It was ugly country. It had showered twice since he had left Pricetown, grudgingly both times. Even the timothy looked yellow and dispirited. Ugly country. He had seen no sign of the man in black. Perhaps he had taken a coach.
The road made a bend, and beyond it the gunslinger clucked the mule to a stop and looked down at Tull. It was at the floor of a circular, bowl-shaped hollow, a shoddy jewel in a cheap setting. There were a number of lights, most of them clustered around the area of the music. There looked to be four streets, three running at right angles to the coach road, which was the main avenue of the town. Perhaps there would be a restaurant. He doubted it, but perhaps. He clucked at the mule.
More houses sporadically lined the road now, most of them still deserted. He passed a tiny graveyard with moldy, leaning wooden slabs overgrown and choked by the rank devil-grass. Perhaps five hundred feet further on he passed a chewed sign which said: TULL
The paint was flaked almost to the point of illegibility. There was another further on, but the gunslinger was not able to read that one at all.
A fool's chorus of half-stoned voices was rising in the final protracted lyric of Hey Jude - "Naa-naa-naa naa-na na-na... hey, Jude..." - as he entered the town proper. It was a dead sound, like the wind in the hollow of a rotted tree. Only the prosaic thump and pound of the honky-tonk piano saved him from seriously wondering if the man in black might not have raised ghosts to inhabit a deserted town. He smiled a little at the thought.
There were a few people on the streets, not many, but a few. Three ladies wearing black slacks and identical middy blouses passed by on the opposite boardwalk, not looking at him with pointed curiosity. Their faces seemed to swim above their all-but-invisible bodies like huge, pallid baseballs with eyes. A solemn old man with a straw hat perched firmly on top of his head watched him from the steps of a boarded-up grocery store. A scrawny tailor with a late customer paused to watch him by; he held up the lamp in his window for a better look. The gunslinger nodded. Neither the tailor nor his customer nodded back. He could feel their eyes resting heavily against the low-slung holsters that lay against his hips. A young boy, perhaps thirteen, and his girl crossed the street a block up, pausing imperceptibly. Their footfalls raised little hanging clouds of dust. A few of the street side lamps worked, but their glass sides were cloudy with congealed oil. Most had been crashed out. There was a livery, probably depending on the coach line for its survival. Three boys were crouched silently around a marble ring drawn in the dust to one side of the barn's gaping maw, smoking cornshuck cigarettes. They made long shadows in the yard.
The gunslinger led his mule past them and looked into the dim depths of the barn. One lamp glowed sunken ly, and a shadow jumped and flickered as a gangling old man in bib overalls forked loose timothy hay into the hay loft with huge, grunting swipes of his fork.
"Hey!" the gunslinger called.
The fork faltered and the hostler looked around waspishly. "Hey yourself!"
"I got a mule here."
"Good for you."
The gunslinger flicked a heavy, unevenly milled gold
piece into the semi dark. It rang on the old, chaff-drifted boards and glittered.
The hostler came forward, bent, picked it up, squinted at the gunslinger. His eyes dropped to the gunbelts and he nodded sourly.
"How long you want him put up?"
"A night. Maybe two. Maybe longer."
"I ain't got no change for gold."
"I'm not asking for any."
"Blood money," the hostler muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing." The hostler caught the mule's bridle and led him inside.
"Rub him down!" the gunslinger called. The old man did not turn.
The gunslinger walked out to the boys crouched around the marble ring. They had watched the entire exchange with contemptuous interest
"How they hanging?" the gunslinger asked conversationally.
No answer.
"You dudes live in town?"
No answer.
One of the boys removed a crazily tilted twist of corn-shuck from his mouth, grasped a green cat's-eye marble, and squirted it into the dirt circle. It struck a croaker and knocked it outside. He picked up the cat's-eye and prepared to shoot again.
"There a restaurant in this town?" the gunslinger asked.
One of them looked up, the youngest There was a huge cold-sore at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were still ingenuous. He looked at the gunslinger with hooded brimming wonder that was touching and frightening.
"Might get a burger at Sheb's."
"That the honky-tonk?"
The boy nodded but didn't speak. The eyes of his playmates had turned ugly and hostile.
The gunslinger touched the brim of his hat. "I'm grateful. It's good to know someone in this town is bright enough to talk."
He walked past, mounted the boardwalk and started down toward Sheb's, hearing the clear, contemptuous voice of one of the others, hardly more than a childish treble: