“He came to you,” the gunslinger said.

“And to my bed. He spoke to me in the Tongue. He – “

“He screwed you. “

She did not flinch. “You walk an evil way, gunslinger. You stand in shadows. You stood in the shadows of the holy

place last night Did you think I couldn’t see you?”

“Why did he heal the weed—eater?”

“He was an angel of God. He said so.”

“I hope he smiled when he said it.”

She drew her lip back from her teeth in an unconsciously feral gesture. “He told me you would follow. He told me what to do. He said you are the Antichrist”

The gunslinger shook his head. “He didn’t say that.”

She smiled up at him lazily. “He said you would want to bed me. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“The price is your life, gunslinger. He has got me with child… the child of an angel. If you invade me – “ She let the lazy smile complete her thought At the same time she gestured with her huge, mountainous thighs. They stretched beneath her garment like pure marble slabs. The effect was dizzying.

The gunslinger dropped his hands to the butts of his pistols. “You have a demon, woman. I can remove it”

The effect was instantaneous. She recoiled against the chair, and a weasel look flashed on her face. “Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! You dare not touch the Bride of God!”

“Want to bet?” the gunslinger said, grinning. He stepped toward her.

The flesh on the huge frame quaked. Her face had be– come a caricature of crazed terror, and she stabbed the sign of the Eye at him with pronged fingers.

“The desert,” the gunslinger said. “What after the desert?”

“You’ll never catch him! Never! Never! You’ll burn! He told me so!”

“I’ll catch him,” the gunslinger said. “We both know it. What is beyond the desert?”

“No!”

“Answer me!”

“No!”

He slid forward, dropped to his knees, and grabbed her thighs. Her legs locked like a vise. She made strange, lustful keening noises.

“The demon, then,” he said.

“No – “

He pried the legs apart and upholstered one of his guns.

“No! No! No!” Her breath came in short, savage grunts.

“Answer me. “

She rocked in the chair and the floor trembled. Prayers and garbled bits of jargon flew from her lips.

He rammed the barrel of the gun forward. He could feel the terrified wind sucked into her lungs more than he could hear it Her hands beat at his head; her legs drummed against the floor. And at the same time the huge body tried to take the invader and enwomb it. Outside nothing watched them but the bruised sky.

She screamed something, high and inarticulate.

“What?”

“Mountains!”

“What about them?”

“He stops… on the other side… s—s—sweet Jesus!… to in—make his strength. Med—in—meditation, do you under– stand? Oh . .. I’m . .. I’m . . . “

The whole huge mountain of flesh suddenly strained forward and upward, yet he was careful not to let her secret flesh touch him.

Then she seemed to wilt and grow smaller, and she wept with her hands in her lap.

“So,” he said, getting up. “The demon is served, eh?”

“Get out. You’ve killed the child. Get out Get out.”

He stopped at the door and looked back. “No child,” he said briefly. “No angel, no demon.”

“Leave me alone.”

He did.

By the time he arrived at Kennerly’s, a queer obscurity had come over the northern horizon and he knew it was dust. Over Tull the air was still dead quiet.

Kennerly was waiting for him on the chaff—strewn stage that was the floor of his barn. “Leaving?” He grinned abjectly at the gunslinger.

“Yes.”

“Not before the storm?”

“Ahead of it”

“The wind goes faster than a man on a mule. In the open it can kill you.”

“I’ll want the mule now,” the gunslinger said simply.

“Sure.” But Kennerly did not turn away, merely stood as if searching for something further to say, grinning his groveling, hate—filled grin, and his eyes flicked up and over the gunslinger’s shoulder.

The gunslinger sidestepped and turned at the same time, and the heavy stick of stovewood that the girl Soobie held swished through the air, grazing his elbow only. She lost hold of it with the force of her swing and it clattered over the floor. In the explosive height of the loft, barn swallows took shadowed wing.

The girl looked at him bovinely. Her breasts thrust with overripe grandeur at the wash—faded shirt she wore. One thumb sought the haven of her mouth with dreamlike slowness.

The gunslinger turned back to Kennerly. Kennerly’s grin was huge. His skin was waxy yellow. His eyes rolled in their sockets. “I – “ he began in a phlegm—filled whisper and could not continue.

“The mule,” the gunslinger prodded gently.

“Sure, sure, sure,” Kennerly whispered, the grin now touched with incredulity. He shuffled after it.

He moved to where he could watch Kennerly, The

hostler brought the mule back and handed him the bridle.

. ,

“You get in an tend your sister,” he said to Soobie.

Soobie tossed her head and didn’t move.

The gunslinger left them there, staring at each other across the dusty, droppings—strewn floor, he with his sick grin, she with dumb, inanimate defiance. Outside the heat was still like a hammer.

He walked the mule up the center of the street, his boots sending up squirts of dust His waterbags were strapped across the mule’s back.

He stopped at Sheb’s, and Allie was not there. The place was deserted, battened for the storm, but still dirty from the night before. She had not begun her cleaning and the place was as fetid as a wet dog.

He filled his tote sack with corn meal, dried and roasted corn, and half of the raw hamburg in the cooler. He left four gold pieces stacked on the planked counter. Allie did not come down. Sheb’s piano bid him a silent, yellow– toothed good—by. He stepped back out and cinched the tote sack across the mule’s back. There was a tight feeling in his throat. He might still avoid the trap, but the chances were small. He was, after all, the interloper.

He walked past the shuttered, waiting buildings, feeling the eyes that peered through cracks and chinks. The man in black had played God in Tull. Was it only a sense of the cosmic comic, or a matter of desperation? It was a question of some importance.

There was a shrill, harried scream from behind him, and doors suddenly threw themselves open. Forms lunged. The trap was sprung, then. Men in long handles and men in dirty dungarees. Women in slacks and in faded dresses.

Even children, tagging after their parents. And in every hand there was a chunk of wood or a knife.

His reaction was automatic, instantaneous, inbred. He whirled on his heels while his hands pulled the guns from their holsters, the hafts heavy and sure in his hands. It was Allie, and of course it had to be Allie, coming at him with her face distorted, the scar a hellish purple in the lowering light He saw that she was held hostage; the distorted, grimacing face of Sheb peered over her shoulder like a witch’s familiar. She was his shield and sacrifice. He saw it all, clear and shadowless in the frozen deathless light of the sterile calm, and heard her:

“He’s got me 0 Jesus don’t shoot don’t don’t don’t – “

But the hands were trained. He was the last of his breed and it was not only his mouth that knew the High Speech. The guns beat their heavy, atonal music into the air. Her mouth flapped and she sagged and the guns fired again. Sheb’s head snapped back. They both fell into the dust.

Sticks flew through the air, rained on him. He staggered, fended them off. One with a nail pounded raggedly through it ripped at his arm and drew blood. A man with a beard stubble and sweat—stained armpits lunged flying at him with a dull kitchen knife held in one paw. The gunslinger shot him dead and the man thumped into the street. His teeth clicked audibly as his chin struck.