The gunslinger - Stephen King [22]
“Do you have a map?” he asked, looking up.
“Of the town?” she laughed. “There isn’t enough of it to need a map.”
“No. Of what’s southeast of here.”
Her smile faded. “The desert. Just the desert. I thought you’d stay for a little.”
“What’s on the other side of the desert?”
“How would I know? Nobody crosses it. Nobody’s tried since I was here.” She wiped her hands on her apron, got potholders, and dumped the tub of water she had been heating into the sink, where it splashed and steamed. “The clouds all go that way. It’s like something sucks them—”
He got up.
“Where are you going?” She heard the shrill fear in her voice and hated it.
“To the stable. If anyone knows, the hostler will.” He put his hands on her shoulders. The hands were hard, but they were also warm. “And to arrange for my mule. If I’m going to be here, he should be taken care of. For when I leave.”
But not yet. She looked up at him. “But you watch that Kennerly. If he doesn’t know a thing, he’ll make it up.”
“Thank you, Allie.”
When he left she turned to the sink, feeling the hot, warm drift of her grateful tears. How long since anyone had thanked her? Someone who mattered?
X
Kennerly was a toothless and unpleasant old satyr who had buried two wives and was plagued with daughters. Two half-grown ones peeked at the gunslinger from the dusty shadows of the barn. A baby drooled happily in the dirt. A full-grown one, blond, dirty, and sensual, watched with a speculative curiosity as she drew water from the groaning pump beside the building. She caught the gunslinger’s eye, pinched her nipples between her fingers, dropped him a wink, and then went back to pumping.
The hostler met him halfway between the door to his establishment and the street. His manner vacillated between a kind of hateful hostility and craven fawning.
“Hit’s bein’ cared for, never fear ’at,” he said, and before the gunslinger could reply, Kennerly turned on his daughter with his fists up, a desperate scrawny rooster of a man. “You get in, Soobie! You get right the hell in!”
Soobie began to drag her bucket sullenly toward the shack appended to the barn.
“You meant my mule,” the gunslinger said.
“Yes, sai. Ain’t seen no mule in quite a time, specially one that looks as threaded as your’n—two eyes, four legs . . .” His face squinched together alarmingly in an expression meant to convey either extreme pain or the notion that a joke had been made. The gunslinger assumed it was the latter, although he had little or no sense of humor himself.
“Time was they used to grow up wild for want of ’em,” Kennerly continued, “but the world has moved on. Ain’t seen nothin’ but a few mutie oxen and the coach horses and—Soobie, I’ll whale you, ’fore God!”
“I don’t bite,” the gunslinger said pleasantly.
Kennerly cringed and grinned. The gunslinger saw the murder in his eyes quite clearly, and although he did not fear it, he marked it as a man might mark a page in a book, one that contained potentially valuable instructions. “It ain’t you. Gods, no, it ain’t you.” He grinned loosely. “She just naturally gawky. She got a devil. She wild.” His eyes darkened. “It’s coming to Last Times, mister. You know how it says in the Book. Children won’t obey their parents, and a plague’ll be visited on the multitudes. You only have to listen to the preacher-woman to know it.”
The gunslinger nodded, then pointed southeast. “What’s out there?”
Kennerly grinned again, showing gums and a few sociable yellow teeth. “Dwellers. Weed. Desert. What else?” He cackled, and his eyes measured the gunslinger coldly.
“How big is the desert?”
“Big.” Kennerly endeavored to look serious, as if answering a serious question. “Maybe a thousand wheels. Maybe two thousand. I can’t tell you, mister. There’s nothin’ out there but devil-grass and maybe demons. Heard there was a speakin-ring sommers on the far side, but that ’us prolly