Topsy sneezed again-K'chow!-and lowered his head wearily.
The gunslinger saw the source of the tinkling. Above the cross on the church doors, a cord had been strung in a long, shallow arc. Hung from it were perhaps two dozen tiny silver bells. There was hardly any breeze today, but enough so these small bells were never quite still… and if a real wind should rise, Roland thought, the sound made by the tintinnabulation of the bells would probably be a good deal less pleasant; more like the strident parley of gossips” tongues.
“Hello!” Roland called, looking across the street at what a large falsefronted sign proclaimed to be the Good Beds Hotel. “Hello, the town!”
No answer but the bells, the tunesome insects, and that odd wooden clunking. No answer, no movement… but there were folk here. Folk or something. He was being watched. The tiny hairs on the nape of his neck had stiffened.
Roland stepped onward, leading Topsy towards the centre of town, puffing up the unlaid High Street dust with each step. Forty paces further along, he stopped in front of a low building marked with a single curt word: LAW. The Sheriffs office (if they had such this far from the Inners) looked remarkably similar to the church-wooden boards stained a rather forbidding shade of dark brown above a stone foundation.
The bells behind him rustled and whispered.
He left the roan standing in the middle of the street and mounted the steps to the LAW office.