Roland shook his head.
"We took them to Andy and asked if he could recharge them, mayhap. He took them into himself, but when they came out again they were as useless as before. Andy said sorry. We said thankya." Henchick rolled his shoulders in that same contemptuous shrug. "We opened the machine - another button did that - and the tongue came out. It were this long." Henchick held his hands four or five inches apart. "Two holes in it. Shiny brown stuff inside, like string. The Pere called it a 'cassette tape.' "
Roland nodded. "I want to thank you for taking me up to the cave, Henchick, and for telling me all thee knows."
"I did what I had to," Henchick said. "And you'll do as'ee promise. Wont'chee?"
Roland of Gilead nodded. "Let God pick a winner."
"Aye, so we do say. Ye speak as if ye knew us, once upon a season." He paused, eyeing Roland with a certain sour shrewdness. "Or is it just makin up to me that ye does? For anyone who's ever read the Good Book can thee and thou till the crows fly home."
"Does thee ask if I play the toady, up here where there's no one to hear us but them?" Roland nodded toward the babbling darkness. "Thou knows better, I hope, for if thee doesn't, thee's a fool." ;
The old man considered, then put out his gnarled, long-fingered hand. "Do'ee well, Roland. 'Tis a good name, and a fair."
Roland put out his right hand. And when the old man took it and squeezed it, he felt the first deep twinge of pain where he wanted to feel it least.
No, not yet. Where I'd feel it least is in the other one. The one that's still whole.
"Mayhap this time the Wolves'll kill us all," said Henchick.
"Perhaps so."
"Yet still, perhaps we're well-met."
"Perhaps we are," the gunslinger replied.
Chapter IX: The Priest's Tale Concluded (Unfound)
ONE
"Beds're ready," Rosalita Munoz said when they got back.
Eddie was so tired that he believed she'd said something else entirely - Time to weed the garden , perhaps, or There's fifty or sixty more people'd like 't'meet ye waitin up to the church . After all, who spoke of beds at three in the afternoon?
"Huh?" Susannah asked blearily. "What-say, hon? Didn't quite catch it."
"Beds're ready," the Pere's woman of work repeated. "You two'll go where ye slept night before last; young soh's to have the Pere's bed. And the bumbler can go in with ye, Jake, if ye'd like; Pere said for me to tell'ee so. He'd be here to tell you himself, but it's his afternoon for sick-rounds. He takes the Communion to em." She said this last with unmistakable pride.
"Beds," Eddie said. He couldn't quite get the sense of this. He looked around, as if to confirm that it was still midafternoon, the sun still shining brightly. "Beds?"
"Pere saw'ee at the store," Rosalita amplified, "and thought ye'd want naps after talking to all those people."
Eddie understood at last. He supposed that at some point in his life he must have felt more grateful for a kindness, but he honestly couldn't remember when or what that kindness might have been. At first those approaching them as they sat in the rockers on the porch of Took's had come slowly, in hesitant little clusters. But when no one turned to stone or took a bullet in the head - when there was, in fact, animated conversation and actual laughter - more and more came. As the trickle became a flood, Eddie at last discovered what it was to be a public person. He was astounded by how difficult it was, how draining. They wanted simple answers to a thousand difficult questions - where the gunslingers came from and where they were going were only the first two. Some of their questions could be answered honestly, but more and more Eddie heard himself giving weaselly politicians' answers, and heard his two friends doing the same. These weren't lies, exactly, but little propaganda capsules that sounded like answers. And everyone wanted a look straight in the face and a Do ya fine that sounded straight from the heart. Even Oy came in for his share of the work; he was petted over and over again, and made to speak until Jake got up, went into the store, and begged a bowl of water from Eben Took. That gentleman gave him a tin cup instead, and told him he could fill it at the trough out front. Jake was surrounded by townsfolk who questioned him steadily even as he did this simple chore. Oy lapped the cup dry, then faced his own gaggle of curious questioners while Jake went back to the trough to fill the cup again.
All in all, they had been five of the longest hours Eddie had ever put in, and he thought he would never regard celebrity in quite the same way again. On the plus side, before finally leaving the porch and heading back to the Old Fella's residence, Eddie reckoned they must have talked to everyone who lived in town and a good number of farmers, ranchers, cowpokes, and hired hands who lived beyond it. Word traveled fast: the outworlders were sitting on the porch of the General Store, and if you wanted to talk to them, they would talk to you.