“Time was they used to grow up wild for want of ’em,” Kennerly continued, “but the world has moved on. Ain’t seen nothin’ but a few mutie oxen and the coach horses and—Soobie, I’ll whale you, ’fore God!”
“I don’t bite,” the gunslinger said pleasantly.
Kennerly cringed and grinned. The gunslinger saw the murder in his eyes quite clearly, and although he did not fear it, he marked it as a man might mark a page in a book, one that contained potentially valuable instructions. “It ain’tyou.Gods, no, it ain’tyou.” He grinned loosely. “She just naturally gawky. She got a devil. She wild.” His eyes darkened. “It’s coming to Last Times, mister. You know how it says in the Book. Children won’t obey their parents, and a plague’ll be visited on the multitudes. You only have to listen to the preacher-woman to know it.”
The gunslinger nodded, then pointed southeast. “What’s out there?”
Kennerly grinned again, showing gums and a few sociable yellow teeth. “Dwellers. Weed. Desert. What else?” He cackled, and his eyes measured the gunslinger coldly.
“How big is the desert?”
“Big.” Kennerly endeavored to look serious, as if answering a serious question. “Maybe a thousand wheels. Maybe two thousand. I can’t tell you, mister. There’s nothin’ out there but devil-grass and maybe demons. Heard there was a speakin’-ring sommers on the far side, but that ’us prolly a lie. That’s the way the other fella went. The one who fixed up Norty when he was sick.”
“Sick? I heard he was dead.”
Kennerly kept grinning. “Well, well. Maybe. But we’re growed-up men, ain’t we?”
“But you believe in demons.”
Kennerly looked affronted. “That’s a lot different. Preacher-woman says...”
He blathered and palavered ever onward. The gunslinger took off his hat and wiped his forehead. The sun was hot, beating steadily. Kennerly seemed not to notice. Kennerly had a lot to say, none of it sensible. In the thin shadow by the livery, the baby girl was gravely smearing dirt on her face.
The gunslinger finally grew impatient and cut the man off in mid-spate. “You don’t know what’s after the desert?”
Kennerly shrugged. “Some might. The coach ran through part of it fifty years ago. My pap said so. He used to say ’twas mountains. Others say an ocean... a green ocean with monsters. And some say that’s where the world ends. That there ain’t nothing but lights that’ll drive a man blind and the face of God with his mouth open to eat them up.”
“Drivel,” the gunslinger said shortly.
“Sure it is,” Kennerly cried happily. He cringed again, hating, fearing, wanting to please.
“You see my mule is looked after.” He flicked Kennerly another coin, which Kennerly caught on the fly. The gunslinger thought of the way a dog will catch a ball.
“Surely. You stayin’ a little?”
“I guess I might. There’ll be water—”
“—if God wills it! Sure, sure!” Kennerly laughed unhappily, and his eyes went on wanting the gunslinger stretched out dead at his feet. “That Allie’s pretty nice when she wants to be, ain’t she?” The hostler made a loose circle with his left fist and began poking his right finger rapidly in and out of it.
“Did you say something?” the gunslinger asked remotely.
Sudden terror dawned in Kennerly’s eyes, like twin moons coming over the horizon. He put his hands behind his back like a naughty child caught with the jamjar. “No, sai, not a word. And I’m right sorry if I did.” He caught sight of Soobie leaning out a window and whirled on her. “I’ll whale you now, you little slutwhore! ’Fore God! I’ll—”
The gunslinger walked away, aware that Kennerly had turned to watch him, aware of the fact that he could whirl and catch the hostler with some true and untinctured emotion distilled on his face. Why bother? It was hot, and he knew what the emotion would be: just hate. Hate of the outsider. He’d gotten all the man had to offer. The only sure thing about the desert was its size. The only sure thing about the town was that it wasn’t all played out here. Not yet.
XI
He and Allie were in bed when Sheb kicked the door open and came in with the knife.
It had been four days, and they had gone by in a blinking haze. He ate. He slept. He had sex with Allie. He found that she played the fiddle and he made her play it for him. She sat by the window in the milky light of daybreak, only a profile, and played something haltingly that might have been good if she’d had some training. He felt a growing (but strangely absentminded) affection for her and thought this might be the trap the man in black had left behind. He walked out sometimes. He thought very little about everything.
He didn’t hear the little piano player come up—his reflexes had sunk. That didn’t seem to matter, either, although it would have frightened him badly in another time and place.
Allie was naked, the sheet below her breasts, and they were preparing to make love.
“Please,” she was saying. “Like before, I want that, I want—”
The door crashed open and the piano player made his ridiculous, knock-kneed run for the sun. Allie did not scream, although Sheb held an eight-inch carving knife in his hand. He was making a noise, an inarticulate blabbering. He sounded like a man being drowned in a bucket of mud. Spittle flew. He brought the knife down with both hands, and the gunslinger caught his wrists and turned them. The knife went flying. Sheb made a high screeching noise, like a rusty screen door. His hands fluttered in marionette movements, both wrists broken. The wind gritted against the window. Allie’s looking glass on the wall, faintly clouded and distorted, reflected the room.
