Wolves of the Calla

She thought about it, then smiled. 'Killer aim,' she said. 'Every one.'

'Can you teach them that crosshand throw?'

Susannah considered the question. You could teach anyone just about anything, given world enough and time, but they had neither. Only thirteen days left now, and by the day the Sisters of Oriza (including their newest member, Susannah of New York) met for the exhibition in Pere Callahan's back yard, there would be only a week and a half. The crosshand throw had come naturally to her, as everything about shooting had. But the others…

'Rosalita will learn it,' she said at last. 'Margaret Eisenhart could learn it, but she might get flustered at the wrong time. Zalia? No. Best she throw one plate at a time, always with her right hand. She's a little slower, but I guarantee every plate she throws will drink something's blood.'

'Yeah,' Eddie said. 'Until a sneetch homes in on her and blows her out of her corset, that is.'

Susannah ignored this. 'We can hurt them, Roland. Thou knows we can.'

Roland nodded. What he'd seen had encouraged him mightily, especially in light of what Eddie had told him. Susannah and Jake also knew Gran- pere's ancient secret now. And, speaking of Jake…

'You're very quiet today,' Roland said to the boy. 'Is everything all right?'

'I do fine, thankya,' Jake said. He had been watching Andy. Thinking of how Andy had rocked the baby. Thinking that if Tian and Zalia and the other kids all died and Andy was left to raise Aaron, baby Aaron would probably die within six months. Die, or turn into the weirdest kid in the universe. Andy would diaper him, Andy would feed him all the correct stuff, Andy would change him when he needed changing and burp him if he needed burping, and there would be all sorts of cradle-songs. Each would be sung perfectly and none would be propelled by a mother's love. Or a father's. Andy was just Andy, Messenger Robot, Many Other Functions. Baby Aaron would be better off being raised by… well, by wolves.

This thought led him back to the night he and Benny had tented out (they hadn't done so since; the weather had turned chilly). The night he had seen Andy and Benny's Da' palavering. Then Benny's Da' had gone wading across the river. Headed east.

Headed in the direction of Thunderclap.

'Jake, are you sure you're okay?' Susannah asked.

'Yessum,' Jake said, knowing this would probably make her laugh. It did, and Jake laughed with her, but he was still thinking of Benny's Da'. The spectacles Benny's Da' wore. Jake was pretty sure he was the only one in town who had them. Jake had asked him about that one day when the three of them had been riding in one of the Rocking B's two north fields, looking out strays. Benny's Da' had told him a story about trading a beautiful true-threaded colt for the specs-from one of the lake-mart boats it had been, back when Benny's sissa had been alive, Oriza bless her. He had done it even though all of the cowpokes-even Vaughn Eisenhart himself, do ya not see-had told him such spectacles never worked; they were no more useful than Andy's fortunes. But Ben Slightman had tried them on, and they had changed everything. All at once, for the first time since he'd been maybe seven, he'd been able to really see the world.

He had polished his specs on his shirt as they rode, held them up to the sky so that twin spots of light swam on his cheeks, then put them back on. 'If I ever lose em or break em, I don't know what I'd do,' he'd said. 'I got along without such just fine for twenty years or more, but a person gets used to something better in one rip of a hurry.'

Jake thought it was a good story. He was sure Susannah would have believed it (assuming the singularity of Slightman's spectacles had occurred to her in the first place). He had an idea Roland would have believed it, too. Slightman told it in just the right way: a man who still appreciated his good fortune and didn't mind letting folks know that he'd been right about something while quite a number of other people, his boss among them, had been wide of the mark. Even Eddie might have swallowed it. The only thing wrong with Slightman's story was that it wasn't true. Jake didn't know what the real deal was, his touch didn't go that deep, but he knew that much. And it worried him.

Probably nothing, you know. Probably he just got them in some way that wouldn't sound so good. For all you know, one of the Manni brought them back from some other world, and Benny's Da' stole them.

That was one possibility; if pressed, Jake could have come up with half a dozen more. He was an imaginative boy.

Still, when added to what he'd seen by the river, it worried him. What kind of business could Eisenhart's foreman have on the far side of the Whye? Jake didn't know. And still, each time he thought to raise this subject with Roland, something kept him quiet.

And after giving him a hard time about keeping secrets!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But-

But what, little trailhand?

But Benny, that was what. Benny was the problem. Or maybe it was Jake himself who was actually the problem. He'd never been much good at making friends, and now he had a good one. A real one. The thought of getting Benny's Da' in trouble made him feel sick to his stomach.

SEVEN

Two days later, at five o' the clock, Rosalita, Zalia, Margaret Eisenhart, Sarey Adams, and Susannah Dean gathered in the field just west of Rosa's neat privy. There were a lot of giggles and not a few bursts of nervous, shrieky laughter. Roland kept his distance, and instructed Eddie and Jake to do the same. Best to let them get it out of their systems.

Set against the rail fence, ten feet apart from each other, were stuffies with plump sharproot heads. Each head was wrapped in a gunnysack which had been tied to make it look like the hood of a cloak. At the foot of each guy were three baskets. One was filled with more sharproot. Another was filled with potatoes. The contents of the third had elicited groans and cries of protest. These three were filled with radishes. Roland told them to quit their mewling; he'd considered peas, he said. None of them (even Susannah) was entirely sure he was joking.

Callahan, today dressed in jeans and a stockman's vest of many pockets, ambled out onto the porch, where Roland sat smoking and waiting for the ladies to settle down. Jake and Eddie were playing draughts close by.

'Vaughn Eisenhart's out front,' the Pere told Roland. 'Says he'll go on down to Tooky's and have a beer, but not until he passes a word with'ee.'

Roland sighed, got up, and walked through the house to the front. Eisenhart was sitting on the seat of a one-horse fly, shor'boots propped on the splashboard, looking moodily off toward Callahan's church.

'G'day to ya, Roland,' he said.

Wayne Overholser had given Roland a cowboy's broad-brimmed hat some days before. He tipped it to the rancher and waited.

'I guess you'll be sending the feather soon,' Eisenhart said. 'Calling a meeting, if it please ya.'

Roland allowed as how that was so. It was not the town's business to tell knights of Eld how to do their duty, but Roland would tell them what duty was to be done. That much he owed them.

'I want you to know that when the time comes, I'll touch it and send it on. And come the meeting, I'll say aye.'

'Say thankya,' Roland replied. He was, in fact, touched. Since joining with Jake, Eddie, and Susannah, it seemed his heart had grown. Sometimes he was sorry. Mostly he wasn't.

'Took won't do neither.'

'No,' Roland agreed. 'As long as business is good, the Tooks of the world never touch the feather. Nor say aye.'

'Overholser's with him.'

This was a blow. Not an entirely unexpected one, but he'd hoped Overholser would come around. Roland had all the support he needed, however, and supposed Overholser knew it. If he was wise, the farmer would just sit and wait for it to be over, one way or the other. If he meddled, he would likely not see another year's crops into his barns.

'I wanted ye to know one thing,' Eisenhart said. 'I'm in with'ee because of my wife, and my wife's in with'ee because she's decided she wants to hunt. This is what all such things as the dish-throwing comes to in the end, a woman telling her man what'll be and what won't. It ain't the natural way. A man's meant to rule his woman. Except in the matter of the babbies, o'course.'

'She gave up everything she was raised to when she took you to husband,' Roland said. 'Now it's your turn to give a little.'

'Don't ye think I know that? But if you get her killed, Roland, you'll take my curse with you when ye leave the Calla. If'ee do. No matter how many children ye save.'

Roland, who had been cursed before, nodded. 'If ka wills, Vaughn, she'll come back to you.'

'Aye. But remember what I said.'

'I will.'

Eisenhart slapped the reins on the horse's back and the fly began to roll.

EIGHT

Each woman halved a sharproot head at forty yards, fifty yards, and sixty.

'Hit the head as high up into the hood as you can get,' Roland said. 'Hitting them low will do no good.'

'Armor, I suppose?' Rosalita asked.

'Aye,' Roland said, although that was not the entire truth. He wouldn't tell them what he now understood to be the entire truth until they needed to know it.

Next came the taters. Sarey Adams got hers at forty yards, clipped it at fifty, and missed entirely at sixty; her dish sailed high. She uttered a curse that was far from ladylike, then walked head-down to the side of the privy. Here she sat to watch the rest of the competition. Roland went over and sat beside her. He saw a tear trickling from the corner of her left eye and down her wind-roughened cheek.

'I've let ye down, stranger. Say sorry.'