Read Online The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King - Free Book Online

salt-houses. The Low is where a sheepherder was killed just recent, by something that looked like a—”
    “Like a wolf,” I said. “This we know. Go on.”
    “Well-informed, are ye? Well, that’s all to the good. Where was I, now? Ah, I know—those rocks that are now known in these parts as Ambush Arroyo. It’s not an arroyo, but I suppose people like the sound. That’s where the tracks went, but Deschain wanted to go around and come in from the east. From the High Pure. The sheriff, Pea Anderson it was back then, didn’t want none o’ that. Eager as a bird with its eye on a worm he was, mad to press on. Said it would take em three days, and by then the woman might be dead and the Crows anywhere. He said he was going the straight way, and he’d go alone if no one wanted to go with him. ‘Or unless you order me in the name of Gilead to do different,’ he says to your da’.
    “‘Never think it,’ Deschain says, ‘for Debaria is your fill; I have my own.’
    “The posse went. I stayed with your da’, lad. Sheriff Anderson turned to me in the saddle and said, ‘I hope they’re hiring at one of the ranches, Hughie, because your days of wearing tin on your vest are over. I’m done with’ee.’
    “Those were the last words he ever said to me. They rode off. Steven of Gilead squatted on his hunkers and I hunkered with him. After half an hour of quiet—might have been longer—I says to him, ‘I thought we were going to hook around . . . unless you’re done with me, too.’
    “‘No,’ he says. ‘Your hire is not my business, Deputy.’
    “‘Then what are we waitin for?’
    “‘Gunfire,’ says he, and not five minutes later we heard it. Gunfire and screams. It didn’t last long. The Crows had seen us coming—probably nummore’n a glint of sun on a bootcap or bit o’ saddle brightwork was enough to attract their attention, for Pa Crow was powerful trig—and doubled back. They got up in those high rocks and poured down lead on Anderson and his possemen. There were more guns in those days, and the Crows had a good share. Even a speed-shooter or two.
    “So we went around, all right? Took us only two days, because Steven Deschain pushed hard. On the third day, we camped downslope and rose before dawn. Now, if ye don’t know, and no reason ye should, salt-houses are just caverns in the cliff faces up there. Whole families lived in em, not just the miners themselves. The tunnels go down into the earth from the backs of em. But as I say, in those days all were deserted. Yet we saw smoke coming from the vent on top of one, and that was as good as a kinkman standing out in front of a carnival tent and pointing at the show inside, don’tcha see it.
    “‘This is the time,’ Steven says, ‘because they will have spent the last nights, once they were sure they were safe, deep in drink. They’ll still be sleeping it off. Will you stand with me?’
    “‘Aye, gunslinger, that I will,’ I tells him.”
    When Peavy said this, he unconsciously straightened his back. He looked younger.
    “We snuck the last fifty or sixty yards, yer da’ with his gun drawn in case they’d posted a guard. They had, but he was only a lad, and fast asleep. The Deschain holstered his gun, swotted him with a rock, and laid him out. I later saw that young fellow standing on a trapdoor with tears running out of his eyes, a mess in his pants, and a rope around his neck. He wasn’t but fourteen, yet he’d taken his turn at sai Doolin—the kidnapped woman, don’tcha know, and old enough to be his grandmother—just like the rest of them, and I shed no tears when the rope shut off his cries for mercy. The salt ye take is the salt ye must pay for, as anyone from these parts will tell you.
    “The gunslinger crep’ inside, and I right after him. They was all lying around, snoring like dogs. Hell, boys, they were dogs. Belinda Doolin was tied to a post. She saw us, and her eyes widened. Steven Deschain pointed to her, then