Here is a road as wide and as well-maintained as any secondary road in America, but of the smooth packed dirt the Calla-folk call oggan. Ditches for runoff border both sides; here and there neat and well-maintained wooden culverts run beneath the oggan. In the faint, unearthly light that comes before dawn, a dozen bucka waggons - they are the kind driven by the Manni, with rounded canvas tops - roll along the road. The canvas is bright clean white, to reflect the sun and keep the interiors cool on hot summer days, and they look like strange, low-floating clouds. The cumulus kind, may it do ya. Each waggon is drawn by a team of six mules or four horses. On the seat of each, driving, are either a pair of fighters or of designated child-minders. Overholser is driving the lead waggon, with Margaret Eisenhart beside him. Next in line comes Roland of Gilead, mated with Ben Slightman. Fifth is Tian and Zalia Jaffords. Seventh is Eddie and Susannah Dean. Susannah's wheelchair is folded up in the waggon behind her. Bucky and Annabelle Javier are in charge of the tenth. On the peak-seat of the last waggon are Father Donald Callahan and Rosalita Munoz.
Inside the buckas are ninety-nine children. The left-over twin - the one that makes for an odd number - is Benny Slightman, of course. He is riding in the last waggon. (He felt uncomfortable about going with his father.) The children don't speak. Some of the younger ones have gone back to sleep; they will have to be awakened shortly, when the waggons reach their destination. Ahead, now less than a mile, is the place where the path into the arroyo country splits off to the left. On the right, the land runs down a mild slope to the river. All the drivers keep looking to the east, toward the constant darkness that is Thunderclap. They are watching for an approaching dust-cloud. There is none. Not yet. Even the seminon winds have fallen still. Callahan's prayers seem to have been answered, at least in that regard.
TWO
Ben Slightman, sitting next to Roland on the bucka's peak-seat, spoke in a voice so low the gunslinger could barely hear him. "What will'ee do to me, then?"
If asked, when the waggons set out from Calla Bryn Sturgis, to give odds on Slightman's surviving this day, Roland might have put them at five in a hundred. Surely no better. There were two crucial questions that needed to be asked and then answered correctly. The first had to come from Slightman himself. Roland hadn't really expected the man to ask it, but here it was, out of his mouth. Roland turned his head and looked at him.
Vaughn Eisenhart's foreman was very pale, but he took off his spectacles and met Roland's gaze. The gunslinger ascribed no special courage to this. Surely Slightman the Elder had had time to take Roland's measure and knew that he must look the gunslinger in the eye if he was to have any hope at all, little as he might like to do it.
"Yar, I know," Slightman said. His voice was steady, at least so far. "Know what? That you know."
"Have since we took your pard, I suppose," Roland said. The word was deliberately sarcastic (sarcasm was the only form of humor Roland truly understood), and Slightman winced at it: pard. Your pard. But he nodded, eyes still steady on Roland's.
"I had to figure that if you knew about Andy, you knew about me. Although he'd never have peached on me. Such wasn't in his programming." At last it was too much and he could bear the eye-contact no longer. He looked down, biting his lip. "Mostly I knew because of Jake."
Roland wasn't able to keep the surprise out of his face.
"He changed. He didn't mean to, not as trig as he is - and as brave - but he did. Not toward me, toward my boy. Over the last week, week and a half. Benny was only... well, puzzled, I guess you'd say. He felt something but didn't know what it was. I did. It was like your boy didn't want to be around him anymore. I asked myself what could do that. The answer seemed pretty clear. Clear as short beer, do ya."
Roland was falling behind Overholser's waggon. He flicked the reins over the backs of his own team. They moved a little faster. From behind them came the quiet sound of the children, some talking now but most snoring, and the muted jingle of trace. He'd asked Jake to collect up a small box of children's possessions, and had seen the boy doing it. He was a good boy who never put off a chore. This morning he wore a dayrider hat to keep the sun out of his eyes, and his father's gun. He rode on the seat of the eleventh waggon, with one of the Estrada men. He guessed that Slightman had a good boy, too, which had gone far toward making this the mess that it was.
"Jake was at the Dogan one night when you and Andy were there, passing on news of your neighbors," Roland said. On the seat beside him, Slightman winced like a man who has just been punched in the belly.
"There," he said. "Yes, I could almost sense... or thought I could..." A longer pause, and then: "Fuck."
Roland looked east. A little brighter over there now, but still no dust. Which was good. Once the dust appeared, the Wolves would come in a rush. Their gray horses would be fast. Continuing on, speaking almost idly, Roland asked the other question. If Slightman answered in the negative, he wouldn't live to see the coming of the Wolves no matter how fast their gray horses rode.
"If you'd found him, Slightman - if you'd found my boy - would you have killed him?"
Slightman put his spectacles back on as he struggled with it. Roland couldn't tell if he understood the importance of the question or not. He waited to see if the father of Jake's friend would live or die. He'd have to decide quickly; they were approaching the place where the waggons would stop and the children would get down.