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hitting the thin board walls sounded like hail.<br />
“Boys, listen to me,” Peavy said, now speaking in a lower and more respectful tone of voice. “These gunslingers could draw and make <strong>you</strong> do<br />
what has to be done, but I don’t want that, and <strong>you</strong> shouldn’t need it. Counting what happened at the Jefferson spread, there’s over three dozen<br />
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 <strong>you</strong>’ve got<br />
hard lives and nothing to gain by doing a good turn, but I’m asking <strong>you</strong>, anyway. And why not? There’s only one of <strong>you</strong> with something to hide.”<br />
“Well, what the fuck,” said the graybeard.<br />
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, <strong>for</strong> all the others<br />
followed suit. I watched <strong>for</strong> anyone showing reluctance, but to my eye there was none. Once it was started, they took it as a kind of joke. Soon there<br />
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<br />
reek of their feet to <strong>this</strong> day.<br />
“Oogh, that’s enough <strong>for</strong> 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<br />
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<br />
Racey’s Café at suppertime; that smell was an appetite-killer if ever there was one.<br />
“Yank up <strong>you</strong>r cuffs,” Peavy said. “Let me gleep yer ankles.”<br />
Now that the thing was begun, they complied without argument. I stepped <strong>for</strong>ward. “If I point to <strong>you</strong>,” I said, “get down off the bar and go stand<br />
against the wall. You can take <strong>you</strong>r boots, but don’t bother putting them on. You’ll only be walking across the street, and <strong>you</strong> can do that barefooty.”<br />
I walked down the line of extended feet, most pitifully skinny and all but those belonging to the <strong>you</strong>ngest miners clogged with bulging purple veins.<br />
“You . . . <strong>you</strong> . . . and <strong>you</strong> . . .”<br />
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<br />
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.<br />
“Barkeep,” I said. “Pour these men who are left another short shot.”<br />
The miners without stockade tattoos cheered at <strong>this</strong> and began putting on their boots again.<br />
“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 treestumps.<br />
How he could walk on them—let alone work on them—was more than I could understand.<br />
“Nine of <strong>you</strong> will get long shots,” I said, and that wiped the gloom from their faces. “The tenth will get something else.”<br />
“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.”<br />
* * *<br />
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<br />
and walked briskly on his tree-stump feet. That day’s light had drained to a weird yellow I had never seen be<strong>for</strong>e, and it would be dark all too soon.<br />
The wind blew and the dust flew. I was watching <strong>for</strong> one of them to make a break—hoping <strong>for</strong> it, if only to spare the child waiting in the jail—but none<br />
did.<br />
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.”<br />
“I know,” I said. “And since that’s all the kiddo did see, he’ll probably ride the bluff.”<br />
“What then?”<br />
“Lock em all up, I suppose, and wait <strong>for</strong> one of em to change his skin.”<br />
“What if it’s not just something that comes over him? What if he can keep it from happening?”<br />
“Then I don’t know,” I said.<br />
* * *<br />
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<br />
matchsticks they were using as counters. “Wegg, <strong>you</strong>’ll accompany these men into the jail with the sheriff. It’ll be a few minutes yet. There’s a few<br />
more things to attend to.”<br />
“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?”<br />
“The boy and the end of <strong>this</strong> sorry business,” I said with more confidence than I felt.<br />
I took the graybeard by the elbow—gently—and pulled him aside. “What’s <strong>you</strong>r name, sai?”<br />
“Steg Luka. What’s it to <strong>you</strong>? You think I’m the one?”<br />
“No,” I said, and I didn’t. No reason; just a feeling. “But if <strong>you</strong> know which one it is—if <strong>you</strong> even think <strong>you</strong> know—<strong>you</strong> ought to tell me. There’s a<br />
frightened boy in there, locked in a cell <strong>for</strong> his own good. He saw something that looked like a giant bear kill his father, and I’d spare him any more<br />
pain if I could. He’s a good boy.”<br />
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, <strong>for</strong><br />
we’ve all been down there, deep in the new plug, and we all saw it.”<br />
“Saw what?”<br />
“A crack in the salt with a green light shining through. Bright, then dim. Bright, then dim. Like a heartbeat. And . . . it speaks to <strong>you</strong>r face.”<br />
“I don’t understand <strong>you</strong>.”<br />
“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 <strong>you</strong>r face and tells <strong>you</strong> to come in. It’s bitter.”<br />
“The light, or the voice?”<br />
“Both. It’s of the Old People, I’ve no doubt of that. We told Banderly—him that’s the bull <strong>for</strong>eman—and he went down himself. Saw it <strong>for</strong> himself.<br />
Felt it <strong>for</strong> himself. But was he going to close the plug <strong>for</strong> that? Balls he was. He’s got his own bosses to answer to, and they know there’s a moit of<br />
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<br />
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<br />
the other side . . . it changed him.”<br />
“But <strong>you</strong> don’t know who.”<br />
Luka shook his head. “All I can say is it must’ve been between twelve o’ the clock and six in the morning, <strong>for</strong> then all’s quiet.”<br />
“Go on back to <strong>you</strong>r mates, and say thankee. You’ll be drinking soon enough, and welcome.” But sai Luka’s drinking days were over. We never<br />
know, do we?<br />
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 <strong>you</strong>ng. They looked<br />
interested and excited rather than afraid, and I could understand that; they’d had a couple of drinks to perk them up, and <strong>this</strong> made a change in the<br />
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<br />
mining town where the rails ended.<br />
“Jamie,” I said. “A word with <strong>you</strong>.”