Now he said: "You boys want all the right things. I can't put it any clearer than that. I believe you." He hesitated. "I believe in you. What I see in your eyes is true."
Eddie thought he was done, and then Cullum grinned like a boy.
"Also it 'pears to me you're offerin the keys to one humongous great engine." Engyne. "Who wouldn't want to turn it on, and see what it does?"
"Are you scared?" Roland asked.
John Cullum considered the question, then nodded.
"Ayuh," he said.
Roland nodded. "Good," he said.
SEVEN
They drove back up to Turtleback Lane in Cullum's car beneath a black, boiling sky. Although diis was the height of the summer season and most of the cottages on Kezar were probably occupied, diey saw not a single car moving in either direction. All the boats on the lake had long since run for cover.
"Said I had somethin else for ya," John said, and went to the back of his truck, where there was a steel lockbox snugged up against the cab. Now the wind had begun to blow. It swirled his scanty fluff of white hair around his head. He ran a combination, popped a padlock, and swung back the lockbox's lid. From inside he brought out two dusty bags the wanderers knew well. One looked almost new compared to the other, which was the scuffed no-color of desert dust and laced its long length with rawhide.
"Our gunna!" Eddie cried, so delighted-and so amazed-tfiat the words almost came out in a scream. "How in the name of hell-?"
John offered them a smile that augured well for his future as a dirty trickster: bemused on the surface, sly beneath. "Nice surprise, ain't it? Thought so m'self. I went back to get a look at Chip's store-what 'us left of it-while there was still a lot of confusion. People runnin hither, thither, and yon is what I mean to say; coverin bodies, stringin that yella tape, takin pitchers.
Somebody'd put those bags off to one side and they looked just a dight lonely, so I..." He shrugged one bony shoulder. "I scooped em up."
"This would have been while we were visiting with Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau in their rented cabin," Eddie said.
"After you went back home, supposedly to pack for Vermont. Is that right?" He was stroking the side of his bag. He knew that smooth surface very well; hadn't he shot the deer it had come from and scraped off the hair with Roland's knife and stitched the hide himself, with Susannah to help him? Not long after the great robot bear Shardik had almost unzipped Eddie's guts, that had been. Sometime in the last century, it seemed.
"Yuh," Cullum said, and when the old fellow's smile sweetened,
Eddie's last doubts about him departed. They had found the right man for this world. Say true and thank Gan big-big.
"Strap on your gun, Eddie," Roland said, holding out the revolver with the worn sandalwood grips.
Mine. Norv he calls it mine. Eddie felt a small chill.
"I thought we were going to Susannah and Jake." But he took the revolver and belted it on willingly enough.
Roland nodded. "But I believe we have a little work to do first, against those who killed Callahan and then tried to kill Jake." His face didn't change as he spoke, but both Eddie Dean and John Cullum felt a chill. For a moment it was almost impossible to look at the gunslinger.
So came-although they did not know it, which was likely more mercy than such as they deserved-the death sentence of Flaherty, the taheen Lamia, and their ka-tet.
EIGHT
Oh my God, Eddie tried to say, but no sound came out.
He had seen brightness growing ahead of them as they drove north along Turtleback Lane, following the one working taillight of Cullum's truck. At first he thought it might be the carriage-lamps guarding some rich man's driveway, then perhaps floodlights. But the glow kept strengthening, a bluegolden brilliance to their left, where the ridge sloped down to the lake. As they approached the source of the light (Cullum's pickup now barely crawling), Eddie gasped and pointed as a circle of radiance broke free of the main body and flew toward them, changing colors as it came: blue to gold to red, red to green to gold and back to blue. In the center of it was something that looked like an insect with four wings. Then, as it soared above the bed of Cullum's truck and into the dark woods on die east side of the road, it looked toward them and Eddie saw the insect had a human face.
"What... dear God, Roland, what-"
"Taheen," Roland said, and said no more. In the growing brilliance his face was calm and tired.