"I agree with your husband," he said. "I'd let them stay."
"Have it as you like," she said. Roland saw she was actually pleased, that she wanted an audience, and his hope grew. He thought it increasingly likely that this pretty middle-aged wife with her small br**sts and salt-and-pepper hair had a hunter's heart. Not a gunslinger's heart, but at this point he would settle for a few hunters - a few killers - male or female.
She marched toward the barn. When they were fifty yards from the stuffy-guys flanking the barn door, Roland touched her shoulder and made her stop.
"Nay," she said, "this is too far."
"I've seen you fling as far and half again," her husband said, and stood firm in the face of her angry look. "So I have."
"Not with a gunslinger from the Line of Eld standing by my right elbow, you haven't," she said, but she stood where she was.
Roland went to the barn door and took the grinning sharp-root head from the stuffy on the left side. He went into the barn. Here was a stall filled with freshly picked sharproot, and beside it one of potatoes. He took one of the potatoes and set it atop the stuffy-guy's shoulders, where the sharproot had been. It was a good-sized spud, but the contrast was still comic; the stuffy-guy now looked like Mr. Tinyhead in a carnival show or street-fair.
"Oh, Roland, no!" she cried, sounding genuinely shocked. "I could never!"
"I don't believe you," he said, and stood aside. "Throw."
For a moment he diought she wouldn't. She looked around for her husband. If Eisenhart had still been standing beside her, Roland thought, she would have thrust the plate into his hands and run for the house and never mind if he cut himself on it, either. But Vaughn Eisenhart had withdrawn to the foot of the steps. The boys stood above him, Benny Slightman watching with mere interest, Jake with closer attention, his brows drawn together and the smile now gone from his face.
"Roland, I - "
"None of it, missus, I beg. Your talk of leaping was all very fine, but now I'd see you do it. Throw ."
She recoiled a little, eyes widening, as if she had been slapped. Then she turned to face the barn door and drew her right hand above her left shoulder. The plate glimmered in the late light, which was now more pink than red. Her lips had thinned to a white line. For a moment all the world held still.
"Riza !" she cried in a shrill, furious voice, and cast her arm forward. Her hand opened, the index finger pointing precisely along the path the plate would take. Of all of them in the yard (the cowpokes had also stopped to watch), only Roland's eyes were sharp enough to follow the flight of the dish.
True ! he exulted. True as ever was !
The plate gave a kind of moaning howl as it bolted above the dirt yard. Less than two seconds after it had left her hand, the potato lay in two pieces, one by the stuffy-guy's gloved right hand and the other by its left. The plate itself stuck in the side of the barn door, quivering.
The boys raised a cheer. Benny hoisted his hand as his new friend had taught him, and Jake slapped him a high five.
"Great going, sai Eisenhart!" Jake called.
"Good hit! Say thankya!" Benny added.
Roland observed the way the woman's lips drew back from her teeth at this hapless, well-meant praise - she looked like a horse that has seen a snake. "Boys," he said, "I'd go inside now, were I you."
Benny was bewildered. Jake, however, took another look at Margaret Eisenhart and understood. You did what you had to... and then the reaction set in. "Come on, Ben," he said.
"But - "
"Come on." Jake took his new friend by the shirt and tugged him back toward the kitchen door.
Roland let the woman stay where she was for a moment, head down, trembling with reaction. Strong color still blazed in her cheeks, but everywhere else her skin had gone as pale as milk. He thought she was struggling not to vomit.
He went to the barn door, grasped the plate at the grasping-place, and pulled. He was astounded at how much effort it took before the plate first wiggled and then pulled loose. He brought it back to her, held it out. "Thy tool."
For a moment she didn't take it, only looked at him with a species of bright hate. "Why do you mock me, Roland? How do'ee know Vaughn took me from the Manni Clan? Tell us that, I beg."
It was the rose, of course - an intuition left by the touch of the rose - and it was also the tale of her face, which was a womanly version of the old Henchick's. But how he knew what he knew was no part of this woman's business, and he only shook his head. "Nay. But I do not mock thee."
Margaret Eisenhart abruptly seized Roland by the neck. Her grip was dry and so hot her skin felt feverish. She pulled his ear to her uneasy, twitching mouth. He thought he could smell every bad dream she must have had since deciding to leave her people for Calla Bryn Sturgis's big rancher.