"How bad, Stu?"
Stu got up on his elbows and looked at Larry, his face white with shock and streaked brown with dirt.
"I figure I'll be walking again in about three months," he said. He began to feel as if he were going to puke. He looked up at the cloudy sky, balled his fists up, and shook them at it.
"OHHH, SHIT! " he screamed.
Ralph and Larry splinted the leg. Glen had produced a bottle of what he called "my arthritis pills" and gave Stu one. Stu didn't know what was in the "arthritis pills" and Glen refused to say, but the pain in his leg faded to a faraway drone. He felt very calm, even serene. It occurred to him that they were all living on borrowed time, not because they were on their way to find Flagg, necessarily, but because they had survived Captain Trips in the first place. At any rate, he knew what had to be done... and he was going to see that it was done. Larry had just finished speaking. They all looked at him anxiously to see what he would say.
What he said was simple enough. "No."
"Stu," Glen said gently, "you don't understand - "
"I understand. I'm saying no. No trip back to Green River. No rope. No car. Against the rules of the game."
"It's no f**king game!" Larry cried. "You'd die here!"
"And you're almost surely gonna die over there in Nevada. Now go on and get getting. You've got another four hours of daylight. No need to waste it."
"We're not going to leave you," Larry said.
"I'm sorry, but you are. I'm telling you to."
"No. I'm in charge now. Mother said if anything happened to you - "
" - that you were to go on."
"No. No." Larry looked around at Glen and Ralph for support. They looked back at him, troubled. Kojak sat nearby, watching all four with his tail curled neatly around his paws.
"Listen to me, Larry," Stu said. "This whole trip is based on the idea that the old lady knew what she was talking about. If you start frigging around with that, you're putting everything on the line."
"Yeah, that's right," Ralph said.
"No, it ain't right, you sodbuster," Larry said, furiously mimicking Ralph's flat Oklahoma accent. "It wasn't God's will that Stu fell down here, it wasn't even the dark man's doing. It was just loose dirt, that's all, just loose dirt! I'm not leaving you, Stu. I'm done leaving people behind."
"Yes. We are going to leave him," Glen said quietly.
Larry stared around unbelievingly, as if he had been betrayed. "I thought you were his friend!"
"I am. But that doesn't matter."
Larry uttered a hysterical laugh and walked a little way down the gully. "You're crazy! You know that?"
"No I'm not. We made an agreement. We stood around Mother Abagail's deathbed and entered into it. It almost certainly meant our deaths, and we knew it. We understood the agreement. Now we're going to live up to it."
"Well, I want to, for Chrissake. I mean, it doesn't have to be Green River; we can get a station wagon, put him in the back, and go on - "
"We're supposed to walk," Ralph said. He pointed at Stu. "He can't walk."
"Right. Fine. He's got a broken leg. What do you propose we do? Shoot him like a horse?"
"Larry - " Stu began.
Before he could go on, Glen grabbed Larry's shirt and yanked him toward him. "Who are you trying to save?" His voice was cold and stern. "Stu, or yourself?"
Larry looked at him, mouth working.
"It's very simple," Glen said. "We can't stay... and he can't go."
"I refuse to accept that," Larry whispered. His face was dead pale.
"It's a test," Ralph said suddenly. "That's what it is."
"A sanity test, maybe," Larry said.
"Vote," Stu said from the ground. "I vote you go on."
"Me too," Ralph said. "Stu, I'm sorry. But if God's gonna watch out for us, maybe he'll watch out for you, too - "
"I won't do it," Larry said.
"It's not Stu you're thinking of," Glen said. "You're trying to save something in yourself, I think. But this time it's right to go on, Larry. We have to."
Larry rubbed his mouth slowly with the back of his hand.
"Let's stay here tonight," he said. "Let's think this thing out."
"No," Stu said.
Ralph nodded. A look passed between him and Glen, and then Glen fished the bottle of "arthritis pills" out of his pocket and put it in Stu's hand. "These have a morphine base," he said. "More than three or four would probably be fatal." His eyes locked with Stu's. "Do you understand, East Texas?"
"Yeah. I get you."
"What are you talking about?" Larry cried. "Just what the hell are you suggesting?"
"Don't you know?" Ralph said with such utter contempt that for a moment Larry was silenced. Then it all rushed before him again with the nightmare speed of strangers' faces as you ride the whip at the carnival: pills, uppers, downers, cruisers. Rita. Turning her over in her sleeping bag and seeing that she was dead and stiff, green puke coming out of her mouth like a rancid party favor.
"No! " he yelled, and tried to snatch the bottle from Stu's hand.