The same for the salute and Susan’s returning wave. Below, the handsome cavalier, acknowledging the pretty maid; above, the maid herself, pleased to be acknowledged by such as he. It was youth calling to youth, that was all. And yet...

The look in his eyes... and the look in hers.

Nonsense, of course. But—

But you saw something else.

Yes, perhaps. For a moment it had seemed to her that the young man was going to blow Susan a kiss... then had remembered himself at the last moment and turned it into a salute, instead.

Even if ye did see such a thing, it means nothing. Young cavaliers are saucy, especially when out from beneath the gaze of their fathers. And these three already have a history, as ye well know.

All true enough, but none of it removed that chilly splinter from her heart.

5

Jonas answered Roland’s knock and let the two boys into the Sheriff’s office. He was wearing a Deputy’s star on his shirt, and looked at them with expressionless eyes. “Boys,” he said. “Come in out of the wet.”

He stepped back to allow them entrance. His limp was more pronounced than Roland had ever seen it; the wet weather was playing it up, he supposed.

Roland and Cuthbert stepped in. There was a gas heater in the corner—filled from “the candle” at Citgo, no doubt—and the big room, which had been cool on the day they had first come here, was stuporously hot. The three cells held five woeful-looking drunks, two pairs of men and a woman in the center cell by herself, sitting on the bunk with her legs spread wide, displaying a broad expanse of red drawers. Roland feared that if she got her finger any farther up her nose, she might never retrieve it. Clay Reynolds was leaning against the notice-board, picking his teeth with a broomstraw. Sitting at the rolltop desk was Deputy Dave, stroking his chin and frowning through his monocle at the board which had been set up there. Roland wasn’t at all surprised to see that he and Bert had interrupted a game of Castles.

“Well, look here, Eldred!” Reynolds said. “It’s two of the In-World boys! Do your mommies know you’re out, fellas?”

“They do,” Cuthbert said brightly. “And you’re looking very well, sai Reynolds. The wet weather’s soothed your pox, has it?”

Without looking at Bert or losing his pleasant little smile, Roland shot an elbow into his friend’s shoulder. “Pardon my friend, sai. His humor regularly transgresses the bounds of good taste; he doesn’t seem able to help it. There’s no need for us to scratch at one another—we’ve agreed to let bygones be bygones, haven’t we?”