Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,76

was a little irritating. She had always found the oilpatch, with its skeletal forest of gantries, a little spooky. Most of those steel towers had stopped pumping long since, and there was neither the parts, the need, nor the understanding to repair them. And those which did still labor along—nineteen out of about two hundred—could not be stopped. They just pumped and pumped, the supplies of oil beneath them seemingly inexhaustible. A little was still used, but a very little—most simply ran back down into the wells beneath the dead pumping stations. The world had moved on, and this place reminded her of a strange mechanical graveyard where some of the corpses hadn’t quite—

Something cold and smooth nuzzled the small of her back, and she wasn’t quite able to stifle a little shriek. Will Dearborn wheeled toward her, his hands dropping toward his belt. Then he relaxed and smiled.

“Rusher’s way of saying he feels ignored. I’m sorry, Miss Delgado.”

She looked at the horse. Rusher looked back mildly, then dipped his head as if to say he was also sorry for having startled her.

Foolishness, girl, she thought, hearing the hearty, no-nonsense voice of her father. He wants to know why you’re being so stand-offy, that’s all. And so do I. ’Tisn’t like you, so it’s not.

“Mr. Dearborn, I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I’d like to ride.”

3

He turned his back and stood looking out at Citgo with his hands in his pockets while Susan first laid the poncho over the cantle of the saddle (the plain black saddle of a working cowboy, without a Barony brand or even a ranch brand to mark it), and then mounted into the stirrup. She lifted her skirt and glanced around sharply, sure he would be stealing a peek, but his back was still to her. He seemed fascinated with the rusty oil derricks.

What’s so interesting about them, cully? she thought, a trifle crossly—it was the lateness of the hour and the residue of her stirred-up emotions, she supposed. Filthy old things have been there six centuries and more, and I’ve been smelling their stink my whole life.

“Stand easy now, my boy,” she said once she had her foot fixed in the stirrup. One hand held the top of the saddle’s pommel, the other the reins. Rusher, meanwhile, flicked his ears as if to say he would stand easy all night, were that what she required.

She swung up, one long bare thigh flashing in the starlight, and felt the exhilaration of being horsed that she always felt . . . only tonight it seemed a little stronger, a little sweeter, a little sharper. Perhaps because the horse was such a beauty, perhaps because the horse was a stranger . . .

Perhaps because the horse’s owner is a stranger, she thought, and fair.

That was nonsense, of course . . . and potentially dangerous nonsense. Yet it was also true. He was fair.

As she opened the poncho and spread it over her legs, Dearborn began to whistle. And she realized, with a mixture of surprise and superstitious fear, what the tune was: “Careless Love.” The very lay she had been singing on her way up to Rhea’s hut.

Mayhap it’s ka, girl, her father’s voice whispered.

No such thing, she thought right back at him. I’ll not see ka in every passing wind and shadow, like the old ladies who gather in Green Heart of a summer’s evening. It’s an old tune; everyone knows it.

Mayhap better if you’re right, Pat Delgado’s voice returned. For if it’s ka, it’ll come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than my da’s barn stood before the cyclone when it came.

Not ka; she would not be seduced by the dark and the shadows and the grim shapes of the oil derricks into believing it was. Not ka but only a chance meeting with a nice young man on the lonely road back to town.

“I’ve made myself decent,” she said in a dry voice that didn’t sound much like her own. “Ye may turn back if you like, Mr. Dearborn.”

He did turn and gazed at her. For a moment he said nothing, but she could see the look in his eyes well enough to know that he found her fair as well. And although this disquieted her—perhaps because of what he’d been whistling—she was also glad. Then he said, “You look well up there. You sit well.”

“And I shall have horses of my own to sit before long,” she