who had been to Disneyland as a teenager, did.) The trains which brought the children back were hauled by
plain old locomotives (hopefully none of them named Charlie, Eddie thought), driverless and attached to one
or perhaps two open flatcars. The children were huddled on these. When they arrived they were usually
crying with fear (from sunburns as well, if the weather west of Thunderclap was hot and clear), covered with
food and their own drying shit, and dehydrated into the bargain. There was no station at the railhead,
although Overholser opined there might have been, centuries before. Once the children had been offloaded,
teams of horses were used to pull the short trains from the rusty railhead. It occurred to Eddie that they could
figure out the number of times the Wolves had come by counting the number of junked engines, sort of like
figuring out the age of a tree by counting the rings on the stump.
"How long a trip for them, would you guess?" Roland asked. "Judging from their condition when they
arrive?"
Overholser looked at Slightman, then at Tian and Zalia. "Two days? Three?"
They shrugged and nodded.
"Two or three days," Overholser said to Roland, speaking with more confidence than was perhaps warranted,
judging from the looks of the others. "Long enough for sunburns, and to eat most of the rations they're left—"
"Or paint themselves with em," Slightman grunted.
"—but not long enough to die of exposure," Overholser finished. "If ye'd judge from that how far they were
taken from the Calla, all I can say is I wish'eejoy of the riddle, for no one knows what speed the train draws
when it's crossing the plains. It comes slow and stately enough to the far side of the river, but that means
little."
"No," Roland agreed, "it doesn't." He considered. "Twenty-seven days left?"
"Twenty-six now," Callahan said quietly.
"One thing, Roland," Overholser said. He spoke apologetically, but his jaw was jutting. Eddie thought he'd
backslid to the kind of guy you could dislike on sight. If you had a problem with authority figures, that was,
and Eddie always had.
Roland raised his eyebrows in silent question.
"We haven't said yes." Overholser glanced at Slightman the Elder, as if for support, and Slightman nodded
agreement.
"Ye must ken we have no way of knowing y'are who you say y'are," Slightman said, rather apologetically.
"My family had no books growing up, and there's none out at the ranch—I'm foreman of Eisenhart's Rocking
B—except for the stockline books, but growing up I heard as many tales of Gilead and gunslingers and
Arthur Eld as any other boy… heard of Jericho Hill and such blood-and-thunder tales of pretend… but I
never heard of a gunslinger missing two of his fingers, or a brown-skinned woman gunslinger, or one who
won't be old enough to shave for years yet."
His son looked shocked, and in an agony of embarrassment as well. Slightman looked rather embarrassed
himself, but pushed on.
"I cry your pardon if what I say offends, indeed I do—"
"Hear him, hear him well," Overholser rumbled. Eddie was starting to think that if the man's jaw jutted out
much further, it would snap clean off.
"—but any decision we make will have long echoes. Ye must see it's so. If we make the wrong one, it could
mean the death of our town, and all in it."
"I can't believe what I'm hearing!" Tian Jaffords cried indignantly. "Do you think 'ese're a fraud? Good gods,
man, have'ee not looked at him? Do'ee not have—"
His wife grasped his arm hard enough to pinch white marks into his farmer's tan with the tips of her fingers.
Tian looked at her and fell quiet, though his lips were pressed together tightly.
Somewhere in the distance, a crow called and a rustie answered in its slightly shriller voice. Then all was
silent. One by one they turned to Roland of Gilead to see how he would reply.
FIVE
It was always the same, and it made him tired. They wanted help, but they also wanted references. A parade
of witnesses, if they could get them. They wanted rescue without risk, just to close their eyes and be saved.
Roland rocked slowly back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. Then he nodded to himself
and raised his head. "Jake," he said. "Come to me."
Jake glanced at Benny, his new friend, then got up and walked across to Roland. Oy walked at his heel, as
always.
"Andy," Roland said.
"Sai?"
"Bring me four of the plates we ate from." As Andy did this,
Roland spoke to Overholser: "You're going to lose some crockery. When gunslingers come to town, sai,
things get broken. It's a simple fact of life."
"Roland, I don't think we need—"
"Hush now," Roland said, and although his voice was gentle, Overholser hushed at once. "You've told your
tale; now we tell ours."
Andy's shadow fell over Roland. The gunslinger looked up and took the plates, which hadn't been rinsed and
still gleamed with grease. Then he turned to Jake, where a remarkable change had taken place. Sitting with
Benny the Kid, watching Oy do his small clever tricks and grinning with pride, Jake had looked like any
other boy of twelve—carefree and full of the old Dick, likely as not Now the smile had fallen away and it
was hard to tell just what his age might have been. His blue eyes looked into Roland's, which were of almost
the same shade. Beneath his shoulder, the Ruger Jake had taken from his father's desk in another life hung in
its docker's clutch. The trigger was secured with a rawhide loop which Jake now loosened without looking. It
took only a single tug.
"Say your lesson, Jake, son of Elmer, and be true."
Roland half-expected either Eddie or Susannah to interfere, but neither did. He looked at them. Their faces
were as cold and grave as Jake's. Good.
Jake's voice was also without expression, but the words came out hard and sure.
"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my
eye. I do not shoot with my hand—"
"I don't see what this—" Overholser began.
"Shut up," Susannah said, and pointed a finger at him.
Jake seemed not to have heard. His eyes never left Roland's. The boy's right hand lay on his upper chest, the
fingers spread. "He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do
not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father."
Jake paused. Drew in breath. And let it out speaking.
"I kill with my heart."
"Kill these," Roland remarked, and with no more warning than that, slung all four of the plates high into the
air. They rose, spinning and separating, black shapes against the white sky.
Jake's hand, the one resting on his chest, became a blur. It pulled the Ruger from the docker's clutch, swung it
up, and began pulling the trigger while Roland's hand was still in the air. The plates did not seem to explode
one after the other but rather all at once. The pieces rained down on the clearing. A few fell into the fire,
puffing up ash and sparks. One or two clanged off Andy's steel head.
Roland snatched upward, open hands moving in a blur. Although he had given them no command, Eddie and
Susannah did the same, did it even while the visitors from Calla Bryn Sturgis cringed, shocked by the
loudness of the gunfire. And the speed of the shots.
"Look here at us, do ya, and say thankee," Roland said. He held out his hands. Eddie and Susannah did the
same. Eddie had caught three pottery shards. Susannah had five (and a shallow cut on the pad of one finger).
Roland had snatched a full dozen pieces of falling shrapnel. It looked like almost enough to make a whole
plate, were the pieces glued back together.
The six from the Calla stared, unbelieving. Benny the Kid still had his hands over his ears; now he lowered
them slowly. He was looking at Jake as one might look at a ghost or an apparition from the sky.
"My… God," Callahan said. "It's like a trick in some old Wild West show."
"It's no trick," Roland said, "never think it. It's the Way of the Eld. We are of that an-tet, khef and ka, watch
and warrant. Gunslingers, do ya. And now I'll tell you what we will do." His eyes sought Overholser's. "What
we will do, I say, for no man bids us. Yet I think nothing I say will discomfort you too badly. If mayhap it
does—" Roland shrugged. If it does, too bad, that shrug said.
He dropped the pottery shards between his boots and dusted his hands.
"If those had been Wolves," he said, "there would have been fifty-six left to trouble you instead of sixty. Four
of them lying dead on the ground before you could draw a breath. Killed by a boy." He gazed at Jake. "What
you would call a boy, mayhap." Roland paused. "We're used to long odds."
"The young fella's a breathtaking shot, I'd grant ye," said Slightman the Elder. "But there's a difference
between clay dishes and Wolves on horseback."
"For you, sai, perhaps. Not for us. Not once the shooting starts. When the shooting starts, we kill what
moves. Isn't that why you sought us?"
"Suppose they can't be shot?" Overholser asked. "Can't be laid low by even the hardest of hard calibers?"
"Why do you waste time when time is short?" Roland asked evenly. "You know they can be killed or you
never would have come out here to us in the first place. I didn't ask, because the answer is self-evident."
Overholser had once more flushed dark red. "Cry your pardon," he said.
Benny, meanwhile, continued to stare at Jake with wide eyes, and Roland felt a minor pang of regret for both
boys. They might still manage some sort of friendship, but what had just happened would change it in
fundamental ways, turn it into something quite unlike the usual lighthearted khef boys shared. Which was a
shame, because when Jake wasn't being called upon to be a gunslinger, he was still only a child. Close to the
age Roland himself had been when the test of manhood had been thrust on him. But he would not be young
much longer, very likely. And it was a shame.
"Listen to me now," Roland said, "and hear me very well. We leave you shortly to go back to our own camp
and take our own counsel. Tomorrow, when we come to your town, we'll put up with one of you—"
"Come to Seven-Mile," Overholser said. "We'll have you and say thankee, Roland."
"Our place is much smaller," Tian said, "but Zalia and I—"
"We'd be so pleased to have'ee," Zalia said. She had flushed as deeply as Overholser. "Aye, we would."
Roland said, "Do you have a house as well as a church, sai Callahan?"
Callahan smiled. "I do, and tell God thankya."
"We might stay with you on our first night in Calla Bryn Sturgis," Roland said. "Could we do that?"
"Sure, and welcome."
"You could show us your church. Introduce us to its mysteries."
Callahan's gaze was steady. "I'd welcome the chance to do that."
"In the days after," Roland said, smiling, "we shall throw ourselves on the hospitality of the town."
"You'll not find it wanting," Tian said. "That I promise ye." Overholser and Slightman were nodding.
"If the meal we've just eaten is any sign, I'm sure that's true. We say thankee, sai Jaffords; thankee one and
all. For a week we four will go about your town, poking our noses here and there. Mayhap a bit longer, but
likely a week. We'll look at the lay of the land and the way the buildings are set on it. Look with an eye to the
coming of these Wolves. We'll talk to folk, and folk will talk to us—those of you here now will see to that,
aye?"
Callahan was nodding. "I can't speak for the Manni, but I'm sure the rest will be more than willing to talk to
you about the Wolves. God and Man Jesus knows they're no secret. And those of the Crescent are frightened
to death of them. If they see a chance you might be able to help us, they'll do all you ask."
"The Manni will speak to me as well," Roland said. "I've held palaver with them before."
"Don't be carried away with the Old Fella's enthusiasm, Roland," Overholser said. He raised his plump hands
in the air, a gesture of caution. "There are others in town you'll have to convince—"
"Vaughn Eisenhart, for one," said Slightman.
"Aye, and Eben Took, do ya," Overholser said. "The General Store's the only thing his name's on, ye ken, but
he owns the boarding house and the restaurant out front of it… as well's a half-interest in the livery… and
loan-paper on most of the smallholds hereabouts.
"When it comes to the smallholds, 'ee mustn't neglect Bucky Javier," Overholser rumbled. "He ain't the
biggest of em, but only because he gave away half of what he had to his young sister when she married."
Overholser leaned toward Roland, his face alight with a bit of town history about to be passed on. "Roberta
Javier, Bucky's sissa, she's lucky," he said. "When the Wolves came last time, she and her twin brother were
but a year old. So they were passed over."
"Bucky's own twin brother was took the time before," Slight-man said. "Bully's dead now almost four year.
Of the sickness. Since then, there ain't enough Bucky can do for those younger two. But you should talk to
