Jonas smiled. "You'd remedy that if you could, wouldn't you? Yar, I reckon." He flicked his eyes at Lengyll. "Get their toys, Fran. Look specially sharp for knives. They've got guns, but not with em. Yet I know a bit more about those shooting irons than they might think. And funny boy's slingshot. Don't forget that, for gods' sake. He like to take Roy's head off with it not so long ago."
"Are you talking about the carrot-top?" Cuthbert asked. His horse was dancing under him; Bert swayed back and forth and from side to side like a circus rider to keep from tumbling off. "He never would have missed his head. His balls, maybe, but not his head."
"Probably true," Jonas agreed, watching as the spears and Roland's shortbow were taken into custody. The slingshot was on the back of Cuthbert's belt, tucked into a holster he had made for it himself. It was very well for Roy Depape that he hadn't tried Bert, Roland knew - Bert could take a bird on the wing at sixty yards. A pouch holding steel shot hung at the boy's left side. Bridger took it, as well.
While this was going on, Jonas fixed Roland with an amiable smile. "What's your real name, brat? Fess up - no harm in telling now; you're going to ride the handsome, and we both know it."
Roland said nothing. Lengyll looked at Jonas, eyebrows raised. Jonas shrugged, then jerked his head in the direction of town. Lengyll nodded and poked Roland with one hard, chapped finger. "Come on, boy. Let's ride."
Roland squeezed Rusher's sides; the horse trotted toward Jonas. And suddenly Roland knew something. As with all his best and truest intuitions, it came from nowhere and everywhere - absent at one second, all there and fully dressed at the next.
"Who sent you west, maggot?" he asked as he passed Jonas. "Couldn't have been Cort - you're too old. Was it his father?"
The look of slightly bored amusement left Jonas's face - flew from his face, as if slapped away. For one amazing moment the man with the white hair was a child again: shocked, shamed, and hurt.
"Yes, Cort's da - I see it in your eyes. And now you're here, on the Clean Sea ... except you're really in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west."
Jonas's gun was out and cocked in his hand with such speed that only Roland's extraordinary eyes were capable of marking the movement. There was a murmur from the men behind them - partly shock, mostly awe.
"Jonas, don't be a fool!" Lengyll snarled. "You ain't killin em after we took the time and risk to hood em and tie their hooks, are ye?"
Jonas seemed to take no notice. His eyes were wide; the comers of his seamed mouth were trembling. "Watch your words, Will Dearborn," he said in a low, hoarse voice. "You want to watch em ever so close. I got two pounds of pressure on a three-pound trigger right this second."
"Fine, shoot me," Roland said. He lifted his head and looked down at Jonas. "Shoot, exile. Shoot, worm. Shoot, you failure. You'll still live in exile and die as you lived."
For a moment he was sure Jonas would shoot, and in that moment Roland felt death would be enough, an acceptable end after the shame of being caught so easily. In that moment Susan was absent from his mind. Nothing breathed in that moment, nothing called, nothing moved. The shadows of the men watching this confrontation, both on foot and on horseback, were printed depthless on the dirt.
Then Jonas dropped the hammer of his gun and slipped it back into its holster.
"Take em to town and jug em," he said to Lengyll. "And when I show up, I don't want to see one hair harmed on one head. If I could keep from killing this one, you can keep from hurting the rest. Now go on."
"Move," Lengyll said. His voice had lost some of its bluff authority. It was now the voice of a man who realizes (too late) that he has bought chips in a game where the stakes are likely much too high.
They rode. As they did, Roland turned one last time. The contempt Jonas saw in those cool young eyes stung him worse than the whips that had scarred his back in Garlan years ago.
6
When they were out of sight, Jonas went into the bunkhouse, pulled up the board which concealed their little armory, and found only two guns. The matched set of six-shooters with the dark handles - Dearborn's guns, surely - were gone.
You 're in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west. You'll live in exile and die as you lived.
Jonas's hands went to work, disassembling the revolvers Cuthbert and Alain had brought west. Alain's had never even been worn, save on the practice-range. Outside, Jonas threw the pieces, scattering them every which way. He threw as hard as he could, trying to rid himself of that cool blue gaze and the shock of hearing what he'd believed no man had known. Roy and Clay suspected, but even they hadn't known for sure.
Before the sun went down, everyone in Mejis would know that Eldred Jonas, the white-haired regulator with the tattooed coffin on his hand, was nothing but a failed gunslinger.
You'll live in exile and die as you lived.
"P'raps," he said, looking at the burned-out ranch house without really seeing it. "But I'll live longer than you, young Dearborn, and die long after your bones are rusting in the ground."
He mounted up and swung his horse around, sawing viciously at the reins. He rode for Citgo, where Roy and Clay would be waiting, and he rode hard, but Roland's eyes rode with him.