Roland waited patiently for the young man to finish. When he didn't, the gunslinger asked: "If you don't, what would you have us do?"
Ted shrugged. The gesture was such a perfect imitation of Dinky's that it was funny. "The best you can," he said. "There are also weapons in the lower cave. A dozen of the electric fireballs they call sneetches. A number of machine-guns, what I've heard some of the low men call speed-shooters. They're U.S. Army AR-15s. Other things we're not sure of."
"One of them's some kind of sci-fi raygun like in a movie,"
Dinky said. "I think it's supposed to disintegrate things, but either I'm too dumb to turn it on or the battery's dead." He turned anxiously to the white-haired man. "Five minutes are up, and more. We have to put an egg in our shoe and beat it, Tedster.
Let's chug."
"Yes. Well, we'll be back tomorrow. Perhaps by then you'll have a plan."
"You don't?" Eddie asked, surprised.
"My plan was to run, young man. It seemed like a terribly bright idea at the time. I ran all the way to the spring of 1960.
They caught me and brought me back, with a little help from my young friend Bobby's mother. And now, we really must-"
"One more minute, do it please ya," Roland said, and stepped toward Stanley. Stanley looked down at his feet, but his beard-scruffy cheeks once more flooded with color. And-
He's shivering, Susannah thought. Like an animal in the woods, faced with its first human being.
Stanley looked perhaps thirty-five, but he could have been older; his face had the carefree smoothness Susannah associated with certain mental defects. Ted and Dinky both had pimples, but Stanley had none. Roland put his hands on the fellow's forearms and looked earnestly at him. At first the gunslinger's eyes met nothing but the masses of dark, curly hair on Stanley's bowed head.
Dinky started to speak. Ted silenced him with a gesture.
"Will'ee not look me in the face?" Roland asked. He spoke with a gentleness Susannah had rarely heard in his voice.
"Will'ee not, before you go, Stanley, son of Stanley? Sheemie that was?"
Susannah felt her mouth drop open. Beside her, Eddie grunted like a man who has been punched. She thought, But Roland's old... so old! Which means that if this is the tavern-boy he knexu in Mejis... the one with the donkey and the pink sombrera hat... then he must also be...
The man raised his face slowly. Tears were streaming from his eyes.
"Good old Will Dearborn," he said. His voice was hoarse, and jigged up and down through the registers as a voice will do when it has lain long unused. "I'm so sorry, sai. Were you to pull your gun and shoot me, I'd understand. So I would."
"Why do'ee say so, Sheemie?" Roland asked in that same gende voice.
Stanley's tears flowed faster. "You saved my life. Arthur and Richard, too, but mosdy you, good old Will Dearborn who was really Roland of Gilead. And I let her die! Her that you loved!
And I loved her, too!"
The man's face twisted in agony and he tried to pull away from Roland. Yet Roland held him.
"None of that was your fault, Sheemie."
"I should have died for her!" he cried. "I should have died in her place! I'm stupid! Foolish as they said!" He slapped himself across the face, first one way and dien the other, leaving red weals. Before he could do it again, Roland seized the hand and forced it down to his side again.
"'Twas Rhea did the harm," Roland said.
Stanley-who had been Sheemie an eon ago-looked into Roland's face, searching his eyes.
"Aye," Roland said, nodding. "'Twas the Coos... and me, as well. I should have stayed with her. If anyone was blameless m the business, Sheemie-Stanley-it was you."
"Do you say so, gunslinger? Truey-true?"
Roland nodded. "We'll palaver all you would about this, if there's time, and about those old days, but not now. No time now. You have to go with your friends, and I must stay with mine."
Sheemie looked at him a moment longer, and yes, Susannah W now see the boy who had busded about a long-ago tavern called the Travellers' Rest, picking up empty beer schooners and dropping them into die wash-barrel which stood beneath die two-headed elk's head that was known as The Romp, avoiding the occasional shove from Coral Thorin or the even more ill-natured kicks that were apt to come from an aging whore called Pettie the Trotter. She could see the boy who had almost been killed for spilling liquor on the boots of a hardcase named Roy Depape. It had been Cuthbert who had saved Sheemie from death that night... but it had been Roland, known to the townsfolk as Will Dearborn, who had saved them all.
Sheemie put his arms around Roland's neck and hugged him tight. Roland smiled and stroked his curly hair with his disfigured right hand. A loud, honking sob escaped Sheemie's throat. Susannah could see the tears in the corners of the gunslinger's eyes.
"Aye," Roland said, speaking in a voice almost too low to hear. "I always knew you were special; Bert and Alain did, too. And here we find each other, well-met further down the path. We're well-met, Sheemie son of Stanley. So we are. So we are."
Chapter VI:THE MASTER OF BLUE HEAVEN