done—their strange, varied light. He remembered Oy's unexpected salute to the crowd. The upturned faces
and his suffocating panic and his anger at Roland. Susannah hoisting herself onto the piano bench in what the
locals called the musica. Oh yeah, that memory always. You bet. But even more vivid than this memory of
his beloved was that of the gunslinger.
Of Roland dancing.
But before any of these things came the ride down the Calla's high street, and his sense of forboding. His
premonition of bad days on the way.
SIX
They reached the town proper an hour before sunset. The clouds parted and let through the day's last red
light. The street was empty. The surface was oiled dirt. The horses' hooves made muffled thuds on the wheel-
marked hardpack. Eddie saw a livery stable, a place called the Travelers' Rest that seemed a combination
lodging-house and eating-house, and, at the far end of the street, a large two-story that just about had to be
the Calla's Gathering Hall. Off to the right of this was the flare of torches, so he supposed there were people
waiting there, but at the north end of town where they entered there were none.
The silence and the empty board sidewalks began to give Eddie the creeps. He remembered Roland's tale of
Susan's final ride into Mejis in the back of a cart, standing with her hands tied in front of her and a noose
around her neck. Her road had been empty, too. At first. Then, not far from the intersection of the Great Road
and the Silk Ranch Road, Susan and her captors had passed a single farmer, a man with what Roland had
called lamb-slaughterer's eyes. Later she would be pelted with vegetables and sticks, even with stones, but
this lone farmer had been first, standing there with his handful of cornshucks, which he had tossed almost
gently at her as she passed on her way to… well, on her way to charyou tree, the Reap Fair of the Old
People.
As they rode into Calla Bryn Sturgis, Eddie kept expecting that man, those lamb-slaughterer's eyes, and the
handful of cornshucks. Because this town felt bad to him. Not evil—evil as Mejis had likely been on the
night of Susan Delgado's death— but bad in a simpler way. Bad as in bad luck, bad choices, bad omens. Bad
ka, maybe.
He leaned toward Slightman the Elder. "Where in the heck is everyone, Ben?"
"Yonder," Slightman said, and pointed to the flare of the torches.
"Why are they so quiet?" Jake asked.
"They don't know what to expect," Callahan said. "We're cut off here. The outsiders we do see from time to
time are the occasional peddler, harrier, gambler… oh, and the lake-boat marts sometimes stop in high
summer."
"What's a lake-boat mart?" Susannah asked.
Callahan described a wide flatboat, paddlewheel-driven and gaily painted, covered with small shops. These
made their slow way down the Devar-Tete Whye, stopping to trade at the Callas of the Middle Crescent until
their goods were gone. Shoddy stuff for the most part, Callahan said, but Eddie wasn't sure he trusted him
entirely, at least on the subject of the lake-boat marts; he spoke with the almost unconscious distaste of the
longtime religious.
"And the other outsiders come to steal their children," Callahan concluded. He pointed to the left, where a
long wooden building seemed to take up almost half the high street. Eddie counted not two hitching rails or
four, but eight. Long ones. "Took's General Store, may it do ya fine," Callahan said, with what might have
been sarcasm.
They reached the Pavilion. Eddie later put the number present at seven or eight hundred, but when he first
saw them— a mass of hats and bonnets and boots and work-roughened hands beneath the long red light of
that day's evening sun—the crowd seemed enormous, untellable.
They will throw shit at us, he thought. Throw shit at us and yell "Charyou tree." The idea was ridiculous but
also strong.
The Calla-folk moved back on two sides, creating an aisle of green grass which led to a raised wooden
platform. Ringing the Pavilion were torches caught in iron cages. At that point, they still all flared a quite
ordinary yellow. Eddie's nose caught the strong reek of oil.
Overholser dismounted. So did the others of his party. Eddie, Susannah, and Jake looked at Roland. Roland
sat as he was for a moment, leaning slightly forward, one arm cast across the pommel of his saddle, seeming
lost in his own thoughts. Then he took off his hat and held it out to the crowd. He tapped his throat three
times. The crowd murmured. In appreciation or surprise? Eddie couldn't tell. Not anger, though, definitely
not anger, and that was good. The gunslinger lifted one booted foot across the saddle and lightly dismounted.
Eddie left his horse more carefully, aware of all the eyes on him. He'd put on Susannah's harness earlier, and
now he stood next to her mount, back-to. She slipped into the harness with the ease of long practice. The
crowd murmured again when they saw her legs were missing from just above the knees.
Overholser started briskly up the path, shaking a few hands along the way. Callahan walked directly behind
him, occasionally sketching the sign of the cross in the air. Other hands reached out of the crowd to secure
the horses. Roland, Eddie, and Jake walked three abreast. Oy was still in the wide front pocket of the poncho
Benny had loaned Jake, looking about with interest.
Eddie realized he could actually smell the crowd—sweat and hair and sunburned skin and the occasional
splash of what the characters in the Western movies usually called (with contempt similar to Callahan's for
the lake-boat marts) "foo-foo water." He could also smell food: pork and beef, fresh bread, frying onions,
coffee and graf. His stomach rumbled, yet he wasn't hungry. No, not really hungry. The idea that the path
they were walking would disappear and these people would close in on them wouldn't leave his mind. They
were so quiet! Somewhere close by he could hear the first nightjars and whippoor-wills tuning up for
evening.
Overholser and Callahan mounted the platform. Eddie was alarmed to see that none of the others of the party
which had ridden out to meet them did. Roland walked up the three broad wooden steps without hesitation,
however. Eddie followed, conscious that his knees were a little weak.
"You all right?" Susannah murmured in his ear.
"So far."
To the left of the platform was a round stage with seven men on it, all dressed in white shirts, blue jeans, and
sashes. Eddie recognized the instruments they were holding, and although the mandolin and banjo made him
think their music would probably be of the shitkicking variety, the sight of them was still reassuring. They
didn't hire bands to play at human sacrifices, did they? Maybe just a drummer or two, to wind up the
spectators.
Eddie turned to face the crowd with Susannah on his back. He was dismayed to see that the aisle that had
begun where the high street ended was indeed gone now. Faces tilted up to look at him. Women and men, old
and young. No expression on those faces, and no children among them. These were faces that spent most of
their time out in the sun and had the cracks to prove it. That sense of foreboding would not leave him.
Overholser stopped beside a plain wooden table. On it was a large billowy feather. The farmer took it and
held it up. The crowd, quiet to begin with, now fell into a silence so disquietingly deep that Eddie could hear
the rattling rales in some old party's chest as he or she breathed.
"Put me down, Eddie," Susannah said quietly. He didn't like to, but he did.
"I'm Wayne Overholser of Seven-Mile Farm," Overholser said, stepping to the edge of the stage with the
feather held before him. "Hear me now, I beg."
"We say thankee-sai," they murmured.
Overholser turned and held one hand out to Roland and his tet, standing there in their travel-stained clothes
(Susannah didn't stand, exactly, but rested between Eddie and Jake on her haunches and one propped hand).
Eddie thought he had never felt himself studied more eagerly.
"We men of the Calla heard Tian Jaffords, George Telford, Diego Adams, and all others who would speak at
the Gathering Hall," Overholser said. "There I did speak myself. 'They'll come and take the children,' I said,
meaning the Wolves, a'course, 'then they'll leave us alone again for a generation or more. So 'tis, so it's been,
I say leave it alone.' I think now those words were mayhap a little hasty."
A murmur from the crowd, soft as a breeze.
"At this same meeting we heard Pere Callahan say there were gunslingers north of us."
Another murmur. This one was a little louder. Gunslingers… Mid-World… Gilead.
"It was taken among us that a party should go and see. These are the folk we found, do ya. They claim to
be… what Pere Callahan said they were." Overholser now looked uncomfortable. Almost as if he were
suppressing a fart. Eddie had seen this expression before, mostly on TV, when politicians faced with some
fact they couldn't squirm around were forced to backtrack. "They claim to be of the gone world. Which is to
say…"
Go on, Wayne, Eddie thought, get it out. You can do it.
"… which is to say of Eld's line."
"Gods be praised!" some woman shrieked. "Gods've sent em to save our babbies, so they have!"
There were shushing sounds. Overholser waited for quiet with a pained look on his face, then went on. "They
can speak for themselves—and must—but I've seen enough to believe they may be able to help us with our
problem. They carry good guns—you see em—and they can use em. Set my watch and warrant on it, and say
thankya."
This time the murmur from the crowd was louder, and Eddie sensed goodwill in it. He relaxed a little.
"All right, then, let em stand before'ee one by one, that ye might hear their voices and see their faces very
well. This is their dinh." He lifted a hand to Roland.
The gunslinger stepped forward. The red sun set his left cheek on fire; the right was painted yellow with
torchglow. He put out one leg. The thunk of the worn bootheel on the boards was very clear in the silence;
Eddie for no reason thought of a fist knocking on a coffintop. He bowed deeply, open palms held out to them.
"Roland of Gilead, son of Steven," he said. "The Line of Eld."
They sighed.
"May we be well-met." He stepped back, and glanced at Eddie.
This part he could do. "Eddie Dean of New York," he said. "Son of Wendell." At least that's what Ma always
claimed, he thought. And then, unaware he was going to say it: "The Line of Eld. The ka-tet of Nineteen."
He stepped back, and Susannah moved forward to the edge of the platform. Back straight, looking out at
them calmly, she said, "I am Susannah Dean, wife of Eddie, daughter of Dan, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of
Nineteen, may we be well-met and do ya fine." She curtsied, holding out her pretend skirts.
At this there was both laughter and applause.
While she spoke her piece, Roland bent to whisper a brief something in Jake's ear. Jake nodded and then
stepped forward confidently. He looked very young and very handsome in the day's end light.
He put out his foot and bowed over it. The poncho swung comically forward with Oy's weight. "I am Jake
Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine."
Ninety-nine? Eddie looked at Susannah, who offered him a very small shrug. What's this ninety-nine shit?
Then he thought what the hell. He didn't know what the ka-tet of Nineteen was, either, and he'd said it
himself.
But Jake wasn't done. He lifted Oy from the pocket of Benny Slightman's poncho. The crowd murmured at
the sight of him. Jake gave Roland a quick glance—Are you sure? it asked— and Roland nodded.
At first Eddie didn't think Jake's furry pal was going to do anything. The people of the Calla—the folken—
had gone completely quiet again, so quiet that once again the evensong of the birds could be heard clearly.
Then Oy rose up on his rear legs, stuck one of them forward, and actually bowed over it. He wavered but
kept his balance. His little black paws were held out with the palms up, like Roland's. There were gasps,
laughter, applause. Jake looked thunderstruck.
"Oy!" said the bumbler. "Eld! Thankee!" Each word clear. He held the bow a moment longer, then dropped
onto all fours and scurried briskly back to Jake's side. The applause was thunderous. In one brilliant, simple
stroke, Roland (for who else, Eddie thought, could have taught die bumbler to do that) had made these people
into their friends and admirers. For tonight, at least.
So that was the first surprise: Oy bowing to the assembled Calla folken and declaring himself an-tet with his
traveling-mates. The second came hard on its heels. "I'm no speaker," Roland said, stepping forward again.
"My tongue tangles worse than a drunk's on Reap-night. But Eddie will set us on with a word, I'm sure."
This was Eddie's turn to be thunderstruck. Below them, the crowd applauded and stomped appreciatively on
the ground. There were cries of Thankee-sai and Speak you well and Hear him, hear him. Even the band got
into the act, playing a flourish that was ragged but loud.
He had time to shoot Roland a single frantic, furious look: What in the blue fuck are you doing to me? The
gunslinger looked back blandly, then folded his arms across his chest. The applause was fading. So was his
anger. It was replaced by terror. Overholser was watching him with interest, arms crossed in conscious or
unconscious imitation of Roland. Below him, Eddie could see a few individual faces at the front of the
crowd: the Slightmans, the Jaffordses. He looked in the other direction and there was Callahan, blue eyes
