always kept together and passed to the likeliest son by dead-letter. When I got em instead of my elder brother,
I was some pleased."
"Did you have a twin?" Roland asked.
"Aye, Verna," Eisenhart said. He smiled easily and often and did so now beneath his great graying bush of a
mustache, but it was painful—the smile of a man who doesn't want you to know he's bleeding somewhere
inside his clothes. "She was lovely as dawn, so she was. Passed on these ten year or more. Went painful early,
as the roont ones often do."
"I'm sorry."
"Say thankya."
The sun was going down red in the southwest, turning the yard the color of blood. There was a line of rockers
on the porch. Eisenhart was settled in one of them. Roland sat cross-legged on the boards, housekeeping
Eisenhart's inheritance. That the pistols would probably never fire meant nothing to the gunslinger's hands,
which had been trained to this work long ago and still found it soothing.
Now, with a speed that made the rancher blink, Roland put the weapons back together in a rapid series of
clicks and clacks. He set them aside on a square of sheepskin, wiped his fingers on a rag, and sat in the rocker
next to Eisenhart's. He guessed that on more ordinary evenings, Eisenhart and his wife sat out here side by
side, watching the sun abandon the day.
Roland rummaged through his purse for his tobacco pouch, found it, and built himself a cigarette with
Callahan's fresh, sweet tobacco. Rosalita had added her own present, a little stack of delicate cornshuck
wraps she called "pulls." Roland thought they wrapped as good as any cigarette paper, and he paused a
moment to admire the finished product before tipping the end into the match Eisenhart had popped alight
with one horny thumbnail. The gunslinger dragged deep and exhaled a long plume that rose but slowly in the
evening air, which was still and surprisingly muggy for summer's end. "Good," he said, and nodded.
"Aye? May it do ya fine. I never got the taste for it myself."
The barn was far bigger than the ranchhouse, at least fifty yards long and fifty feet high. The front was
festooned with reapcharms in honor of the season; stuffy-guys with huge sharproot heads stood guard. From
above the open bay over the main doors, the butt of the head-beam jutted. A rope had been fastened around
this. Below, in the yard, the boys had built a good-sized stack of hay. Oy stood on one side of it, Andy on the
other. They were both looking up as Benny Slightman grabbed the rope, gave it a tug, then retreated back
into the loft and out of sight. Oy began to bark in anticipation. A moment later Benny came pelting forward
with the rope wrapped in his fists and his hair flying out behind him.
"Gilead and the Eld!" he cried, and leaped from the bay. He swung into the red sunset air with his shadow
trailing behind him.
"Ben-Ben! "Oy barked. "Ben-Ben-Ben!"
The boy let go, flew into the haystack, disappeared, then popped up laughing. Andy offered him a metal hand
but Benny ignored it, flopping out onto the hardpacked earth. Oy ran around him, barking.
"Do they always call so at play?" Roland asked.
Eisenhart snorted laughter. "Not at all! Usually it's a cry of Oriza, or Man Jesus, or 'hail the Calla,' or all
three. Your boy's been filling Slightman's boy full of tales, thinks I."
Roland ignored the slightly disapproving note in this and watched Jake reel in the rope. Benny lay on the
ground, playing dead, until Oy licked his face. Then he sat up, giggling. Roland had no doubt that if the boy
had gone off-course, Andy would have snagged him.
To one side of the barn was a remuda of work-horses, perhaps twenty in all. A trio of cowpokes in chaps and
battered shor'boots were leading the last half-dozen mounts toward it. On the other side of the yard was a
slaughter-pen filled with steers. In the following weeks they would be butchered and sent downriver on the
trading boats.
Jake retreated into the loft, then came pelting forward. "New York!" he shouted. "Times Square! Empire State
Building! Twin Towers! Statue of Liberty!" And he launched himself into space along the arc of the rope.
They watched him disappear, laughing, into the pile of hay.
"Any particular reason you wanted your other two to stay with the Jaffordses?" Eisenhart asked. He spoke
idly, but Roland thought this was a question that interested him more than a little.
"Best we spread ourselves around. Let as many as possible get a good look at us. Time is short. Decisions
must be made." All of which was true, but there was more, and Eisenhart probably knew it. He was shrewder
than Overholser. He was also dead set against standing up to the Wolves—at least so far. This didn't keep
Roland from liking the man, who was big and honest and possessed of an earthy countryman's sense of
humor. Roland thought he might come around, if he could be shown they had a chance to win.
On their way out to the Rocking B, they had visited half a dozen smallhold farms along the river, where rice
was the main crop. Eisenhart had performed the introductions good-naturedly enough. At each stop Roland
had asked the two questions he had asked the previous night, at the Pavilion: Will you open to us, if we open
to you ? Do you see us for what we are, and accept us for what we do? All of them had answered yes.
Eisenhart had also answered yes. But Roland knew better than to ask the third question of any. There was no
need to, not yet. They still had over three weeks.
"We bide, gunslinger," Eisenhart said. "Even in the face of the Wolves, we bide. Once there was Gilead and
now there's Gilead nummore—none knows better'n you—but still we bide. If we stand against the Wolves,
all that may change. To you and yours, what happens along the Crescent might not mean's'much as a fart in a
high wind one way or't'other. If ye win and survive, you'll move along. If ye lose and die, we have nowhere
to go."
"But—"
Eisenhart raised his hand. "Hear me, I beg. Would'ee hear me?"
Roland nodded, resigned to it. And for him to speak was probably for the best. Beyond them, the boys were
running back into the barn for another leap. Soon the coming dark would put an end to their game. The
gunslinger wondered how Eddie and Susannah were making out. Had they spoken to Tian's Gran-pere yet?
And if so, had he told them anything of value?
"Suppose they send fifty or even sixty, as they have before, many and many-a? And suppose we wipe them
out? And then, suppose that a week or a month later, after you're gone, they send five hundred against us?"
Roland considered the question. As he was doing so, Margaret Eisenhart joined them. She was a slim woman,
fortyish, small-breasted, dressed in jeans and a shirt of gray silk. Her hair, pulled back in a bun against her
neck, was black threaded with white. One hand hid beneath her apron.
"That's a fair question," she said, "but this might not be a fair time to ask it. Give him and his friends a week,
why don't you, to peek about and see what they may see."
Eisenhart gave his sai a look that was half humorous and half irritated. "Do I tell'ee how to run your kitchen,
woman? When to cook and when to wash?"
"Only four times a week," said she. Then, seeing Roland rise from the rocker next to her husband's: "Nay, sit
still, I beg you. I've been in a chair this last hour, peeling sharproot with Edna, yon's auntie." She nodded in
Benny's direction. "It's good to be on my feet." She watched, smiling, as the boys swung out into the pile of
hay and landed, laughing, while Oy danced and barked. "Vaughn and I have never had to face the full horror
of it before, Roland. We had six, all twins, but all grown in the time between. So we may not have all the
understanding needed to make such a decision as you ask."
"Being lucky doesn't make a man stupid," Eisenhart said. "Quite the contrary, is what I think. Cool eyes see
clear."
"Perhaps," she said, watching the boys run back into the barn. They were bumping shoulders and laughing,
each trying to get to the ladder first. "Perhaps, aye. But the heart must call for its rights, too, and a man or
woman who doesn't listen is a fool. Sometimes 'tis best to swing on the rope, even if it's too dark to see if the
hay's there or not."
Roland reached out and touched her hand. "I couldn't have said better myself."
She gave him a small, distracted smile. It was only a moment before she returned her attention to the boys,
but it was long enough for Roland to see that she was frightened. Terrified, in fact.
"Ben, Jake!" she called. "Enough! Time to wash and then come in! There's pie for those can eat it, and cream
to go on top!"
Benny came to the open bay. "My Da' says we can sleep in my tent over on the bluff, sai, if it's all right with
you."
Margaret Eisenhart looked at her husband. Eisenhart nodded. "All right," she said, "tent it is and give you joy
of it, but come in now if you'd have pie. Last warning! And wash first, mind'ee! Hands and faces!"
"Aye, say thankya," Benny said. "Can Oy have pie?"
Margaret Eisenhart thudded the pad of her left hand against her brow, as if she had a headache. The right,
Roland was interested to note, stayed beneath her apron. "Aye," she said, "pie for the bumbler, too, as I'm
sure he's Arthur Eld in disguise and will reward me with jewels and gold and the healing touch."
"Thankee-sai,"Jake called. "Could we have one more swing first? It's the quickest way down."
"I'll catch them if they fly wrong, Margaret-sai," Andy said. His eyes flashed blue, then dimmed. He appeared
to be smiling. To Roland, the robot seemed to have two personalities, one old-maidish, the other harmlessly
cozening. The gunslinger liked neither, and understood why perfectly. He'd come to mistrust machinery of all
kinds, and especially the kind that walked and talked.
"Well," Eisenhart said, "the broken leg usually hides in the last caper, but have on, if ye must."
They had on, and there were no broken legs. Both boys hit the haypile squarely, popped up laughing and
looking at each other, then footraced for the kitchen with Oy running behind them. Appearing to herd them.
"It's wonderful how quickly children can become friends," Margaret Eisenhart said, but she didn't look like
one contemplating something wonderful. She looked sad.
"Yes," Roland said. "Wonderful it is." He laid his purse across his lap, seemed on the verge of pulling the
knot that anchored the laces, then didn't. "Which are your men good with?" he asked Eisenhart. "Bow or bah?
For I know it's surely not the rifle or revolver."
"We favor the bah," Eisenhart said. "Fit the bolt, wind it, aim it, fire it, 'tis done."
Roland nodded. It was as he had expected. Not good, because the bah was rarely accurate at a distance
greater than twenty-five yards, and that only on a still day. On one when a strong breeze was kicking up… or,
gods help us, a gale…
But Eisenhart was looking at his wife. Looking at her with a kind of reluctant admiration. She stood with her
eyebrows raised, looking back at her man. Looking him back a question. What was this? It surely had to do
with the hand under the apron.
"Garn, tell im," Eisenhart said. Then he pointed an almost-angry finger at Roland, like the barrel of a pistol.
"It changes nothing, though. Nothing! Say thankya!" This last with the lips drawn back in a kind of savage
grin. Roland was more puzzled than ever, but he felt a faint stirring of hope. It might be false hope, probably
would be, but anything was better than the worries and confusions—and the aches—that had beset him lately.
"Nay," Margaret said with maddening modesty. " 'Tis not my place to tell. To show, perhaps, but not to tell."
Eisenhart sighed, considered, then turned to Roland. "Ye danced the rice-dance," he said, "so ye know Lady
Oriza."
Roland nodded. The Lady of the Rice, in some places considered a goddess, in others a heroine, in some,
both.
"And ye know how she did away with Gray Dick, who killed her father?"
Roland nodded again.
TWO
According to the story—a good one that he must remember to tell Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, when (and if)
there was once more time for storytelling—Lady Oriza invited Gray Dick, a famous outlaw prince, to a vast
dinner party in Waydon, her castle by the River Send. She wanted to forgive him for the murder of her father,
she said, for she had accepted the Man Jesus into her heart and such was according to His teachings.
Ye'll get me there and kill me, be I stupid enough to come, said Gray Dick.
Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it. All weapons will be left outside the castle. And when we sit in
the banqueting hall below, there will be only me, at one end of the table, and thee, at the other.
You'll conceal a dagger in your sleeve or a bola beneath your dress, said Gray Dick. And if you don't, I will.
Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it, for we shall both be naked.
At this Gray Dick was overcome with lust, for Lady Oriza was fair. It excited him to think of his prick getting
hard at the sight of her bare breasts and bush, and no breeches on him to conceal his excitement from her
maiden's eye. And he thought he understood why she would make such a proposal. His haughty heart will
undo him, Lady Oriza told her maid (whose name was Marian and who went on to have many fanciful
adventures of her own).
The Lady was right. I've killed Lord Grenfall, wiliest lord in all the river baronies, Gray Dick told himself.
