Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,260

with his foot. There were several guns, left over from that morning, inside. “Now, I don’t know if that thing’s loaded, but I don’t hardly think a traildog like you—”

The newcomer pointed the gun at the desk and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the little room, but Roland thought—hoped—that with the door shut, it would sound like just another firecracker. Bigger than some, smaller than others.

Good girl, he thought. Oh, good girl—but be careful. For gods’ sake, Sue, be careful.

All three of them standing in a line at the cell doors now, eyes wide and mouths tight.

The bullet struck the corner of the Sheriff’s rolltop and tore off a huge splinter. Avery screamed, tilted back in his chair again, and went sprawling. His foot remained hooked under the drawer-pull; the drawer shot out and overturned, spilling three ancient firearms across the board floor.

“Susan, look out!” Cuthbert shouted, and then: “No, Dave!”

At the end of his life, it was duty and not fear of the Big Coffin Hunters which propelled Dave Hollis, who had hoped to be Sheriff of Mejis himself when Avery retired (and, he sometimes told his wife, Judy, a better one than Fatso had ever dreamed of being). He forgot that he had serious questions about the way the boys had been taken as well as about what they might or might not have done. All he thought of then was that they were prisoners o’ the Barony, and such would not be taken if he could help it.

He lunged for the cowboy in the too-big clothes, meaning to tear the gun out of his hands. And shoot him with it, if necessary.

12

Susan was staring at the yellow blaze of fresh wood on the corner of the Sheriff’s desk, forgetting everything in her amazement—so much damage inflicted by the single twitch of a finger!—when Cuthbert’s desperate shout awakened her to her position.

She shrank back against the wall, avoiding Dave’s first swipe at the oversized serape, and, without thinking, pulled the trigger again. There was another loud explosion, and Dave Hollis—a young man only two years older than she herself—was flung backward with a smoking hole in his shirt between two points of the star he wore. His eyes were wide and unbelieving. His monocle lay by one outstretched hand on its length of black silk ribbon. One of his feet struck his guitar and knocked it to the floor with a thrum nearly as musical as the chords he had been trying to make.

“Dave,” she whispered. “Oh Dave, I’m sorry, what did I do?”

Dave tried once to get up, then collapsed forward on his face. The hole going into the front of him was small, but the one she was looking at now, the one coming out the back, was huge and hideous, all black and red and charred edges of cloth . . . as if she had run him through with a blazing hot poker instead of shooting him with a gun, which was supposed to be merciful and civilized and was clearly neither one.

“Dave,” she whispered. “Dave, I . . .”

“Susan look out!” Roland shouted.

It was Avery. He scuttled forward on his hands and knees, seized her around the calves, and yanked her feet out from under her. She came down on her bottom with a tooth-rattling crash and was face to face with him—his frog-eyed, large-pored face, his garlic-smelling hole of a mouth.

“Gods, ye’re a girl,” he whispered, and reached for her. She pulled the trigger of Roland’s gun again, setting the front of her serape on fire and blowing a hole in the ceiling. Plaster dust drifted down. Avery’s ham-sized hands settled around her throat, cutting off her wind. Somewhere far away, Roland shrieked her name.

She had one more chance.

Maybe.

One’s enough, Sue, her father spoke inside of her head. One’s all ye need, my dear.

She cocked Roland’s pistol with the side of her thumb, socked the muzzle deep into the flab hanging from the underside of Sheriff Herk Avery’s head, and pulled the trigger.

The mess was considerable.

13

Avery’s head dropped into her lap, as heavy and wet as a raw roast. Above it, she could feel growing heat. At the bottom edge of her vision was the yellow flicker of fire.

“On the desk!” Roland shouted, yanking the door of his cell so hard it rattled in its frame. “Susan, the water-pitcher! For your father’s sake!”

She rolled Avery’s head out of her lap, got to her feet, and staggered to the desk