The Wind Through the Keyhole

  "My da' said to me that it was going to be a warm night and I should go up to the graze t'other side of the corral and sleep under the stars," Young Bill told us. "He said it'd be cooler and I'd sleep better. But I knew why. Elrod'd got a bottle somewhere--again--and he was in drink."

  "That'd be Elrod Nutter?" Sheriff Peavy asked.

  "Aye, him. Foreman of the boys, he is."

  "I know him well," Peavy said to us. "Ain't I had him locked up half a dozen times and more? Jefferson keeps him on because he's a helluva rider and roper, but he's one mean whoredog when he's in drink. Ain't he, Young Bill?"

  Young Bill nodded earnestly and brushed his long hair, still all dusty from the tack he'd hidden in, out of his eyes. "Yessir, and he had a way of takin after me. Which my father knew."

  "Cook's apprentice, were ye?" Peavy asked. I knew he was trying to be kind, but I wished he'd mind his mouth and stop talking in the way that says once, but no more.

  But the boy didn't seem to notice. "Bunkhouse boy. Not cook's boy." He turned to Jamie and me. "I make the bunks, coil the rope, cinch the bedrolls, polish the saddles, set the gates at the end of the day after the horses is turned in. Tiny Braddock taught me how to make a lasso, and I throw it pretty. Roscoe's teaching me the bow. Freddy Two-Step says he'll show me how to brand, come fall."

  "Do well," I said, and tapped my throat.

  That made him smile. "They're good fellas, mostly." The smile went away as fast as it had come, like the sun going behind a cloud. "Except for Elrod. He's just grouchy when he's sober, but when he's in drink, he likes to tease. Mean teasing, if you do ken it."

  "Ken it well," I said.

  "Aye, and if you don't laugh and act like it's all a joke--even if it's twisting on your hand or yanking you around on the bunkhouse floor by your hair--he gets uglier still. So when my da' told me to sleep out, I took my blanket and my shaddie and I went. A word to the wise is sufficient, my da' says."

  "What's a shaddie?" Jamie asked the sheriff.

  "Bit o' canvas," Peavy said. "Won't keep off rain, but it'll keep you from getting damp after dewfall."

  "Where did you roll in?" I asked the boy.

  He pointed beyond the corral, where the horses were still skitty from the rising wind. Above us and around us, the willa sighed and danced. Pretty to hear, prettier still to look at. "I guess my blanket n shaddie must still be there."

  I looked from where he had pointed, to the tack-shed hostelry where we'd found him, then to the bunkhouse. The three places made the corners of a triangle probably a quarter-mile on each side, with the corral in the middle.

  "How did you get from where you slept to hiding under that pile of tack, Bill?" Sheriff Peavy asked.

  The boy looked at him for a long time without speaking. Then the tears began to fall again. He covered them with his fingers so we wouldn't see them. "I don't remember," he said. "I don't remember nuffink." He didn't exactly lower his hands; they seemed to drop into his lap, as if they'd grown too heavy for him to hold up. "I want my da'."

  Jamie got up and walked away, with his hands stuffed deep in his back pockets. I tried to say what needed saying, and couldn't. You have to remember that although Jamie and I wore guns, they weren't yet the big guns of our fathers. I'd never again be so young as before I met Susan Delgado, and loved her, and lost her, but I was still too young to tell this boy that his father had been torn to pieces by a monster. So I looked to Sheriff Peavy. I looked to the grownup.

  Peavy took off his hat and laid it aside on the grass. Then he took the boy's hands. "Son," he said, "I've got some very hard news for you. I want you to pull in a deep breath and be a man about it."

  But Young Bill Streeter had only nine or ten summers behind him, eleven at most, and he couldn't be a man about anything. He began to wail. When he did it, I saw my mother's pale dead face as clear as if she had been lying next to me under that willa, and I couldn't stand it. I felt like a coward, but that didn't stop me from getting up and walking away.

  *

  The lad either cried himself to sleep or into unconsciousness. Jamie carried him into the big house and put him in one of the beds upstairs. He was just the son of a bunkhouse cook, but there was no one else to sleep in them, not now. Sheriff Peavy used the jing-jang to call his office where one of the not-so-good deputies had been ordered to wait for his ring. Soon enough, Debaria's undertaker--if there was one--would organize a little convoy of wagons to come and pick up the dead.

  Sheriff Peavy went into sai Jefferson's little office and plunked himself down in a chair on rollers. "What's next, boys?" he asked. "The salties, I reckon . . . and I suppose you'll want to get up there before this wind blows into a simoom. Which it certainly means t'do." He sighed. "The boy's no good to ye, that's certain. Whatever he saw was evil enough to scrub his mind clean."

  Jamie began, "Roland has a way of--"

  "I'm not sure what's next," I said. "I'd like to talk it over a little with my pard. We might take a little pasear back up to that tack shed."

  "Tracks'll be blown away by now," Peavy said, "but have at it and may it do ya well." He shook his head. "Telling that boy was hard. Very hard."

  "You did it the right way," I said.

  "Do ya think so? Aye? Well, thankya. Poor little cullie. Reckon he can stay with me n the wife for a while. Until we figure what comes next for him. You boys go on and palaver, if it suits you. I think I'll just sit here and try to get back even wi' myself. No hurry about anything now; that damned thing ate well enough last night. It'll be a good while before it needs to go hunting again."

  *

  Jamie and I walked two circuits around the shed and corral while we talked, the strengthening wind rippling our pantlegs and blowing back our hair.

  "Is it all truly erased from his mind, Roland?"

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "Because 'Is it gone?' was the first thing he asked."

  "And he knew his father was dead. Even when he asked us, it was in his eyes."

  Jamie walked without replying for a while, his head down.

  We'd tied our bandannas over our mouths and noses because

  of the blowing grit. Jamie's was still wet from the trough. Finally he said, "When I started to tell the sheriff you have a way of getting at things that are buried--buried in people's minds--you cut me off."

  "He doesn't need to know, because it doesn't always work."

  It had with Susan Delgado, in Mejis, but part of Susan had wanted badly to tell me what the witch, Rhea, had tried to hide from Susan's front-mind, where we hear our own thoughts very clearly. She'd wanted to tell me because we were in love.

  "But will you try? You will, won't you?"

  I didn't answer him until we had started our second circuit of the corral. I was still putting my thoughts in order. As I may have said, that has always been slow work for me.

  "The salties don't live in the mines anymore; they have their own encampment a few wheels west of Little Debaria. Kellin Frye told me about it on the ride out here. I want you to go up there with Peavy and the Fryes. Canfield, too, if he'll go. I think he will. Those two pokies--Canfield's trailmates--can stay here and wait for the undertaker."

  "You mean to take the boy back to town?"

  "Yes. Alone. But I'm not sending you up there just to get you and the others away. If you travel fast enough, and they have a remuda, you may still be able to spot a horse that's been rode hard."

  Under the bandanna, he might have smiled. "I doubt it."

  I did, too. It would have been more likely but for the wind--what Peavy had called the simoom. It would dry the sweat on a horse, even one that had been ridden hard, in short order. Jamie might spot one that was dustier than the rest, one with burdocks and bits of jugweed in its tail, but if we were right about the skin-man knowing what he was, he would have given his mount a complete rubdown and curry, from hooves to mane, as soon as he got back.

  "Someone may have seen him ride in."

&
nbsp; "Yes . . . unless he went to Little Debaria first, cleaned up, and came back to the saltie encampment from there. A clever man might do that."

  "Even so, you and the sheriff should be able to find out how many of them own horses."

  "And how many of them can ride, even if they don't own," Jamie said. "Aye, we can do that."

  "Round that bunch up," I told him, "or as many of them as you can, and bring them back to town. Any who protests, remind them that they'll be helping to catch the monster that's been terrorizing Debaria . . . Little Debaria . . . the whole Barony. You won't have to tell them that any who still refuse will be looked at with extra suspicion; even the dumbest of them will know."

  Jamie nodded, then grabbed the fencerail as an especially strong gust of wind blasted us. I turned to face him.

  "And one other thing. You're going to pull a cosy, and Kellin's son, Vikka, will be your cat's-paw. They'll believe a kid might run off at the mouth, even if he's been told not to. Especially if he's been told not to."

  Jamie waited, but I felt sure he knew what I was going to say, for his eyes were troubled. It was a thing he'd never have done himself, even if he thought of it. Which was why my father had put me in charge. Not because I'd done well in Mejis--I hadn't, not really--and not because I was his son, either. Although in a way, I suppose that was it. My mind was like his: cold.

  "You'll tell the salties who know about horses that there was a witness to the murders at the ranch. You'll say you can't tell them who it was--naturally--but that he saw the skin-man in his human form."

  "You don't know that Young Bill actually saw him, Roland. And even if he did, he might not have seen the face. He was hiding in a pile of tack, for your father's sake."

  "That's true, but the skin-man won't know it's true. All the skin-man will know is that it might be true, because he was human when he left the ranch."

  I began to walk again, and Jamie walked beside me.

  "Now here's where Vikka comes in. He'll get separated from you and the others a bit and whisper to someone--another kid, one his own age, would be best--that the survivor was the cook's boy. Bill Streeter by name."

  "The boy just lost his father and you want to use him as bait."

  "It may not come to that. If the story gets to the right ears, the one we're looking for may bolt on the way to town. Then you'll know. And none of it matters if we're wrong about the skin-man being a saltie. We could be, you know."

  "What if we're right, and the fellow decides to face it out?"

  "Bring them all to the jail. I'll have the boy in a cell--a locked one, you ken--and you can walk the horsemen past, one by one. I'll tell Young Bill to say nothing, one way or the other, until they're gone. You're right, he may not be able to pick our man out, even if I can help him remember some of what happened last night. But our man won't know that, either."

  "It's risky," said Jamie. "Risky for the kid."

  "Small risk," I said. "It'll be daylight, with the skin-man in his human shape. And Jamie . . ." I grasped his arm. "I'll be in the cell, too. The bastard will have to go through me if he wants to get to the boy."

  *

  Peavy liked my plan better than Jamie had. I wasn't a bit surprised. It was his town, after all. And what was Young Bill to him? Only the son of a dead cook. Not much in the great scheme of things.

  Once the little expedition to Saltie Town was on its way, I woke the boy and told him we were going to Debaria. He agreed without asking questions. He was distant and dazed. Every now and then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. As we walked out to the corral, he asked me again if I was sure his da' was dead. I told him I was. He fetched a deep sigh, lowered his head, and put his hands on his knees. I gave him time, then asked if he'd like me to saddle a horse for him.

  "If it's all right to ride Millie, I can saddle her myself. I feed her, and she's my special friend. People say mules ain't smart, but Millie is."

  "Let's see if you can do it without getting kicked," I said.

  It turned out he could, and smartly. He mounted up and said, "I guess I'm ready." He even tried to give me a smile. It was awful to look at. I was sorry for the plan I'd set in motion, but all I had to do was think of the carnage we were leaving behind and Sister Fortuna's ruined face to remind myself of what the stakes were.

  "Will she skit in the wind?" I asked, nodding at the trim little mule. Sitting on her back, Young Bill's feet came almost down to the ground. In another year, he'd be too big for her, but of course in another year, he'd probably be far from Debaria, just another wanderer on the face of a fading world. Millie would be a memory.

  "Not Millie," he said. "She's as solid as a dromedary."

  "Aye, and what's a dromedary?"

  "Dunno, do I? It's just something my da' says. One time I asked him, and he didn't know, either."

  "Come on, then," I said. "The sooner we get to town, the sooner we'll get out of this grit." But I intended to make one stop before we got to town. I had something to show the boy while we were still alone.

  *

  About halfway between the ranch and Debaria, I spied a deserted sheepherder's lean-to, and suggested we shelter in there for a bit and have a bite. Bill Streeter agreed willingly enough. He had lost his da' and everyone else he'd known, but he was still a growing boy and he'd had nothing to eat since his dinner the night before.

  We tethered our mounts away from the wind and sat on the floor inside the lean-to with our backs against the wall. I had dried beef wrapped in leaves in my saddlebag. The meat was salty, but my waterskin was full. The boy ate half a dozen chunks of the meat, tearing off big bites and washing them down with water.

  A strong gust of wind shook the lean-to. Millie blatted a protest and fell silent.

  "It'll be a full-going simoom by dark," Young Bill said. "You watch and see if it ain't."

  "I like the sound of the wind," I said. "It makes me think of a story my mother read to me when I was a sma' one. 'The Wind Through the Keyhole,' it was called. Does thee know it?"

  Young Bill shook his head. "Mister, are you really a gunslinger? Say true?"

  "I am."

  "Can I hold one of your guns for a minute?"

  "Never in life," I said, "but you can look at one of these, if you'd like." I took a shell from my belt and handed it to him.

  He examined it closely, from brass base to lead tip. "Gods, it's heavy! Long, too! I bet if you shot someone with one of these, he'd stay down."

  "Yes. A shell's a dangerous thing. But it can be pretty, too. Would you like to see a trick I can do with this one?"

  "Sure."

  I took it back and began to dance it from knuckle to knuckle, my fingers rising and falling in waves. Young Bill watched, wide-eyed. "How does thee do it?"

  "The same way anyone does anything," I said. "Practice."

  "Will you show me the trick?"

  "If you watch close, you may see it for yourself," I said. "Here it is . . . and here it isn't." I palmed the shell so fast it disappeared, thinking of Susan Delgado, as I supposed I always would when I did this trick. "Now here it is again."

  The shell danced fast . . . then slow . . . then fast again.

  "Follow it with your eyes, Bill, and see if you can make out how I get it to disappear. Don't take your eyes off it." I dropped my voice to a lulling murmur. "Watch . . . and watch . . . and watch. Does it make you sleepy?"

  "A little," he said. His eyes slipped slowly closed, then the lids rose again. "I didn't sleep much last night."

  "Did you not? Watch it go. Watch it slow. See it disappear and then . . . see it as it speeds up again."

  Back and forth the shell went. The wind blew, as lulling to me as my voice was to him.

  "Sleep if you want, Bill. Listen to the wind and sleep. But listen to my voice, too."

  "I hear you, gunslinger." His eyes closed again and this time didn't reopen. His hands were clasped limply in his lap. "I hear you very well."

  "You can still see the shell, can't you
? Even with your eyes closed."

  "Yes . . . but it's bigger now. It flashes like gold."

  "Do you say so?"

  "Yes . . ."

  "Go deeper, Bill, but hear my voice."

  "I hear."

  "I want you to turn your mind back to last night. Your mind and your eyes and your ears. Will you do that?"

  A frown creased his brow. "I don't want to."

  "It's safe. All that's happened, and besides, I'm with you."

  "You're with me. And you have guns."

  "So I do. Nothing will happen to you as long as you can hear my voice, because we're together. I'll keep thee safe. Do you understand that?"

  "Yes."

  "Your da' told you to sleep out under the stars, didn't he?"

  "Aye. It was to be a warm night."

  "But that wasn't the real reason, was it?"

  "No. It was because of Elrod. Once he twirled the bunkhouse cat by her tail, and she never came back. Sometimes he pulls me around by my hair and sings 'The Boy Who Loved Jenny.' My da' can't stop him, because Elrod's bigger. Also, he has a knife in his boot. He could cut with it. But he couldn't cut the beast, could he?" His clasped hands twitched. "Elrod's dead and I'm glad. I'm sorry about all the others . . . and my da', I don't know what I'll do wi'out my da' . . . but I'm glad about Elrod. He won't tease me nummore. He won't scare me nummore. I seen it, aye."

  So he did know more than the top of his mind had let him remember.

  "Now you're out on the graze."

  "On the graze."

  "Wrapped up in your blanket and shinnie."

  "Shaddie."

  "Your blanket and shaddie. You're awake, maybe looking up at the stars, at Old Star and Old Mother--"

  "No, no, asleep," Bill said. "But the screams wake me up. The screams from the bunkhouse. And the sounds of fighting. Things are breaking. And something's roaring."

  "What do you do, Bill?"

  "I go down. I'm afraid to, but my da' . . . my da's in there. I look in the window at the far end. It's greasepaper, but I can see through it well enough. More than I want to see. Because I see . . . I see . . . mister, can I wake up?"

  "Not yet. Remember that I'm with you."