Wolves of the Calla

away from you , Roland read in his eyes.

'Our palaver won't be long,' Roland said, and with perfect honesty. He'd already seen everything he needed.

SIX

The stockline office only had a single chair, the one behind the desk. Margaret took it. Eisenhart sat on a footstool. Roland squatted on his hunkers with his back to the wall and his purse open before him. He had shown them the twins' map. Eisenhart hadn't immediately grasped what Roland had pointed out (might not grasp it even now), but the woman did. Roland thought it no wonder she hadn't been able to stay witь the Manni. The Manni were peaceful. Margaret Eisenhart was not. Not once you got below her surface, at any rate.

'You'll keep this to yourselves,' he said.

'Or thee'll kill us, like our cowpokes?' she asked.

Roland gave her a patient look, and she colored beneath it.

'I'm sorry, Roland. I'm upset. It comes of throwing the plate in hot blood.'

Eisenhart put an arm around her. This time she accepted it gladly, and laid her head on his shoulder.

'Who else in your group can throw as well as that?' Roland asked. 'Any?'

'Zalia Jaffords,' she said at once.

'Say true?'

She nodded emphatically. 'Zalia could have cut that tater in two ten-for-ten, at twenty paces farther back.'

'Others?'

'Sarey Adams, wife of Diego. And Rosalita Munoz.'

Roland raised his eyebrows at that.

'Aye,' she said. 'Other than Zalia, Rosie's best.' A brief pause. 'And me, I suppose.'

Roland felt as if a huge weight had rolled off his back. He'd been convinced they'd somehow have to bring back weapons from New York or find them on the east side of the river. Now it looked as if that might not be necessary. Good. They had other business in New York—business involving Calvin Tower. He didn't want to mix the two unless he absolutely had to.

'I'd see you four women at the Old Fella's rectory-house. And just you four.' His eyes flicked briefly to Eisenhart, then back to Eisenhart's sai. 'No husbands.'

'Now wait just a damn minute,' Eisenhart said.

Roland held up his hand. 'Nothing's been decided yet.'

'It's the way it's not been decided I don't care for,' Eisenhart said.

'Hush a minute,' Margaret said. 'When would you see us?'

Roland calculated. Twenty-four days left, perhaps only twenty-three, and still much left to see. And there was the thing hidden in the Old Fella's church, that to deal with, too. And the old Manni, Henchick…

Yet in the end, he knew, the day would come and things would play out with shocking suddenness. They always did. Five minutes, ten at most, and all would be finished, for good or ill.

The trick was to be ready when those few minutes came around.

'Ten days from now,' he said. 'In the evening. I'd see the four of you in competition, turn and turn about.'

'All right,' she said. 'That much we can do. But Roland… I'll not throw so much as a single plate or raise a single finger against the Wolves if my husband still says no.'

'I understand,' Roland said, knowing she would do as he said, like it or not. When the time came they all would.

There was one small window in the office wall, dirty and festooned with cobwebs but clear enough for them to be able to see Andy marching across the yard, his electric eyes flashing on and off in the deepening twilight. He was humming to himself.

'Eddie says robots are programmed to do certain tasks,' he said. 'Andy does the tasks you bid him?'

'Mostly, yes,' Eisenhart said. 'Not always. And he's not always around, ye ken.'

'Hard to believe he was built to do no more than sing foolish songs and tell horoscopes,' Roland mused.

'Perhaps the Old People gave him hobbies,' Margaret Eisenhart said, 'and now that his main tasks are gone—lost in time, do ya ken—he concentrates on the hobbies.'

'You think the Old People made him.'

'Who else?' Vaughn Eisenhart asked. Andy was gone now, and the back yard was empty.

'Aye, who else,' Roland said, still musing. 'Who else would have the wit and the tools? But the Old People were gone two thousand years before the Wolves began raiding into the Calla. Two thousand or more. So what I'd like to know is who or what programmed Andy not to talk about them, except to tell you folks when they're coming . And here's another question, not as interesting as that but still curious: why does he tell you that much if he cannot—or will not—tell you anything else?'

Eisenhart and his wife were looking at each other, thunderstruck. They'd not gotten past the first part of what Roland had said. The gunslinger wasn't surprised, but he was a little disappointed in them. Really, there was much here that was obvious. If, that was, one set one's wits to work. In fairness to the Eisenharts, Jaffordses, and Overholsers of the Calla, he supposed, straight thinking wasn't so easy when your babbies were at stake.

There was a knock at the door. Eisenhart called, 'Come!'

It was Ben Slightman. 'Stock's all put to bed, boss.' He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. 'And the boys're off with Benny's tent. Andy was stalkin em close, so that's well.' Slightman looked at Roland. 'It's early for rock-cats, but if one were to come, Andy'd give my boy at least one shot at it with his bah—he's been told so and comes back 'Order recorded.' If Benny were to miss, Andy'd get between the boys and the cat. He's programmed strictly for defense and we've never been able to change that, but if the cat were to keep coming—'

'Andy'd rip it to pieces,' Eisenhart said. He spoke with a species of gloomy satisfaction.

'Fast, is he?' Roland asked.

'Yer-bugger,' Slightman said. 'Don't look it, do he, all tall and gangly like he is? But aye, he can move like greased lightning when he wants to. Faster than any rock-cat. We believe he must run on ant-nomics.'

'Very likely,' Roland said absently.

'Never mind that,' Eisenhart said, 'but listen, Ben—why d'you suppose it is that Andy won't talk about the Wolves?'

'His programming—'

'Aye, but it's as Roland pointed out to us just before'ee came in—and we should have seen it for ourselves long before this—if the Old People set him a-going and then the Old People died out or moved on… long before the Wolves showed themselves… do you see the problem?'

Slightman the Elder nodded, then put his glasses back on. 'Must have been something like the Wolves in the elden days, don't you think? Enough like em so Andy can't tell em apart. It's all I can figure.'

Is it really ? Roland thought.

He produced the Tavery twins' map, opened it, and tapped an arroyo in the hill country northeast of town. It wound its way deeper and deeper into those hills before ending in one of the Calla's old garnet mines. This one was a shaft that went thirty feet into a hillside and then stopped. The place wasn't really much like Eyebolt Canyon in Mejis (there was no thinny in the arroyo, for one thing), but there was one crucial similarity: both were dead ends. And, Roland knew, a man will try to take service again from that which has served him once. That he should pick this arroyo, this dead-end mineshaft, for his ambush of the Wolves made perfect sense. To Eddie, to Susannah, to the Eisenharts, and now to the Eisenharts' foreman. It would make sense to Sarey Adams and Rosalita Munoz. It would make sense to the Old Fella. He would disclose this much of his plan to others, and it would make sense to them, as well.