Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,140

looked as ghostly as the Peddler’s Moon, which still hung in the sky above the rim of the plundered hills. He could hear the mines tink-tonking away, though. You bet. Those babies tink-tonked away seven days a week. No rest for the wicked . . . and he supposed that included him. He dragged his horse’s head around with his usual unthinking and ham-handed force, booted its flanks, and headed east, thinking of the old bastard as he went. He had treated the old bastard passing fair, he reckoned. A reward had been promised, and had been paid for information given.

“Yar,” Depape said, his glasses flashing in the new sun (it was a rare morning when he had no hangover, and he felt quite cheerful), “I reckon the old bugger can’t complain.”

Depape had had no trouble following the young culls’ backtrail; they had come east on the Great Road the whole way from New Canaan, it appeared, and at every town where they had stopped, they had been marked. In most they were marked if they did no more than pass through. And why not? Young men on good horses, no scars on their faces, no regulator tattoos on their hands, good clothes on their backs, expensive hats on their heads. They were remembered especially well at the inns and saloons, where they had stopped to refresh themselves but had drunk no hard liquor. No beer or graf, either, for that matter. Yes, they were remembered. Boys on the road, boys that seemed almost to shine. As if they had come from an earlier, better time.

Piss in their faces, Depape thought as he rode. One by one. Mr. Arthur “Ha-Ha” Heath last. I’ll save enough so it’d drown you, were you not already at the end of the path and into the clearing.

They had been noticed, all right, but that wasn’t good enough—if he went back to Hambry with no more than that, Jonas would likely shoot his nose off. And he would deserve it. They may be rich boys, but that’s not all they are. Depape had said that himself. The question was, what else were they? And finally, in the shit-and-sulfur stench of Ritzy, he had found out. Not everything, perhaps, but enough to allow him to turn his horse around before he found himself all the way back in fucking New Canaan.

He had hit two other saloons, sipping watered beer in each, before rolling into Hattigan’s. He ordered yet another watered beer, and prepared to engage the bartender in conversation. Before he even began to shake the tree, however, the apple he wanted fell off and dropped into his hand, neat as you please.

It was an old man’s voice (an old bastard’s voice), speaking with the shrill, head-hurting intensity which is the sole province of old bastards in their cups. He was talking about the old days, as old bastards always did, and about how the world had moved on, and how things had been ever so much better when he was a boy. Then he had said something which caused Depape’s ears to prick up: something about how the old days might be coming again, for hadn’t he seen three young lords not two months a-gone, mayhap less, and even bought one of them a drink, even if ’twas only sasparilly soda?

“You wouldn’t know a young lord from a young turd,” said a miss who appeared to have all of four teeth left in her charming young head.

There was general laughter at this. The old bastard looked around, offended. “I know, all right,” he said. “I’ve forgot more than you’ll ever learn, so I have. One of them at least came from the Eld line, for I saw his father in his face . . . just as clear as I see your saggy tits, Jolene.” And then the old bastard had done something Depape rather admired—yanked out the front of the saloon-whore’s blouse and poured the remainder of his beer down it. Even the roars of laughter and heavy applause which greeted this couldn’t entirely drown the girl’s caw of rage, or the old man’s cries when she began to slap and punch him about the head and shoulders. These latter cries were only indignant at first, but when the girl grabbed the old bastard’s own beer-stein and shattered it against the side of his head, they became screams of pain. Blood—mixed with a few watery dregs of beer—began to run down the old bastard’s