Something farther off to the east screamed like a woman in life-ending agony. Jake knew it was only a rock-cat - he'd heard them before, when he'd been at the river with Benny, either fishing or swimming - but he still put his hand on the butt of the Ruger until it stopped. Oy had assumed the bowing position, front paws apart, head lowered, rump pointed skyward. Usually this meant he wanted to play, but there was nothing playful about his bared teeth.
"S'okay," Jake said. He rummaged in his bedroll again (he hadn't bothered to bring a saddlebag) until he found a red-checked cloth. This was Slightman the Elder's neckerchief, stolen four days previous from beneath the bunkhouse table, where the foreman had dropped it during a game of Watch Me and then forgotten it.
Quite the little thief I am , Jake thought. My Dad's gun, now Benny's Dad's snotrag. I can't tell if I'm working my way up or down .
It was Roland's voice that replied. You're doing what you were called here to do. Why don't you stop beating your breast and get started ?
Jake held the neckerchief between his hands and looked down at Oy. "This always works in the movies," he said to the bumbler. "I have no idea if it works in real life... especially after weeks have gone by." He lowered the neckerchief to Oy, who stretched out his long neck and sniffed it delicately. "Find this smell, Oy. Find it and follow it."
"Oy!" But he just sat there, looking up at Jake.
"This, Dumbo," Jake said, letting him smell it again. "Find it! Go on!"
Oy got up, turned around twice, then began to saunter north along the bank of the river. He lowered his nose occasionally to the rocky ground, but seemed a lot more interested in the occasional dying-woman howl of the rock-cat. Jake watched his friend with steadily diminishing hope. Well, he'd seen which way Slightman had gone. He could go in that direction himself, course around a little, see what there was to see.
Oy turned around, came back toward Jake, then stopped. He sniffed a patch of ground more closely. The place where Slightman had come out of the water? It could have been. Oy made a thoughtful hoofing sound far back in his throat and then turned to his right - east. He slipped sinuously between two rocks. Jake, now feeling at least a tickle of hope, mounted up and followed.
SIX
They hadn't gone far before Jake realized Oy was following an actual path that wound through the hilly, rocky, arid land on this side of the river. He began to see signs of technology: a cast-off, rusty electrical coil, something that looked like an ancient circuit-board poking out of the sand, tiny shards and shatters of glass. In the black moonlight-created shadow of a large boulder, he spied what looked like a whole bottle. He dismounted, picked it up, poured out God knew how many decades (or centuries) of accumulated sand, and looked at it. Written on the side in raised letters was a word he recognized: Nozz-A-La.
"The drink of finer bumhugs everywhere," Jake murmured, and put the bottle down again. Beside it was a crumpled-up cigarette pack. He smoothed it out, revealing a picture of a red-lipped woman wearing a jaunty red hat. She was holding a cigarette between two glamorously long fingers, PARTI appeared to be the brand name.
Oy, meanwhile, was standing ten or twelve yards farther along and looking back at him over one low shoulder.
"Okay," Jake said. "I'm coming."
Other paths joined the one they were on, and Jake realized this was a continuation of the East Road. He could see only a few scattered bootprints and smaller, deeper footprints. These were in places guarded by high rocks - wayside coves the prevailing winds didn't often reach. He guessed the bootprints were Slightman's, the deep footprints Andy's. There were no others. But there would be, and not many days from now, either. The prints of the Wolves' gray horses, coming out of the east. They would also be deep prints, Jake reckoned. Deep like Andy's.
Up ahead, the path breasted the top of a hill. On either side were fantastically misshapen organ-pipe cactuses with great thick barrel arms that seemed to point every which way. Oy was standing there, looking down at something, and once more seeming to grin. As Jake approached him, he could smell the cactus-plants. The odor was bitter and tangy. It reminded him of his father's martinis.