The Dark Tower IV Wizard and Glass (25 page)

“Ye’re wondering about the ice, Master Stockworth.”

Alain started. “Well, I . . .”

“Ye expected no such amenity in a backwater like Hambry, I’ll warrant,” Avery said, and although there was a joshing quality on top of his voice, Roland thought there was something else entirely underneath.

He doesn’t like us. He doesn’t like what he thinks of as our “city ways.” He hasn’t known us long enough to know what kind of ways we have, if any at all, but already he doesn’t like them. He thinks we’re a trio of snotnoses; that we see him and everyone else here as country bumpkins.

“Not just Hambry,” Alain said quietly. “Ice is as rare in the Inner Arc these days as anywhere else, Sheriff Avery. When I grew up, I saw it mostly as a special treat at birthday parties and such.”

“There was always ice on Glowing Day,” Cuthbert put in. He spoke with very un-Cuthbertian quiet. “Except for the fireworks, that’s what we liked about it most.”

“Is that so, is that so,” Sheriff Avery said in an amazed, wonders-will-never-cease tone. Avery perhaps didn’t like them riding in like this, didn’t like having to take up what he would probably call “half the damn morning” with them; he didn’t like their clothes, their fancy identification papers, their accents, or their youth. Least of all their youth. Roland could understand all that, but wondered if it was the whole story. If there was something else going on here, what was it?

“There’s a gas-fired refrigerator and stove in the Town Gathering Hall,” Avery said. “Both work. There’s plenty of earth-gas out at Citgo—that’s the oilpatch east of town. Yer passed it on yer way in, I wot.”

They nodded.

“Stove’s nobbut a curiosity these days—a history lesson for the schoolchildren—but the refrigerator comes in handy, so it does.” Avery held up his glass and looked through the side. “ ’Specially in summer.” He sipped some tea, smacked his lips, and smiled at Alain. “You see? No mystery.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t found use for the oil,” Roland said. “No generators in town, Sheriff?”

“Aye, there be four or five,” Avery said. “The biggest is out at Francis Lengyll’s Rocking B ranch, and I recall when it useter run. It’s HONDA. Do ye kennit that name, boys? HONDA?”

“I’ve seen it once or twice,” Roland said, “on old motor-driven bicycles.”

“Aye? In any case, none of the generators will run on the oil from the Citgo patch. ’Tis too thick. Tarry goo, is all. We have no refineries here.”

“I see,” Alain said. “In any case, ice in summer’s a treat. However it comes to the glass.” He let one of the chunks slip into his mouth, and crunched it between his teeth.

Avery looked at him a moment longer, as if to make sure the subject was closed, then switched his gaze back to Roland. His fat face was once more radiant with his broad, untrustworthy smile.

“Mayor Thorin has asked me to extend ye his very best greetings, and convey his regrets for not bein here today—very busy is our Lord Mayor, very busy indeed. But he’s laid on a
dinner-party at Mayor’s House tomorrow evening—seven o’ the clock for most folk, eight for you young fellows . . . so you can make a bit of an entrance, I imagine, add a touch o’ drama, like. And I need not tell such as yourselves, who’ve probably attended more such parties than I’ve had hot dinners, that it would be best to arrive pretty much on the dot.”

“Is it
fancy
-dress?” Cuthbert asked uneasily. “Because we’ve come a long way, almost four hundred wheels, and we didn’t pack formal wear and sashes, none of us.”

Avery was chuckling—more honestly this time, Roland thought, perhaps because he felt “Arthur” had displayed a streak of unsophistication and insecurity. “Nay, young master, Thorin understands ye’ve come to do a job—next door to workin cowboys, ye be! ’Ware they don’t have ye out draggin nets in the bay next!”

From the corner, Dave—the deputy with the monocle—honked unexpected laughter. Perhaps it was the sort of joke you had to be local to understand, Roland thought.

“Wear the best ye have, and ye’ll be fine. There’ll be no one there in sashes, in any case—that’s not how things are done in Hambry.” Again Roland was struck by the man’s constant smiling denigration of his town and Barony . . . and the resentment of the outsiders which lay just beneath it.

“In any case, ye’ll find yerselves working more than playing tomorrow night, I imagine. Hart’s invited all the large ranchers, stockliners, and livestock owners from this part of the Barony . . . not that there’s so many, you understand, bein as how Mejis is next door to desert once you get west o’ the Drop. But everyone whose goods and chattel you’ve been sent to count will be there, and I think you’ll find all of them loyal Affiliation men, ready and eager to help. There’s Francis Lengyll of the Rocking B . . . John Croydon of the Piano Ranch . . . Henry Wertner, who’s the Barony’s stockliner as well as a horsebreeder in his own right . . . Hash Renfrew, who owns the Lazy Susan, the biggest horse-ranch in Mejis (not that it’s much by the standards you fellows are used to, I wot) . . . and there’ll be others, as well. Rimer’ll introduce you, and get you about your business right smart.”

Ronald nodded and turned to Cuthbert. “You’ll want to be on your mettle tomorrow night.”

Cuthbert nodded. “Don’t fear me, Will, I’ll note em all.”

Avery sipped more tea, eyeing them over his glass with a roguish expression so false it made Roland want to squirm.

“Most of em’s got daughters of marriageable age, and they’ll bring em. You boys want to look out.”

Roland decided he’d had enough tea and hypocrisy for one morning. He nodded, emptied his glass, smiled (hoping his looked more genuine than Avery’s now looked to him), and got to his feet. Cuthbert and Alain took the cue and did likewise.

“Thank you for the tea, and for the welcome,” Roland said. “Please send a message to Mayor Thorin, thanking him for his kindness and telling him that he’ll see us tomorrow, at eight o’ the clock, prompt.”

“Aye. So I will.”

Roland then turned to Dave. That worthy was so surprised to be noticed again that he recoiled, almost bumping his head on the notice-board. “And please thank your wife for the tea. It was wonderful.”

“I will. Thankee-sai.”

They went back outside, High Sheriff Avery herding them along like a genial, overweight sheepdog.

“As to where you’ll locate—” he began as they descended the steps and started down the walk. As soon as they hit the sunshine, he began to sweat.

“Oh, land, I forgot to ask you about that,” Roland said, knocking the heel of his hand against his forehead. “We’ve camped out on that long slope, lots of horses as you go down the turf, I’m sure you know where I mean—”

“The Drop, aye.”

“—but without permission, because we don’t yet know who to ask.”

“That’d be John Croydon’s land, and I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge ye, but we mean to do ye better than that. There’s a spread northwest of here, the Bar K. Used to b’long to the Garber family, but they gave it up and moved on after a fire. Now it b’longs to the Horsemen’s Association—that’s a little local group of farmers and ranchers. I spoke to Francis Lengyll about you fellows—he’s the H.A. president just current—and he said ‘We’ll put em out to the old Garber place, why not?’ ”

“Why not?” Cuthbert agreed in a gentle, musing voice. Roland shot him a sharp glance, but Cuthbert was looking
down at the harbor, where the small fishing boats skittered to and fro like waterbugs.

“Aye, just what I said, ‘Why not, indeed?’ I said. The home place burned to a cinder, but the bunkhouse still stands; so does the stable and the cook-shack next door to it. On Mayor Thorin’s orders, I’ve taken the liberty of stocking the larder and having the bunkhouse swept out and spruced up a little. Ye may see the occasional bug, but nothing that’ll bite or sting . . . and no snakes, unless there’s a few under the floor, and if there are, let em stay there’s what I say. Hey, boys? Let em stay there!”

“Let em stay there, right under the floor where they’re happy,” Cuthbert agreed, still gazing down at the harbor with his arms folded over his chest.

Avery gave him a brief, uncertain glance, his smile flickering a bit at the corners. Then he turned back to Roland, and the smile shone out strongly once more. “There’s no holes in the roof, lad, and if it rains, ye’ll be dry. What think ye of that? Does it sound well to ye?”

“Better than we deserve. I think that you’ve been very efficient and Mayor Thorin’s been far too kind.” And he
did
think that. The question was why. “But we appreciate his thoughtfulness. Don’t we, boys?”

Cuthbert and Alain made vigorous assent.

“And we accept with thanks.”

Avery nodded. “I’ll tell him. Go safely, boys.”

They had reached the hitching rail. Avery once more shook hands all around, this time saving his keenest looks for their horses.

“Until tomorrow night, then, young gents?”

“Tomorrow night,” Roland agreed.

“Will ye be able to find the Bar K on your own, do yer think?”

Again Roland was struck by the man’s unspoken contempt and unconscious condescension. Yet perhaps it was to the good. If the High Sheriff thought they were stupid, who knew what might come of it?

“We’ll find it,” Cuthbert said, mounting up. Avery was looking suspiciously at the rook’s skull on the horn of Cuthbert’s saddle. Cuthbert saw him looking, but for once managed to keep his mouth shut. Roland was both amazed and pleased by this unexpected reticence. “Fare you well, Sheriff.”

“And you, boy.”

He stood there by the hitching post, a large man in a khaki shirt with sweat-stains around the armpits and black boots that looked too shiny for a working sheriff’s feet.
And where’s the horse that could support him through a day of range-riding?
Roland thought.
I’d like to see the cut of that Cayuse.

Avery waved to them as they went. The other deputies came down the walk, Deputy Dave in the forefront. They waved, too.

The moment the Affliation brats mounted on their fathers’ expensive horseflesh were around the corner and headed downhill to the High Street, the sheriff and the deputies stopped waving. Avery turned to Dave Hollis, whose expression of slightly stupid awe had been replaced by one marginally more intelligent.

“What think ye, Dave?”

Dave lifted his monocle to his mouth and began to nibble nervously at its brass edging, a habit about which Sheriff Avery had long since ceased to nag him. Even Dave’s wife, Judy, had given up on that score, and Judy Hollis—Judy Wertner that was—was a fair engine when it came to getting her own way.

“Soft,” Dave said. “Soft as eggs just dropped out of a chicken’s ass.”

“Mayhap,” Avery said, putting his thumbs in his belt and rocking enormously back and forth, “but the one did most of the talking, him in the flathead hat, he doesn’t
think
he’s soft.”

“Don’t matter what he
thinks,
” Dave said, still nibbling at his eyeglass. “He’s in Hambry, now. He may have to change his way of thinking to our’n.”

Behind him, the other deputies laughed. Even Avery smiled. They would leave the rich boys alone if the rich boys left them alone—those were orders, straight from Mayor’s House—but Avery had to admit that he wouldn’t mind a little dust-up with them, so he wouldn’t. He would enjoy putting his boot into the balls of the one with that idiotic bird’s skull on his saddle-horn—standing there and mocking him, he’d
been, thinking all the while that Herk Avery was too country-dumb to know what he was up to—but the thing he’d
really
enjoy would be beating the cool look from the eyes of the boy in the flathead preacher’s hat, seeing a hotter expression of fear rise up in them as Mr. Will Dearborn of Hemphill realized that New Canaan was far away and his rich father couldn’t help him.

“Aye,” he said, clapping Dave on the shoulder. “Mayhap he’ll have to change his way of thinking.” He smiled—one very different from any of those he had shown the Affiliation counters. “Mayhap they all will.”

The three boys rode in single file until they were past the Travellers’ Rest (a young and obviously retarded man with kinky black hair looked up from scrubbing the brick stoop and waved to them; they waved back). Then they moved up abreast, Roland in the middle.

“What did you think of our new friend, the High Sheriff?” Roland asked.

“I have no opinion,” Cuthbert said brightly. “No, none at all. Opinion is politics, and politics is an evil which has caused many a fellow to be hung while he’s still young and pretty.” He leaned forward and tapped the rook’s skull with his knuckles. “The lookout didn’t care for him, though. I’m sorry to say that our faithful lookout thought Sheriff Avery a fat bag of guts without a trustworthy bone in his body.”

Roland turned to Alain. “And you, young Master Stockworth?”

Alain considered it for some time, as was his way, chewing a piece of grass he’d bent oversaddle to pluck from his side of the road. At last he said: “If he came upon us burning in the street, I don’t think he’d piss on us to put us out.”

Cuthbert laughed heartily at that. “And you, Will? How do you say, dear captain?”

“He doesn’t interest me much . . . but one thing he said does. Given that the horse-meadow they call the Drop has to be at least thirty wheels long and runs five or more to the dusty desert, how do you suppose Sheriff Avery knew we were on the part of it that belongs to Croydon’s Piano Ranch?”

They looked at him, first with surprise, then speculation. After a moment Cuthbert leaned forward and rapped once more on the rook’s skull. “We’re being watched, and you never reported it? No supper for you, sir, and it’ll be the stockade the next time it happens!”

But before they had gone much farther, Roland’s thoughts of Sheriff Avery gave way to more pleasant ones of Susan Delgado. He would see her the following night, of that he was sure. He wondered if her hair would be down.

He couldn’t wait to find out.

Now here they were, at Mayor’s House.
Let the game begin,
Roland thought, not clear on what that meant even as the phrase went through his mind, surely not thinking of Castles . . . not then.