stood between two walls of pink adobe that ran into the scree for a
distance of about twenty feet on either side of the road and then
simply stopped. Close the gate, lock it with many locks, and all
that meant was a short walk around one bit of adobe wall or the
other.
Beyond the gate, Roland could see what looked in most respects
like a perfectly ordinary High Street - an inn, two saloons (one of
which was called The Bustling Pig; the sign over the other was too
faded to read), a mercantile, a smithy, a Gathering Hall. There was
also a small but rather lovely wooden building with a modest bell-
tower on top, a sturdy fieldstone foundation on bottom, and a gold-
painted cross on its double doors. The cross, like the one over the
gate, marked this as a worshipping place for those who held to the
Jesus-man. This wasn't a common religion in Mid-World, but far
from unknown; that same thing could have been said about most
forms of worship in those days, including the worship of Baal,
Asmodeus, and a hundred others. Faith, like everything else in the
world these days, had moved on. As far as Roland was concerned,
God o' the Cross was just another religion which taught that love
and murder were inextricably bound together - that in the end, God
always drank blood.
Meanwhile, there was the singing hum of insects which sounded
almost like crickets. The dreamlike tinkle of the bells. And that
queer wooden thumping, like a fist on a door. Or on a coffin top.
Something here's a long way from right, the gunslinger thought.
Ware, Roland; this place has a reddish odour.
He led Topsy through the gate with its adornments of dead flowers
and down the High Street. On the porch of the mercantile, where
the old men should have congregated to discuss crops, politics, and
the follies of the younger generation, there stood only a line of
empty rockers. Lying beneath one, as if dropped from a careless
(and long-departed) hand, was a charred corncob pipe. The
hitching-rack in front of The Bustling Pig stood empty; the
windows of the saloon itself were dark. One of the batwing doors
had been yanked off and stood propped against the side of the
building; the other hung ajar, its faded green slats splattered with
maroon stuff that might have been paint but probably wasn't.
The shopfront of the livery stable stood intact, like the face of a
ruined woman who has access to good cosmetics, but the double
barn behind it was a charred skeleton. That fire must have
happened on a rainy day, the gunslinger thought, or the whole
damned town would have gone up in flames; a jolly spin and raree
for anyone around to see it.
To his right now, halfway up to where the street opened into the
town square, was the church. There were grassy borders on both
sides, one separating the church from the town's Gathering Hall,
the other from the little house set aside for the preacher and his
family (if this was one of the Jesus-sects which allowed its
shamans to have wives and families, that was; some of them,
clearly administered by lunatics, demanded at least the appearance
