wooden clunking. No answer, no movement ... but there were folk
here. Folk or something. He was being watched. The tiny hairs on
the nape of his neck had stiffened.
Roland stepped onward, leading Topsy towards the centre of town,
puffing up the unlaid High Street dust with each step. Forty paces
further along, he stopped in front of a low building marked with a
single curt word: LAW. The Sheriffs office (if they had such this
far from the Inners) looked remarkably similar to the church -
wooden boards stained a rather forbidding shade of dark brown
above a stone foundation.
The bells behind him rustled and whispered.
He left the roan standing in the middle of the street and mounted
the steps to the LAW office. He was very aware of the bells, the
sun beating against his neck, and of the sweat trickling down his
sides. The door was shut but unlocked. He opened it, then winced
back, half-raising a hand as the heat trapped inside rushed out in a
soundless gasp. If all the closed buildings were this hot inside, he
mused, the livery barns would soon not be the only burned-out
hulks. And with no rain to stop the flames (and certainly no
volunteer fire department, not any more), the town would not be
long for the face of the earth.
He stepped inside, trying to sip at the stifling air rather than taking
deep breaths. He immediately heard the low drone of flies.
There was a single cell, commodious and empty, its barred door
standing open. Filthy skin-shoes, one of the pair coming unsewn,
lay beneath a bunk sodden with the same dried maroon stuff which
had marked The Bustling Pig. Here was where the flies were,
crawling over the stain, feeding from it.
On the desk was a ledger. Roland turned it towards him and read
what was embossed upon its red cover:
REGISTRY OF MISDEEDS & REDRESS
IN THE YEARS OF OUR LORD
ELURIA
So now he knew the name of the town, at least - Eluria. Pretty, yet
somehow ominous, as well. But any name would have seemed
ominous, Roland supposed, given these circumstances. He turned
to leave, and saw a closed door secured by a wooden bolt.
He went to it, stood before it for a moment, then drew one of the
big revolvers he carried low on his hips. He stood a moment
longer, head down, thinking (Cuthbert, his old friend, liked to say
that the wheels inside Roland's head ground slow but exceedingly
fine), and then retracted the bolt. He opened the door and
immediately stood back, levelling his gun, expecting a body
(Eluria's Sheriff, mayhap) to come tumbling into the room with his
throat cut and his eyes gouged out, victim of a MISDEED in need
of REDRESS
Nothing.
Well, half a dozen stained jumpers which longer-term prisoners
probably required to wear, two bows, a quiver of arrows, an old,
dusty motor, a rifle that had probably last been fired a hundred
years agog and a mop ... but in the gunslinger's mind, all that came
down to nothing. Just a storage closet.
He went back to the desk, opened the register, and leafed through
it. Even the pages were warm, as if the book had been baked. In a
way, he supposed it had been. If the High Street layout had been
different, he might have expected a large number of religious
offences to be recorded, but he wasn't surprised to find none here -
if the Jesus-man church had coexisted with a couple of saloons, the
churchfolk must have been fairly reasonable.
What Roland found were the usual petty offences, and a few not so
petty - a murder, a horse-thieving, the Distressal of a Lady (which
probably meant rape). The murderer had been removed to a place
called Lexingworth to be hanged. Roland had never heard of it.
One note towards the end read Green folk sent hence. It meant
nothing to Roland. The most recent entry was this: 12/Fe/99. Chas.
Freeborn, cattle-theef to be tryed.
Roland wasn't familiar with the notation 12/Fe/99, but as this was
a long stretch from February, he supposed Fe might stand for Full
Earth. In any case, the ink looked about as fresh as the blood on the
bunk in the cell, and the gunslinger had a good idea that Chas.
Freeborn, cattle-theef, had reached the clearing at the end of his
path.
He went out into the heat and the lacy sound of bells. Topsy looked
at Roland dully, then lowered his head again, as if there were
something in the dust of the High Street which could be cropped.
As if he would ever want to crop again, for that matter.
The gunslinger gathered up the reins, slapped the dust off them
against the faded no-colour of his jeans, and continued on up the
street. The wooden knocking sound grew steadily louder as he
walked (he had not holstered his gun when leaving LAW, nor
cared to holster it now), and as he neared the town square, which
must have housed the Eluria market in more normal times, Roland
at last saw movement.
On the far side of the square was a long watering trough, made of
iron-wood from the look (what some called 'seequoiah' out here),
apparently fed in happier times from a rusty steel pipe which now
jutted waterless above the trough's south end. Lolling over one side
of this municipal oasis, about halfway down its length, was a leg
clad in faded grey pants and terminating in a well-chewed cowboy
boot.
The chewer was a large dog, perhaps two shades greyer than the
corduroy pants. Under other circumstances, Roland supposed the
mutt would have had the boot off long since, but perhaps the foot
and lower calf inside it had swelled. In any case, the dog was well
on its way to simply chewing the obstacle away. It would seize the
boot and shake it back and forth. Every now and then the boot's
heel would collide with the wooden side of the trough, producing
another hollow knock. The gunslinger hadn't been so wrong to
think of coffin tops after all, it seemed.
Why doesn't it just back off a few steps, jump into the trough, and
have at him? Roland wondered. No water coming out of the pipe,
so it can't be afraid of drowning.
Topsy uttered another of his hollow, tired sneezes, and when the
dog lurched around in response, Roland understood why it was
doing things the hard way. One of its front legs had been badly
broken and crookedly mended. Walking would be a chore for it,
jumping out of the question. On its chest was a patch of dirty white
fur. Growing out of this patch was black fur in a roughly cruciform
shape. A Jesus-dog, mayhap, hoping for a spot of afternoon
communion.
There was nothing very religious about the snarl which began to
wind out of its chest, however, or the roll of its rheumy eyes. It
lifted its upper lip in a trembling sneer, revealing a goodish set of
teeth.
'Light out,' Roland said. 'While you can.'
The dog backed up until its hindquarters were pressed against the
chewed boot. It regarded the oncoming man fearfully, but clearly
meant to stand its ground. The revolver in Roland's hand held no
significance for it. The gunslinger wasn't surprised - he guessed the
dog had never seen one, had no idea it was anything other than a
club of some kind, which could only be thrown once.
'Hie on with you, now,' Roland said, but still the dog wouldn't
move.
He should have shot it - it was no good to itself, and a dog that had
acquired a taste for human flesh could be no good to anyone else -
but he somehow didn't like to. Killing the only thing still living in
this town (other than the singing bugs, that was) seemed like an
invitation to bad luck.