“Do you really think sentry-duty is necessary?” Susannah asked. “I don’t know. And that’s the best reason of all to do it. Jake, choose us a riddle from your book.”
Eddie handed Riddle-De-Dum! to Jake, who thumbed through the pages and finally stopped near the back. “Whoa! This one’s a killer.” “Let’s hear it,” Eddie said. “If I don’t get it, Suze will. We’re known at Fair-Days all across the land as Eddie Dean and His Riddling Queen.” “We’re witty tonight, ain’t we?” Susannah said. “Let’s see how witty you are after settin by the side o’ the road until midnight or so, honeychild.” Jake read: ” ‘There is a thing that nothing is, and yet it has a name. It’s sometimes tall and sometimes short, joins our talks, joins our sport, and plays at every game.’ “
They discussed this riddle for almost fifteen minutes, but none of them could even hazard an answer.
“Maybe it’ll come to one of us while we’re asleep,” Jake said. “That’s how I got the one about the river.”
“Cheap book, with the answers torn out,” Eddie said. He stood up and wrapped a hide blanket around his shoulders like a cloak. “Well, it was cheap. Mr. Tower gave it to me for free.” “What am I looking for, Roland?” Eddie asked. Roland shrugged as he lay down. “I don’t know, but I think you’ll know it if you see it or hear it.”
“Wake me up when you start feeling sleepy,” Susannah said. “You better believe it.”
A GRASSY DITCH RAN along the side of the road and Eddie sat on the far side of it with his blanket around his shoulders. A thin scud of clouds had veiled the sky tonight, dimming the starshow. A strong west wind was blowing. When Eddie turned his face in that direction, he could clearly smell the buffalo which now owned these plains—a mixed per-fume of hot fur and fresh dung. The clarity which had returned to his senses in these last few months was amazing , . . and, at times like these, a little spooky, as well. Very faintly, he could hear a buffalo calf bawling. He turned toward the city, and after a while he began to think he might be seeing distant sparks of light there—the electric candles of the twins’ story—but he was well aware that he might be seeing nothing more than his own wishful thinking.
You’re a long way from Forty-second Street, sweetheart—hope is a great thing, no matter what anyone says, but don’t hope so hard you lose sight of that one thought: you’re a long way from Forty-second Street. That’s not New York up ahead, no matter how much you might wish it was. That’s Lud, and it’ll be whatever it is. And if you keep that in mind, maybe you’ll be okay. He passed his time on watch trying to think of an answer to the last riddle of the evening. The scolding Roland had given him about his dead-baby joke had left him feeling disgruntled, and it would please him to be able to start off the morning by giving them a good answer. Of course they wouldn’t be able to check any answer against the back of the book, but he had an idea that with good riddles a good answer was usually self-evident.
Sometimes tall and sometimes short. He thought that was the key and all the rest was probably just misdirection. What was sometimes tall and sometimes short? Pants? No. Pants were sometimes short and some-times long, but he had never heard of tall pants. Tales? Like pants, it only fit snugly one way. Drinks were sometimes both tall and short—
“Order,” he murmured, and thought for a moment that he must have stumbled across the solution—both adjectives fit the noun glove-tight. A tall order was a big job; a short order was something you got on the quick in a restaurant—a hamburger or a tuna melt. Except that tall orders and tuna melts didn’t join our talk or play at every game.