The Wind Through The Keyhole (12 page)

The terror he’d felt as the grunting, snuffling thing approached. The way the sounds had changed, blurring into the snarls of a cat. Once it had roared, Young Bill said, and when he heard that sound, he’d let loose water in his trousers. He hadn’t been able to hold it. He waited for the cat to come in, knowing it would scent him where he lay—from the urine—only the cat didn’t. There was silence . . . silence . . . and then more screaming.

“At first it’s the cat screaming, then it changes into a human screaming. High to begin with, it’s like a woman, but then it starts to go down until it’s a man. It screams and screams. It makes
me
want to scream. I thought—”

“Think,” I said. “You think, Bill, because it’s happening now. Only I’m here to protect you. My guns are drawn.”

“I think my head will split open. Then it stops . . . and it comes in.”

“It walks up the middle to the other door, doesn’t it?”

He shook his head. “Not walks. Shuffles.
Staggers.
Like it’s hurt. It goes right past me.
He.
Now it’s
he.
He almost falls down, but grabs one of the stall doors and stays up. Then he goes on. He goes on a little better now.”

“Stronger?”

“Aye.”

“Do you see his face?” I thought I already knew the answer to that.

“No, only his feet, through the tack. The moon’s up, and I see them very well.”

Perhaps so, but we wouldn’t be identifying the skin-man from his feet, I felt quite sure. I opened my mouth, ready to start bringing him up from his trance, when he spoke again.

“There’s a ring around one of his ankles.”

I leaned forward, as if he could see me . . . and if he was deep enough, mayhap he could, even with his eyes closed. “What kind of ring? Was it metal, like a manacle?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Like a bridle-ring? You know, a hoss-clinkum?”

“No, no. Like on Elrod’s arm, but that’s a picture of a nekkid woman, and you can hardly make it out nummore.”

“Bill, are you talking about a tattoo?”

In his trance, the boy smiled. “Aye, that’s the word. But this one wasn’t a picture, just a blue ring around his ankle. A blue ring in his skin.”

I thought,
We have you. You don’t know it yet, sai skin-man, but we have you.

“Mister, can I wake up now? I want to wake up.”

“Is there anything else?”

“The white mark?” He seemed to be asking himself.

“What white mark?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side, and I decided to let it go. He’d had enough.

“Come to the sound of my voice. As you come, you’ll leave everything that happened last night behind, because it’s over. Come, Bill. Come now.”

“I’m coming.” His eyes rolled back and forth behind his closed lids.

“You’re safe. Everything that happened at the ranch is ago. Isn’t it?”

“Yes . . .”

“Where are we?”

“On Debaria high road. We’re going to town. I ain’t been there but once. My da’ bought me candy.”

“I’ll buy you some, too,” I said, “for you’ve done well, Young Bill of the Jefferson. Now open your eyes.”

He did, but at first he only looked through me. Then his eyes cleared and he gave an uncertain smile. “I fell asleep.”

“You did. And now we should push for town before the wind grows too strong. Can you do that, Bill?”

“Aye,” he said, and as he got up he added, “I was dreaming of candy.”

* * *

The two not-so-good deputies were in the sheriff’s office when we got there, one of them—a fat fellow wearing a tall black hat with a gaudy rattlesnake band—taking his ease behind Peavy’s desk. He eyed the guns I was wearing and got up in a hurry.

“You’re the gunslinger, ain’tcha?” he said. “Well-met, well-met, we both say so. Where’s t’other one?”

I escorted Young Bill through the archway and into the jail without answering. The boy looked at the cells with interest but no fear. The drunk, Salty Sam, was long gone, but his aroma lingered.

From behind me, the other deputy asked, “What do you think you’re doing, young sai?”

“My business,” I said. “Go back to the office and bring me the keyring to these cells. And be quick about it, if you please.”

None of the smaller cells had mattresses on their bunks, so I took Young Bill to the drunk-and-disorderly cell where Jamie and I had slept the night before. As I put the two straw pallets together to give the boy a little more comfort—after what he’d been through, I reckoned he deserved all the comfort he could get—Bill looked at the chalked map on the wall.

“What is it, sai?”

“Nothing to concern you,” I said. “Now listen to me. I’m going to lock you in, but you’re not to be afraid, for you’ve done nothing wrong. ’Tis but for your own safety. I have an errand that needs running, and when it’s done, I’m going to come in there with you.”

“And lock us both in,” said he. “You’d better lock us both in. In case it comes back.”

“Do you remember it now?”

“A little,” said he, looking down. “It wasn’t a man . . . then it was. It killed my da’.” He put the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Poor Da’.”

The deputy with the black hat returned with the keys. The other was right behind him. Both were gawking at the boy as if he were a two-headed goat in a roadshow.

I took the keys. “Good. Now back to the office, both of you.”

“Seems like you might be throwing your weight around a little, youngster,” Black Hat said, and the other—a little man with an undershot jaw—nodded vigorously.

“Go now,” I said. “This boy needs rest.”

They looked me up and down, then went. Which was the correct thing. The only thing, really. My mood was not good.

The boy kept his eyes covered until their bootheels faded back through the arch, then he lowered his hands. “Will you catch him, sai?”

“Yes.”

“And will you kill him?”

“Does thee
want
me to kill him?”

He considered this, and nodded. “Aye. For what he did to my da’, and to sai Jefferson, and all the others. Even Elrod.”

I closed the door of the cell, found the right key, and turned it. The keyring I hung over my wrist, for it was too big for my pocket. “I’ll make you a promise, Young Bill,” I said. “One I swear to on my father’s name. I won’t kill him, but you shall be there when he swings, and with my own hand I’ll give you the bread to scatter beneath his dead feet.”

* * *

In the office, the two not-so-good deputies eyed me with caution and dislike. That was nothing to me. I hung the keyring on the peg next to the jing-jang and said, “I’ll be back in an hour, maybe a little less. In the meantime, no one goes into the jail. And that includes you two.”

“High-handed for a shaveling,” the one with the undershot jaw remarked.

“Don’t fail me in this,” I said. “It wouldn’t be wise. Do you understand?”

Black Hat nodded. “But the sheriff will hear how you done with us.”

“Then you’ll want to have a mouth still capable of speech when he gets back,” I said, and went out.

* * *

The wind had continued to strengthen, blowing clouds of gritty, salt-flavored dust between the false-fronted buildings. I had Debaria high street entirely to myself except for a few hitched horses that stood with their hindquarters turned to the wind and their heads unhappily lowered. I would not leave my own so—nor Millie, the mule the boy had ridden—and led them down to the livery stable at the far end of the street. There the hostler was glad to take them, especially when I split him off half a gold knuck from the bundle I carried in my vest.

No, he said in answer to my first question, there was no jeweler in Debaria, nor ever had been in his time. But the answer to my second question was yar, and he pointed across the street to the blacksmith’s shop. The smith himself was standing in the doorway, the hem of his tool-filled leather apron flapping in the wind. I walked across and he put his fist to his forehead. “Hile.”

I hiled him in return and told him what I wanted—what Vannay had said I might need. He listened closely, then took the shell I handed him. It was the very one I’d used to entrance Young Bill. The blackie held it up to the light. “How many grains of powder does it blow, can’ee say?”

Of course I could. “Fifty-seven.”

“As many as that? Gods! It’s a wonder the barrel of your revolver don’t bust when’ee pull the trigger!”

The shells in my father’s guns—the ones I might someday carry—blew seventy-six, but I didn’t say so. He’d likely not have believed it. “Can you do what I ask, sai?”

“I think so.” He considered, then nodded. “Aye. But not today. I don’t like to run my smithhold hot in the wind. One loose ember and the whole town might catch ablaze. We’ve had no fire department since my da’ was a boy.”

I took out my bag of gold knuckles and shook two into the palm of my hand. I considered, then added a third. The smith stared at them with wonder. He was looking at two years’ wages.

“It has to be today,” I said.

He grinned, showing teeth of amazing whiteness within the forest of his ginger beard. “Tempting devil, get not aside! For what you’re showin me, I’d risk burning Gilead herself to her foundations. You’ll have it by sundown.”

“I’ll have it by three.”

“Aye, three’s what I meant. To the shaved point of the minute.”

“Good. Now tell me, which restaurant cooks the best chow in town?”

“There’s only two, and neither of em’ll make you remember your mother’s bird puddin, but neither’ll poison’ee. Racey’s Café is probably the better.”

That was good enough for me; I thought a growing boy like Bill Streeter would take quantity over quality any day. I headed for the café, now working against the wind.
It’ll be a full-going simoom by dark,
the boy had told me, and I thought he was right. He had been through a lot, and needed time to rest. Now that I knew about the ankle tattoo, I might not need him at all . . . but the skin-man wouldn’t know that. And in the jail, Young Bill was safe. At least I hoped so.

* * *

It was stew, and I could have sworn it had been seasoned with alkali grit instead of salt, but the kid ate all of his and finished mine as well when I put it aside. One of the not-so-good deputies had made coffee, and we drank that from tin cups. We made our meal right there in the cell, sitting cross-legged on the floor. I listened for the jing-jang, but it stayed quiet. I wasn’t surprised. Even if Jamie and the High Sheriff came near one at their end, the wind had probably taken the wires down.

“I guess you know all about these storms you call simooms,” I said to Young Bill.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “This is the season for em. The proddies hate em and the pokies hate em even more, because if they’re out on the range, they have to sleep rough. And they can’t have a fire at night, accourse, because of—”

“Because of the embers,” I said, remembering the blacksmith.

“Just as you say. Stew all gone, is it?”

“So it is, but there’s one more thing.”

I handed over a little sack. He looked inside it and lit up. “Candy! Rollers and chocker-twists!” He extended the bag. “Here, you have the first.”

I took one of the little chocolate twists, then pushed the bag back to him. “You have the rest. If it won’t make your belly sick, that is.”

“It won’t!” And he dived in. It did me good to see him. After the third roller went into his gob, he cheeked it—which made him look like a squirrel with a nut—and said, “What’ll happen to me, sai? Now that my da’s gone?”

“I don’t know, but there’ll be water if God wills it.” I already had an idea where that water might be. If we could put paid to the skin-man, a certain large lady named Everlynne would owe us a good turn, and I doubt if Bill Streeter would be the first stray she’d taken in.

I returned to the subject of the simoom. “How much will it strengthen?”

“It’ll blow a gale tonight. Probably after midnight. And by noon tomorrow, it’ll be gone.”

“Does thee know where the salties live?”

“Aye, I’ve even been there. Once with my da’, to see the races they sometimes have up there, and once with some proddies looking for strays. The salties take em in, and we pay with hard biscuit for the ones that have the Jefferson brand.”

“My trailmate’s gone there with Sheriff Peavy and a couple of others. Think they have any chance of getting back before nightfall?”

I felt sure he would say no, but he surprised me. “Being as it’s all downhill from Salt Village—which is on this side of Little Debaria—I’d say they could. If they rode hard.”

That made me glad I’d told the blacksmith to hurry, although I knew better than to trust the reckoning of a mere boy.

“Listen to me, Young Bill. When they come back, I expect they’ll have some of the salties with em. Maybe a dozen, maybe as many as twenty. Jamie and I may have to walk em through the jail for you to look at, but you needn’t be afraid, because the door of this cell will be locked. And you don’t have to say anything, just look.”

“If you’re thinking I can tell which one killed my da’, I can’t. I don’t even remember if I saw him.”

“You probably won’t have to see them at all,” I said. This I truly believed. We’d have them into the sheriff’s office by threes, and have them hike their pants. When we found the one with the blue ring tattooed around his ankle, we’d have our man. Not that he
was
a man. Not anymore. Not really.

“Wouldn’t you like another chocker, sai? There’s three left, and I can’t eat nummore.”

“Save them for later,” I said, and got up.

His face clouded. “Will you come back? I don’t want to be in here on my own.”

“Aye, I’ll come back.” I stepped out, locked the cell door, then tossed the keys to him through the bars. “Let me in when I do.”

* * *

The fat deputy with the black hat was Strother. The one with the undershot jaw was Pickens. They looked at me with care and mistrust, which I thought a good combination, coming from the likes of them. I could work with care and mistrust.

“If I asked you fellows about a man with a blue ring tattooed on his ankle, would it mean anything to you?”