Eddie, meanwhile, had put the barrel of the Gilead revolver with the sandalwood grips against the side of Weasel-boy's head. His finger was tightening on the trigger when he saw that Weasel-boy, although shot in the chest, bleeding heavily, and clearly dying fast, was looking at him with complete awareness.
And something else, something Eddie did not much care for. He thought it was contempt. He looked up, saw Susannah and Jake checking bodies at the eastern end of the killzone, saw Roland on the far sidewalk, speaking with Dinky and Ted as he knotted a makeshift bandage around the latter's arm. The two former Breakers were listening carefully, and although both of them looked dubious, they were nodding their heads.
Eddie returned his attention to the dying taheen. 'You're at the end of the path, my friend," he said. "Plugged in the pump, it looks like to me. Do you have something you want to say before you step into the clearing?"
Finli nodded.
"Say it, then, chum. But I'd keep it short if you want to get it all out."
"Thee and thine are a pack of yellowback dogs," Finli managed.
He probably was shot in the heart-so it felt, anyway-but he would say this; it needed to be said, and he willed his 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 about yellowback dogs who'd use children to kill the whole world from ambush, my friend? The whole universe)"
The Weasel blinked at that, as if he'd expected no such reply. Perhaps any reply at all. "I had... my orders."
"I have no doubt of that," Eddie said. "And followed them to the end. Enjoy hell or Na'ar or whatever you call it." He put the barrel of his gun against Finli's temple and pulled the trigger.
The Wease jerked a single time and was still. Grimacing,
Eddie got to his feet.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye as he did so and saw anotfier one-the boss of the show-had struggled up onto one elbow. His gun, the Peacemaker.40 that had once executed a ra**st, was leveled. Eddie's reflexes were quick, but there was no time to use them. The Peacemaker roared a single time, fire licking from the end of its barrel, and blood flew from Eddie Dean's brow. A lock of hair flipped on the back of his head as the slug exited. He slapped his hand to the hole that had appeared over his right eye, like a man who has remembered something of vital importance just a little too late.
Roland whirled on the rundown heels of his boots, pulling his own gun in a dip too quick to see. Jake and Susannah also turned. Susannah saw her husband standing in the street with the heel of his hand pressed to his brow.
"Eddie? Sugar?"
Pimli was struggling to c**k the Peacemaker again, 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 snaprolled to his left, the still-uncocked pistol flying out of his hand and clattering to a stop beside the body of his friend the Weasel.
It finished almost at Eddie's feet.
"Eddie!" Susannah screamed, and began a loping crawl toward him, thrusting herself on her hands. He's not hurt bad, she told herself, not hurt bad, dear God don't let my man be hurt bad-
Then she saw the blood running from beneath his pressing hand, pattering down into the street, and knew it was bad.
"Suze?" he asked. His voice was perfectly clear. "Suzie, where are you? I can't see."
He took one step, a second, a third... and then 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 sitting disconsolately outside the Clover Tavern at the east end of Main Street in Pleasantville.
The bodies of the guards had been carted away by a robot maintenance crew, and that was at least something of a relief. Oy had been in the boy's lap for an hour or more. Ordinarily he would never have stayed so close for so long, but he seemed to understand that Jake needed him. On several occasions,
Jake wept into the bumbler's fur.
For most of that endless day Jake found himself thinking in two different voices. This had happened to him before, but not for years; not since the time when, as a very young child, he suspected he might have suffered some sort of weird, below-theparental-
radar breakdown.
Eddie's dying, said the first voice (the one that used to assure him there were monsters in his closet, and soon they would emerge to eat him alive). He's in a room in Corbett Hall and Susannah's with him and he won't shut up, but he's dying.
No, denied the second voice (the one that used to assure him-feebly-that there were no such things as monsters).
No, that can't be. Eddie's... Eddie! And besides, he's ka-tet. He might die when we reach the Dark Tower, we might all die when we get there, but not now, not here, that's crazy.
Eddie's dying, replied the first voice. It was implacable. He's got a hole in his head almost big enough to stick your fist in, and he's dying.