Wolves of the Calla

Callahan came first. Behind him were two men, one who looked about thirty and another who looked to Susannah nearly twice that. The older man had heavy cheeks that would be jowls in another five years or so, and lines carving their courses from the sides of his nose down to his chin. 'I-want lines,' her father would have called them (and Dan Holmes had had a pretty good set of his own). The younger man wore a battered sombrero, the older a clean white Stetson that made Susannah want to smile—it looked like the kind of hat the good guy would wear in an old black-and-white Western movie. Still, she guessed a lid like that didn't come cheap, and she thought the man wearing it had to be Wayne Overholser. 'The big farmer,' Roland had called him. The one that had to be convinced, according to Callahan.

But not by us , Susannah thought, which was sort of a relief. The tight mouth, the shrewd eyes, and most of all those deep-carved lines (there was another slashed vertically into his brow, just above the eyes) suggested sai Overholser would be a pain in the ass when it came to convincing.

Just behind these two—specifically behind the younger of the two—there came a tall, handsome woman, probably not black but nonetheless nearly as dark-skinned as Susannah herself. Bringing up the rear was an earnest-looking man in spectacles and farmer's clothes and a likely-looking boy probably two or three years older than Jake. The resemblance between this pair was impossible to miss; they had to be Slightman the Elder and Younger.

Boy may be older than Jake in years , she thought, but he's got a soft bok about him, all the same . True, but not necessarily a bad thing. Jake had seen far too much for a boy not yet in his teens. Done too much, as well.

Overholser looked at their guns (Roland and Eddie each wore one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips; the .44 Ruger from New York City hung under Jake's arm in what Roland called a docker's clutch), then at Roland. He made a perfunctory salute, his half-closed fist skimming somewhere at least close to his forehead. There was no bow. If Roland was offended by this, it didn't show on his face. Nothing showed on his face but polite interest.

'Hile, gunslinger,' the man who had been walking beside Overholser said, and this one actually dropped to one knee, with his head down and his brow resting on his fist. 'I am Tian Jaffords, son of Luke. This lady is my wife, Zalia.'

'Hile,' Roland said. 'Let me be Roland to you, if it suits. May your days be long upon the earth, sai Jaffords.'

'Tian. Please. And may you and your friends have twice the—'

'I'm Overholser,' the man in the white Stetson broke in brusquely. 'We've come to meet you—you and your friends— at the request of Callahan and young Jaffords. I'd pass the formalities and get down to business as soon as possible, do ya take no offense, I beg.'

'Ask pardon but that's not quite how it is,' Jaffords said. 'There was a meeting, and the men of the Calla voted—'

Overholser broke in again. He was, Susannah thought, just that kind of man. She doubted he was even aware he was doing it. 'The town, yes. The Calla. I've come along with every wish to do right by my town and my neighbors, but this is a busy time for me, none busier—'

'Charyou tree,' Roland said mildly, and although Susannah knew a deeper meaning for this phrase, one that made her back prickle, Overholser's eyes lit up. She had her first inkling then of how this day was going to go.

'Come reap, yessir, say thankee.' Off to one side, Callahan was gazing into the woods with a kind of studied patience. Behind Overholser, Tian Jaffords and his wife exchanged an embarrassed glance. The Slightmans only waited and watched. 'You understand that much, anyway.'

'In Gilead we were surrounded by farms and freeholds,' Roland said. 'I got my share of hay and corn in barn. Aye, and sharproot, too.'

Overholser was giving Roland a grin that Susannah found fairly offensive. It said, We know better than that, don't we, sail We're both men of the world, after all . 'Where are you from really, sai Roland?'

'My friend, you need to see an audiologist,' Eddie said.

Overholser looked at him, puzzled. 'Beg-my-ear?'

Eddie made a there, you see ? gesture and nodded. 'Exactly what I mean.'

'Be still, Eddie,' Roland said. Still as mild as milk. 'Sai Overholser, we may take a moment to exchange names and speak a good wish or two, surely. For that is how civilized, kindly folk behave, is it not?' Roland paused—a brief, underlining pause— and then said, 'With harriers it may be different, but there are no harriers here.'

Overholser's lips pressed together and he looked hard at Roland, ready to take offense. He saw nothing in the gunslinger's face that offered it, and relaxed again. 'Thankee,' he said. 'Tian and Zalia Jaffords, as told —'

Zalia curtsied, spreading invisible skirts to either side of her battered corduroy pants.

'—and here are Ben Slightman the Elder and Benny the Younger.'

The father raised his fist to his forehead and nodded. The son, his face a study in awe (it was mostly the guns, Susannah surmised), bowed with his right leg out stiffly in front of him and the heel planted.

'The Old Fella you already know,' Overholser finished, speaking with exactly the sort of offhand contempt at which Overholser himself would have taken deep offense, had it been directed toward his valued self. Susannah supposed that when you were the big farmer, you got used to talking just about any way you wanted. She wondered how far he might push Roland before discovering that he hadn't been pushing at all. Because some men couldn't be pushed. They might go along with you for awhile, but then—

'These are my trailmates,' Roland said. 'Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers, of New York. And this is Susannah.' He gestured at her without turning in her direction. Overholser's face took on a knowing, intensely male look Susannah had seen before. Detta Walker had had a way of wiping that look off men's faces that she didn't believe sai Overholser would care for at all.

Nonetheless, she gave Overholser and the rest of them a demure little smile and made her own invisible-skirts curtsy. She thought hers as graceful in its way as the one made by Zalia Jaffords, but of course a curtsy didn't look quite the same when you were missing your lower legs and feet. The newcomers had marked the part of her that was gone, of course, but their feelings on that score didn't interest her much. She did wonder what they thought of her wheelchair, though, the one Eddie had gotten her in Topeka, where Blaine the Mono had finished up. These folks would never have seen the like of it.

Callahan may have , she thought. Because Callahans from our side. He —

The boy said, 'Is that a bumbler?'

'Hush, do ya,' Slightman said, sounding almost shocked that his son had spoken.

'That's okay,' Jake said. 'Yeah, he's a bumbler. Oy, go to him.' He pointed at Ben the Younger. Oy trotted around the campfire to where the newcomer stood and looked up at the boy with his gold-ringed eyes.

'I never saw a tame one before,' Tian said. 'Have heard of em, of course, but the world has moved on.'

'Mayhap not all of it has moved on,' Roland said. He looked at Overholser. 'Mayhap some of the old ways still hold.'

'Can I pat him?' the boy asked Jake. 'Will he bite?'

'You can and he won't.'

As Slightman the Younger dropped on his hunkers in front of Oy, Susannah certainly hoped Jake was right. Having a billy-bumbler chomp off this kid's nose would not set them on in any style at all.

But Oy suffered himself to be stroked, even stretching his long neck up so he could sample the odor of Slightman's face. The boy laughed. 'What did you say his name was?'