Wolves of the Calla

business farther along the Path of the Beam.' He observed Tian's and Zalia's crestfallen faces for a moment, then said: 'I don't think that's likely, you know. There's usually a way.'

'May the meeting receive your judgment favorably,' Over-holser said.

Roland hesitated. This was the point where he could hammer the truth home, should he want to. If these people still believed a tet of gunslingers would be bound by what farmers and ranchers decided in a public meeting, they really had lost the shape of the world as it once was. But was that so bad? In the end, matters would play out and become part of his long history. Or not. If not, he would finish his history and his quest in Calla Bryn Sturgis, moldering beneath a stone. Perhaps not even that; perhaps he'd finish in a dead heap somewhere east of town, he and his friends with him, so much rotting meat to be picked over by the crows and the rusties. Ka would tell. It always did.

Meanwhile, they were looking at him.

Roland stood up, wincing at a hard flare of pain in his right hip as he did so. Taking their cues from him, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake also got to their feet.

'We're well-met,' Roland said. 'As for what lies ahead, there will be water if God wills it.'

Callahan said, 'Amen.'

Chapter VII: Todash

ONE

'Gray horses,' Eddie said.

'Aye,' Roland agreed.

'Fifty or sixty of them, all on gray horses.'

'Aye, so they did say.'

'And didn't think it the least bit strange,' Eddie mused.

'No. They didn't seem to.'

'Is it?'

'Fifty or sixty horses, all the same color? I'd say so, yes.'

'These Calla-folk raise horses themselves.'

'Aye.'

'Brought some for us to ride.' Eddie, who had never ridden a horse in his life, was grateful that at least had been put off, but didn't say so.

'Aye, tethered over the hill.'

'You know that for a fact?'

'Smelled em. I imagine the robot had the keeping of them.'

'Why would these folks take fifty or sixty horses, all the same shade, as a matter of course?'

'Because they don't really think about the Wolves or anything to do with them,' Roland said. 'They're too busy being afraid, I think.'

Eddie whistled five notes that didn't quite make a melody. Then he said, 'Gray horses.'

Roland nodded. 'Gray horses.'

They looked at each other for a moment, then laughed. Eddie loved it when Roland laughed. The sound was dry, as ugly as the calls of those giant blackbirds he called rusties… but he loved it. Maybe it was just that Roland laughed so seldom.

It was late afternoon. Overhead, the clouds had thinned enough to turn a pallid blue that was almost the color of sky. The Overholser party had returned to their camp. Susannah and Jake had gone back along the forest road to pick more muffin-balls. After the big meal they'd packed away, none of them wanted anything heavier. Eddie sat on a log, whittling. Beside him sat Roland, with all their guns broken down and spread out before him on a piece of deerskin. He oiled the pieces one by one, holding each bolt and cylinder and barrel up to the daylight for a final look before setting it aside for reassembly.

'You told them it was out of their hands,' Eddie said, 'but they didn't ken that any more than they did the business about all those gray horses. And you didn't press it.'

'Only would have distressed them,' Roland said. 'There was a saying in Gilead: Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.'

'Uh-huh,' Eddie said. 'There was a saying in Brooklyn: You can't get snot off a suede jacket.' He held up the object he was making. It would be a top, Roland thought, a toy for a baby. And again he wondered how much Eddie might know about the woman he lay down with each night. The women . Not on the top of his mind, but underneath. 'If you decide we can help them, then we have to help them. That's what Eld's Way really boils down to, doesn't it?'

'Yes,' Roland said.

'And if we can't get any of them to stand with us, we stand alone.'

'Oh, I'm not worried about that,' Roland said. He had a saucer filled with light, sweet gun-oil. Now he dipped the corner of a chamois rag into it, picked up the spring-clip of Jake's Ruger, and began to clean it. 'Tian Jaffords would stand with us, come to that. Surely he has a friend or two who'd do the same regardless of what their meeting decides. In a pinch, there's his wife.'

'And if we get them both killed, what about their kids? They have five. Also, I think there's an old guy in the picture. One of em's Grampy. They probably take care of him, too.'

Roland shrugged. A few months ago, Eddie would have mistaken that gesture—and the gunslinger's expressionless face— for indifference. Now he knew better. Roland was as much a prisoner of his rules and traditions as Eddie had ever been of heroin.

'What if we get killed in this little town, screwing around with these Wolves?' Eddie asked. 'Isn't your last thought gonna be something like, 'I can't believe what a putz I was, throwing away my chance to get to the Dark Tower in order to take up for a bunch of snotnose brats.' Or similar sentiments.'

'Unless we stand true, we'll never get within a thousand miles of the Tower,' Roland said. 'Would you tell me you don't feel that?'

Eddie couldn't, because he did. He felt something else, as well: a species of bloodthirsty eagerness. He actually wanted to fight again. Wanted to have a few of these Wolves, whatever they were, in the sights of one of Roland's big revolvers. There was no sense kidding himself about the truth: he wanted to take a few scalps.

Or wolf-masks.

'What's really troubling you, Eddie? I'd have you speak while it's just you and me.' The gunslinger's mouth quirked in a thin, slanted smile. 'Do ya, I beg.'

'Shows, huh?'

Roland shrugged and waited.

Eddie considered the question. It was a big question. Facing it made him feel desperate and inadequate, pretty much the way he'd felt when faced with the task of carving the key that would letjake Chambers through into their world. Only then he'd had the ghost of his big brother to blame, Henry whispering deep down in his head that he was no good, never had been, never would be. Now it was just the enormity of what Roland was asking. Because everything was troubling him, everything was wrong. Everything . Or maybe wrong was the wrong word, and by a hundred and eighty degrees. Because in another way things seemed too right , too perfect, too…

'Arrrggghh,' Eddie said. He grabbed bunches of hair on both sides of his head and pulled. 'I can't think of a way to say it.'

'Then say the first thing that comes into your mind. Don't hesitate.'

'Nineteen,' Eddie said. 'This whole deal has gone nineteen.'

He fell backward onto the fragrant forest floor, covered his eyes, and kicked his feet like a kid doing a tantrum. He thought: Maybe killing a few Wolves will set me right. Maybe that's all it will take .