Wolves of the Calla

"If you please," Susa

FIVE

Up the road about forty feet from the others, the three men stood together. Overholser appeared to be doing all the talking, sometimes gesturing violently to punctuate a point. He spoke as if Roland were no more than some gunbu

Roland listened to it all, nodding occasionally. He said almost nothing. And when Overholser was finally finished, Calla Bryn Sturgis's big farmer simply looked with a kind of fixed fascination at the gunman who stood before him. Mostly at those faded blue eyes.

"Are ye what ye say?" he asked finally. "Tell me true, sai."

"I'm Roland of Gilead," the gunslinger said.

"From the line of Eld? Ye do say it?"

"By watch and by warrant," Roland said.

"But Gilead…" Overholser paused. "Gilead's long gone."

"I," Roland said, "am not."

"Would ye kill us all, or cause us to be killed? Tell me, I beg."

"What would you, sai Overholser? Not later; not a day or a week or a moon from now, but at this minute?"

Overholser stood a long time, looking from Roland to Eddie and then back to Roland again. Here was a man not used to changing his mind; if he did so, it would hurt him like a rupture. From down the road came the laughter of the boys as Oy fetched something Be

"I'd listen," Overholser said at last. "I'd do that much, gods help me, and say thankee."

"In other words he explained all the reasons why it was a fool's errand," Eddie told her later, "and then did exactly what Roland wanted him to do. It was like magic."

"Sometimes Roland is magic," she said.

SIX

The Calla's party had camped in a pleasant hilltop clearing not far south of the road but just enough off the Path of the Beam so that the clouds hung still and moveless in the sky, seemingly close enough to touch. The way there through the woods had been carefully marked; some of the blazes Susa

"May I spell ye on that chair a bit, young man?" Overholser asked Eddie as they began the final push upslope. Susa

"Do ya," Eddie said. He didn't quite dare to add "I beg" (still sounds phony to him, Susa

"Might I ask you a question, sai Overholser?" Eddie asked.

"Of course," Overholser replied.

"What's your middle name?"

There was a momentary slackening of forward motion; Susa

"Oh, it's a kind of hobby of mine," Eddie said. "In fact, I tell fortunes by em."

Careful, Eddie, careful, Susa

"Oh, aye?"

"Yes," Eddie said. "You, now. I'll bet your middle name begins with"-he seemed to calculate-"with the letter D." Only he pronounced it Deh, in the fashion of the Great Letters in the High Speech. "And I'd say it's short. Five letters? Maybe only four?"

The slackening of forward push came again. "Devil say please!" Overholser exclaimed. "How'd you know? Tell me!"

Eddie shrugged. "It's no more than counting and guessing, really. In truth, I'm wrong almost as often as I'm right."

"More often," Susa

"Tell ya my middle name's Dale," Overholser said, "although if anyone ever explained me why, it's slipped my mind. I lost my folks when I was young."

"Sorry for your loss," Susa

"Is that young man trig or a fool?" Overholser asked Susa

"A little of both," she said.

"No question about this push-chair, though, would you say? It's trig as a compass."

"Say thankya," she said, then gave a small inward sigh of relief. It had come out sounding all right, probably because she hadn't exactly pla

"Where did it come from?"

"Back on our way a good distance," she said. This turn of the conversation did not please her much. She thought it was Roland's job to tell their history (or not tell it). He was their dinh. Besides, what was told by only one could not be contradicted. Still, she thought she could say a little more. "There's a thi

"Yar," he said, hawked, and spat off to the left. "Not that I've seen or heard it myself, you understand. I never wander far; too much to do on the farm. Those of the Calla aren't woodsy people as a rule, anyway, do ya ke

Oh yes, I think I ke