From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: Re: (urth) PEACE: Gold hunt's end at the box in the hole 
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 03:43:08 -0600

Stone Ox quoted and wrote:
>> While I argue against Weer murdering Lois, still, the text is clear that
>> ghosts can be pinned down and this is why Weer would use the stone:
>> not to mark the grave (though it would do that as well) but to pin the
>> ghost down so she wouldn't come after him.  Like a stake through the
>> heart of a vampire (iirc the old tradition of pinning them down rather
than
>> turning them to dust).
>
>That's right.  If Weer laid the stone down flat (like a porch step) only he
>would know it marked Lois's grave.  Suppose he kills her (most likely,
>the gun went off accidentally while they were fighting for it).  He now has
>a body, and a grave and stone at hand.  I think Wolfe very deliberately
>placed that section about the Bell witch and the porch step "tombstone"
>in the middle of Lois's story (i.e., Weer's memories of Lois elicited his
>memories of the Bell witch episode) because of these parallels.

Like mantis, I don't think Weer murdered her, and the way the text reads
doesn't seem to indicate that he killed her accidentally, either. She told
him why she had the gun *after* he took it away from her, or so I read it.
Besides, as mantis wrote the other day: "How ugly was their parting?  Seems
pretty ugly.  He seems to be keeping the gun against her possible return."
And, as *everybody* knows, guns don't work against ghosts! 

-Roy



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