The Wind Through the Keyhole

THE SKIN — MAN

“She told him not to look at what was left inside-the body of his steppa, you ken-and he said he wouldn’t. Nor did he, but he picked up the gun, and put it in his belt-”

“The four-shot the widow-woman gave him,” Young Bill Streeter said. He was sitting against the cell wall below the chalked map of Debaria with his chin on his chest, he had said little, and in truth, I thought the lad had fallen asleep and I was telling the tale only to myself. But he had been listening all along, it seemed. Outside, the rising wind of the simoom rose to a brief shriek, then settled back to a low and steady moan.

“Aye, Young Bill. He picked up the gun, put it in his belt on the left side, and carried it there for the next ten years of his life. After that he carried bigger ones-six-shooters.” That was the story, and I ended it just as my mother had ended all the stories she read me when I was but a sma’ one in my tower room. It made me sad to hear those words from my own mouth. “And so it happened, once upon a bye, long before your grandfather’s grandfather was born.”

Outside, the light was beginning to fail. I thought it would be tomorrow after all before the deputation that had gone up to the foothills would return with the salties who could sit a horse. And really, did it matter so much? For an uncomfortable thought had come to me while I was telling Young Bill the story of Young Tim. If I were the skin-man, and if the sheriff and a bunch of deputies (not to mention a young gunslinger all the way from Gilead) came asking if I could saddle, mount, and ride, would I admit it? Not likely. Jamie and I should have seen this right away, but of course we were still new to the lawman’s way of thinking.

“Sai?”

“Yes, Bill.”

“Did Tim ever become a real gunslinger? He did, didn’t he?”

“When he was twenty-one, three men carrying hard calibers came through Tree. They were bound for Tavares and hoping to raise a posse, but Tim was the only one who would go with them. They called him ‘the lefthanded gun,’ for that was the way he drew.

“He rode with them, and acquitted himself well, for he was both fearless and a dead shot. They called him tet-fa, or friend of the tet. But there came a day when he became ka-tet, one of the very, very few gunslingers not from the proven line of Eld. Although who knows? Don’t they say that Arthur had many sons from three wives, and moity-more born on the dark side of the blanket?”

“I dunno what that means.”

With that I could sympathize; until two days before, I hadn’t known what was meant by “the longstick.”

“Never mind. He was known first as Lefty Ross, then-after a great battle on the shores of Lake Cawn-as Tim Stoutheart. His mother finished her days in Gilead as a great lady, or so my mother said. But all those things are-”

“-a tale for another day,” Bill finished. “That’s what my da’ always says when I ask for more.” His face drew in on itself and his mouth trembled at the corners as he remembered the bloody bunkhouse and the cook who had died with his apron over his face. “What he said. ”

I put my arm around his shoulders again, a thing that felt a little more natural this time. I’d made my mind up to take him back to Gilead with us if Everlynne of Serenity refused to take him in… but I thought she would not refuse. He was a good boy.

Outside the wind whined and howled. I kept an ear out for the jing-jang, but it stayed silent. The lines were surely down somewhere.

“Sai, how long was Maerlyn caged as a tyger?”

“I don’t know, but a very long time, surely.”

“What did he eat?”

Cuthbert would have made something up on the spot, but I was stumped.

“If he was shitting in the hole, he must have eaten,” Bill said, and reasonably enough. “If you don’t eat, you can’t shit.”

“I don’t know what he ate, Bill.”

“P’raps he had enough magic left-even as a tyger-to make his own dinner. Out of thin air, like.”

“Yes, that’s probably it.”

“Did Tim ever reach the Tower? For there are stories about that, too, aren’t there?”

Before I could answer, Strother-the fat deputy with the rattlesnake hatband-came into the jail. When he saw me sitting with my arm around the boy, he gave a smirk. I considered wiping it off his face-it wouldn’t have taken long-but forgot the idea when I heard what he had to say.

“Riders comin. Must be a moit, and wagons, because we can hear em even over the damn beastly wind. People is steppin out into the grit to see.”

I got up and let myself out of the cell.

“Can I come?” Bill asked.

“Better that you bide here yet awhile,” I said, and locked him in. “I won’t be long.”

“I hate it here, sai!”

“I know,” I told him. “It’ll be over soon enough.”

I hoped I was right about that.

When I stepped out of the sheriff’s office, the wind made me stagger and alkali grit stung my cheeks. In spite of the rising gale, both boardwalks of the high street were lined with spectators. The men had pulled their bandannas over their mouths and noses; the women were using their kerchiefs. I saw one lady-sai wearing her bonnet backwards, which looked strange but was probably quite useful against the dust.

To my left, horses began to emerge from the whitish clouds of alkali. Sheriff Peavy and Canfield of the Jefferson were in the van, with their hats yanked low and their neckcloths pulled high, so only their eyes showed. Behind them came three long flatbed wagons, open to the wind. They were painted blue, but their sides and decks were rimed white with salt. On the side of each the words DEBARIA SALT COMBYNE had been daubed in yellow paint. On each deck sat six or eight fellows in overalls and the straw workingmen’s hats known as clobbers (or clumpets, I disremember which). On one side of this caravan rode Jamie DeCurry, Kellin Frye, and Kellin’s son, Vikka. On the other were Snip and Arn from the Jefferson spread and a big fellow with a sand-colored handlebar mustache and a yellow duster to match. This turned out to be the man who served as constable in Little Debaria… at least when he wasn’t otherwise occupied at the faro or Watch Me tables.

None of the new arrivals looked happy, but the salties looked least happy of all. It was easy to regard them with suspicion and dislike; I had to remind myself that only one was a monster (assuming, that was, the skin-man hadn’t slipped our net entirely). Most of the others had probably come of their own free will when told they could help put an end to the scourge by doing so.

I stepped into the street and raised my hands over my head. Sheriff Peavy reined up in front of me, but I ignored him for the time being, looking instead at the huddled miners in the flatbed wagons. A swift count made their number twenty-one. That was twenty more suspects than I wanted, but far fewer than I had feared.

I shouted to make myself heard over the wind. “You men have come to help us, and on behalf of Gilead, I say thankya!”

They were easier to hear, because the wind was blowing toward me. “Balls to your Gilead,” said one. “Snot-nosed brat,” said another. “Lick my johnny on behalf of Gilead,” said a third.

“I can smarten em up anytime you’d like,” said the man with the handlebar mustache. “Say the word, young’un, for I’m constable of the shithole they come from, and that makes em my fill. Will Wegg.” He put a perfunctory fist to his brow.

“Never in life,” I said, and raised my voice again. “How many of you men want a drink?”

That stopped their grumbling in its tracks, and they raised a cheer instead.

“Then climb down and line up!” I shouted. “By twos, if you will!” I grinned at them. “And if you won’t, go to hell and go there thirsty!”

That made most of them laugh.

“Sai Deschain,” Wegg said, “puttin drink in these fellers ain’t a good idea.”

But I thought it was. I motioned Kellin Frye to me and dropped two gold knucks into his hand. His eyes widened.

“You’re the trail-boss of this herd,” I told him. “What you’ve got there should buy them two whiskeys apiece, if they’re short shots, and that’s all I want them to have. Take Canfield with you, and that one there.” I pointed to one of the pokies. “Is it Arn?”

“Snip,” the fellow said. “T’other one’s Arn.”

“Aye, good. Snip, you at one end of the bar, Canfield at the other. Frye, you stand behind them at the door and watch their backs.”

“I won’t be taking my son into the Busted Luck,” Kellin Frye said. “It’s a whore-hole, so it is.”

“You won’t need to. Soh Vikka goes around back with the other pokie.” I cocked my thumb at Arn. “All you two fellows need to do is watch for any saltie trying to sneak out the back door. If you do, let loose a yell and then scat, because he’ll probably be our man. Understand?”

“Yep,” Arn said. “Come on, kid, off we go. Maybe if I get out of this wind, I can get a smoke to stay lit.”

“Not just yet,” I said, and beckoned to the boy.

“Hey, gunbunny!” one of the miners yelled. “You gonna let us out of this wind before nightfall? I’m fuckin thirsty!”

The others agreed.

“Hold your gabber,” I said. “Do that, and you get to wet your throat. Run your gums at me while I’m doing my job and you’ll sit out here in the back of a wagon and lick salt.”

That quieted them, and I bent to Vikka Frye. “You were to tell someone something while you were up there at the Salt Rocks. Did you do it?”

“Yar, I-” His father elbowed him almost hard enough to knock him over. The boy remembered his manners and started again, this time with a fist to his brow. “Yes, sai, do it please you.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“Puck DeLong. He’s a boy I know from Reap Fairday. He’s just a miner’s kid, but we palled around some, and did the three-leg race together. His da’s foreman of the nightwork crew. That’s what Puck says, anyways.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That it was Billy Streeter who seen the skin-man in his human shape. I said how Billy hid under a pile of old tack, and that was what saved him. Puck knew who I was talking about, because Billy was at Reap Fairday, too. It was Billy who won the Goose Dash. Do you know the Goose Dash, sai gunslinger?”

“Yes,” I said. I had run it myself on more than one Reap Fairday, and not that long ago, either.

Vikka Frye swallowed hard, and his eyes filled with tears. “Billy’s da’ cheered like to bust his throat when Billy come in first,” he whispered.

“I’m sure he did. Did this Puck DeLong put the story on its way, do you think?”

“Dunno, do I? But I would’ve, if it’d been me.”

I thought that was good enough, and clapped Vikka on the shoulder. “Go on, now. And if anyone tries to take it on the sneak, raise a shout. A good loud one, so to be heard over the wind.”

He and Arn struck off for the alley that would take them behind the Busted Luck. The salties paid them no mind; they only had eyes for the batwing doors and thoughts for the rotgut waiting behind them.

“Men!” I shouted. And when they turned to me: “Wet thy whistles!”

That brought another cheer, and they set off for the saloon. But walking, not running, and still two by two. They had been well trained. I guessed that their lives as miners were little more than slavery, and I was thankful ka had pointed me along a different path… although, when I look back on it, I wonder how much difference there might be between the slavery of the mine and the slavery of the gun. Perhaps one: I’ve always had the sky to look at, and for that I tell Gan, the Man Jesus, and all the other gods that may be, thankya.

I motioned Jamie, Sheriff Peavy, and the new one-Wegg-to the far side of the street. We stood beneath the overhang that shielded the sheriff’s office. Strother and Pickens, the not-so-good deputies, were crowded into the doorway, fair goggling.

“Go inside, you two,” I told them.

“We don’t take orders from you,” Pickens said, just as haughty as Mary Dame, now that the boss was back.

“Go inside and shut the door,” Peavy said. “Have you thudbrains not kenned even yet who’s in charge of this raree?”

They drew back, Pickens glaring at me and Strother glaring at Jamie. The door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass. For a moment the four of us stood there, watching the great clouds of alkali dust blow up the high street, some of them so thick they made the saltwagons disappear. But there was little time for contemplation; it would be night all too soon, and then one of the salties now drinking in the Busted Luck might be a man no longer.

“I think we have a problem,” I said. I was speaking to all of them, but it was Jamie I was looking at. “It seems to me that a skin-turner who knows what he is would hardly admit to being able to ride.”

“Thought of that,” Jamie said, and tilted his head to Constable Wegg.

“We’ve got all of em who can sit a horse,” Wegg said. “Depend on it, sai. Ain’t I seen em myself?”

“I doubt if you’ve seen all of them,” I said.

“I think he has,” Jamie said. “Listen, Roland.”

“There’s one rich fella up in Little Debaria, name of Sam Shunt,” Wegg said. “The miners call him Shunt the Cunt, which ain’t surprising, since he’s got most of em where the hair grows short. He don’t own the Combyne-it’s big bugs in Gilead who’ve got that-but he owns most of the rest: the bars, the whores, the skiddums-”

I looked at Sheriff Peavy.

“Shacks in Little Debaria where some of the miners sleep,” he said. “Skiddums ain’t much, but they ain’t underground.”

I looked back at Wegg, who had hold of his duster’s lapels and was looking pleased with himself.

“Sammy Shunt owns the company store. Which means he owns the miners.” He grinned. When I didn’t grin back, he took his hands from his lapels and flipped them skyward. “It’s the way of the world, young sai-I didn’t make it, and neither did you.

“Now Sammy’s a great one for fun n games… always assumin he can turn a few pennies on em, that is. Four times a year, he sets up races for the miners. Some are footraces, and some are obstacle-course races, where they have to jump over wooden barrycades, or leap gullies filled up with mud. It’s pretty comical when they fall in. The whores always come to watch, and that makes em laugh like loons.”

“Hurry it up,” Peavy growled. “Those fellas won’t take long to get through two drinks.”

“He has hoss-races, too,” said Wegg, “although he won’t provide nothing but old nags, in case one of them ponies breaks a leg and has to be shot.”

“If a miner breaks a leg, is he shot?” I asked.

Wegg laughed and slapped his thigh as if I’d gotten off a good one. Cuthbert could have told him I don’t joke, but of course Cuthbert wasn’t there. And Jamie rarely says anything, if he doesn’t have to.

“Trig, young gunslinger, very trig ye are! Nay, they’re mended right enough, if they can be mended; there’s a couple of whores that make a little extra coin working as ammies after Sammy Shunt’s little competitions. They don’t mind; it’s servicin em either way, ain’t it?

“There’s an entry fee, accourse, taken out of wages. That pays Sammy’s expenses. As for the miners, the winner of whatever the particular competition happens to be-dash, obstacle-course, hoss-race-gets a year’s worth of debt forgiven at the company store. Sammy keeps the in’drest s’high on the others that he never loses by it. You see how it works? Quite snick, wouldn’t you say?”

“Snick as the devil,” I said.

“Yar! So when it comes to racing those nags around the little track he had made, any miner who can ride, does ride. It’s powerful comical to watch em smashin their nutsacks up n down, set my watch and warrant on that. And I’m allus there to keep order. I’ve seen every race for the last seven years, and every diggerboy who’s ever run in em. For riders, those boys over there are it. There was one more, but in the race Sammy put on this New Earth, that pertic’ler salt-mole fell off his mount and got his guts squashed. Lived a day or two, then goozled. So I don’t think he’s your skin-man, do you?”

At this, Wegg laughed heartily. Peavy looked at him with resignation, Jamie with a mixture of contempt and wonder.

Did I believe this man when he said they’d rounded up every saltie who could sit a horse? I would, I decided, if he could answer one question in the affirmative.

“Do you bet on these horse-races yourself, Wegg?”

“Made a goodish heap last year,” he said proudly. “Course Shunt only pays in scrip-he’s tight-but it keeps me in whores and whiskey. I like the whores young and the whiskey old.”

Peavy looked at me over Wegg’s shoulder and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, He’s what they have up there, so don’t blame me for it.

Nor did I. “Wegg, go on in the office and wait for us. Jamie and Sheriff Peavy, come with me.”

I explained as we crossed the street. It didn’t take long.

“You tell them what we want,” I said to Peavy as we stood outside the batwings. I kept it low because we were still being watched by the whole town, although the ones clustered outside the saloon had drawn away from us, as if we might have something that was catching. “They know you.”

“Not as well as they know Wegg,” he said.

“Why do you think I wanted him to stay across the street?”

He grunted a laugh at that, and pushed his way through the batwings. Jamie and I followed.

The regular patrons had drawn back to the gaming tables, giving the bar over to the salties. Snip and Canfield flanked them; Kellin Frye stood with his back leaning against the barnboard wall and his arms folded over his sheepskin vest. There was a second floor-given over to bump-cribs, I assumed-and the balcony up there was loaded with less-than-charming ladies, looking down at the miners.

“You men!” Peavy said. “Turn around and face me!”

They did as he said, and promptly. What was he to them but just another foreman? A few held onto the remains of their short whiskeys, but most had already finished. They looked livelier now, their cheeks flushed with alcohol rather than the scouring wind that had chased them down from the foothills.

“Now here’s what,” Peavy said. “You’re going to sit up on the bar, every mother’s son of you, and take off your boots so we can see your feet.”

A muttering of discontent greeted this. “If you want to know who’s spent time in Beelie Stockade, why not just ask?” a graybeard called. “I was there, and I en’t ashamed. I stole a loaf for my old woman and our two babbies. Not that it did the babbies any good; they both died.”

“What if we won’t?” a younger one asked. “Them gunnies shoot us? Not sure I’d mind. At least I wouldn’t have to go down in the plug nummore.”

A rumble of agreement met this. Someone said something that sounded like green light.

Peavy took hold of my arm and pulled me forward. “It was this gunny got you out of a day’s work, then bought you drinks. And unless you’re the man we’re looking for, what the hell are you afraid of?”

The one that answered this couldn’t have been more than my age. “Sai Sheriff, we’re always afraid.”

This was truth a little balder than they were used to, and complete silence dropped over the Busted Luck. Outside, the wind moaned. The grit hitting the thin board walls sounded like hail.

“Boys, listen to me,” Peavy said, now speaking in a lower and more respectful tone of voice. “These gunslingers could draw and make you do what has to be done, but I don’t want that, and you shouldn’t need it. Counting what happened at the Jefferson spread, there’s over three dozen dead in Debaria. Three at the Jefferson was women.” He paused. “Nar, I tell a lie. One was a woman, the other two mere girls. I know you’ve got hard lives and nothing to gain by doing a good turn, but I’m asking you, anyway. And why not? There’s only one of you with something to hide.”

“Well, what the fuck,” said the graybeard.

He reached behind him to the bar and boosted himself up so he was sitting on it. He must have been the Old Fella of the crew, for all the others followed suit. I watched for anyone showing reluctance, but to my eye there was none. Once it was started, they took it as a kind of joke. Soon there were twenty-one overalled salties sitting on the bar, and the boots rained down on the sawdusty floor in a series of thuds. Ay, gods, I can smell the reek of their feet to this day.

“Oogh, that’s enough for me,” one of the whores said, and when I looked up, I saw our audience vacating the balcony in a storm of feathers and a swirl of pettislips. The bartender joined the others by the gaming tables, holding his nose pinched shut. I’ll bet they didn’t sell many steak dinners in Racey’s Cafe at suppertime; that smell was an appetite-killer if ever there was one.

“Yank up your cuffs,” Peavy said. “Let me gleep yer ankles.”

Now that the thing was begun, they complied without argument. I stepped forward. “If I point to you,” I said, “get down off the bar and go stand against the wall. You can take your boots, but don’t bother putting them on. You’ll only be walking across the street, and you can do that barefooty.”

I walked down the line of extended feet, most pitifully skinny and all but those belonging to the youngest miners clogged with bulging purple veins.

“You… you… and you…”

In all, there were ten of them with blue rings around their ankles that meant time in the Beelie Stockade. Jamie drifted over to them. He didn’t draw, but he hooked his thumbs in his crossed gunbelts, with his palms near enough to the butts of his six-shooters to make the point.

“Barkeep,” I said. “Pour these men who are left another short shot.”

The miners without stockade tattoos cheered at this and began putting on their boots again.

“What about us?” the graybeard asked. The tattooed ring above his ankle was faded to a blue ghost. His bare feet were as gnarled as old tree-stumps. How he could walk on them-let alone work on them-was more than I could understand.

“Nine of you will get long shots,” I said, and that wiped the gloom from their faces. “The tenth will get something else.”

“A yank of rope,” Canfield of the Jefferson said in a low voice. “And after what I seen out t’ranch, I hope he dances at the end of it a long time.”

We left Snip and Canfield to watch the eleven salties drinking at the bar, and marched the other ten across the street. The graybeard led the way and walked briskly on his tree-stump feet. That day’s light had drained to a weird yellow I had never seen before, and it would be dark all too soon. The wind blew and the dust flew. I was watching for one of them to make a break-hoping for it, if only to spare the child waiting in the jail-but none did.

Jamie fell in beside me. “If he’s here, he’s hoping the kiddo didn’t see any higher than his ankles. He means to face it out, Roland.”

“I know,” I said. “And since that’s all the kiddo did see, he’ll probably ride the bluff.”

“What then?”

“Lock em all up, I suppose, and wait for one of em to change his skin.”

“What if it’s not just something that comes over him? What if he can keep it from happening?”

“Then I don’t know,” I said.

Wegg had started a penny-in, three-to-stay Watch Me game with Pickens and Strother. I thumped the table with one hand, scattering the matchsticks they were using as counters. “Wegg, you’ll accompany these men into the jail with the sheriff. It’ll be a few minutes yet. There’s a few more things to attend to.”

“What’s in the jail?” Wegg asked, looking at the scattered matchsticks with some regret. I guessed he’d been winning. “The boy, I suppose?”

“The boy and the end of this sorry business,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

I took the graybeard by the elbow-gently-and pulled him aside. “What’s your name, sai?”

“Steg Luka. What’s it to you? You think I’m the one?”

“No,” I said, and I didn’t. No reason; just a feeling. “But if you know which one it is-if you even think you know-you ought to tell me. There’s a frightened boy in there, locked in a cell for his own good. He saw something that looked like a giant bear kill his father, and I’d spare him any more pain if I could. He’s a good boy.”

He considered, then it was him who took my elbow… and with a hand that felt like iron. He drew me into the corner. “I can’t say, gunslinger, for we’ve all been down there, deep in the new plug, and we all saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“A crack in the salt with a green light shining through. Bright, then dim. Bright, then dim. Like a heartbeat. And… it speaks to your face.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I don’t understand myself. The only thing I know is we’ve all seen it, and we’ve all felt it. It speaks to your face and tells you to come in. It’s bitter.”

“The light, or the voice?”

“Both. It’s of the Old People, I’ve no doubt of that. We told Banderly-him that’s the bull foreman-and he went down himself. Saw it for himself. Felt it for himself. But was he going to close the plug for that? Balls he was. He’s got his own bosses to answer to, and they know there’s a moit of salt left down there. So he ordered a crew to close it up with rocks, which they did. I know, because I was one of em. But rocks that are put in can be pulled out. And they have been, I’d swear to it. They were one way then, now they’re another. Someone went in there, gunslinger, and whatever’s on the other side… it changed him.”

“But you don’t know who.”

Luka shook his head. “All I can say is it must’ve been between twelve o’ the clock and six in the morning, for then all’s quiet.”

“Go on back to your mates, and say thankee. You’ll be drinking soon enough, and welcome.” But sai Luka’s drinking days were over. We never know, do we?

He went back and I surveyed them. Luka was the oldest by far. Most of the others were middle-aged, and a couple were still young. They looked interested and excited rather than afraid, and I could understand that; they’d had a couple of drinks to perk them up, and this made a change in the drudgery of their ordinary days. None of them looked shifty or guilty. None looked like anything more or less than what they were: salties in a dying mining town where the rails ended.

“Jamie,” I said. “A word with you.”

I walked him to the door, and spoke directly into his ear. I gave him an errand, and told him to do it as fast as ever he could. He nodded and slipped out into the stormy afternoon. Or perhaps by then it was early evening.

“Where’s he off to?” Wegg asked.

“That’s nonnies to you,” I said, and turned to the men with the blue tattoos on their ankles. “Line up, if you please. Oldest to youngest.”

“I dunno how old I am, do I?” said a balding man wearing a wrist-clock with a rusty string-mended band. Some of the others laughed and nodded.

“Just do the best you can,” I said.

I had no interest in their ages, but the discussion and argument took up some time, which was the main object. If the blacksmith had fulfilled his commission, all would be well. If not, I would improvise. A gunslinger who can’t do that dies early.

The miners shuffled around like kids playing When the Music Stops, swapping spots until they were in some rough approximation of age. The line started at the door to the jail and ended at the door to the street. Luka was first; Wrist-Clock was in the middle; the one who looked about my age-the one who’d said they were always afraid-was last.

“Sheriff, will you get their names?” I asked. “I want to speak to the Streeter boy.”

Billy was standing at the bars of the drunk-and-disorderly cell. He’d heard our palaver, and looked frightened. “Is it here?” he asked. “The skin-man?”

“I think so,” I said, “but there’s no way to be sure.”

“Sai, I’m ascairt.”

“I don’t blame you. But the cell’s locked and the bars are good steel. He can’t get at you, Billy.”

“You ain’t seen him when he’s a bear,” Billy whispered. His eyes were huge and shiny, fixed in place. I’ve seen men with eyes like that after they’ve been punched hard on the jaw. It’s the look that comes over them just before their knees go soft. Outside, the wind gave a thin shriek along the underside of the jail roof.

“Tim Stoutheart was afraid, too,” I said. “But he went on. I expect you to do the same.”

“Will you be here?”

“Aye. My mate, Jamie, too.”

As if I had summoned him, the door to the office opened and Jamie hurried in, slapping alkali dust from his shirt. The sight of him gladdened me. The smell of dirty feet that accompanied him was less welcome.

“Did you get it?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a pretty enough thing. And here’s the list of names.”

He handed both over.

“Are you ready, son?” Jamie asked Billy.

“I guess so,” Billy said. “I’m going to pretend I’m Tim Stoutheart.”

Jamie nodded gravely. “That’s a fine idea. May you do well.”

A particularly strong gust of wind blew past. Bitter dust puffed in through the barred window of the drunk-and-disorderly cell. Again came that eerie shriek along the eaves. The light was fading, fading. It crossed my mind that it might be better-safer-to jail the waiting salties and leave this part for tomorrow, but nine of them had done nothing. Neither had the boy. Best to have it done. If it could be done, that was.

“Hear me, Billy,” I said. “I’m going to walk them through nice and slow. Maybe nothing will happen.”

“A-All right.” His voice was faint.

“Do you need a drink of water first? Or to have a piss?”

“I’m fine,” he said, but of course he didn’t look fine; he looked terrified. “Sai? How many of them have blue rings on their ankles?”

“All,” I said.

“Then how-”

“They don’t know how much you saw. Just look at each one as he passes. And stand back a little, doya.” Out of reaching-distance was what I meant, but I didn’t want to say it out loud.

“What should I say?”

“Nothing. Unless you see something that sets off a recollection, that is.” I had little hope of that. “Bring them in, Jamie. Sheriff Peavy at the head of the line and Wegg at the end.”

He nodded and left. Billy reached through the bars. For a second I didn’t know what he wanted, then I did. I gave his hand a brief squeeze. “Stand back now, Billy. And remember the face of your father. He watches you from the clearing.”

He obeyed. I glanced at the list, running over names (probably misspelled) that meant nothing to me, with my hand on the butt of my righthand gun. That one now contained a very special load. According to Vannay, there was only one sure way to kill a skin-man: with a piercing object of the holy metal. I had paid the blacksmith in gold, but the bullet he’d made me-the one that would roll under the hammer at first cock-was pure silver. Perhaps it would work.

If not, I would follow with lead.

The door opened. In came Sheriff Peavy. He had a two-foot ironwood headknocker in his right hand, the rawhide drop cord looped around his wrist. He was patting the business end gently against his left palm as he stepped through the door. His eyes found the white-faced lad in the cell, and he smiled.

“Hey-up, Billy, son of Bill,” he said. “We’re with ye, and all’s fine. Fear nothing.”

Billy tried to smile, but looked like he feared much.

Steg Luka came next, rocking from side to side on those tree-stump feet of his. After him came a man nearly as old, with a mangy white mustache, dirty gray hair falling to his shoulders, and a sinister, squinted look in his eyes. Or perhaps he was only nearsighted. The list named him as Bobby Frane.

“Come slow,” I said, “and give this boy a good look at you.”

They came. As each one passed, Bill Streeter looked anxiously into his face.

“G’d eve’n to’ee, boy,” Luka said as he went by. Bobby Frane tipped an invisible cap. One of the younger ones-Jake Marsh, according to the list-stuck out a tongue yellow from bingo-weed tobacco. The others just shuffled past. A couple kept their heads lowered until Wegg barked at them to raise up and look the kiddo in the eye.

There was no dawning recognition on Bill Streeter’s face, only a mixture of fright and perplexity. I kept my own face blank, but I was losing hope. Why, after all, would the skin-man break? He had nothing to lose by playing out his string, and he must know it.

Now there were only four left… then two… then only the kid who in the Busted Luck had spoken of being afraid. I saw change on Billy’s face as that one went by, and for a moment I thought we had something, then realized it was nothing more than the recognition of one young person for another.

Last came Wegg, who had put away his headknocker and donned brass knuckledusters on each hand. He gave Billy Streeter a not very pleasant smile. “Don’t see no merchandise you want to buy, younker? Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t say I’m surpri-”

“Gunslinger!” Billy said to me. “Sai Deschain!”

“Yes, Billy.” I shouldered Wegg aside and stood in front of the cell.

Billy touched his tongue to his upper lip. “Walk them by again, if it please you. Only this time have them hold up their pants. I can’t see the rings.”

“Billy, the rings are all the same.”

“No,” he said. “They ain’t.”

The wind was in a lull, and Sheriff Peavy heard him. “Turn around, my cullies, and back you march. Only this time hike up your trousers.”

“Ain’t enough enough?” the man with the old wrist-clock grumbled. The list called him Ollie Ang. “We was promised shots. Long ones.”

“What’s it to you, honey?” Wegg asked. “Ain’t you got to go back that way anyro’? Did yer marmar drop’ee on your head?”

They grumbled about it, but started back down the corridor toward the office, this time from youngest to oldest, and holding up their pants. All the tattoos looked about the same to me. I at first thought they must to the boy, as well. Then I saw his eyes widen, and he took another step away from the bars. Yet he said nothing.

“Sheriff, hold them right there for a moment, if you will,” I said.

Peavy moved in front of the door to the office. I stepped to the cell and spoke low. “Billy? See something?”

“The mark,” he said. “I seen the mark. It’s the man with the broken ring.”

I didn’t understand… then I did. I thought of all the times Cort had called me a slowkins from the eyebrows up. He called the others those things and worse-of course he did, it was his job-but standing in the corridor of that Debaria jail with the simoom blowing outside, I thought he had been right about me. I was a slowkins. Only minutes ago I’d thought that if there had been more than the memory of the tattoo, I’d have gotten it from Billy when he was hypnotized. Now, I realized, I had gotten it.

Is there anything else? I’d asked him, already sure that there wasn’t, only wanting to raise him from the trance that was so obviously upsetting him. And when he’d said the white mark — but dubiously, as if asking himself-foolish Roland had let it pass.

The salties were getting restless. Ollie Ang, the one with the rusty wrist-clock, was saying they’d done as asked and he wanted to go back to the Busted to get his drink and his damn boots.

“Which one?” I asked Billy.

He leaned forward and whispered.

I nodded, then turned to the knot of men at the end of the corridor. Jamie was watching them closely, hands resting on the butts of his revolvers. The men must have seen something in my face, because they ceased their grumbling and just stared. The only sound was the wind and the constant gritty slosh of dust against the building.

As to what happened next, I’ve thought it over many times since, and I don’t think we could have prevented it. We didn’t know how fast the change happened, you see; I don’t think Vannay did, either, or he would have warned us. Even my father said as much when I finished making my report and stood, with all those books frowning down upon me, waiting for him to pass judgment on my actions in Debaria-not as my father, but as my dinh.

For one thing I was and am grateful. I almost told Peavy to bring forward the man Billy had named, but then I changed my mind. Not because Peavy had helped my father once upon a bye, but because Little Debaria and the salt-houses were not his fill.

“Wegg,” I said. “Ollie Ang to me, do it please ya.”

“Which?”

“The one with the clock on his wrist.”

“Here, now!” Ollie Ang squawked as Constable Wegg laid hold of him. He was slight for a miner, almost bookish, but his arms were slabbed with muscle and I could see more muscle lifting the shoulders of his chambray workshirt. “Here, now, I ain’t done nothing! It ain’t fair to single me out just because this here kid wants to show off!”

“Shut your hole,” Wegg said, and pulled him through the little clot of miners.

“Huck up your pants again,” I told him.

“Fuck you, brat! And the horse you rode in on!”

“Huck up or I’ll do it for you.”

He raised his hands and balled them into fists. “Try! Just you t-”

Jamie strolled up behind him, drew one of his guns, tossed it lightly into the air, caught it by the barrel, and brought the butt down on Ang’s head. A smartly calculated blow: it didn’t knock the man out, but he dropped his fists, and Wegg caught him under the armpit when his knees loosened. I pulled up the right leg of his overalls, and there it was: a blue Beelie Stockade tattoo that had been cut- broken, to use Billy Streeter’s word-by a thick white scar that ran all the way to his knee.

“That’s what I saw,” Billy breathed. “That’s what I saw when I was a-layin under that pile of tack.”

“He’s making it up,” Ang said. He looked dazed and his words were muzzy. A thin rill of blood ran down the side of his face from where Jamie’s blow had opened his scalp a little.

I knew better. Billy had mentioned the white mark long before he’d set eyes on Ollie Ang in the jail. I opened my mouth, meaning to tell Wegg to throw him in a cell, but that was when the Old Man of the crew burst forward. In his eyes was a look of belated realization. Nor was that all. He was furious.

Before I or Jamie or Wegg could stop him, Steg Luka grabbed Ang by the shoulders and bore him back against the bars across the aisle from the drunk-and-disorderly cell. “I should have known!” he shouted. “I should have known weeks ago, ye great growit shifty asshole! Ye murderin trullock!” He seized the arm bearing the old watch. “Where’d ye get this, if not in the crack the green light comes from? Where else? Oh, ye murderin skin-changin bastard!”

Luka spit into Ang’s dazed face, then turned to Jamie and me, still holding up the miner’s arm. “Said he found it in a hole outside one of the old foothill plugs! Said it was probably leftover outlaw booty from the Crow Gang, and like fools we believed him! Even went diggin around for more on our days off, didn’t we!”

He turned back to the dazed Ollie Ang. Dazed was how he looked to us, anyway, but who knows what was going on behind those eyes?

“And you laughin up your fuckin sleeve at us while we did it, I’ve no doubt. You found it in a hole, all right, but it wasn’t in one of the old plugs. You went into the crack! Into the green light! It was you! It was you! It was-”

Ang twisted from the chin up. I don’t mean he grimaced; his entire head twisted. It was like watching a cloth being wrung by invisible hands. His eyes rose up until one was almost above the other, and they turned from blue to jet-black. His skin paled first to white, then to green. It rose as if pushed by fists from beneath, and cracked into scales. His clothes dropped from his body, because his body was no longer that of a man. Nor was it a bear, or a wolf, or a lion. Those things we might have been prepared for. We might even have been prepared for an ally-gator, such as the thing that had assaulted the unfortunate Fortuna at Serenity. Although it was closer to an ally-gator than anything else.

In a space of three seconds, Ollie Ang turned into a man-high snake. A pooky.

Luka, still holding onto an arm that was shrinking toward that fat green body, gave out a yell that was muffled when the snake-still with a flopping tonsure of human hair around its elongating head-jammed itself into the old man’s mouth. There was a wet popping sound as Luka’s lower jaw was torn from the joints and tendons holding it to the upper. I saw his wattled neck swell and grow smooth as that thing-still changing, still standing on the dwindling remnants of human legs-bored into his throat like a drill.

There were yells and screams of horror from the head of the aisle as the other salties stampeded. I paid them no notice. I saw Jamie wrap his arms around the snake’s growing, swelling body in a fruitless attempt to pull it out of the dying Steg Luka’s throat, and I saw the enormous reptilian head when it tore its way through the nape of Luka’s neck, its red tongue flicking, its scaly head painted with beads of blood and bits of flesh.

Wegg threw one of his brass-knuckle-decorated fists at it. The snake dodged easily, then struck forward, exposing enormous, still-growing fangs: two on top, two on bottom, all dripping with clear liquid. It battened on Wegg’s arm and he shrieked.

“Burns! Dear gods, it BURNS!”

Luka, impaled at the head, seemed to dance as the snake dug its fangs into the struggling constable. Blood and gobbets of flesh spattered everywhere.

Jamie looked at me wildly. His guns were drawn, but where to shoot? The pooky was writhing between two dying men. Its lower body, now legless, flipped free of the heaped clothes, wound itself around Luka’s waist in fat coils, drew tight. The part behind the head was slithering out through the widening hole at the nape of Luka’s neck.

I stepped forward, seized Wegg, and dragged him backward by the scruff of his vest. His bitten arm had already turned black and swelled to twice its normal size. His eyes were bulging from their sockets as he stared at me, and white foam began to drizzle from his lips.

Somewhere, Billy Streeter was screaming.

The fangs tore free. “Burns,” Wegg said in a low voice, and then he could say no more. His throat swelled, and his tongue shot out of his mouth. He collapsed, shuddering in his death-throes. The snake stared at me, its forked tongue licking in and out. They were black snake-eyes, but they were filled with human understanding. I lifted the revolver holding the special load. I had only one silver shell and the head was weaving erratically from side to side, but I never doubted I could make the shot; it’s what such as I was made for. It lunged, fangs flashing, and I pulled the trigger. The shot was true, and the silver bullet went right into that yawning mouth. The head blew away in a splatter of red that had begun to turn white even before it hit the bars and the floor of the corridor. I’d seen such mealy white flesh before. It was brains. Human brains.

Suddenly it was Ollie Ang’s ruined face peering at me from the ragged hole in the back of Luka’s neck-peering from atop a snake’s body. Shaggy black fur sprang from between the scales on its body as whatever force dying inside lost all control of the shapes it made. In the moment before it collapsed, the remaining blue eye turned yellow and became a wolf’s eye. Then it went down, bearing the unfortunate Steg Luka with it. In the corridor, the dying body of the skin-man shimmered and burned, wavered and changed. I heard the pop of muscles and the grind of shifting bones. A naked foot shot out, turned into a furry paw, then became a man’s foot again. The remains of Ollie Ang shuddered all over, then grew still.

The boy was still screaming.

“Go to yon pallet and lie down,” I said to him. My voice was not quite steady. “Close your eyes and tell yourself it’s over, for now it is.”

“I want you,” Billy sobbed as he went to the pallet. His cheeks were speckled with blood. I was drenched with it, but this he didn’t see. His eyes were already closed. “I want you with me! Please, sai, please!”

“I’ll come to you as soon as I can,” I said. And I did.

Three of us spent the night on pushed-together pallets in the drunk-and-disorderly cell: Jamie on the left, me on the right, Young Bill Streeter in the middle. The simoom had begun to die, and until late, we heard the sound of revels on the high street as Debaria celebrated the death of the skin-man.

“What will happen to me, sai?” Billy asked just before he finally fell asleep.

“Good things,” I said, and hoped Everlynne of Serenity would not prove me wrong about that.

“Is it dead? Really dead, sai Deschain?”

“Really.”

But on that score I meant to take no chance. After midnight, when the wind was down to a bare breeze and Bill Streeter lay in an exhausted sleep so deep even bad dreams couldn’t reach him, Jamie and I joined Sheriff Peavy on the waste ground behind the jail. There we doused the body of Ollie Ang with coal oil. Before setting match to it, I asked if either of them wanted the wrist-clock as a souvenir. Somehow it hadn’t been broken in the struggle, and the cunning little second hand still turned.

Jamie shook his head.

“Not I,” said Peavy, “for it might be haunted. Go on, Roland. If I may call ye so.”

“And welcome,” I said. I struck the sulphur and dropped it. We stood watching until the remains of Debaria’s skin-man were nothing but black bones. The wrist-clock was a charred lump in the ash.

The following morning, Jamie and I rounded up a crew of men-more than willing, they were-to go out to the rail line. Once they were there, it was a matter of two hours to put Sma’ Toot back on the double-steel. Travis, the enjie, directed the operation, and I made many friends by telling them I’d arranged for everyone in the crew to eat free at Racey’s at top o’ day and drink free at the Busted Luck that afternoon.

There was to be a town celebration that night, at which Jamie and I would be guests of honor. It was the sort of thing I could happily do without-I was anxious to get home, and as a rule, company doesn’t suit me-but such events are often part of the job. One good thing: there would be women, some of them no doubt pretty. That part I wouldn’t mind, and suspected Jamie wouldn’t, either. He had much to learn about women, and Debaria was as good a place to begin his studies as any.

He and I watched Sma’ Toot puff slowly up to the roundway and then make its way toward us again, pointed in the right direction: toward Gilead.

“Will we stop at Serenity on the way back to town?” Jamie asked. “To ask if they’ll take the boy in?”

“Aye. And the prioress said she had something for me.”

“Do you know what?”

I shook my head.

Everlynne, that mountain of a woman, swept toward us across the courtyard of Serenity, her arms spread wide. I was almost tempted to run; it was like standing in the path of one of the vast trucks that used to run at the oil-fields near Kuna.

Instead of running us down, she swept us into a vast and bosomy double hug. Her aroma was sweet: a mixture of cinnamon and thyme and baked goods. She kissed Jamie on the cheek-he blushed. Then she kissed me full on the lips. For a moment we were enveloped by her complicated and billowing garments and shaded by her winged silk hood. Then she drew back, her face shining.

“What a service you have done this town! And how we say thankya!”

I smiled. “Sai Everlynne, you are too kind.”

“Not kind enough! You’ll have noonies with us, yes? And meadow wine, although only a little. Ye’ll have more to drink tonight, I have no doubt.” She gave Jamie a roguish side-glance. “But ye’ll want to be careful when the toasts go around; too much drink can make a man less a man later on, and blur memories he might otherwise want to keep.” She paused, then broke into a knowing grin that went oddly with her robes. “Or… p’raps not.”

Jamie blushed harder than ever, but said nothing.

“We saw you coming,” Everlynne said, “and there’s someone else who’d like to give you her thanks.”

She moved aside and there stood the tiny Sister of Serenity named Fortuna. She was still swathed in bandagement, but she looked less wraithlike today, and the side of the face we could see was shining with happiness and relief. She stepped forward shyly.

“I can sleep again. And in time, I may even be able to sleep wi’out nightmares.”

She twitched up the skirt of her gray robe, and-to my deep discomfort-fell on her knees before us. “Sister Fortuna, Annie Clay that was, says thank you. So do we all, but this comes from my own heart.”

I took her gently by the shoulders. “Rise, bondswoman. Kneel not before such as us.”

She looked at me with shining eyes, and kissed me on the cheek with the side of her mouth that could still kiss. Then she fled back across the courtyard toward what I assumed was their kitchen. Wonderful smells were already arising from that part of the haci.

Everlynne watched her go with a fond smile, then turned back to me.

“There’s a boy-” I began.

She nodded. “Bill Streeter. I know his name and his story. We don’t go to town, but sometimes the town comes to us. Friendly birds twitter news in our ears, if you take my meaning.”

“I take it well,” I said.

“Bring him tomorrow, after your heads have shrunk back to their normal size,” said she. “We’re a company of women, but we’re happy to take an orphan boy… at least until he grows enough hair on his upper lip to shave. After that, women trouble a boy, and it might not be so well for him to stay here. In the meantime, we can set him about his letters and numbers… if he’s trig enough to learn, that is. Would you say he’s trig enough, Roland, son of Gabrielle?”

It was odd to be called from my mother’s side rather than my father’s, but strangely pleasant. “I’d say he’s very trig.”

“That’s well, then. And we’ll find a place for him when it’s time for him to go.”

“A plot and a place,” I said.

Everlynne laughed. “Aye, just so, like in the story of Tim Stoutheart. And now we’ll break bread together, shall we? And with meadow wine we’ll toast the prowess of young men.”

We ate, we drank, and all in all, it was a very merry meeting. When the sisters began to clear the trestle tables, Prioress Everlynne took me to her private quarters, which consisted of a bedroom and a much larger office where a cat slept in a bar of sun on a huge oaken desk heaped high with papers.

“Few men have been here, Roland,” she said. “One was a fellow you might know. He had a white face and black clothes. Do you know the man of whom I speak?”

“Marten Broadcloak,” I said. The good food in my stomach was suddenly sour with hate. And jealousy, I suppose-nor just on behalf of my father, whom Gabrielle of Arten had decorated with cuckold’s horns. “Did he see her?”

“He demanded to, but I refused and sent him hence. At first he declined to go, but I showed him my knife and told him there were other weapons in Serenity, aye, and women who knew how to use them. One, I said, was a gun. I reminded him he was deep inside the haci, and suggested that, unless he could fly, he had better take heed. He did, but before he went he cursed me, and he cursed this place.” She hesitated, stroked the cat, then looked up at me. “There was a time when I thought perhaps the skin-man was his work.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Nor I, but neither of us will ever be entirely sure, will we?” The cat tried to climb into the vast playground of her lap, and Everlynne shooed it away. “Of one thing I am sure: he spoke to her anyway, although whether through the window of her cell late at night or only in her troubled dreams, no one will ever know. That secret she took with her into the clearing, poor woman.”

To this I did not reply. When one is amazed and heartsick, it’s usually best to say nothing, for in that state, any word will be the wrong word.

“Your lady-mother quit her retirement with us shortly after we turned this Broadcloak fellow around. She said she had a duty to perform, and much to atone for. She said her son would come here. I asked her how she knew and she said, ‘Because ka is a wheel and it always turns.’ She left this for you.”

Everlynne opened one of the many drawers of her desk and removed an envelope. Written on the front was my name, in a hand I knew well. Only my father would have known it better. That hand had once turned the pages of a fine old book as she read me “The Wind Through the Keyhole.” Aye, and many others. I loved all the stories held in the pages that hand turned, but never so much as I loved the hand itself. Even more, I loved the sound of the voice that told them as the wind blew outside. Those were the days before she was mazed and fell into the sad bitchery that brought her under a gun in another hand. My gun, my hand.

Everlynne rose, smoothing her large apron. “I must go and see how things are advancing in other parts of my little kingdom. I’ll bid you goodbye now, Roland, son of Gabrielle, only asking that you pull the door shut when you go. It will lock itself.”

“You trust me with your things?” I asked.

She laughed, came around the desk, and kissed me again. “Gunslinger, I’d trust you with my life,” said she, and left. She was so tall she had to duck her head when she went through the door.

I sat looking at Gabrielle Deschain’s last missive for a long time. My heart was full of hate and love and regret-all those things that have haunted me ever since. I considered burning it, unread, but at last I tore the envelope open. Inside was a single sheet of paper. The lines were uneven, and the pigeon-ink in which they had been written was blotted in many places. I believe the woman who wrote those lines was struggling to hold onto a few last shreds of sanity. I’m not sure many would have understood her words, but I did. I’m sure my father would have, as well, but I never showed it to him or told him of it.

The feast I ate was rotten what I thought was a palace was a dungeon how it burns Roland

I thought of Wegg, dying of snakebite.

If I go back and tell what I know what I overheard

Gilead may yet be saved a few years you may be saved a few years your father little that he ever cared for me

The words “little that he ever cared for me” had been crossed out with a series of heavy lines, but I could read them anyway. he says I dare not he says “Bide at Serenity until death finds you.” he says “If you go back death will find you early.” he says “Your death will destroy the only one in the world for whom you care.” he says “Would you die at your brat’s hand and see every goodness every kindness every loving thought poured out of him like water from a dipper? for Gilead that cared for you little and will die anyway?”

But I must go back. I have prayed on it and meditated on it and the voice I hear always speaks the same words: THIS IS WHAT KA DEMANDS

There was a little more, words I traced over and over during my wandering years after the disastrous battle at Jericho Hill and the fall of Gilead. I traced them until the paper fell apart and I let the wind take it-the wind that blows through time’s keyhole, ye ken. In the end, the wind takes everything, doesn’t it? And why not? Why other? If the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all.

I stayed in Everlynne’s office until I had myself under control. Then I put my mother’s last word-her dead-letter-in my purse and left, making sure the door locked behind me. I found Jamie and we rode to town. That night there were lights and music and dancing; many good things to eat and plenty of liquor to wash it down with. There were women, too, and that night Silent Jamie left his virginity behind him. The next morning…