"Not daft a bit," she replied shortly, without looking around.
She accomplished the first half of her aim, going to bed just after moonrise with tired arms, aching legs, and a throbbing back - but sleep still did not come. She lay in bed wide-eyed and unhappy. The hours passed, the moon set, and still Susan couldn't sleep. She looked into the dark and wondered if there was any possibility, even the slightest, that her father had been murdered. To stop his mouth, to close his eyes.
Finally she reached the conclusion Roland had already come to: if there had been no attraction for her in those eyes of his, or the touch of his hands and lips, she would have agreed in a flash to the meeting he wanted. If only to set her troubled mind to rest.
At this realization, relief overspread her and she was able to sleep.
7
Late the next afternoon, while Roland and his friends were at fives in the Travellers' Rest (cold beef sandwiches and gallons of white iced tea - not as good as that made by Deputy Dave's wife, but not bad), Sheemie came in from outside, where he had been watering his flowers. He was wearing his pink sombrero and a wide grin. In one hand he held a little packet.
"Hello, there, you Little Coffin Hunters!" he cried cheerfully, and made a bow which was an amusingly good imitation of their own. Cuthbert particularly enjoyed seeing such a bow done in gardening sandals. "How be you? Well, I'm hoping, so I do!"
"Right as rainbarrels," Cuthbert said, "but none of us enjoys being called Little Coffin Hunters, so maybe you could just play soft on that, all right?"
"Aye," Sheemie said, as cheerful as ever. "Aye, Mr. Arthur Heath, good fella who saved my life!" He paused and looked puzzled for a moment, as if unable to remember why he had approached them in the first place. Then his eyes cleared, his grin shone out, and he held the packet out to Roland. "For you, Will Dearborn!"
"Really? What is it?"
"Seeds! So they are!"
"From you, Sheemie?"
"Oh, no."
Roland took the packet - just an envelope which had been folded over and sealed. There was nothing written on the front or back, and the tips of his fingers felt no seeds within.
"Who from, then?"
"Can't remember," said Sheemie, who then cast his eyes aside. His brains had been stirred just enough, Roland reflected, so that he would never be unhappy for long, and would never be able to lie at all. Then his eyes, hopeful and timid, came back to Roland's. "I remember what I was supposed to say to you, though."
"Aye? Then say it, Sheemie."
Speaking as one who recites a painfully memorized line, both proud and nervous, he said: "These are the seeds you scattered on the Drop."
Roland's eyes blazed so fiercely that Sheemie stumbled back a step. He gave his sombrero a quick tug, turned, and hurried back to the safety of his flowers. He liked Will Dearborn and Will's friends (especially Mr. Arthur Heath, who sometimes said things that made Sheemie laugh fit to split), but in that moment he saw something in Will-sai's eyes that frightened him badly. In that instant he understood that Will was as much a killer as the one in the cloak, or the one who had wanted Sheemie to lick his boots clean, or old white-haired Jonas with the trembly voice.
As bad as them, or even worse.
8
Roland slipped the "seed-packet" into his shirt and didn't open it until the three of them were back on the porch of the Bar K. In the distance, the thinny grumbled, making their horses twitch their ears nervously.
"Well?" Cuthbert asked at last, unable to restrain himself any longer. Roland took the envelope from inside his shirt, and tore it open. As he did, he reflected that Susan had known exactly what to say. To a nicety.
The others bent in, Alain (mm his left and Cuthbert from his right, as he unfolded the single scrap of paper. Again he saw her simple, neatly made writing, the message not much longer than the previous one. Very different in content, however.
There is an orange grove a mile off the road on the town side of Citgo. Meet me there at moonrise. Come alone. S.
And below that, printed in emphatic little letters: burn this.
"We'll keep a lookout," Alain said.
Roland nodded. "Aye. But from a distance."
Then he burned the note.
9