Part 7 (1/2)

The guns were empty and they boiled at him, transmogrified into an Eye and a Hand, and he stood, screaming and reloading, his mind far away and absent, letting his hands do their reloading trick. Could he hold up a hand, tell them he had spent a thousand years learning this trick and others, tell them of the guns and the blood that had blessed them? Not with his mouth. But his hands could speak their own tale.

They were in throwing range as he finished reloading, and a stick struck him on the forehead and brought blood in abraded drops. In two seconds they would be in gripping distance. In the forefront he saw Kennerly; Kennerly's younger daughter, perhaps eleven; Soobie; two male barflies; a wh.o.r.e named Amy Feldon. He let them all have it, and the ones behind them. Their bodies thumped like scarecrows. Blood and brains flew in streamers.

They halted for a moment, startled, the mob face s.h.i.+vering into individual, bewildered faces. A man ran in a large, screaming circle. A woman with blisters on her hands turned her head up and cackled feverishly at the sky. The man whom he had first seen sitting gravely on the steps of the mercantile store made a sudden and amazing load in his pants.

He had time to reload one gun.

Then it was Sylvia Pittston, running at him, waving a wooden cross in each hand. ”DEVIL! DEVIL! DEVIL! CHILDKILLER! MONSTER! DESTROY HIM, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! DESTROY THE CHILDKILLING INTERLOPER!”

He put a shot into each of the crosspieces, blowing the roods to splinters, and four more into the woman's head. She seemed to accordion into herself and waver like a s.h.i.+mmer of heat.

They all stared at her for a moment in tableau, while the gunslinger's fingers did their reloading trick. The tips of his fingers sizzled and burned. Neat circles were branded into the tips of each one.

There were fewer of them now; he had run through them like a mower's scythe. He thought they would break with the woman dead, but someone threw a knife. The hilt struck him squarely between the eyes and knocked him over. They ran at him in a reaching, vicious clot. He fired his guns empty again, lying in his own spent sh.e.l.ls. His head hurt and he saw large brown circles in front of his eyes. He missed with one shot, downed eleven with the rest.

But they were on him, the ones that were left. He fired the four sh.e.l.ls he had reloaded, and then they were beating him, stabbing him. He threw a pair of them off his left arm and rolled away. His hands began doing their infallible trick. He was stabbed in the shoulder. He was stabbed in the back. He was. .h.i.t across the ribs. He was stabbed in the a.s.s with what might have been a meat-fork. A small boy squirmed at him and made the only deep cut, across the bulge of his calf. The gunslinger blew his head off.

They were scattering and he let them have it again, back-shooting now. The ones left began to retreat toward the sand-colored, pitted buildings, and still the hands did their business, like overeager dogs that want to do their rolling-over trick for you not once or twice but all night, and the hands were cutting them down as they ran. The last one made it as far as the steps of the barber shop's back porch, and then the gunslinger's bullet took him in the back of the head. ”Yowp!” ”Yowp!” the man cried, and fell over. It was Tull's final word on the business. the man cried, and fell over. It was Tull's final word on the business.

Silence came back in, filling jagged s.p.a.ces.

The gunslinger was bleeding from perhaps twenty different wounds, all of them shallow except for the cut across his calf. He bound it with a strip of s.h.i.+rt and then straightened and examined his kill.

They trailed in a twisting, zigzagging path from the back door of the barber shop to where he stood. They lay in all positions. None of them seemed to be sleeping.

He followed the trail of death, counting as he went. In the general store, one man sprawled with his arms wrapped lovingly around the cracked candy jar he had dragged down with him.

He ended up where he had started, in the middle of the deserted main street. He had shot and killed thirty-nine men, fourteen women, and five children. He had shot and killed everyone in Tull.

A sickish-sweet odor came to him on the first of the dry, stirring wind. He followed it, then looked up and nodded. The decaying body of Nort was spread-eagled atop the plank roof of Sheb's, crucified with wooden pegs. Mouth and eyes were open. The mark of a large and purple cloven hoof had been pressed into the skin of his grimy forehead.

The gunslinger walked out of town. His mule was standing in a clump of weed about forty yards further along the remnant of the coach road. The gunslinger led it back to Kennerly's stable. Outside, the wind was playing a jagtime tune. He put the mule up for the time being and went back to the tonk. He found a ladder in the back shed, went up to the roof, and cut Nort loose. The body was lighter than a bag of sticks. He tumbled it down to join the common people, those who would only have to die once. Then he went back inside, ate hamburgers, and drank three beers while the light failed and the sand began to fly. That night he slept in the bed where he and Allie had lain. He had no dreams. The next morning the wind was gone and the sun was its usual bright and forgetful self. The bodies had gone south like tumbleweeds with the wind. At midmorning, after he had bound all his cuts, he moved on as well.

XVIII.

He thought Brown had fallen asleep. The fire was down to no more than a spark and the bird, Zoltan, had put his head under his wing.

Just as he was about to get up and spread a pallet in the corner, Brown said, ”There. You've told it. Do you feel better?”

The gunslinger started. ”Why would I feel bad?”

”You're human, you said. No demon. Or did you lie?”

”I didn't lie.” He felt the grudging admittance in him: he liked Brown. Honestly did. And he hadn't lied to the dweller in any way. ”Who are you, Brown? Really, I mean.”

”Just me,” he said, unperturbed. ”Why do you have to think you're in the middle of such a mystery?”

The gunslinger lit a smoke without replying.

”I think you're very close to your man in black,” Brown said. ”Is he desperate?”

”I don't know.”

”Are you?”

”Not yet,” the gunslinger said. He looked at Brown with a shade of defiance. ”I go where I have to go, do what I have to do.”

”That's good then,” Brown said and turned over and went to sleep.

XIX.

The next morning, Brown fed him and sent him on his way. In the daylight he was an amazing figure with his scrawny, sunburnt chest, pencil-like collarbones, and loony shock of red hair. The bird perched on his shoulder.

”The mule?” the gunslinger asked.

”I'll eat it,” Brown said.

”Okay.”

Brown offered his hand and the gunslinger shook it. The dweller nodded to the southeast. ”Walk easy. Long days and pleasant nights.”

”May you have twice the number.”

They nodded at each other and then the man Allie had called Roland walked away, his body festooned with guns and water. He looked back once. Brown was rooting furiously at his little cornbed. The crow was perched on the low roof of his dwelling like a gargoyle.

XX.

The fire was down, and the stars had begun to pale off. The wind walked restlessly, told its tale to no one. The gunslinger twitched in his sleep and was still again. He dreamed a thirsty dream. In the darkness the shape of the mountains was invisible. Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out. He found himself thinking more and more about Cort, who had taught him to shoot. Cort had known black from white.

He stirred again and woke. He blinked at the dead fire with its own shape superimposed over the other, more geometrical one. He was a romantic, he knew it, and he guarded the knowledge jealously. It was a secret he had shared with only a few over the years. The girl named Susan, the girl from Mejis, had been one of them.

That, of course, made him think of Cort again. Cort was dead. They were all dead, except for him. The world had moved on.

The gunslinger shouldered his gunna and moved on with it.

The WAY STATION.

CHAPTER TWO.

The Way Station

I.

A nursery rhyme had been playing itself through his mind all day, the maddening kind of thing that will not let go, that mockingly ignores all commands of the conscious mind to cease and desist. The rhyme was: The rain in Spain falls on the plain.There is joy and also painbut the rain in Spain falls on the plain.