“Will you tell me something, first? If you know, that is?”
“Of course.”
“My father said that the women at the retreat in Debaria prefer the longstick to a man. Do you know what he meant?”
Jamie regarded me in silence for a bit-as if to make sure I wasn’t shaking his knee-and then his lips twitched at the corners. For Jamie this was the equivalent of holding his belly, rolling around the floor, and howling with glee. Which Cuthbert Allgood certainly would have done. “It must be what the whores in the low town call a diddlestick. Does that help?”
“Truly? And they… what? Use it on each other?”
“So ’tis said, but much talk is just la-la-la. You know more of women than I do, Roland; I’ve never lain with one. But never mind. Given time, I suppose I will. Tell me what we’re about in Debaria.”
“A skin-man is supposedly terrorizing the good folk. Probably the bad folk, as well.”
“A man who becomes some sort of animal?”
It was actually a little more complicated in this case, but he had the nub of it. The wind was blowing hard, flinging handfuls of alkali at the side of the car. After one particularly vicious gust, the little train lurched. Our empty porridge bowls slid. We caught them before they could fall. If we hadn’t been able to do such things, and without even thinking of them, we would not have been fit to carry the guns we wore. Not that Jamie preferred the gun. Given a choice (and the time to make it), he would reach for either his bow or his bah.
“My father doesn’t believe it,” I said. “But Vannay does. He-”
At that moment, we were thrown forward into the seats ahead of us. The old servant, who was coming down the center aisle to retrieve our bowls and cups, was flung all the way back to the door between the car and his little kitchen. His front teeth flew out of his mouth and into his lap, which gave me a start.
Jamie ran up the aisle, which was now severely tilted, and knelt by him. As I joined him, Jamie plucked up the teeth and I saw they were made of painted wood and held together by a cunning clip almost too small to see.
“Are you all right, sai?” Jamie asked.
The old fellow got slowly to his feet, took his teeth, and filled the hole behind his upper lip with them. “I’m fine, but this dirty bitch has derailed again. No more Debaria runs for me, I have a wife. She’s an old nag, and I’m determined to outlive her. You young men had better check your horses. With luck, neither of them will have broken a leg.”
Neither had, but they were nervous and stamping, anxious to get out of confinement. We lowered the ramp and tethered them to the connecting bar between the two cars, where they stood with their heads lowered and their ears flattened against the hot and gritty wind blowing out of the west. Then we clambered back inside the passenger car and collected our gunna. The engineer, a broad-shouldered, bowlegged plug of a man, came down the side of his listing train with the old servant in tow. When he reached us, he pointed to what we could see very well.
“Yonder on that ridge be Debaria high road-see the marking-posts? You can be at the place o’ the females in less than an hour, but don’t bother asking nothing o’ those bitches, because you won’t get it.” He lowered his voice. “They eat men, is what I’ve heard. Not just a way o’ speakin, boys: they… eat… the mens. ”
I found it easier to believe in the reality of the skin-man than in this, but I said nothing. It was clear that the enjie was shaken up, and one of his hands was as red as Jamie’s. But the enjie’s was only a little burn, and would go away. Jamie’s would still be red when he was sent down in his grave. It looked as if it had been dipped in blood.
“They may call to you, or make promises. They may even show you their titties, as they know a young man can’t take his eyes off such. But never mind. Turn yer ears from their promises and yer eyes from their titties. You just go on into the town. It’ll be less than another hour by horse. We’ll need a work crew to put this poxy whore upright. The rails are fine; I checked. Just covered with that damned alkali dust, is all. I suppose ye can’t pay men to come out, but if ye can write-as I suppose such gentle fellows as yerselves surely can-you can give em a premissary note or whatever it’s called-”
“We have specie,” I said. “Enough to hire a small crew.”
The enjie’s eyes widened at this. I supposed they would widen even more if I told him my father had given me twenty gold knuckles to carry in a special pocket sewn inside my vest.
“And oxes? Because we’ll need oxes if they’ve got em. Hosses if they don’t.”
“We’ll go to the livery and see what they have,” I said, mounting up. Jamie tied his bow on one side of his saddle and then moved to the other, where he slid his bah into the leather boot his father had made special for it.
“Don’t leave us stuck out here, young sai,” the enjie said. “We’ve no horses, and no weapons.”
“We won’t forget you,” I said. “Just stay inside. If we can’t get a crew out today, we’ll send a bucka to take you into town.”
“Thankee. And stay away from those women! They… eat… the mens! ”
The day was hot. We ran the horses for a bit because they wanted to stretch after being pent up, then pulled them down to a walk.
“Vannay,” Jamie said.
“Pardon?”
“Before the train derailed, you said your father didn’t believe there was a skin-man, but Vannay does.”
“He said that after reading the reports High Sheriff Peavy sent along, it was hard not to believe. You know what he says at least once in every class: ‘When facts speak, the wise man listens.’ Twenty-three dead makes a moit of facts. Not shot or stabbed, mind you, but torn to pieces.”
Jamie grunted.
“Whole families, in two cases. Large ones, almost clans. The houses turned all upsy-turvy and splashed with blood. Limbs ripped off the bodies and carried away, some found-partly eaten-some not. At one of those farms, Sheriff Peavy and his deputy found the youngest boy’s head stuck on a fencepole with his skull smashed in and his brains scooped out.”
“Witnesses?”
“A few. A sheepherder coming back with strays saw his partner attacked. The one who survived was on a nearby hill. The two dogs with him ran down to try and protect their other master, and were torn apart too. The thing came up the hill after the herder, but got distracted by the sheep instead, so the fellow struck lucky and got away. He said it was a wolf that ran upright, like a man. Then there was a woman with a gambler. He was caught cheating at Watch Me in one of the local pits. The two of them were given a bill of circulation and told to leave town by nightfall or be whipped. They were headed for the little town near the salt-mines when they were beset. The man fought. It gave the woman just enough time to get clear. She hid up in some rocks until the thing was gone. She’s said ’twas a lion.”
“On its back legs?”
“If so, she didn’t wait to see. Last, two cowpunchers. They were camped on Debaria Stream near a young Manni couple on marriage retreat, although the punchers didn’t know it until they heard the couple’s screams. As they rode toward the sound, they saw the killer go loping off with the woman’s lower leg in its jaws. It wasn’t a man, but they swore on watch and warrant that it ran upright like a man.”
Jamie leaned over the neck of his horse and spat. “Can’t be so.”
“Vannay says it can. He says there have been such before, although not for years. He believes they may be some sort of mutation that’s pretty much worked its way out of the true thread.”
“All these witnesses saw different animals?”
“Aye. The cowpokes described it as a tyger. It had stripes.”
“Lions and tygers running around like trained beasts in a traveling show. And out here in the dust. Are you sure we aren’t being tickled?”
I wasn’t old enough to be sure of much, but I did know the times were too desperate to be sending young guns even so far west as Debaria for a prank. Not that Steven Deschain could have been described as a prankster even in the best of times.