by Alex Bell
‘You’d better hope it is,’ Lex replied.
‘Now, now, we had a deal,’ Jesse replied. ‘All I had to do was teach you everything I know about being a cowboy, and I’ve done that. You gotta pull this off by yourself. I had my doubts at first, but you were tellin’ the truth about being a quick learner and I think you’ll probably manage it.’
‘Glad to hear it. Now, let’s go find out.’
They went up the four steps to the porch and walked in through the front doors. Or at least tried to. Just as Lex was about to put his hand on the doorknob, the doors flew open. He and Jesse both managed to jump back in time to avoid being flattened but, when two big cowboys came rushing out, Lex was unable to get out of the way quick enough to avoid one of them barrelling into him. He and the cowboy got tangled up together and ended up rolling down the steps to the ground. By the time they’d managed to disentangle themselves in the dust, the second cowboy had jumped on to his horse and was already riding away fast.
‘Daw-gone it!’ the other cowboy exclaimed as he leapt to his feet. In another moment there was a pistol in his hand and he was aiming shots towards the fleeing cowboy. He missed, which seemed to infuriate him even more. He spun round on his heel, back towards Lex still sprawled in the dust, and the expression on his face as he looked down on him was not at all friendly.
‘That man insulted me!’ he exclaimed. ‘And because of you he got away! Seems to me it’s only right that you should take his place in the duel! What’s your name, boy?’
But before Lex could say so much as a single word, Jesse said conversationally, ‘That’s Slow Sid.’ He sauntered over with his hands in his pockets. The other cowboy might have looked a bit meaner and had a few more scars than Jesse, but they were about the same size. ‘Sad, really,’ Jesse went on. ‘He used to be Sid the Kid − I’m sure you’ve heard of him? − but then, coupla years back, he went and fell off his horse and caught his head a right crack on a rock. And that was that. Sid the Kid was no more and all that was left was poor old Slow Sid. Don’t know who he is or what he’s doing half the time, now. Ain’t that right, Sid?’
Jesse looked down at Lex pointedly. Lex was furious. How dare he? How dare he? He had not spent all those hours practising and practising passing himself off as a half-decent cowboy only to have to play a simpleton the whole time he was here! At the back of his mind he was aware that Jesse was trying to prevent him from getting shot in the face, but that wasn’t the point. Lex could take care of himself − he didn’t need anyone coming to his rescue. But what was done now was done and, if he didn’t want to raise suspicion, he really had no choice but to play along. So Lex lowered his voice, unfocused his gaze slightly, looked up at Jesse with the most gormless expression he could muster on short notice and said, ‘Horse hit Sid onna head.’
‘Well, the horse didn’t hit you; the floor did,’ Jesse replied. ‘But, yeah, you fell off the horse first, so I hear. That’s what happens if you insist on riding horses what ain’t been broken in yet.’
The other cowboy glared down at Lex for a moment, still looking mightily peeved but no longer murderous.
‘Huh,’ he grunted, and then finally walked off.
Once he’d disappeared back into the house, Jesse looked down at Lex, a little smile tugging at one corner of his mouth and, reaching down a hand he said, ‘You need some help there, Sid?’
Lex would have dearly loved to hiss some unpleasantry back at him but, for all he knew, the scar-faced cowboy was watching from the windows. Others’ attention may have been drawn their way by the altercation and Lex couldn’t risk anything that might give him away. This was show time, now. Granted, it might not be the kind of show time he had planned upon, but it was show time just the same. Shouting-at-Jesse time would just have to wait.
So, making a real effort to look mildly confused, Lex gripped Jesse’s hand and allowed the cowboy to haul him to his feet. Then he dusted himself off and gazed around stupidly, as if not too sure of where he was. His hat had fallen off in the kerfuffle and lay on the floor in the dust. Lex purposefully ignored it and started to stagger towards the front doors. Jesse clapped the hat back on his head from behind, as Lex had known that he would. He didn’t bother to adjust the lop-sided angle but simply carried on towards the door. He pulled it open and, this time, managed to get all the way inside.
Once there, he stopped short. The entrance hall was enormous, with a great sweeping staircase going up to the next level. Portraits lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Every single one was of the same person − a rather strange-looking man with greying hair, a thin face, impressively bushy whiskers and an expression of mild puzzlement.
There must have been two hundred portraits there, all of different sizes, all of the same man. Some of the paintings were traditional head-and-shoulder portraits. But others were much larger and showed the entire person. They were − to put it mildly − ridiculous. One picture was of him sitting at a table having tea with a giant fox (who was wearing a waistcoat); in another, he was sitting on a toilet with his trousers around his ankles. One particularly large painting showed him brandishing what looked very much like a smoked trout against an enormous white dragon that seemed set to roast him where he stood at any moment.
In every picture he wore the same dark suit, the same daft monocle, the same bushy whiskers and the same amiable expression of foolish, mild puzzlement.
It was a little hard to see some of the paintings properly, especially those hung lower down, because most of them had a hell of a lot of darts sticking out of them.
‘Nathaniel East,’ Jesse said behind Lex. ‘In every single painting, the mad old coot. Painted them all himself, so they say.’
It must have taken him years. The paintings were so detailed and some of them were so large that Lex thought it must have taken Nathaniel practically his whole life to paint them. He could not have produced all of these during the five years he’d lived in Dry Gulch. For some unknown reason he must have brought them with him when he’d travelled out to the Wild West.
‘Can’t be taken down, see?’ Jesse went on. ‘Because of the witch’s sticking spell. So the fellas just use ’em for dart practice mostly. Let’s go through to the bar.’
Adopting a rambling, shuffling gait, Lex followed him. He would have known where to go, even without Jesse, by following the raucous sounds of talking and laughter and the rather jolly music of a honky-tonk piano.
The bar adjoined the entrance hall to the left. It was a large room, that easily accommodated the twenty or so people there. Everyone in the room was a cowboy. You could tell by the hats and boots. A lot of the furniture had obviously been moved from other rooms, for none of it matched. It seemed that, although the witch’s sticking spell meant that none of the items could be taken out of the house, some of them could be moved from room to room. Any spare table or chair had been brought there. Lex even saw two men drinking at a chess table, the chessmen still fixed firmly in place − glued into a stalemate from the looks of it.
‘Let’s go get ourselves a drink, Sid,’ Jesse said, already striding purposefully towards the bar.
Lex obediently followed along behind him.
‘Hello again, Sam,’ Jesse said to the man behind the bar.
Lex was pleased to note that he was bald and had a waxed moustache that curled at the ends, just like in the books.
‘Howdy, Jesse,’ Sam replied. ‘Back again? Ain’t you got bored of lookin’ for that sword yet?’
Lex almost jumped where he sat. Jesse had told him right back in the jail cell at the Wither City that he didn’t believe the Sword of Life existed. He had neglected to mention that he had searched for it himself.
‘Just passin’ through this time,’ Jesse replied. ‘Needed somewhere to stay for a few days. You got any rooms?’
‘Yep.’ Sam turned around and picked off a key from the board on the wall behind him. He put this on the bar in front of Jesse, glanced at Lex and said, ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘This here is Slow Sid,’ Jesse said. ‘We’re travelling together for a while.’
‘Pleased to know you, Sid. I’m Sam. What can I get you?’
‘Glass of milk, please,’ Lex said, scooping up the nearby beer mats and absently starting to shuffle them.
‘Sid!’ Jesse said sharply. ‘What have I told you about that?’ He looked at Sam and said, ‘He means milk and rum. Obviously.’ He added a nervous laugh at the end of that, which Lex thought was rather a nice touch.
‘Obviously,’ Sam replied, eyebrow raised.
‘Yeah,’ Lex said, giving the barman his best eager-to-please smile. ‘Milk and rum.’ He turned his smile on Jesse, who nodded approvingly. ‘Without the rum,’ Lex added − to which Jesse shook his head despairingly.
‘What are you hanging around with this halfwit for, anyway?’ the barman said suspiciously. ‘You’re a one for always bein’ out for yourself, so what’s in it for you, Jesse, eh?’
Uh oh, Lex thought. Off the top of his head he could think of a couple of half-decent explanations but the problem was in trying to convincingly produce them when he’d been sitting there affecting a complete lack of awareness of anything that was being said.
But, as it happened, he didn’t need to come up with something because, quick as a whip, Jesse said, ‘What’s in it for me? Well, I’ll show you.’
And, suddenly, Lex found the beer mats plucked from his fingers and a pack of cards pressed into his palm instead. He looked up at Jesse, who raised an eyebrow meaningfully. Lex knew instantly what he had in mind. He looked down at the pack in his hands for a bare moment before breaking into a perfect Faro shuffle. It was one of the more difficult ones to do but Lex pulled it off flawlessly.
‘Little bit of Sid the Kid comes back when he handles the cards. We split the winnings,’ Jesse said blithely.
‘You’re using him,’ the barman said with a knowing chuckle.
Jesse gave a lazy grin. ‘Dunno ’bout that. Works all right for us, don’t it, Sid?’
Lex grinned stupidly and took a big slurp of the milk Sam set down in front of him. It left a moustache but he didn’t bother to wipe it off.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PLANTAGENET THE DREAM-FOX
They spent the rest of that evening in the bar. Slow Sid was clearly something of an enigma to the other cowboys and it seemed to bring them great amusement to take it in turns buying him glasses of milk.
Of course, whilst he was sitting in the bar, Lex could not be looking for the sword, but he didn’t mind. This was groundwork. Groundwork that was going splendidly well. Already Lex could see that Slow Sid was going to serve him much better than Sid the Kid ever could. It was, after all, one of his own rules that he should always be underestimated as much as possible, by as many people as possible. In his preoccupation with learning how to become a cowboy, he had become too good. The other cowboys might have been wary of Sid the Kid, with his mean card skills and his impressive knife spinning and the keen, sharp mind that made up for his lack of brawn.
Sid the Kid could never have wandered the house at night. Slow Sid, on the other hand . . . Well, no one would think twice about a nincompoop lost in the halls. The trick, therefore, was to get himself known to as many of these cowboys as possible. And that evening spent in the bar was the perfect way to do it. With a little bit of help from Jesse, everyone became very interested in Slow Sid. It was cleverly done, Lex couldn’t deny that. Because Jesse was, at the end of the day, every bit as much of a rotter as Lex was, the cowboy didn’t even need Lex to tell him what to do. He could do it all by himself! Whilst maintaining a perfectly amiable manner towards Lex, Jesse brazenly exploited him for the others’ entertainment.
They bounced off each other beautifully. At one point, Jesse proclaimed that he’d never seen anyone dance like Slow Sid. He then promptly sat down at the honky-tonk piano and started to play a lively, jolly little tune. Lex leapt up on to the bar, secretly delighted by the cowboy’s improvisation, and broke out into the most absurd jig he could manage. The cowboys cheered merrily. It was probably no lie to say that they had never seen anything so silly in their lives.
It was perfect. Even if there were cowboys staying in the house who were not in the bar that night, they would be sure to hear about Slow Sid later and, if they were to catch Lex wandering around at night, then they would surely put two and two together and assume he was just a halfwit who couldn’t find his room, rather than a thief and an adventurer who was looking for the Sword of Life. As Slow Sid, Lex could get away with doing practically anything.
It was about midnight when Lex and Jesse finally left. After the dancing, Lex had affected a sudden fatigue and apparently gone to sleep with his head on the bar. Seeing that he was to provide no more amusement to them, the other cowboys had settled down to talk to Jesse, flicking cigarette butts at Lex from time to time but paying him no attention other than that.
Finally, Jesse collected Lex from the bar and they made their way back out to the main entrance hall. Up the stairs they went, past the portraits and up to the large landing at the top.
The corridor leading there was uncommonly thin. Only just wide enough to accommodate Jesse’s broad shoulders. Anyone with a plump stature would not possibly have been able to squeeze through. It was lit with electric lights along the ceiling. Doors led off from both sides.
Jesse glanced over his shoulder at Lex and said quietly, ‘Not a bad start, eh?’
The corridor appeared to be deserted but Lex did not respond to Jesse’s question. Breaking character was a risky business and a bad habit. Lex never allowed himself to do it until he could be absolutely sure the coast was clear. So he ignored Jesse and simply continued walking down the corridor in the slow, shuffling gait he had adopted as Slow Sid. Jesse looked faintly surprised but had the sense to say nothing as they continued on down the hallway. A moment later he stopped in front of a room with the number nine painted roughly on it in chalk. He unlocked the door and they stepped in.
Because the corridor had been so narrow, Lex had been expecting the room to be small, too. But, actually, it was extremely large. The corridor had obviously just been another one of Nathaniel East’s quirks, rather than a result of a genuine need to conserve space.
The large room they stepped into was fairly ordinary in so much as it had a large four poster bed, a wardrobe, a sink and a window that looked out from the front of the building. A hammock was strung across one corner. But the odd thing about the room was its colour scheme, for everything in it was a garish shade of lime green. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the furniture. It was extremely wearing on the senses and Lex instinctively wanted to wince and shield his eyes from the horrible sight. But he kept staunchly in character as Slow Sid whilst Jesse groaned aloud and said, ‘Aw, man, not the snot room!’
Lex couldn’t help thinking that, if someone had snot that colour, then that person must have something very seriously wrong with them indeed. But he said nothing as Jesse closed the door behind them. Instead, he rambled over to the wardrobe and opened the door to check inside it. Then he wandered over to the bed and looked underneath it.
‘What are you doin’?’ Jesse asked, staring at him. ‘Lex?’
Lex ignored him and went to look behind both of the heavy lime drapes that fell all the way to the floor alongside the window. Only once he’d satisfied himself that there was no one else in the room with them did he relax and drop the act.
‘This is the ugliest room I ever saw in my life!’ he declared.
Jesse breathed a sigh of relief then and said, ‘You gave me a horrible turn for a minute there, kid. I was almost thinkin’ that perhaps you really did hit your head in that scuffle outside and the entire evening weren’t an act, after all!’
‘I never break character in public,’ Lex replied. ‘Never. So don’t ever talk to me out there unless you’re talking to Slow Sid. And thanks a lot for landing me with that character, by the way! Having to play your pet monke
y all week was not what I had in mind!’
Of course, Lex was secretly rather pleased with the Slow Sid development, but there was no point in admitting as much to Jesse.
The cowboy merely shrugged and said, ‘You’d have found yourself fighting a duel with scar face outside if I hadn’t stepped in when I did.’
‘Rubbish!’ Lex retorted. ‘I can look after myself. If you’d just given me another moment, I would have got myself out of it all right. Next time you decide to help me, don’t!’
‘Noted,’ Jesse replied. ‘Let me know how that works out for you. And, since you’re so keen on staying in character, I guess I’ll just have to take the bed whilst you take the hammock.’
‘Help yourself to the bed, by all means,’ Lex replied. ‘It’s probably riddled with lice. What do you people sleep in, anyway? And don’t tell me you sleep in the nude.’
Jesse shrugged. ‘Shirt and long johns, usually.’
‘Good,’ Lex said, pulling off his jacket. ‘I’m going to go and do a bit of sleepwalking.’