They did not stop. They walked hand-in-hand toward the white-edged hem of the smoky green shimmer. The thinny whined its pleasure, murmured endearments, promised rewards. It baked the nerves numb and picked at the brain.
There was no time to reach them, so Roland did the only thing he could think of: raised one of his guns and fired it over their heads. The report was a hammer-blow in the canyon's enclosure, and for a moment the ricochet whine was louder than that of the thinny. The two boys stopped only inches from its sick shimmer. Roland kept expecting it to reach out and grab them, as it had grabbed the low-flying bird when they had been here on the night of the Peddler's Moon.
He triggered two more shots into the air, the reports hitting the walls and rolling back. "Gunslingers!" he cried. "To me! To me!"
It was Alain who turned toward him first, his dazed eyes seeming to float in his dust-streaked face. Cuthbert continued forward another step, the tips of his boots disappearing in the greenish-silver froth at the edge of the thinny (the whingeing grumble of the thing rose half a note, as if in anticipation), and then Alain yanked him back by the tugstring of his sombrero. Cuthbert tripped over a good-sized chunk of fallen rock and landed hard. When he looked up, his eyes had cleared.
"Gods!" he murmured, and as he scrambled to his feet, Roland saw that the toes of his boots were gone, clipped off neatly, as if with a pair of gardening shears. His great toes stuck out.
"Roland," he gasped as he and Alain stumbled toward him. "Roland, we were almost gone. It talks!"
"Yes. I've heard it. Come on. There's no time."
He led them to the notch in the canyon wall, praying that they could get up quick enough to avoid being riddled with bullets ... as they certainly would be, if Latigo arrived before they could get up at least part of the way.
A smell, acrid and bitter, began to fill the air - an odor like boiling juniper berries. And the first tendrils of whitish-gray smoke drifted past them.
"Cuthbert, you first. Alain, you next. I'll come last. Climb fast, boys. Climb for your lives."
21
Latigo's men poured through the slot in the wall of brush like water pouring into a funnel, gradually widening the gap as they came. The bottom layer of the dead vegetation was already on fire, but in their excitement none of them saw these first low flames, or marked them if they did. The pungent smoke also went unnoticed; their noses had been deadened by the colossal stench of the burning oil. Latigo himself, in the lead with Hendricks close behind, had only one thought; two words that pounded at his brain in a kind of vicious triumph: Box canyon! Box canyon! Box canyon!
Yet something began to intrude on this mantra as he galloped deeper into Eyebolt, his horse's hooves clattering nimbly through the scree of rocks and
(bones)
whitish piles of cow-skulls and ribcages. This was a kind of low buzzing, a maddening, slobbering whine, insectile and insistent. It made his eyes water. Yet, strong as the sound was (if it was a sound; it almost seemed to be coming from inside him), he pushed it aside, holding onto his mantra
(box canyon box canyon got em in a box canyon)
instead. He would have to face Walter when this was over, perhaps Farson himself, and he had no idea what his punishment would be for losing the tankers ... but all that was for later. Now he wanted only to kill these interfering bastards.
Up ahead, the canyon took a jog to the north. They would be beyond that point, and probably not far beyond, either. Backed up against the canyon's final wall, trying to squeeze themselves behind what fallen rocks there might be. Latigo would mass what guns he had and drive them out into the open with ricochets. They would probably come with their hands up, hoping for mercy. They would hope in vain. After what they'd done, the trouble they'd caused -
As Latigo rode around the jog in the canyon's wall, already levelling his pistol, his horse screamed - like a woman, it screamed - and reared beneath him. Latigo caught the saddle-horn and managed to stay up, but the horse's rear hooves slid sideways in the scree and the animal went down. Latigo let go of the horn and threw himself clear, already aware that the sound which had been creeping into his ears was suddenly ten times stronger, buzzing loud enough to make his eyeballs pulse in their sockets, loud enough to make his balls tingle unpleasantly, loud enough to blot out the mantra which had been beating so insistently in his head.
The insistence of the thinny was far, far greater than any George Latigo could have managed.