Wolves of the Calla

'More often,' Susannah said.

'Tell ya my middle name's Dale,' Overholser said, 'although if anyone ever explained me why, it's slipped my mind. I lost my folks when I was young.'

'Sorry for your loss,' Susannah said, happy to see that Eddie was moving away. Probably to tell Jake she'd been right about the middle name: Wayne Dale Overholser. Equals nineteen.

'Is that young man trig or a fool?' Overholser asked Susannah. 'Tell me, I beg, for I canna' tell myself.'

'A little of both,' she said.

'No question about this push-chair, though, would you say? It's trig as a compass.'

'Say thankya,' she said, then gave a small inward sigh of relief. It had come out sounding all right, probably because she hadn't exactly planned on saying it.

'Where did it come from?'

'Back on our way a good distance,' she said. This turn of the conversation did not please her much. She thought it was Roland's job to tell their history (or not tell it). He was their dinh. Besides, what was told by only one could not be contradicted. Still, she thought she could say a little more. 'There's a thinny. We came from the other side of that, where things are much different.' She craned around to look at him. His cheeks and neck had flushed, but really, she thought, he was doing very well for a man who had to be deep into his fifties. 'Do you know what I'm talking about?'

'Yar,' he said, hawked, and spat off to the left. 'Not that I've seen or heard it myself, you understand. I never wander far; too much to do on the farm. Those of the Calla aren't woodsy people as a rule, anyway, do ya kennit.'

Oh yes, I think I kennit, Susannah thought, spying another blaze roughly the size of a dinner plate. The unfortunate tree so marked would be lucky to survive the coming winter.

'Andy's told of the thinny many and many-a. Makes a sound, he says, but can't tell what it is.'

'Who's Andy?'

'Ye'll meet him for y'self soon enough, sai. Are'ee from this Calla York, like yer friends?'

'Yes,' she said, again on her guard. He swung her wheelchair around a hoary old ironwood. The trees were sparser now, and the smell of cooking much stronger. Meat… and coffee. Her stomach rumbled.

'And they be not gunslingers,' Overholser said, nodding at Jake and Eddie. 'You'll not tell me so, surely.'

'You must decide that for yourself when the time comes,' Susannah said.

He made no reply for a few moments. The wheelchair rumbled over a rock outcropping. Ahead of them, Oy padded along between Jake and Benny Slightman, who had made friends with boyhood's eerie speed. She wondered if it was a good idea. For the two boys were different. Time might show them how much, and to their sorrow.

'He scared me,' Overholser said. He spoke in a voice almost too low to hear. As if to himself. ' 'Twere his eyes, I think. Mostly his eyes.'

'Would you go on as you have, then?' Susannah asked. The question was far from as idle as she hoped it sounded, but she was still starded by the fury of his response.

'Are'ee mad, woman? Course not-not if I saw a way out of the box we're in. Hear me well! That boy'-he pointed at Tian Jaffords, walking ahead of them with his wife-'that boy as much as accused me of running yella. Had to make sure they all knew I didn't have any children of the age the Wolves fancy, aye. Not like he has, kennit. But do'ee think I'm a fool that can't count the cost?'

'Not me,' Susannah said, calmly.

'But do he? I halfway think so.' Overholser spoke as a man does when pride and fear are fighting it out in his head. 'Do I want to give the babbies to the Wolves? Babbies that're sent back roont to be a drag on the town ever after? No! But neither do I want some hardcase to lead us all to blunder wi' no way back!'

She looked over her shoulder at him and saw a fascinating thing. He now wanted to say yes. To find a reason to say yes. Roland had brought him that far, and with hardly a word. Had only… well, had only looked at him.

There was movement in the corner of her eye. 'Holy Christl' Eddie cried. Susannah's hand darted for a gun that wasn't diere. She turned forward in the chair again. Coming down the slope toward them, moving with a prissy care that she couldn't help find amusing even in her startlement, was a metal man at least seven feet high.

Jake's hand had gone to the docker's clutch and the butt of the gun that hung thhere.

'Easy, Jake!' Roland said.

The metal man, eyes flashing blue, stopped in front of them. It stood perfectly still for perhaps ten seconds, plenty of time for Susannah to read what was stamped on its chest. North Central Positronics, she thought, back for another curtain call. Not to mention LaMerk Industries.

Then the robot raised one silver arm, placing a silver hand against its stainless-steel forehead. 'Hile, gunslinger, come from afar,' it said. 'Long days and pleasant nights.'

Roland raised his fingers to his own forehead. 'May you have twice the number, Andy-sai.'

'Thankee.' Clickings from its deep and incomprehensible guts. Then it leaned forward toward Roland, blue eyes flashing brighter. Susannah saw Eddie's hand creep to the sandalwood grip of the ancient revolver he wore. Roland, however, never flinched.

'I've made a goodish meal, gunslinger. Many good things from the fullness of the earth, aye.'

'Say thankee, Andy.'

'May it do ya fine.' The robot's guts clicked again. 'In the meantime, would you perhaps care to hear your horoscope?'

Chapter VI: The Way of the Eld

ONE

At around two in the afternoon of that day, the ten of them sat down to what Roland called a rancher's dinner. 'During the morning chores, you look forward with love,' he told his friends later. 'During the evening ones, you look back with nostalgia.'

Eddie thought he was joking, but with Roland you could never be completely sure. What humor he had was dry to the point of desiccation.

It wasn't the best meal Eddie had ever had, the banquet put on by the old people in River Crossing still held pride of place in that regard, but after weeks in the woods, subsisting on gun-slinger burritos (and shitting hard little parcels of rabbit turds maybe twice a week), it was fine fare indeed. Andy served out whopping steaks done medium rare and smothered in mushroom gravy. There were beans on the side, wrapped things like tacos, and roasted corn. Eddie tried an ear of this and found it tough but tasty. There was coleslaw which, Tian Jaffords was at pains to tell them, had been made by his own wife's hands. There was also a wonderful pudding called strawberry cosy. And of course there was coffee. Eddie guessed that, among the four of them, they must have put away at least a gallon. Even Oy had a little. Jake put down a saucer of the dark, strong brew. Oy sniffed, said 'Coff!' and then lapped it up quickly and efficiently.

There was no serious talk during the meal ('Food and palaver don't mix' was but one of Roland's many little nuggets of wisdom), and yet Eddie learned a great deal from Jaffords and his wife, mostly about how life was lived out here in what Tian and Zalia called 'the borderlands.' Eddie hoped Susannah (sitting by Overholser) and Jake (with the youngster Eddie was already coming to think of as Benny the Kid) were learning half as much. He would have expected Roland to sit with Callahan, but Callahan sat with no one. He took his food off a little distance from all of them, blessed himself, and ate alone. Not very much, either. Mad at Overholser for taking over the show, or just a loner by nature? Hard to tell on such short notice, but if someone had put a gun to his head, Eddie would have voted for the latter.

What struck Eddie with the most force was how goddam civilized this part of the world was. It made Lud, with its warring Grays and Pubes, look like the Cannibal Isles in a boy's sea-story. These people had roads, law enforcement, and a system of government that made Eddie think of New England town meetings. There was a Town Gathering Hall and a feather which seemed to be some sort of authority symbol. If you wanted to call a meeting, you had to send the feather around. If enough people touched it when it came to their place, there was a meeting. If they didn't, there wasn't. Two people were sent to carry the feather, and their count was trusted without question. Eddie doubted if it would work in New York, but for a place like this it seemed a fine way to run things.

There were at least seventy other Callas, stretching in a mild arc north and south of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Calla Bryn Lockwood to the south and Calla Amity to the north were also farms and ranches. They also had to endure the periodic depredations of the Wolves. Farther south were Calla Bryn Bouse and Calla Staffel, containing vast tracts of ranchland, and Jaffords said they suffered the Wolves as well… at least he thought so. Farther north, Calla Sen Pinder and Calla Sen Chre, which were farms and sheep.

'Farms of a good size,' Tian said, 'but they're smaller as ye go north, kennit, until ye're in the lands where the snows fall- so I'm told; I've never seen it myself-and wonderful cheese is made.'

'Those of the north wear wooden shoes, or so 'tis said.' Zalia told Eddie, looking a little wistful. She herself wore scuffed clodhoppers called shor'boots.

The people of the Callas traveled little, but the roads were there if they wanted to travel, and trade was brisk. In addition to them, there was the Whye, sometimes called Big River. This ran south of Calla Bryn Sturgis all the way to the South Seas, or so 'twas said. There were mining Callas and manufacturing Callas (where things were made by steam-press and even, aye, by electricity) and even one Calla devoted to nothing but pleasure: gambling and wild, amusing rides, and…

But here Tian, who had been talking, felt Zalia's eyes on him and went back to the pot for more beans. And a conciliatory dish of his wife's slaw.

'So,' Eddie said, and drew a curve in the dirt. 'These are the borderlands. The Callas. An arc that goes north and south for… how far, Zalia?'