The gunslinger - Stephen King [34]
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 blade of pain slipped smoothly 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.
II
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 and wet. He licked at his face and tasted water. He blinked at it. His tongue seemed to swell in his mouth.
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.
“Would you want something to eat, sir?”
“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. I have a friend—well, sort of a friend, she works for us—who calls me ’Bama sometimes, but 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 ten or eleven. There had been a shadow of fear on his face, but that was all right; the gunslinger would have trusted him far less if the boy hadn’t shown fear.
A strange, thumping hum began at the rear of the stable. The gunslinger raised his head alertly, hands going to the butts of his guns. 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.”
“Maybe I was. I thought you were somebody else.”
“The priest?”
The gunslinger looked up sharply.
The boy studied him, frowning. “He camped in the yard. I was in the house over there. Or maybe it was a depot. 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 sleeping when you came.” He looked darkly over the gunslinger’s head. “I don’t like people. They fuck me up.”
“What did he look like?”
The boy shrugged. “Like a priest. He was wearing black things.”
“A hood and a cassock?”
“What’s a cassock?”
“A robe. Like a dress.”
The boy nodded. “That’s about right.”
The gunslinger leaned forward, and something in his face made the boy recoil a little. “How long ago? Tell me, for your father’s sake.”
“I. . .I. . .”
Patiently, the gunslinger said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don