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on, hide them, then come back to them later. But if he didn’t know . . .
It was a small thread, but sometimes—if you’re careful not to break it—you can pull on a small thread and unravel a whole garment.
“Goodnight, Roland.”
“Goodnight, Jamie.”
I closed my eyes and thought of my mother. I often did that year, but for once they weren’t thoughts of how she had looked dead, but of how
beautiful she had been in my early childhood, as she sat beside me on my bed in the room with the colored glass windows, reading to me. “Look
you, Roland,” she’d say, “here are the billy-bumblers sitting all a-row and scenting the air. They know, don’t they?”
“Yes,” I would say, “the bumblers know.”
“And what is it they know?” the woman I would kill asked me. “What is it they know, dear heart?”
“They know the starkblast is coming,” I said. My eyes would be growing heavy by then, and minutes later I would drift off to the music of her voice.
As I drifted off now, with the wind outside blowing up a strong gale.
* * *
I woke in the first thin light of morning to a harsh sound: BRUNG! BRUNG! BRUNNNNG!
Jamie was still flat on his back, legs splayed, snoring. I took one of my revolvers from its holster, went out through the open cell door, and
shambled toward that imperious sound. It was the jing-jang Sheriff Peavy had taken so much pride in. He wasn’t there to answer it; he’d gone home
to bed, and the office was empty.
Standing there bare-chested, with a gun in my hand and wearing nothing but the swabbies and slinkum I’d slept in—for it was hot in the cell—I
took the listening cone off the wall, put the narrow end in my ear, and leaned close to the speaking tube. “Yes? Hello?”
“Who the hell’s this?” a voice screamed, so loud that it sent a nail of pain into the side of my head. There were jing-jangs in Gilead, perhaps as
many as a hundred that still worked, but none spoke so clear as this. I pulled the cone away, wincing, and could still hear the voice coming out of it.
“Hello? Hello? Gods curse this fucking thing! HELLO?”
“I hear you,” I said. “Lower thy voice, for your father’s sake.”
“Who is this?” There was just enough drop in volume for me to put the listening cone a little closer to my ear. But not in it; I would not make that
mistake twice.
“A deputy.” Jamie DeCurry and I were the farthest things in the world from that, but simplest is usually best. Always best, I wot, when speaking
with a panicky man on a jing-jang.
“Where’s Sheriff Peavy?”
“At home with his wife. It isn’t yet five o’ the clock, I reckon. Now tell me who you are, where you’re speaking from, and what’s happened.”
“It’s Canfield of the Jefferson. I—”
“Of the Jefferson what?” I heard footsteps behind me and turned, half-raising my revolver. But it was only Jamie, with his hair standing up in sleepspikes
all over his head. He was holding his own gun, and had gotten into his jeans, although his feet were yet bare.
“The Jefferson Ranch, ye great grotting idiot! You need to get the sheriff out here, and jin-jin. Everyone’s dead. Jefferson, his fambly, the cookie,
all the proddies. Blood from one end t’other.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Maybe fifteen. Maybe twenty. Who can tell?” Canfield of the Jefferson began to sob. “They’re all in pieces. Whatever it was did for em left the two
dogs, Rosie and Mozie. They was in there. We had to shoot em. They was lapping up the blood and eating the brains.”
* * *
It was a ten-wheel ride, straight north toward the Salt Hills. We went with Sheriff Peavy, Kellin Frye—the good deputy—and Frye’s son, Vikka. The
enjie, whose name turned out to be Travis, also came along, for he’d spent the night at the Fryes’ place. We pushed our mounts hard, but it was still
full daylight by the time we got to the Jefferson spread. At least the wind, which was still strengthening, was at our backs.
Peavy thought Canfield was a pokie—which is to say a wandering cowboy not signed to any particular ranch. Some such turned outlaw, but most
were honest enough, just men who couldn’t settle down in one place. When we rode through the wide stock gate with JEFFERSON posted over it in
white birch letters, two other cowboys—his mates—were with him. The three of them were bunched together by the shakepole fence of the horse
corral, which stood near to the big house. A half a mile or so north, standing atop a little hill, was the bunkhouse. From this distance, only two things
looked out of place: the door at the south end of the bunkie was unlatched, swinging back and forth in the alkali-wind, and the bodies of two large
black dogs lay stretched on the dirt.
We dismounted and Sheriff Peavy shook with the men, who looked mightily glad to see us. “Aye, Bill Canfield, see you very well, pokie-fella.”
The tallest of them took off his hat and held it against his shirt. “I ain’t no pokie nummore. Or maybe I am, I dunno. For a while here I was Canfield
of the Jefferson, like I told whoever answered the goddam speakie, because I signed on just last month. Old man Jefferson himself oversaw my
mark on the wall, but now he’s dead like the rest of em.”
He swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. The stubble on his face looked very black, because his skin was very white. There
was drying vomit on the front of his shirt.
“His wife and daughters’ve gone into the clearing, too. You can tell em by their long hair and their . . . their . . . ay, ay, Man Jesus, you see a thing
like that and it makes you wish you were born blind.” He raised his hat to his face to hide it and began to weep.
One of Canfield’s mates said, “Is those gunslingers, Sheriff? Mighty young to be hauling iron, ain’t they?”
“Never mind them,” said Peavy. “Tell me what brought you here.”
Canfield lowered his hat. His eyes were red and streaming. “The three of us was camped out on the Pure. Roundin strays, we were, and camped
for the night. Then we heard screamin start from the east. Woke us from a sound sleep, because we was that tired. Then gunshots, two or three of
em. They quit and there was more screamin. And somethin—somethin big—roarin and snarlin.”
One of the others said, “It sounded like a bear.”
“No, it didn’t,” said the third. “Never at all.”
Canfield said, “Knew it was comin from the ranch, whatever it was. Had to’ve been four wheels from where we were, maybe six, but sound
carries on the Pure, as ye know. We mounted up, but I got here way ahead of these two, because I was signed and they’re yet pokies.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Canfield turned to me. “I had a ranch horse, didn’t I? A good ’un. Snip and Arn there had nothing but mules. Put em in there, with the others.” He
pointed into the corral. A big gust of wind blew through just then, driving dust before it, and all the livestock galloped away like a wave.
“They’re still spooked,” Kellin Frye said.
Looking toward the bunkhouse, the enjie—Travis—said, “They en’t the only ones.”
* * *