Wizard and glass - Stephen King [137]
“Most of the ordinary day-to-day folk I’ve spoken to seem to feel the same. And yet your Mayor Thorin—”
“He’s not my Mayor Thorin,” she said, more sharply than she had intended.
“And yet the Barony’s Mayor Thorin has given us every help we’ve asked for, and some we haven’t. I have only to snap my fingers, and Kimba Rimer stands before me.”
“Then don’t snap them,” she said, looking around in spite of herself. She tried to smile and show it was a joke, but didn’t make much success of it.
“The townsfolk, the fisherfolk, the farmers, the cowboys . . . they all speak well of the Affiliation, but distantly. Yet the Mayor, his Chancellor, and the members of the Horsemen’s Association, Lengyll and Garber and that lot—”
“I know them,” she said shortly.
“They’re absolutely enthusiastic in their support. Mention the Affiliation to Sheriff Avery and he all but dances. In every ranch parlor we’re offered a drink from an Eld commemorative cup, it seems.”
“A drink of what?” she asked, a trifle roguishly. “Beer? Ale? Graf?”
“Also wine, whiskey, and pettibone,” he said, not responding to her smile. “It’s almost as if they wish us to break our vow. Does that strike you as strange?”
“Aye, a little; or just as Hambry hospitality. In these parts, when someone—especially a young man—says he’s taken the pledge, folks tend to think him coy, not serious.”
“And this joyful support of the Affiliation amongst the movers and the shakers? How does that strike you?”
“Queer.”
And it did. Pat Delgado’s work had brought him in almost daily contact with these landowners and horsebreeders, and so she, who had tagged after her da any time he would let her, had seen plenty of them. She thought them a cold bunch, by and large. She couldn’t imagine John Croydon or Jake White waving an Arthur Eld stein in a sentimental toast . . . especially not in the middle of the day, when there was stock to be run and sold.
Will’s eyes were full upon her, as if he were reading these thoughts.
“But you probably don’t see as much of the big fellas as you once did,” he said. “Before your father passed, I mean.”
“Perhaps not . . . but do bumblers learn to speak backward?”
No cautious smile this time; this time he outright grinned. It lit his whole face. Gods, how handsome he was! “I suppose not. No more than cats change their spots, as we say. And Mayor Thorin doesn’t speak of such as us—me and my friends—to you when you two are alone? Or is that question beyond what I have a right to ask? I suppose it is.”
“I care not about that,” she said, tossing her head pertly enough to make her long braid swing. “I understand little of propriety, as some have been good enough to point out.” But she didn’t care as much for his downcast look and flush of embarrassment as she had expected. She knew girls who liked to tease as well as flirt—and to tease hard, some of them—but it seemed she had no taste for it. Certainly she had no desire to set her claws in him, and when she went on, she spoke gently. “I’m not alone with him, in any case.”
And oh how ye do lie, she thought mournfully, remembering how Thorin had embraced her in the hall on the night of the party, groping at her breasts like a child trying to get his hand into a candy-jar; telling her that he burned for her. Oh ye great liar.
“In any case, Will, Hart’s opinion of you and yer friends can hardly concern ye, can it? Ye have a job to do, that’s all. If he helps ye, why not just accept and be grateful?”
“Because something’s wrong here,” he said, and the serious, almost somber quality of his voice frightened her a little.
“Wrong? With the Mayor? With the Horsemen’s Association? What are ye talking about?”
He looked at her steadily, then seemed to decide something. “I’m going