Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,194

huge cash advance (which Jonas hadn’t yet shared with Reynolds and Depape) and promising an even larger piece of war-spoil if the Affiliation’s major forces were wiped out in or around the Shavéd Mountains.

Latigo was a good-sized bug, all right, but nothing to the size of the bug trundling along behind him. And besides, no large reward was ever achieved without risk. If they delivered the horses, oxen, wagons of fresh vegetables, the tack, the oil, the glass—most of all the wizard’s glass—all would be well. If they failed, it was very likely that their heads would end up being whacked about by Farson and his aides in their nightly polo games. It could happen, and Jonas knew it. No doubt someday it would happen. But when his head finally parted company from his shoulders, the divorce wouldn’t be caused by any such smarms as Dearborn and his friends, no matter whose bloodline they had descended from.

But if he’s been having an affair with Thorin’s autumn treat . . . if he’s been able to keep such a secret as that, what others has he been keeping? Perhaps he is playing Castles with you.

If so, he wouldn’t play for long. The first time young Mr. Dearborn poked his nose around his Hillock, Jonas would be there to shoot it off for him.

The question for the present was where to go first. Out to the Bar K, to take a long overdue look at the boys’ living quarters? He could; they would be counting Barony horses on the Drop, all three of them. But it wasn’t over horses that he might lose his head, was it? No, the horses were just a small added attraction, as far as the Good Man was concerned.

Jonas rode for Citgo instead.

6

First he checked the tankers. They were just as had been and should be—lined up in a neat row with their new wheels ready to roll when the time came, and hidden behind their new camouflage. Some of the screening pine branches were turning yellow at the tips, but the recent spell of rain had kept most admirably fresh. There had been no tampering that Jonas could see.

Next he climbed the hill, walking beside the pipeline and pausing more and more frequently to rest; by the time he reached the rotting gate between the slope and the oilpatch, his bad leg was paining him severely. He studied the gate, frowning over the smudges he saw on the top rung. They might mean nothing, but Jonas thought someone might have climbed over the gate rather than risk opening it and having it fall off its hinges.

He spent the next hour strolling around the derricks, paying especially close attention to those that still worked, looking for sign. He found plenty of tracks, but it was impossible (especially after a week of wet weather) to read them with any degree of accuracy. The In-World boys might have been out here; that ugly little band of brats from town might have been out here; Arthur Eld and the whole company of his knights might have been out here. The ambiguity put Jonas in a foul temper, as ambiguity (other than on a Castles board) always did.

He started back the way he’d come, meaning to descend the slope to his horse and ride back to town. His leg was aching like fury, and he wanted a stiff drink to quiet it down. The bunkhouse at the Bar K could wait another day.

He got halfway to the gate, saw the weedy spur track tying Citgo to the Great Road, and sighed. There would be nothing on that little strip of road to see, but now that he’d come all the way out here, he supposed he should finish the job.

Bugger finishing the job, I want a damned drink.

But Roland wasn’t the only one who sometimes found his wishes overruled by training. Jonas sighed, rubbed at his leg, then walked back to the weedy twin ruts. Where, it seemed, there was something to find after all.

It lay in the grassy ditch less than a dozen paces from the place where the old road joined the Great Road. At first he saw only a smooth white shape in the weeds and thought it was a stone. Then he saw a black roundness that could only be an eyehole. Not a stone, then; a skull.

Grunting, Jonas knelt and fished it out while the few living derricks continued to squeal and thump behind him. A