PART TWO
TELLING TALES
CHAPTER I:
THE PAVILION
ONE
If anything about the ride into Calla Bryn Sturgis surprised Eddie, it was how easily and naturally he took to horseback. Unlike Susannah and Jake, who had both ridden at summer camp, Eddie had never even petted a horse. When he’d heard the clop of approaching hooves on the morning after what he thought of as Todash Number Two, he’d felt a sharp pang of dread. It wasn’t the riding he was afraid of, or the animals themselves; it was the possibility—hell, the strong probability—of looking like a fool. What kind of gunslinger had never ridden a horse?
Yet Eddie still found time to pass a word with Roland before they came. “It wasn’t the same last night.”
Roland raised his eyebrows.
“It wasn’t nineteen last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean.”
“I don’t know, either,” Jake put in, “but he’s right. Last night New York felt like the real deal. I mean, I know we were todash, but still . . . ”
“Real,” Roland had mused.
And Jake, smiling, said: “Real as roses.”
TWO
The Slightmans were at the head of the Calla’s party this time, each leading a pair of mounts by long hacks. There was nothing very intimidating about the horses of Calla Bryn Sturgis; certainly they weren’t much like the ones Eddie had imagined galloping along the Drop in Roland’s tale of long-ago Mejis. These beasts were stubby, sturdy-legged creatures with shaggy coats and large, intelligent eyes. They were bigger than Shetland ponies, but a very long cast from the fiery-eyed stallions he had been expecting. Not only had they been saddled, but a proper bedroll had been lashed to each mount.
As Eddie walked toward his (he didn’t need to be told which it was, he knew: the roan), all his doubts and worries fell away. He only asked a single question, directed at Ben Slightman the Younger after examining the stirrups. “These are going to be too short for me, Ben—can you show me how to make them longer?”
When the boy dismounted to do it himself, Eddie shook his head. “It’d be best if I learned,” he said. And with no embarrassment at all.
As the boy showed him, Eddie realized he didn’t really need the lesson. He saw how it was done almost as soon as Benny’s fingers flipped up the stirrup, revealing the leather tug in back. This wasn’t like hidden, subconscious knowledge, and it didn’t strike him as anything supernatural, either. It was just that, with the horse a warm and fragrant reality before him, he understood how everything worked. He’d only had one experience exactly like this since coming to Mid-World, and that had been the first time he’d strapped on one of Roland’s guns.
“Need help, sugar?” Susannah asked.
“Just pick me up if I go off on the other side,” he grunted, but of course he didn’t do any such thing. The horse stood steady, swaying just the slightest bit as Eddie stepped into the stirrup and then swung into the plain black ranchhand’s saddle.
Jake asked Benny if he had a poncho. The foreman’s son looked doubtfully up at the cloudy sky. “I really don’t think it’s going to rain,” he said. “It’s often like this for days around Reaptide—”
“I want it for Oy.” Perfectly calm, perfectly certain. He feels exactly like I do, Eddie thought. As if he’s done this a thousand times before.
The boy drew a rolled oilskin from one of his saddlebags and handed it to Jake, who thanked him, put it on, and then tucked Oy into the capacious pocket which ran across the front like a kangaroo’s pouch. There wasn’t a single protest from the bumbler, either. Eddie thought: If I told Jake I’d expected Oy to trot along behind us like a sheepdog, would he say, “He always rides like this”? No . . . but he might think it.
As they set off, Eddie realized what all this reminded him of: stories he’d heard of reincarnation. He had tried to shake the idea off, to reclaim the practical, tough-minded Brooklyn boy who had grown up in Henry Dean’s shadow, and wasn’t quite able to do it. The thought of reincarnation might have been less unsettling if it had come to him head-on, but it didn’t. What he thought was that he couldn’t be from Roland’s line, simply couldn’t. Not unless Arthur Eld had at some point stopped by Co-Op City, that was. Like maybe for a redhot and a piece of Dahlie Lundgren’s fried dough. Stupid to project such an idea from the ability to ride an obviously docile horse without lessons. Yet the idea came back at odd moments through the day, and had followed him down into sleep last night: the Eld. The line of the Eld.
THREE
They nooned in the saddle, and while they were eating popkins and drinking cold coffee, Jake eased his mount in next to Roland’s. Oy peered at the gunslinger with bright eyes from the front pocket of the poncho. Jake was feeding the bumbler pieces of his popkin, and there were crumbs caught in Oy’s whiskers.
“Roland, may I speak to you as dinh?” Jake sounded slightly embarrassed.
“Of course.” Roland drank coffee and then looked at the boy, interested, all the while rocking contentedly back and forth in the saddle.
“Ben—that is, both Slightmans, but mostly the kid—asked if I’d come and stay with them. Out at the Rocking B.”
“Do you want to go?” Roland asked.
The boy’s cheeks flushed thin red. “Well, what I thought is that if you guys were in town with the Old Fella and I was out in the country—south of town, you ken—then we’d get two different pictures of the place. My Dad says you don’t see anything very well if you only look at it from one viewpoint.”
“True enough,” Roland said, and hoped neither his voice nor his face would give away any of the sorrow and regret he suddenly felt. Here was a boy who was now ashamed of being a boy. He had made a friend and the friend had invited him to stay over, as friends sometimes do. Benny had undoubtedly promised that Jake could help him feed the animals, and perhaps shoot his bow (or his bah, if it shot bolts instead of arrows). There would be places Benny would want to share, secret places he might have gone to with his twin in other times. A platform in a tree, mayhap, or a fishpond in the reeds special to him, or a stretch of riverbank where pirates of eld were reputed to have buried gold and jewels. Such places as boys go. But a large part of Jake Chambers was now ashamed to want to do such things. This was the part that had been despoiled by the doorkeeper in Dutch Hill, by Gasher, by the Tick-Tock Man. And by Roland himself, of course. Were he to say no to Jake’s request now, the boy would very likely never ask again. And never resent him for it, which was even worse. Were he to say yes in the wrong way—with even the slightest trace of indulgence in his voice, for instance—the boy would change his mind.
The boy. The gunslinger realized how much he wanted to be able to go on calling Jake that, and how short the time to do so was apt to be. He had a bad feeling about Calla Bryn Sturgis.
“Go with them after they dine us in the Pavilion tonight,” Roland said. “Go and do ya fine, as they say here.”
“Are you sure? Because if you think you might need me—”
“Your father’s saying is a good one. My old teacher—”
“Cort or Vannay?”
“Cort. He used to tell us that a one-eyed man sees flat. It takes two eyes, set a little apart from each other, to see things as they really are. So aye. Go with them. Make the boy your friend, if that seems natural. He seems likely enough.”
“Yeah,” Jake said briefly. But the color was going down in his cheeks again. Roland was pleased to see this.
“Spend tomorrow with him. And his friends, if he has a gang he goes about with.”
Jake shook his head. “It’s far out in the country. Ben says that Eisenhart’s got plenty of help around the place, and there are some kids his age, but he’s not allowed to play with them. Because he’s the foreman’s son, I guess.”
Roland nodded. This did not surprise him. “You’ll be offered graf tonight in the Pavilion. Do you need me to tell you it’s iced tea once we’re past the first toast?”
Jake shook his head.
Roland touched his temple, his lips, the corner of one eye, his lips again. “Head clear. Mouth shut. See much. Say little.”
Jake grinned briefly and gave him a thumbs-up. “What about you?”
“The three of us will stay with the priest tonight. I’m in hopes that tomorrow we may hear his tale.”
“And see . . . ” They had fallen a bit behind the others, but Jake still lowered his voice. “See what he told us about?”
“That I don’t know,” Roland said. “The day after tomorrow, we three will ride out to the Rocking B. Perhaps noon with sai Eisenhart and have a bit of palaver. Then, over the next few days, the four of us will have a look at this town, both the inner and the outer. If things go well for you at the ranch, Jake, I’d have you stay there as long as you like and as much as they’ll have you.”
“Really?” Although he kept his face well (as the saying went), the gunslinger thought Jake was very pleased by this.
“Aye. From what I make out—what I ken—there’s three big bugs in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Overholser’s one. Took, the storekeeper, is another. The third one’s Eisenhart. I’d hear what you make of him with great interest.”
“You’ll hear,” Jake said. “And thankee-sai.” He tapped his throat three times. Then his seriousness broke into a broad grin. A boy’s grin. He urged his horse into a trot, moving up to tell his new friend that yes, he might stay the night, yes, he could come and play.