still fixed firmly in place? glued into a stalemate from the looks of it.

‘Let’s go get ourselves a drink, Sid,’ Jesse said, already striding purposefully towards the bar.

Lex obediently followed along behind him.

‘Hello again, Sam,’ Jesse said to the man behind the bar.

Lex was pleased to note that he was bald and had a waxed moustache that curled at the ends, just like in the books.

‘Howdy, Jesse,’ Sam replied. ‘Back again? Ain’t you got bored of lookin’ for that sword yet?’

Lex almost jumped where he sat. Jesse had told him right back in the jail cell at the Wither City that he didn’t believe the Sword of Life existed. He had neglected to mention that he had searched for it himself.

‘Just passin’ through this time,’ Jesse replied. ‘Needed somewhere to stay for a few days. You got any rooms?’

‘Yep.’ Sam turned around and picked off a key from the board on the wall behind him. He put this on the bar in front of Jesse, glanced at Lex and said, ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘This here is Slow Sid,’ Jesse said. ‘We’re travelling together for a while.’

‘Pleased to know you, Sid. I’m Sam. What can I get you?’

‘Glass of milk, please,’ Lex said, scooping up the nearby beer mats and absently starting to shuffle them.

‘Sid!’ Jesse said sharply. ‘What have I told you about that?’ He looked at Sam and said, ‘He means milk and rum. Obviously.’ He added a nervous laugh at the end of that, which Lex thought was rather a nice touch.

‘Obviously,’ Sam replied, eyebrow raised.

‘Yeah,’ Lex said, giving the barman his best eager-to-please smile. ‘Milk and rum.’ He turned his smile on Jesse, who nodded approvingly. ‘Without the rum,’ Lex added? to which Jesse shook his head despairingly.

‘What are you hanging around with this halfwit for, anyway?’ the barman said suspiciously. ‘You’re a one for always bein’ out for yourself, so what’s in it for you, Jesse, eh?’

Uh oh, Lex thought. Off the top of his head he could think of a couple of half-decent explanations but the problem was in trying to convincingly produce them when he’d been sitting there affecting a complete lack of awareness of anything that was being said.

But, as it happened, he didn’t need to come up with something because, quick as a whip, Jesse said, ‘What’s in it for me? Well, I’ll show you.’

And, suddenly, Lex found the beer mats plucked from his fingers and a pack of cards pressed into his palm instead. He looked up at Jesse, who raised an eyebrow meaningfully. Lex knew instantly what he had in mind. He looked down at the pack in his hands for a bare moment before breaking into a perfect Faro shuffle. It was one of the more difficult ones to do but Lex pulled it off flawlessly.

‘Little bit of Sid the Kid comes back when he handles the cards. We split the winnings,’ Jesse said blithely.

‘You’re using him,’ the barman said with a knowing chuckle.

Jesse gave a lazy grin. ‘Dunno ’bout that. Works all right for us, don’t it, Sid?’

Lex grinned stupidly and took a big slurp of the milk Sam set down in front of him. It left a moustache but he didn’t bother to wipe it off.