Avery finished the letter and handed it back to Roland with the air of one passing on a holy relic. “Ye want to keep that safe about yer person, Will Dearborn—aye, very safe indeed!”
“Yes, sir.” He tucked the letter and his identification back into his purse. His friends “Richard” and “Arthur” were doing the same.
“This is excellent white tea, sir,” Alain said. “I’ve never had better.”
“Aye,” Avery said, sipping from his own glass. ” ‘Tis the honey that makes it so fearsome. Eh, Dave?”
The deputy with (he monocle smiled from his place by the notice-hoard. “1
believe so, but Judy don’t like to say. She had the recipe from her mother.”
“Aye, we must remember the faces of our mothers, too, so we must.” Sheriff Avery looked sentimental for a moment, but Roland had an idea that the face of his mother was the furthest thing from the big man’s mind just then. He turned to Alain, and sentiment was replaced by a surprising shrewdness.
“Ye’re wondering about the ice, Master Stockworth.”
Alain started. “Well, I…”
“Ye expected no such amenity in a backwater like Hambry, I’ll warrant,” Avery said, and although there was a joshing quality on top of his voice, Roland thought there was something else entirely underneath.
He doesn’t like us. He doesn’t like what he thinks of as our “city ways. ” He hasn’t known us long enough to know what kind of ways we have, if any at all, but already he doesn’t like them. He thinks we’re a trio of snotnoses; that we see him and everyone else here as country bumpkins.
“Not just Hambry,” Alain said quietly. “Ice is as rare in the Inner Arc these days as anywhere else, Sheriff Avery. When I grew up, I saw it mostly as a special treat at birthday parties and such.”
“There was always ice on Glowing Day,” Cuthbert put in. He spoke with very un-Cuthbertian quiet. “Except for the fireworks, that’s what we liked about it most.”
“Is that so, is that so,” Sheriff Avery said in an amazed, wonders-will-never-cease tone. Avery perhaps didn’t like them riding in like this, didn’t like having to take up what he would probably call “half the damn morning” with them; he didn’t like their clothes, their fancy identification papers, their accents, or their youth. Least of all their youth. Roland could understand all that, but wondered if it was the whole story. If there was something else going on here, what was it?
“There’s a gas-fired refrigerator and stove in the Town Gathering Hall,” Avery said. “Both work. There’s plenty of earth-gas out at Citgo— that’s the oil patch east of town. Yer passed it on yer way in, I wot.”
They nodded.
“Stove’s nobbut a curiosity these days—a history lesson for the schoolchildren—but the refrigerator comes in handy, so it does.” Avery held up his glass and looked through the side. ” ‘Specially in summer.”
He sipped some tea, smacked his lips, and smiled at Alain, “You see? No mystery.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t found use for the oil,” Roland said. “No generators in town, Sheriff?”
“Aye, there be four or five,” Avery said. “The biggest is out at Francis Lengyll’s Rocking B ranch, and I recall when it useter run. It’s HONDA. Do ye kennit that name, boys? HONDA?”
“I’ve seen it once or twice,” Roland said, “on old motor-driven bicycles.”
“Aye? In any case, none of the generators will run on the oil from the Citgo patch.
Tis too thick. Tarry goo, is all. We have no refineries here.”
“I see,” Alain said. “In any case, ice in summer’s a treat. However it comes to the glass.” He let one of the chunks slip into his mouth, and crunched it between his teeth.
Avery looked at him a moment longer, as if to make sure the subject was closed, then switched his gaze back to Roland. His fat face was once more radiant with his broad, untrustworthy smile.
“Mayor Thorin has asked me to extend ye his very best greetings, and convey his regrets for not bein here today—very busy is our Lord Mayor, very busy indeed.
But he’s laid on a dinner-party at Mayor’s House tomorrow evening—seven o’ the
clock for most folk, eight for you young fellows … so you can make a bit of an entrance, I imagine, add a touch o’ drama, like. And I need not tell such as yourselves, who’ve probably attended more such parties than I’ve had hot dinners, that it would be best to arrive pretty much on the dot.”
“Is it fancy-dress?” Cuthbert asked uneasily. “Because we’ve come a long way, almost four hundred wheels, and we didn’t pack formal wear and sashes, none of us.”
Avery was chuckling—more honestly this time, Roland thought, perhaps because he felt “Arthur” had displayed a streak of unsophistication and insecurity. “Nay, young master, Thorin understands ye’ve come to do a job—next door to workin cowboys, ye be! ‘Ware they don’t have ye out draggin nets in the bay next!”
From the comer, Dave—the deputy with the monocle—honked unexpected laughter. Perhaps it was the sort of joke you had to be local to understand, Roland thought.
“Wear the best ye have, and ye’ll be fine. There’ll be no one there in sashes, in any case—that’s not how things are done in Hambry.” Again
Roland was struck by the man’s constant smiling denigration of his town ;iiul Barony . . . and the resentment of the outsiders which lay just beneath it.
“In any case, ye’ll find yerselves working more than playing tomorrow night, I imagine. Hart’s invited all the large ranchers, stockliners, and livestock owners from this part of the Barony … not that there’s so many, you understand, bein as how Mejis is next door to desert once you get west o’ the Drop. But everyone whose goods and chattel you’ve been sent to count will be there, and I think you’ll find all of them loyal Affiliation men, ready and eager to help. There’s Francis Lengyll of the Rocking B … John Croydon of the Piano Ranch .. . Henry Wertner, who’s the Barony’s stockliner as well as a horsebreeder in his own right . .. Hash Renfrew, who owns the Lazy Susan, the biggest horse-ranch in Mejis (not that it’s much by the standards you fellows are used to, I wot) . . . and there’ll be others, as well. Rimer’ll introduce you, and get you about your business right smart.”
Ronald nodded and turned to Cuthbert. “You’ll want to be on your mettle tomorrow night.”
Cuthbert nodded. “Don’t fear me, Will, I’ll note em all.”
Avery sipped more tea, eyeing them over his glass with a roguish expression so false it made Roland want to squirm.
“Most of em’s got daughters of marriageable age, and they’ll bring em. You boys want to look out.”
Roland decided he’d had enough tea and hypocrisy for one morning. He nodded, emptied his glass, smiled (hoping his looked more genuine than Avery’s now looked to him), and got to his feet. Cuthbert and Alain took the cue and did likewise.
“Thank you for the tea, and for the welcome,” Roland said. “Please send a message to Mayor Thorin, thanking him for his kindness and telling him that he’ll see us tomorrow, at eight o’ the clock, prompt.”
“Aye. So I will.”
Roland then turned to Dave. That worthy was so surprised to be noticed again that he recoiled, almost bumping his head on the notice-board. “And please thank your wife for the tea. It was wonderful.”
“I will. Thankee-sai.”
They went back outside, High Sheriff Avery herding them along like a genial, overweight sheepdog.
“As to where you’ll locate—” he began as they descended the steps and started down the walk. As soon as they hit the sunshine, he began to sweat.
“Oh, land, I forgot to ask you about that,” Roland said, knocking the heel of his hand against his forehead. “We’ve camped out on that long slope, lots of horses as you go down the turf, I’m sure you know where I mean—”
“The Drop, aye.”
“—but without permission, because we don’t yet know who to ask.”
“That’d be John Croydon’s land, and I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge ye, but we mean to do ye better than that. There’s a spread northwest of here, the Bar K. Used to b’long to the Garber family, but they gave it up and moved on after a fire. Now it b’longs to the Horsemen’s Association—that’s a little local group of farmers and ranchers. I spoke to Francis Lengyll about you fellows—he’s the H.A. president just current—and he said ‘We’ll put em out to the old Garber place, why not?’ ”
“Why not?” Cuthbert agreed in a gentle, musing voice. Roland shot him a sharp glance, but Cuthbert was looking down at the harbor, where the small fishing boats skittered to and fro like waterbugs.
“Aye, just what I said, ‘Why not, indeed?’ I said. The home place burned to a cinder, but the bunkhouse still stands; so does the stable and the cook-shack next