Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,146

as good as these, I’ll admit, but any port does in a storm, so they say. So, if it’s not horses, what is it? Until we know, or decide we’ll never know, we go on as we are.”

Part of the answer was waiting for them back at the Bar K. It was perched on the hitching rail and flicking its tail saucily. When the pigeon hopped into Roland’s hand, he saw that one of its wings was oddly frayed. Some animal—likely a cat—had crept up on it close enough to pounce, he reckoned.

The note curled against the pigeon’s leg was short, but it explained a good deal of what they hadn’t understood.

I’ll have to see her again, Roland thought after reading it, and felt a surge of gladness. His pulse quickened, and in the cold silver light of the Peddler’s Moon, he smiled.

CHAPTER IX

CITGO

1

The Peddler’s Moon began to wane; it would take the hottest, fairest part of the summer with it when it went. On an afternoon four days past the full, the old mozo from Mayor’s House (Miguel had been there long before Hart Thorin’s time and would likely be there long after Thorin had gone back to his ranch) showed up at the house Susan shared with her aunt. He was leading a beautiful chestnut mare by a hack’. It was the second of the three promised horses, and Susan recognized Felicia at once. The mare had been one of her childhood’s favorites.

Susan embraced Miguel and covered his bearded cheeks with kisses. The old man’s wide grin would have showed every tooth in his head, if he’d had any left to show. “Gracias, gracias, a thousand thanks, old father,” she told him.

“Da nada,” he replied, and handed her the bridle. “It is the Mayor’s earnest gift.”

She watched him away, the smile slowly fading from her lips. Felicia stood docilely beside her, her dark brown coat shining like a dream in the summer sunlight. But this was no dream. It had seemed like one at first—that sense of unreality had been another inducement to walk into the trap, she now understood—but it was no dream. She had been proved honest; now she found herself the recipient of “earnest gifts” from a rich man. The phrase was a sop to conventionality, of course . . . or a bitter joke, depending on one’s mood and outlook. Felicia was no more a gift than Pylon had been—they were step-by-step fulfillments of the contract into which she had entered. Aunt Cord could express shock, but Susan knew the truth: what lay directly ahead was whoring, pure and simple.

Aunt Cord was in the kitchen window as Susan walked her gift (which was really just returned property, in her view) to the stable. She called out something passing cheery about how the horse was a good thing, that caring for it would give Susan less time for her megrims. Susan felt a hot reply rise to her lips and held it back. There had been a wary truce between the two of them since the shouting match about the shirts, and Susan didn’t want to be the one to break it. There was too much on her mind and heart. She thought that one more argument with her aunt and she might simply snap like a dry twig under a boot. Because often silence is best, her father had told her when, at age ten or so, she had asked him why he was always so quiet. The answer had puzzled her then, but now she understood better.

She stabled Felicia next to Pylon, rubbed her down, fed her. While the mare munched oats, Susan examined her hooves. She didn’t care much for the look of the iron the mare was wearing—that was Seafront for you—and so she took her father’s shoebag from its nail beside the stable door, slung the strap over her head and shoulder so the bag hung on her hip, and walked the two miles to Hookey’s Stable and Fancy Livery. Feeling the leather bag bang against her hip brought back her father in a way so fresh and clear that grief pricked her again and made her feel like crying. She thought he would have been appalled at her current situation, perhaps even disgusted. And he would have liked Will Dearborn, of that she was sure—liked him and approved of him for her. It was the final miserable touch.

2

She had known how to shoe most of her life, and even