Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,243

choice. Roland put his hands behind his back. Rusher uttered a small, reproving whinny—as if to say all this was highly improper—and trotted away to stand beside the bunkhouse porch.

“You’re going to feel metal on your wrists,” Lengyll said.

“Esposas.”

Two cold circles slipped over Roland’s hands. There was a click and suddenly the arcs of the handcuffs were tight against his wrists.

“All right,” said another voice. “Now you, son.”

“Be damned if I will!” Cuthbert’s voice wavered on the edge of hysteria.

There was a thud and a muffled cry of pain. Roland turned around and saw Alain down on one knee, the heel of his left hand pressed against his forehead. Blood ran down his face.

“Ye want me to deal him another ’un?” Jake White asked. He had an old pistol in his hand, reversed so the butt was forward. “I can, you know; my arm is feeling wery limber for this early in the day.”

“No!” Cuthbert was twitching with horror and something like grief. Ranged behind him were three armed men, looking on with nervous avidity.

“Then be a good boy an’ get yer hands behind yer.”

Cuthbert, still fighting tears, did as he was told. Esposas were put on him by Deputy Bridger. The other two men yanked Alain to his feet. He reeled a little, then stood firm as he was handcuffed. His eyes met Roland’s, and Al tried to smile. In some ways it was the worst moment of that terrible ambush morning. Roland nodded back and made himself a promise: he would never be taken like this again, not if he lived to be a thousand years old.

Lengyll was wearing a trailscarf instead of a string tie this morning, but Roland thought he was inside the same box-tail coat he’d worn to the Mayor’s welcoming party, all those weeks ago. Standing beside him, puffing with excitement, anxiety, and self-importance, was Sheriff Avery.

“Boys,” the Sheriff said, “ye’re arrested for transgressing the Barony. The specific charges are treason and murder.”

“Who did we murder?” Alain asked mildly, and one of the posse uttered a laugh either shocked or cynical, Roland couldn’t tell which.

“The Mayor and his Chancellor, as ye know quite well,” Avery said. “Now—”

“How can you do this?” Roland asked curiously. It was Lengyll to whom he spoke. “Mejis is your home place; I’ve seen the line of your fathers in the town cemetery. How can you do this to your home place, sai Lengyll?”

“I’ve no intention of standing out here and making palaver with ye,” Lengyll said. He glanced over Roland’s shoulder. “Alvarez! Get his horse! Boys as trig as this bunch should have no problem riding with their hands behind their—”

“No, tell me,” Roland interposed. “Don’t hold back, sai Lengyll—these are your friends you’ve come with, and not a one who isn’t inside your circle. How can you do it? Would you rape your own mother if you came upon her sleeping with her dress up?”

Lengyll’s mouth twitched—not with shame or embarrassment but momentary prudish distaste, and then the old rancher looked at Avery. “They teach em to talk pretty in Gilead, don’t they?”

Avery had a rifle. Now he stepped toward the handcuffed gunslinger with the butt raised. “I’ll teach ’im how to talk proper to a man of the gentry, so I will! Knock the teef straight out of his head, if you say aye, Fran!”

Lengyll held him back, looking tired. “Don’t be a fool. I don’t want to bring him back laying over a saddle unless he’s dead.”

Avery lowered his gun. Lengyll turned to Roland.

“Ye’re not going to live long enough to profit from advice, Dearborn,” he said, “but I’ll give’ee some, anyway: stick with the winners in this world. And know how the wind blows, so ye can tell when it changes direction.”

“You’ve forgotten the face of your father, you scurrying little maggot,” Cuthbert said clearly.

This got to Lengyll in a way Roland’s remark about his mother had not—it showed in the sudden bloom of color in his weathered cheeks.

“Get em mounted!” he said. “I want em locked up tight within the hour!”

5

Roland was boosted into Rusher’s saddle so hard he almost flew off on the other side—would have, if Dave Hollis had not been there to steady him and then to wedge Roland’s boot into the stirrup. Dave offered the gunslinger a nervous, half-embarrassed smile.

“I’m sorry to see you here,” Roland said gravely.

“It’s sorry I am to be here,” the deputy said. “If murder was your business, I wish you’d gotten to it sooner. And