XII

   The next night the bar was closed. It was whatever passed for the Sabbath in Tull. The gunslinger went to the tiny, leaning church by the graveyard while Allie washed tables with strong disinfectant and rinsed kerosene lamp chimnies in soapy water.
   An odd purple dusk had fallen, and the church, lit from the inside, looked almost like a blast furnace from the road.
   “I don’t go,” Allie had said shortly. “The woman who preaches has poison religion. Let the respectable ones go.
   He stood in the vestibule, hidden in a shadow, looking in. The pews were gone and the congregation stood (he saw Kennerly and his brood; Castner, owner of the town’s scrawny dry-goods emporium and his slat-sided wife; a few barflies; a few “town” women he had never seen before; and, surprisingly, Sheb). They were singing a hymn raggedly, a cappella. He looked curiously at the mountainous woman at the pulpit. Allie had said: “She lives alone, hardly ever sees anybody. Only comes out on Sunday to serve up the hellfire. Her name is Sylvia Pittston. She’s crazy, but she’s got the hoodoo on them. They like it that way. It suits them.”
   No description could take the measure of the woman.
   Breasts like earthworks. A huge pillar of a neck overtopped by a pasty white moon of a face, in which blinked eyes so large and so dark that they seemed to be bottomless tarns. Her hair was a beautiful rich brown and it was piled atop her head in a haphazard, lunatic sprawl, held by a hairpin big enough to be a meat skewer. She wore a dress that seemed to be made of burlap. The arms that held the hymnal were slabs. Her skin was creamy, unmarked, lovely. He thought that she must top three hundred pounds. He felt a sudden red lust for her that made him feel shaky, and he turned his head and looked away.
   “Shall we gather at the river,
   The beautiful, the beautiful,
   The riiiiver,
   Shall we gather at the river,
   That flows by the Kingdom of God.”
   The last note of the last chorus faded off, and there was a moment of shuffling and coughing.
   She waited. When they were settled, she spread her hands over them, as if in benediction. It was an evocative gesture.
   “My dear little brothers and sisters in Christ.”
   It was a haunting line. For a moment the gunslinger felt mixed feelings of nostalgia and fear, stitched in with an eerie feeling of deja vu – he thought: I dreamed this. When? He shook it off. The audience – perhaps twenty-five all told – had become dead silent.
   “The subject of our meditation tonight is The Interloper.” Her voice was sweet, melodious, the speaking voice of a well-trained soprano.
   “A little rustle ran through the audience.
   “I feel,” Sylvia Pittston said reflectively, “I feel that I know everyone in The Book personally. In the last five years I have worn out five Bibles, and uncountable numbers before that. I love the story, and I love the players in that story. I have walked arm in arm in the lion’s den with
   Daniel. I stood with David when he was tempted by Bath sheba as she bathed at the pool. I have been in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I slew two thousand with Samson and was blinded with St. Paul on the road to Damascus. I wept with Mary at Golgotha.”
   A soft, shurring sigh in the audience.
   “I have known and loved them. There is only one —one – “she held up a finger – “only one player in the greatest of all dramas that I do not know. Only one who stands outside with his face in the shadow. Only one that makes my body tremble and my spirit quail. I fear him. I don’t know his mind and I fear him. I fear The Interloper.”
   Another sigh. One of the women had put a hand over her mouth as if to stop a sound and was rocking, rocking.
   “The Interloper who came to Eve as a snake on its belly, grinning and writhing. The Interloper who walked among the Children of Israel while Moses was up on the Mount, who whispered to them to make a golden idol, a golden calf, and to worship it with foulness and fornication.”
   Moans, nods.
   “The Interloper! He stood on the balcony with Jezebel and watched as King Ahaz fell screaming to his death, and he and she grinned as the dogs gathered and lapped up his life’s blood. Oh, my little brothers and sisters, watch thou for The Interloper.”
   “Yes, 0 Jesus – “The man the gunslinger had first noticed coming into town, the one with the straw hat.
   “He’s always been there, my brothers and sisters. But I don’t know his mind. And you don’t know his mind. Who could understand the awful darkness that swirls there, the pride like pylons, the titanic blasphemy, the unholy glee? And the madness! The cyclopean, gibbering madness that walks and crawls and wriggles through men’s most awful wants and desires?”
   “0 Jesus Savior – “
   “It was him who took our Lord up on the mountain —““Yes – “
   “It was him that tempted him and shewed him all the world and the world’s pleasures —“Yesss – “
   “It’s him that will come back when Last Times come on the world.., and they are coming, my brothers and sisters, can’t you feel they are?”
   “Yesss – “
   Rocking and sobbing, the congregation became a sea; the woman seemed to point at all of them, none of them.
   “It’s him that will come as the Antichrist, to lead men into the flaming bowels of perdition, to the bloody end of wickedness, as Star Wormwood hangs blazing in the sky, as gall gnaws at the vitals of the children, as women’s wombs give forth monstrosities, as the works of men’s hands turn to blood – “
   “Ahhh – “
   “Ah, God – “
   “Gawwwwwwww – “
   A woman fell on the floor, her legs crashing up and down against the wood. One of her shoes flew off.
   “It’s him that stands behind every fleshly pleasure … him! The Interloper!”
   “Yes, Lord!”
   A man fell on his knees, holding his head and braying.
   “When you take a drink, who holds the bottle?”
   “The Interloper!”
   “When you sit down to a faro or a Watch Me table, who turns the cards?”
   “The Interloper!”
   “When you riot in the flesh of another’s body, when you pollute yourself, who are you selling your soul to?”
   “In – “
   “The – “
   “Oh, Jesus . .. Oh – “
   “– loper —
   “—Aw…Aw…Aw… “
   “And who is he?” She screamed (but calm within, he could sense the calmness, the mastery, the control, the domination. He thought suddenly, with terror and absolute surety: he has left a demon in her. She is haunted. He felt the hot ripple of sexual desire again through his fear.)
   The man who was holding his head crashed and blundered forward.
   “I’m in hell!” He screamed up at her. His face twisted and writhed as if snakes crawled beneath his skin. “I done fornications! I done gambling! I done weed! I done sins! I
   – “ But his voice rose skyward in a dreadful, hysterical wail that drowned articulation. He held his head as if it would burst like an overripe cantaloupe at any moment.
   The audience stilled as if a cue had been given, frozen in their half-erotic poses of ecstasy.
   Sylvia Pittston reached down and grasped his head. The man’s cry ceased as her fingers, strong and white, unblemished and gentle, worked through his hair. He looked up at her dumbly.
   “Who was with you in sin?” She asked. Her eyes looked into his, deep enough, gentle enough, cold enough to drown in.
   “The.. . the Interloper.”
   “Called who?”
   “Called Satan.” Raw, oozing whisper.
   “Will you renounce?”
   Eagerly: “Yes! Yes! Oh, my Jesus Savior!”
   She rocked his head; he stared at her with the blank, shiny eyes of the zealot. “If he walked through that door
   – “ she hammered a finger at the vestibule shadows where
   the gunslinger stood – “would you renounce him to his face?”
   “On my mother’s name!”
   “Do you believe in the eternal love of Jesus?”
   He began to weep. “Your fucking-A I do – “
   “He forgives you that, Jonson.”
   “Praise God,” Jonson said, still weeping.
   “I know he forgives you just as I know he will cast out the unrepentant from his palaces and into the place of burning darkness. “
   “Praise God. “ The congregation drained, spoke it solemnly.
   “Just as I know this Interloper, this Satan, this Lord of Flies and Serpents will be cast down and crushed. . . will you crush him if you see him, Jonson?”
   “Yes and praise God!” Jonson wept.
   “Will you crush him if you see him, brothers and sisters?”
   “Yess… “ Sated.
   “If you see him sashaying down Main St tomorrow?”
   “Praise God… “
   The gunslinger, unsettled, at the same time, faded back out the door and headed for town. The smell of the desert was clear in the air. Almost time to move on.

XIII

   In bed again.
   “She won’t see you,” Allie said. She sounded frightened. “She doesn’t see anybody. She only comes out on Sunday evenings to scare the hell out of everybody.”
   “How long has she been here?”
   “Twelve years or so. Let’s not talk about her.”
   “Where did she come from? Which direction?”
   “I don’t know.” Lying.
   “Allie?”
   “I don’t know!”
   “Allie?”
   “All right! All right! She came from the dwellers! From the desert!”
   “I thought so.” He relaxed a little. “Where does she live?”
   Her voice dropped a notch. “If I tell you, will you make love to me?”
   “You know the answer to that.”
   She sighed. It was an old, yellow sound, like turning pages. “She has a house over the knoll in back of the church. A little shack. It’s where the . . . the real minister used to live until he moved out. Is that enough? Are you satisfied?”
   “No. Not yet.” And he rolled on top of her.

XIV

   It was the last day, and he knew it.
   The sky was an ugly, bruised purple, weirdly lit from above with the first fingers of dawn. Allie moved about like a wraith, lighting lamps, tending the corn fritters that spluttered in the skillet. He had loved her hard after she had told him what he had to know, and she had sensed the coming end and had given more than she had ever given, and she had given it with desperation against the coming of dawn, given it with the tireless energy of sixteen. But she was pale this morning, on the brink of menopause again.
   She served him without a word. He ate rapidly, chewing, swallowing, chasing each bite with hot coffee. Allie went to the batwings and stood staring out at the morning, at the silent battalions of slow-moving clouds.
   “It’s going to dust up today. “
   “I’m not surprised.”
   “Are you ever?” She asked ironically, and turned to watch him get his hat. He clapped it on his head and brushed past her.
   “Sometimes,” he told her. He only saw her once more alive.

XV

   By the time he reached Sylvia Pittston’s shack, the wind had died utterly and the whole world seemed to wait. He had been in desert country long enough to know that the longer the lull, the harder the wind would blow when it finally decided to start up. A queer, flat light hung over everything.
   There was a large wooden cross nailed to the door of the place, which was leaning and tired. He rapped and waited. No answer. He rapped again. No answer. He drew back and kicked in the door with one hard shot of his right boot. A small bolt on the inside ripped free. The door banged against a haphazardly planked wall and scared rats into skittering flight Sylvia Pittston sat in the hall, sat in a mammoth darkwood rocker, and looked at him calmly with those great and dark eyes. The stormlight fell on her cheeks in terrifying half—tones. She wore a shawl. The rocker made tiny squeaking noises.
   They looked at each other for a long, clockless moment.
   “You will never catch him,” she said. “You walk in the way of evil.”
   “He came to you,” the gunslinger said.
   “And to my bed. He spoke to me in the Tongue. He – “
   “He screwed you. “
   She did not flinch. “You walk an evil way, gunslinger. You stand in shadows. You stood in the shadows of the holy
   place last night Did you think I couldn’t see you?”
   “Why did he heal the weed—eater?”
   “He was an angel of God. He said so.”
   “I hope he smiled when he said it.”
   She drew her lip back from her teeth in an unconsciously feral gesture. “He told me you would follow. He told me what to do. He said you are the Antichrist”
   The gunslinger shook his head. “He didn’t say that.”
   She smiled up at him lazily. “He said you would want to bed me. Do you?”
   “Yes.”
   “The price is your life, gunslinger. He has got me with child… the child of an angel. If you invade me – “ She let the lazy smile complete her thought At the same time she gestured with her huge, mountainous thighs. They stretched beneath her garment like pure marble slabs. The effect was dizzying.
   The gunslinger dropped his hands to the butts of his pistols. “You have a demon, woman. I can remove it”
   The effect was instantaneous. She recoiled against the chair, and a weasel look flashed on her face. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! You dare not touch the Bride of God!”
   “Want to bet?” the gunslinger said, grinning. He stepped toward her.
   The flesh on the huge frame quaked. Her face had be– come a caricature of crazed terror, and she stabbed the sign of the Eye at him with pronged fingers.
   “The desert,” the gunslinger said. “What after the desert?”
   “You’ll never catch him! Never! Never! You’ll burn! He told me so!”
   “I’ll catch him,” the gunslinger said. “We both know it. What is beyond the desert?”
   “No!”
   “Answer me!”
   “No!”
   He slid forward, dropped to his knees, and grabbed her thighs. Her legs locked like a vise. She made strange, lustful keening noises.
   “The demon, then,” he said.
   “No – “
   He pried the legs apart and upholstered one of his guns.
   “No! No! No!” Her breath came in short, savage grunts.
   “Answer me. “
   She rocked in the chair and the floor trembled. Prayers and garbled bits of jargon flew from her lips.
   He rammed the barrel of the gun forward. He could feel the terrified wind sucked into her lungs more than he could hear it Her hands beat at his head; her legs drummed against the floor. And at the same time the huge body tried to take the invader and enwomb it. Outside nothing watched them but the bruised sky.
   She screamed something, high and inarticulate.
   “What?”
   “Mountains!”
   “What about them?”
   “He stops… on the other side… s—s—sweet Jesus!… to in—make his strength. Med—in—meditation, do you under– stand? Oh . .. I’m . .. I’m . . . “
   The whole huge mountain of flesh suddenly strained forward and upward, yet he was careful not to let her secret flesh touch him.
   Then she seemed to wilt and grow smaller, and she wept with her hands in her lap.
   “So,” he said, getting up. “The demon is served, eh?”
   “Get out. You’ve killed the child. Get out Get out.”
   He stopped at the door and looked back. “No child,” he said briefly. “No angel, no demon.”
   “Leave me alone.”
   He did.

XVI

   By the time he arrived at Kennerly’s, a queer obscurity had come over the northern horizon and he knew it was dust. Over Tull the air was still dead quiet.
   Kennerly was waiting for him on the chaff—strewn stage that was the floor of his barn. “Leaving?” He grinned abjectly at the gunslinger.
   “Yes.”
   “Not before the storm?”
   “Ahead of it”
   “The wind goes faster than a man on a mule. In the open it can kill you.”
   “I’ll want the mule now,” the gunslinger said simply.
   “Sure.” But Kennerly did not turn away, merely stood as if searching for something further to say, grinning his groveling, hate—filled grin, and his eyes flicked up and over the gunslinger’s shoulder.
   The gunslinger sidestepped and turned at the same time, and the heavy stick of stovewood that the girl Soobie held swished through the air, grazing his elbow only. She lost hold of it with the force of her swing and it clattered over the floor. In the explosive height of the loft, barn swallows took shadowed wing.
   The girl looked at him bovinely. Her breasts thrust with overripe grandeur at the wash—faded shirt she wore. One thumb sought the haven of her mouth with dreamlike slowness.
   The gunslinger turned back to Kennerly. Kennerly’s grin was huge. His skin was waxy yellow. His eyes rolled in their sockets. “I – “ he began in a phlegm—filled whisper and could not continue.
   “The mule,” the gunslinger prodded gently.
   “Sure, sure, sure,” Kennerly whispered, the grin now touched with incredulity. He shuffled after it.
   He moved to where he could watch Kennerly, The
   hostler brought the mule back and handed him the bridle.
   . ,
   “You get in an tend your sister,” he said to Soobie.
   Soobie tossed her head and didn’t move.
   The gunslinger left them there, staring at each other across the dusty, droppings—strewn floor, he with his sick grin, she with dumb, inanimate defiance. Outside the heat was still like a hammer.

XVII

   He walked the mule up the center of the street, his boots sending up squirts of dust His waterbags were strapped across the mule’s back.
   He stopped at Sheb’s, and Allie was not there. The place was deserted, battened for the storm, but still dirty from the night before. She had not begun her cleaning and the place was as fetid as a wet dog.
   He filled his tote sack with corn meal, dried and roasted corn, and half of the raw hamburg in the cooler. He left four gold pieces stacked on the planked counter. Allie did not come down. Sheb’s piano bid him a silent, yellow– toothed good—by. He stepped back out and cinched the tote sack across the mule’s back. There was a tight feeling in his throat. He might still avoid the trap, but the chances were small. He was, after all, the interloper.
   He walked past the shuttered, waiting buildings, feeling the eyes that peered through cracks and chinks. The man in black had played God in Tull. Was it only a sense of the cosmic comic, or a matter of desperation? It was a question of some importance.
   There was a shrill, harried scream from behind him, and doors suddenly threw themselves open. Forms lunged. The trap was sprung, then. Men in long handles and men in dirty dungarees. Women in slacks and in faded dresses.
   Even children, tagging after their parents. And in every hand there was a chunk of wood or a knife.
   His reaction was automatic, instantaneous, inbred. He whirled on his heels while his hands pulled the guns from their holsters, the hafts heavy and sure in his hands. It was Allie, and of course it had to be Allie, coming at him with her face distorted, the scar a hellish purple in the lowering light He saw that she was held hostage; the distorted, grimacing face of Sheb peered over her shoulder like a witch’s familiar. She was his shield and sacrifice. He saw it all, clear and shadowless in the frozen deathless light of the sterile calm, and heard her:
   “He’s got me 0 Jesus don’t shoot don’t don’t don’t – “
   But the hands were trained. He was the last of his breed and it was not only his mouth that knew the High Speech. The guns beat their heavy, atonal music into the air. Her mouth flapped and she sagged and the guns fired again. Sheb’s head snapped back. They both fell into the dust.
   Sticks flew through the air, rained on him. He staggered, fended them off. One with a nail pounded raggedly through it ripped at his arm and drew blood. A man with a beard stubble and sweat—stained armpits lunged flying at him with a dull kitchen knife held in one paw. The gunslinger shot him dead and the man thumped into the street. His teeth clicked audibly as his chin struck.
   “SATAN!” Some was screaming: “THE ACCURSED! BRING HIM DOWN!”
   “THE INTERLOPER!” Another voice cried. Sticks rained on him. A knife struck his boot and bounced. “THE
   INTERLOPER! THE ANTICHRIST!”
   He blasted his way through the middle of them, running as the bodies fell, his hands picking the targets with dreadful accuracy. Two men and a woman went down, and he ran through the hole they left.
   He led them a feverish parade across the street and toward the rickety general store/barber shop that faced Sheb’s. He mounted the boardwalk, turned again, and fired the rest of his loads into the charging crowd. Behind them, Sheb and Allie and the others lay crucified in the dust.
   They never hesitated or faltered, although every shot he fired found a vital spot and although they had probably never seen a gun except for pictures in old magazines.
   He retreated, moving his body like a dancer to avoid the flying missiles. He reloaded as he went, with a rapidity that had also been trained into his fingers. They shuttled busily between gunbelts and cylinders. The mob came up over the boardwalk and he stepped into the general store and rammed the door closed. The large display window to the right shattered inward and three men crowded through. Their faces were zealously blank, their eyes filled with bland fire. He shot them all, and the two that followed them. They fell in the window, hung on the jutting shards of glass, choking the opening.
   The door crashed and shuddered with their weight and he could hear her voice: “THE KILLER! YOUR SOULS! THE CLOVEN HOOF!”
   The door ripped off its hinges and fell straight in, making a flat handclap. Dust puffed up from the floor. Men, women, and children charged him. Spittle and stove– wood flew. He shot his guns empty and they fell like nine– pins. He retreated, shoving over a flour barrel, rolling it at them, into the barbershop, throwing a pan of boiling water that contained two nicked straight—razors. They came on, screaming with frantic incoherency. From somewhere, Sylvia Pittston exhorted them, her voice rising and falling on blind inflections. He pushed shells into hot chambers, smelling the smells of shave and tonsure, smelling his own flesh as the calluses at the tips of his fingers singed.
   He went through the back door and onto the porch. The flat scrubland was at his back now, flatly denying the town that crouched against its huge haunch. Three men hustled around the corner, with large betrayer grins on their faces. They saw him, saw him seeing them, and the grins curdled in the second before he mowed them down. A woman had followed them, howling. She was large and fat and known to the patrons of Sheb’s as Aunt Mill. The gunslinger blew her backwards and she landed in a whorish sprawl, her skirt kinked up between her thighs.
   He went down the steps and walked backwards into the desert, ten paces, twenty. The back door of the barber shop flew open and they boiled out He caught a glimpse of Sylvia Pittston. He opened up. They fell in squats, they fell backwards, they tumbled over the railing into the dust. They cast no shadows in the deathless purple light of the day. He realized he was screaming. He had been scream– ing all along. His eyes felt like cracked ball bearings. His balls had drawn up against his belly. His legs were wood. His ears were iron.
   The guns were empty and they boiled at him, transmogrified into an Eye and a Hand, and he stood, scream– ing 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 twenty—five 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 bar– flies; a female barfly 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 shivering 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! CHILD-KILLER! MONSTER! DESTROY HIM, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! DESTROY THE CHILD– KILLING 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 accordian into herself and waver like a shimmer 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 less 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 shells. His head hurt and he saw large brown circles in front of his ‘eyes. He missed one shot, downed eleven.
   But they were on him, the ones that were left He fired the four shells 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 hit across the ribs. He was stabbed in the ass. 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. The ones left began to retreat toward the sand—colored, pitted buildings, and still the hands did their trick, like over– eager 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.


   Silence came back in, filling jagged spaces.
   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 shirt and then straightened and examined his kill.
   They trailed in a twisted, 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 them back, counting as he went. In the general store one man lay 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. A large and purple cloven hoof had been pressed into the skin of his grimy forehead.
   He walked out of town. His mule was standing in a
   clump of weed about forty yards out along the remnant of the coach road. The gunslinger led it back to Kennerly’s . stable. Outside, the wind was playing a ragtime tune. He put the mule up and went back to Sheb’s. He found a ladder in the back shed, went up to the roof, and cut Nort down. The body was lighter than a bag of sticks. He tumbled it down to join the common people. 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 tumble– weeds 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 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 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 do what I have to do.”
   “That’s good then,” Brown said and turned over and went to sleep.

XIX

XIX

   In the morning Brown fed him and sent him on his way. In the daylight he was an amazing figure with his scrawny, burnt chest, pencil-like collarbones and ring leted 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 south. “Walk easy. “
   “You know it.”
   They nodded at each other and then the gunslinger walked away, his body festooned with guns and water. He looked back once. Brown was rooting furiously at his little combed. 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. 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. The thoughts of guilt had faded. The desert had baked them out. He found himself thinking more and more about Cort, who had taught him to shoot, instead. Cort had known black from white.
   He stirred again and awoke. 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.
   That, of course, made him think of Cort again. He didn’t know where Cort was. The world had moved on.
   The gunslinger shouldered his tote sack and moved on with it.

The Way Station

   A nursery rhyme had been playing itself through his mind all day, the maddening kind of thing that will not let go, that stands mockingly outside the apse of the conscious mind and makes faces at the rational being inside. The rhyme was:
   The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
   There is joy and also pain
   but the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
   Pretty-plain, loony-sane
   The ways of the world all will change and all the ways remain the same
   but if you’re mad or only sane
   the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
   We walk in love but fly in chains
   And the planes in Spain fall mainly in the rain.
   He knew why the rhyme had occurred to him. There had been the recurring dream of his room in the castle and of his father, who had sung it to him as he lay solemnly in the tiny bed by the window of many colors. She did not sing it at bedtimes because all small boys born to the High Speech must face the dark alone, but she sang to him at nap-times and he could remember the heavy gray rain light that shivered into colors on the counterpane; he could feel the coolness of the room and the heavy warmth of blankets, love for his mother and her red lips, the haunting melody of the little nonsense lyric, and her voice.
   Now it came back maddeningly, like prickly heat, chasing its own tail in his mind as he walked. All his water was gone, and he knew he was very likely a dead man. He had never expected it to come to this, and he was sorry. Since noon he had been watching his feet rather than watching the way ahead. Out here even the devil-grass had grown stunted and yellow. The hardpan had disintegrated in places to mere rubble. The mountains were not noticeably clearer, although sixteen days had passed since he had left the hut of the last homesteader, a loony-sane young man on the edge of the desert He had had a raven, the gunslinger remembered, but he couldn’t remember the raven’s name.
   He watched his feet move up and down, listened to the nonsense rhyme sing itself into a pitiful garble in his mind, and wondered when he would fall down for the first time. He didn’t want to fall, even though there was no one to see him. It was a matter of pride. A gunslinger knows pride —that invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff.
   He stopped and looked up suddenly. It made his head buzz and for a moment his whole body seemed to float The mountains dreamed against the far horizon. But there was something else up ahead, something much closer. Perhaps only five miles away. He squinted at it, but his eyes were sandblasted and going glare blind. He shook his head and began to walk again. The rhyme circled and buzzed. About an hour later he fell down and skinned his hands. He looked at the tiny beads of blood on his flaked skin with unbelief. The blood looked no thinner; it looked mutely viable. It seemed almost as smug as the desert He dashed the drops away, haling them blindly. Smug? Why not? The blood was
   not thirsty. The blood was being served. The blood was being made sacrifice unto. Blood sacrifice. All the blood needed to do was run… and run.., and run.
   He looked at the splotches that had landed on the hard-pan and watched as they were sucked up with uncanny suddenness. How do you like that, blood? How does that grab you?
   0 Jesus, you’re far gone.
   He got up, holding his hands to his chest and the thing he had seen earlier was almost in front of him, startling a cry out of him – a dust-choked crow-croak. It was a building. No; two buildings, surrounded by a fallen rail fence. The wood seemed old, fragile to the point of elvishness; it was wood being transmogrified into sand. One of the buildings had been a stable – the shape was clear and unmistakable. The other was a house, or an inn. A way station for the coach line. The tottering sand-house (the wind had crusted the wood with grit until it looked like a sand castle that the sun had beat upon at low tide and hardened to a temporary abode) cast a thin line of shadow, and someone sat in the shadow, leaning against the building. And the building seemed to lean with the burden of his weight
   Him, then. At last The man in black.
   The gunslinger stood with his hands to his chest, unaware of his declamatory posture, and gawped. And instead of the tremendous winging excitement he had expected (or perhaps fear, or awe), there was nothing but the dim, atavistic guilt for the sudden, raging hate of his own blood moments earlier and the endless ring-a-rosy of the childhood song:
   … the rain in Spain…
   He moved forward, drawing one gun.
   … falls mainly on the plain.
   He came the last quarter mile at the run, not trying to
   hide himself; there was nothing to hide behind. His short shadow raced him. He was not aware that his face had become a gray and grinning death mask of exhaustion; he was aware of nothing but the figure in the shadow. It did not occur to him until later that the figure might even have been dead.
   He kicked through one of the leaning fence rails (it broke in two without a sound, almost apologetically) and lunged across the dazzled and silent stable yard, bringing the gun up.
   “You’re covered! You’re covered! You’re —“
   The figure moved restlessly and stood up. The gunslinger thought: My God, he is worn away to nothing, what’s happened to him? Because the man in black had shrunk two full feet and his hair had gone white.
   He paused, struck dumb, his head buzzing tunelessly. His heart was racing at a lunatic rate and he thought, I’m dying right here —He sucked the white-hot air into his lungs and hung
   his head for a moment When he raised it again, he saw it wasn’t the man in black but a small boy with sun-bleached hair, regarding him with eyes that did not even seem interested. The gunslinger stared at him blankly and then shook his head in negation. But the boy survived his refusal to believe; he was still there, wearing blue jeans with a patch on one knee and a plain brown shirt of rough weave.
   The gunslinger shook his head again and started for the stable with his head lowered, gun still in hand. He couldn't think yet His head was filled with motes and there was a huge, thrumming ache building in it
   The inside of the stable was silent and dark and exploding with heat The gunslinger stared around himself with huge, floating walleyes. He made a drunken about-
   face and saw the boy standing in the ruined doorway, staring at him. A huge lancet of pain slipped dreamily into his head, cutting from temple to temple, dividing his brain like an orange. He reholstered his gun, swayed, put out his hands as if to ward off phantoms, and fell over on his face.
   When he woke up, he was on his back, and there was a pile of light, odorless hay beneath his head. The boy had not been able to move him, but he had made him reasonably comfortable. And he was cool. He looked down at himself and saw that his shirt was dark with moisture. He licked at his face and tasted water. He blinked at it
   The boy was hunkered down beside him. When he saw the gunslinger’s eyes were open, he reached behind him and gave the gunslinger a dented tin can filled with water. He grasped it with trembling hands and allowed himself to drink a little – just a little. When that was down and sitting in his belly, he drank a little more. Then he spilled the rest over his face and made shocked blowing noises. The boy’s pretty lips curved in a solemn little smile.
   “Want something to eat?”
   “Not yet,” the gunslinger said. There was still a sick ache in his head from the sunstroke, and the water sat uneasily in his stomach, as if it did not know where to go. “Who are you?”
   “My name is John Chambers. You can call me Jake.”
   The gunslinger sat up, and the sick ache became hard and immediate. He leaned forward and lost a brief struggle with his stomach.
   “There’s more,” Jake said. He took the can and walked toward the rear of the stable. He paused and smiled back at the gunslinger uncertainly. The gunslinger nodded at him and then put his head down and propped it with his
   hands. The boy was well-made, handsome, perhaps nine. There had been a shadow on his face, but there were shadows on all faces now.
   A strange, thumping hum began at the rear of the stable, and the gunslinger raised his head alertly, hands going to gunbutts. The sound lasted for perhaps fifteen seconds and then quit. The boy came back with the can – filled now.
   The gunslinger drank sparingly again, and this time it was a little better. The ache in his head was fading.
   “I didn’t know what to do with you when you fell down,” Jake said. “For a couple of seconds there, I thought you were going to shoot me.”
   “I thought you were somebody else.”
   “The priest?”
   The gunslinger looked up sharply. “What priest?”
   The boy looked at him, frowning lightly. “The priest He camped in the yard. I was in the house over there. I didn’t like him, so I didn’t come out He came in the night and went on the next day. I would have hidden from you, but I was sleepin’ when you came.” He looked darkly over the gunslinger’s head. “I don’t like people. They fuck me up.”
   “What did the priest look like?”
   The boy shrugged. “Like a priest. He was wearing black things.”
   “Like a hood and a cassock?”
   “What’s a cassock?”
   “A robe.”
   The boy nodded. “A robe and a hood.”
   The gunslinger leaned forward, and something in his face made the boy recoil a little. “How long ago?”
   “I – I – “
   Patiently, the gunslinger said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
   “I don’t know. I can’t remember time. Every day is the same.”
   For the first time the gunslinger wondered consciously how the boy had come to this place, with dry and man killing leagues of desert all around it. But he would not make it his concern; not yet, at least. “Make a guess. Long ago?”
   “No. Not long. I haven’t been here long.”
   The fire lit in him again. He grabbed the can and drank from it with hands that trembled the smallest bit. A snatch of the cradle song recurred, but this time, instead of his mother’s face, he saw the scarred face of Alice, who had been his woman in the now-defunct town of Tull. “How long? A week? Two? three?”
   The boy looked at him distractedly. “Yes.”
   “Which one?”
   “A week. Or two. I didn’t come out. He didn’t even drink. I thought he might be the ghost of a priest I was scared. I’ve been scared almost all the time.” His face quivered like crystal on the edge of the ultimate, destructive high note. “He didn’t even build a fire. He just sat there. I don’t even know if he went to sleep.”
   Close! He was closer than he had ever been. In spite of his extreme dehydration, his hands felt faintly moist; greasy.
   “There’s some dried meat,” the boy said.
   “All right” The gunslinger nodded. “Good.”
   The boy got up to fetch it, his knees popping slightly. He made a fine straight figure. The desert had not yet sapped him. His arms were thin, but the skin, although tanned, had not dried and cracked. He’s got juice, the gunslinger thought He drank from the can again. He’s got juice and he didn’t come from this place.
   Jake came back with a pile of dried jerky on what looked like a sun-scoured breadboard. The meat was tough, stringy, and salty enough to make the cankered lining of the gunslinger’s mouth sing. He ate and drank until he felt logy, and then settled back. The boy ate only a little.
   The gunslinger regarded him steadily, and the boy looked back at him. “Where did you come from, Jake?” He asked finally.
   “I don’t know.” The boy frowned. “I did know. I knew when I came here, but it’s all fuzzy now, like a bad dream when you wake up. I have lots of bad dreams.”
   “Did somebody bring you?”
   “No,” the boy said. “I was just here.”
   “You’re not making any sense,” the gunslinger said flatly.
   Quite suddenly the boy seemed on the verge of tears. “I can’t help it. I was just here. And now you’ll go away and I’ll starve because you ate up almost all my food. I didn’t ask to be here. I don’t like it. It’s spooky.”
   “Don’t feel so sorry for yourself. Make do.”
   “I didn’t ask to be here,” the boy repeated bewildered defiance.
   The gunslinger ate another piece of the meat, chewing the salt out of it before swallowing. The boy had become part of it, and the gunslinger was convinced he told the truth —he had not asked for it. It was too bad. He himself … he had asked for it But he had not asked for the game to become this dirty. He had not asked to be allowed to turn his guns on the unarmed populace of Tull; had not asked to shoot Allie, her face marked by that strange, shining scar; had not asked to be faced with a choice between the obsession of his duty and his quest and criminal amorality. The man in black had begun to pull bad strings in his desperation, if it was the man in black who had pulled this par ticular string. It was not fair to ring in innocent bystanders and make them speak lines they didn’t understand on a strange stage. Allie, he thought Allie at least had been into the world in her own self-illusory way. But this boy… this God-damned boy….