Wizard and glass - Stephen King [195]
She saw the reflection’s ghost-eyes widen in shock and dismay. She saw the ghost-fist relax, become a hand again, fall to the ghost-woman’s side.
“Susan,” Cordelia said in a small, hurt voice. “How can ye call me so? What’s so coarsened your tongue and your regard for me?”
Susan went out without replying. She crossed the yard and entered the barn. Here the smells she had known since childhood—horses, lumber, hay—filled her head and drove the awful clarity away. She was tumbled back into childhood, lost in the shadows of her confusion again. Pylon turned to look at her and whickered. Susan put her head against his neck and cried.
7
“There!” Sheriff Avery said when sais Dearborn and Heath were gone. “It’s as ye said—just slow is all they are; just creeping careful.” He held the meticulously printed list up, studied it a moment, then cackled happily. “And look at this! What a beauty! Har! We can move anything we don’t want em to see days in advance, so we can.”
“They’re fools,” Reynolds said . . . but he pined for another chance at them, just the same. If Dearborn really thought bygones were bygones over that little business in the Travellers’ Rest, he was way past foolishness and dwelling in the land of idiocy.
Deputy Dave said nothing. He was looking disconsolately through his monocle at the Castles board, where his white army had been laid waste in six quick moves. Jonas’s forces had poured around Red Hillock like water, and Dave’s hopes had been swept away in the flood.
“I’m tempted to wrap myself up dry and go over to Seafront with this,” Avery said. He was still gloating over the paper, with its neat list of farms and ranches and proposed dates of inspection. Up to Year’s End and beyond it ran. Gods!
“Why don’t ye do that?” Jonas said, and got to his feet. Pain ran up his leg like bitter lightning.
“Another game, sai Jonas?” Dave asked, beginning to reset the pieces.
“I’d rather play a weed-eating dog,” Jonas said, and took malicious pleasure at the flush that crept up Dave’s neck and stained his guileless fool’s face. He limped across to the door, opened it, and went out on the porch. The drizzle had become a soft, steady rain. Hill Street was deserted, the cobbles gleaming wetly.
Reynolds had followed him out. “Eldred—”
“Get away,” Jonas said without turning.
Clay hesitated a moment, then went back inside and closed the door.
What the hell’s wrong with you? Jonas asked himself.
He should have been pleased at the two young pups and their list—as pleased as Avery was, as pleased as Rimer would be when he heard about this morning’s visit. After all, hadn’t he told Rimer not three days ago that the boys would soon be over on the Drop, counting their little hearts out? Yes. So why did he feel so unsettled? So fucking jittery? Because there still hadn’t been any contact from Farson’s man, Latigo? Because Reynolds came back empty from Hanging Rock on one day and Depape came back empty the next? Surely not. Latigo would come, along with a goodly troop of men, but it was still too soon for them, and Jonas knew it. Reaping was still almost a month away.
So is it just the bad weather working on your leg, stirring up that old wound and making you ugly?
No. The pain was bad, but it had been worse before. The trouble was his head. Jonas leaned against a post beneath the overhang, listened to the rain plinking on the tiles, and thought how, sometimes in a game of Castles, a clever player would peek around his Hillock for just a moment, then duck back. That was what this felt like—it was so right it smelled wrong. Crazy idea, but somehow not crazy at all.
“Are you trying to play Castles with me, sprat?” Jonas murmured. “If so, you’ll soon wish you’d stayed home with your mommy. So you will.”
8
Roland and Cuthbert headed back to the Bar K along the Drop—there would be no counting done today. At first, in spite of the rain and the gray skies, Cuthbert’s good humor was almost entirely restored.
“Did