The Dark Tower

But perhaps he could do something aboutthat. His right hand began its slow and painful journey up toward the docker’sclutch, and the Peacemaker holstered there.

Eddie, meanwhile, had put the barrel of theGilead revolver with the sandalwood grips against the side of Weasel-boy’shead. His finger was tightening on the trigger when he saw that Weasel-boy,although shot in the chest, bleeding heavily, and clearly dying fast, waslooking at him with complete awareness. And something else, something Eddie didnot much care for. He thought it was contempt. He looked up, saw Susa

Eddie returned his attention to the dyingtaheen. “You’re at the end of the path, my friend,” he said. “Plugged in thepump, it looks like to me. Do you have something you want to say before youstep into the clearing?”

Finli nodded.

“Say it, then, chum. But I’d keep it shortif you want to get it all out.”

“Thee and thine are a pack of yellowbackdogs,” Finli managed. He probably was shot in the heart—so itfelt, anyway—but he would say this; it needed to be said, and he willedhis damaged heart to beat until it was out. Then he’d die and welcome the dark.“Piss-stinking yellowback dogs, killing men from ambush. That’s what I’d say.”

Eddie smiled humorlessly. “And what aboutyellowback dogs who’d use children to kill the whole world from ambush, myfriend? The whole universe?”

The Weasel blinked at that, as if he’d expectedno such reply. Perhaps any reply at all. “I had… my orders.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Eddie said. “Andfollowed them to the end. Enjoy hell or Na’ar or whatever you call it.” He putthe barrel of his gun against Finli’s temple and pulled the trigger. The Weasejerked a single time and was still. Grimacing, Eddie got to his feet.

He caught movement from the corner of hiseye as he did so and saw another one—the boss of the show—hadstruggled up onto one elbow. His gun, the Peacemaker .40 that had once executeda rapist, was leveled. Eddie’s reflexes were quick, but there was no time touse them. The Peacemaker roared a single time, fire licking from the end of itsbarrel, and blood flew from Eddie Dean’s brow. A lock of hair flipped on theback of his head as the slug exited. He slapped his hand to the hole that hadappeared over his right eye, like a man who has remembered something of vitalimportance just a little too late.

Roland whirled on the rundown heels of hisboots, pulling his own gun in a dip too quick to see. Jake and Susa

“Eddie? Sugar?”

Pimli was struggling to cock the Peacemakeragain, his upper lip curled back from his teeth in a doglike snarl of effort.Roland shot him in the throat and Algul Siento’s Master snap-rolled to hisleft, the still-uncocked pistol flying out of his hand and clattering to a stopbeside the body of his friend the Weasel. It finished almost at Eddie’s feet.

“Eddie!” Susa

Then she saw the blood ru

“Suze?” he asked. His voice was perfectlyclear. “Suzie, where are you? I can’t see.”

He took one step, a second, a third… andthen fell facedown in the street, just as Gran-pere Jaffords had known he would,aye, from the first moment he’d laid eyes on him. For the boy was a gunslinger,say true, and it was the only end that one such as he could expect.

Chapter XII:

The Tet Breaks

One

That night found Jake Chambers sittingdisconsolately outside the Clover Tavern at the east end of Main Street inPleasantville. The bodies of the guards had been carted away by a robotmaintenance crew, and that was at least something of a relief. Oy had been inthe boy’s lap for an hour or more. Ordinarily he would never have stayed soclose for so long, but he seemed to understand that Jake needed him. On severaloccasions, Jake wept into the bumbler’s fur.

For most of that endless day Jake foundhimself thinking in two different voices. This had happened to him before, butnot for years; not since the time when, as a very young child, he suspected hemight have suffered some sort of weird, below-the-parental-radar breakdown.

Eddie’s dying, said the first voice(the one that used to assure him there were monsters in his closet, and soonthey would emerge to eat him alive). He’s in a room in Corbett Hall andSusa