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“Here’s the Timbersmith farm on the High Pure. Nine killed. It’s where we found the little boy’s head on a pole. Tracks all around it.”
“Wolf?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nar, some kind o’ big cat. At first. Before we lost the trail, they changed into what looked like hooves. Then . . .” He looked at
us grimly. “Footprints. First big—like a giant’s, almost—but then smaller and smaller until they were the size of any man’s tracks. Any-ro’, we lost em
in the hardpan. Mayhap your father wouldn’t’ve, sai.”
He went on marking the map, and when he was done, stepped away so we could see it clearly.
“Such as you are supposed to have good brains as well as fast hands, I was always told. So what do you make of this?”
Jamie stepped forward between the rows of pallets (for this cell must have been for many guests, probably brought in on drunk-and-disorderly),
and traced the tip of his finger over the jags at the top of the map, blurring them a little. “Do the salt-houses run all along here? In all the foothills?”
“Yar. The Salt Rocks, those hills’re called.”
“Little Debaria is where?”
Peavy made another box for the salt-miners’ town. It was close to the X he’d made to mark the place where the woman and the gambler had
been killed . . . for it was Little Debaria they’d been headed for.
Jamie studied the map a bit more, then nodded. “Looks to me like the skin-man could be one of the miners. Is that what you think?”
“Aye, a saltie, even though a couple of them has been torn up, too. It makes sense—as much as anything in a crazy business like this can make
sense. The new plug’s a lot deeper than the old ones, and everyone knows there are demons in the earth. Mayhap one of the miners struck on one,
wakened it, and was done a mischief by it.”
“There are also leftovers from the Great Old Ones in the ground,” I said. “Not all are dangerous, but some are. Perhaps one of those old things . . .
those what-do-you-callums, Jamie?”
“Artyfax,” he said.
“Yes, those. Perhaps one of those is responsible. Mayhap the fellow will be able to tell us, if we take him alive.”
“Sma’ chance of that,” Peavy growled.
I thought there was a good chance. If we could identify him and close on him in the daytime, that was.
“How many of these salties are there?” I asked.
“Not s’many as in the old days, because now it’s just the one plug, don’tcha see it. I sh’d say no more’n . . . two hundred.”
I met Jamie’s eyes, and saw a glint of humor in them. “No fret, Roland,” said he. “I’m sure we can interview em all by Reaptide. If we hurry.”
He was exaggerating, but I still saw several weeks ahead of us in Debaria. We might interview the skin-man and still not be able to pick him out,
either because he was a masterful liar or because he had no guilt to cover up; his day-self might truly not know what his night-self was doing. I
wished for Cuthbert, who could look at things that seemed unrelated and spot the connections, and I wished for Alain, with his power to touch
minds. But Jamie wasn’t so bad, either. He had, after all, seen what I should have seen myself, what was right in front of my nose. On one matter I
was in complete accord with Sheriff Hugh Peavy: I hated mysteries. It’s a thing that has never changed in this long life of mine. I’m not good at
solving them; my mind has never run that way.
When we trooped back into the office, I said, “I have some questions I must ask you, Sheriff. The first is, will you open to us, if we open to you?
The second—”
“The second is do I see you for what you are and accept what you do. The third is do I seek aid and succor. Sheriff Peavy says yar, yar, and yar.
Now for gods’ sake set your brains to working, fellows, for it’s over two weeks since this thing showed up at Serenity, and that time it didn’t get a full
meal. Soon enough it’ll be out there again.”
“It only prowls at night,” Jamie said. “You’re sure of that much?”
“I am.”
“Does the moon have any effect on it?” I asked. “Because my father’s advisor—and our teacher that was—says that in some of the old
legends . . .”
“I’ve heard the legends, sai, but in that they’re wrong. At least for this particular creatur’ they are. Sometimes the moon’s been full when it strikes
—it was Full Peddler when it showed up at Serenity, all covered with scales and knobs like an alligator from the Long Salt Swamps—but it did its
work at Timbersmith when the moon was dark. I’d like to tell you different, but I can’t. I’d also like to end this without having to pick anyone else’s
guts out of the bushes or pluck some other kiddie’s head off’n a fencepost. Ye’ve been sent here to help, and I hope like hell you can . . . although
I’ve got my doubts.”
* * *
When I asked Peavy if there was a good hotel or boardinghouse in Debaria, he chuckled.
“The last boardinghouse was the Widow Brailley’s. Two year ago, a drunk saddletramp tried to rape her in her own outhouse, as she sat at
business. But she was always a trig one. She’d seen the look in his eye, and went in there with a knife under her apron. Cut his throat for him, she
did. Stringy Bodean, who used to be our Justice Man before he decided to try his luck at raising horses in the Crescent, declared her not guilty by
reason of self-defense in about five minutes, but the lady decided she’d had enough of Debaria and trained back to Gilead, where she yet bides,
I’ve no doubt. Two days after she left, some drunken buffoon burned the place to the ground. The hotel still stands. It’s called the Delightful View. The
view ain’t delightful, young fellows, and the beds is full of bugs as big as toads’ eyeballs. I wouldn’t sleep in one without putting on a full suit of Arthur
Eld’s armor.”
And so we ended up spending our first night in Debaria in the large drunk-and-disorderly cell, beneath Peavy’s chalked map. Salty Sam had
been set free, and we had the jail to ourselves. Outside, a strong wind had begun to blow off the alkali flats to the west of town. The moaning sound
it made around the eaves caused me to think again of the story my mother used to read to me when I was just a sma’ toot myself—the story of Tim
Stoutheart and the starkblast Tim had to face in the Great Woods north of New Canaan. Thinking of the boy alone in those woods has always
chilled my heart, just as Tim’s bravery has always warmed it. The stories we hear in childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.
After one particularly strong gust—the Debaria wind was warm, not cold like the starkblast—struck the side of the jail and puffed alkali grit in
through the barred window, Jamie spoke up. It was rare for him to start a conversation.
“I hate that sound, Roland. It’s apt to keep me awake all night.”
I loved it myself; the sound of the wind has always made me think of good times and far places. Although I confess I could have done without the
grit.
“How are we supposed to find this thing, Jamie? I hope you have some idea, because I don’t.”
“We’ll have to talk to the salt-miners. That’s the place to start. Someone may have seen a fellow with blood on him creeping back to where the
salties live. Creeping back naked. For he can’t come back clothed, unless he takes them off beforehand.”
That gave me a little hope. Although if the one we were looking for knew what he was, he might take his clothes off when he felt an attack coming