Gone off a bit , Roland thought. He could feel a blackness filling his heart. His sinking heart. She'd gone off a bit, all right. And he knew who had stepped in to take her place. Their attention had wandered in the aftermath of the fight...Jake's grief... the congratulations of the folken ... the confusion and the joy and the singing... but that was no excuse.
"Gunslingers !" he roared, and the jubilant crowd quieted at once. Had he cared to look, he could have seen the fear that lay just beneath their relief and adulation. It would not have been new to him; they were always afraid of those who came wearing the hard calibers. What they wanted of such when the shooting was done was to give them a final meal, perhaps a final gratitude-fuck, then send them on their way and pick up their own peaceful farming-tools once more.
Well , Roland thought, we'll be going soon enough. In fact, one of us has gone already. Gods !
"Gunslingers, to me! To me!"
Eddie reached Roland first. He looked around. "Where's Susannah?" he asked.
Roland pointed into the stony wasteland of bluffs and arroyos, then elevated his finger until it was pointing at a black hole just below the skyline. "I think there," he said.
All the color had drained out of Eddie Dean's face. "That's Doorway Cave you're pointing at," he said. "Isn't it?"
Roland nodded.
"But the ball... Black Thirteen... she wouldn't even go near it when it was in Callahan's church - "
"No," Roland said. "Susannah wouldn't. But she's not in charge anymore."
"Mia?" Jake asked.
"Yes." Roland studied the high hole with his faded eyes. "Mia's gone to have her baby. She's gone to have her chap."
"No," Eddie said. His hands wandered out and took hold of Roland's shirt. Around them, the folken stood silently, watching. "Roland, say no."
"We'll go after her and hope we're not too late," Roland said.
But in his heart, he knew they already were.
Epilogue: The Doorway Cave
ONE
They moved fast, but Mia moved faster. A mile beyond the place where the arroyo path divided, they found her wheelchair. She had pushed it hard, using her strong arms to give it a savage beating against the unforgiving terrain. Finally it had struck a jutting rock hard enough to bend the lefthand wheel out of true and render the chair useless. It was a wonder, really, that she had gotten as far in it as she had.
"Fuck-commala," Eddie murmured, looking at the chair. At the dents and dings and scratches. Then he raised his head, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted. "Fight her, Susannah!Fight her! We're coming! " He pushed past the chair and headed on up the path, not looking to see if the others were following.
"She can't make it up the path to the cave, can she?" Jake asked. "I mean, her legs are gone."
"Wouldn't think so, would you?" Roland asked, but his face was dark. And he was limping. Jake started to say something about this, then thought better of it.
"What would she want up there, anyway?" Callahan asked.
Roland turned a singularly cold eye on him. "To go somewhere else," he said. "Surely you see that much. Come on."
TWO
As they neared the place where the path began to climb, Roland caught up to Eddie. The first time he put his hand on the younger man's shoulder, Eddie shook it off. The second time he turned - reluctantly - to look at his dinh. Roland saw there was blood spattered across the front of Eddie's shirt. He wondered if it was Benny's, Margaret's, or both.
"Mayhap it'd be better to let her alone awhile, if it's Mia," Roland said.
"Are you crazy? Did fighting the Wolves loosen your screws ?"
"If we let her alone, she may finish her business and be gone." Even as he spoke the words, Roland doubted them.
"Yeah," Eddie said, studying him with burning eyes, "she'll finish her business, all right. First piece, have the kid. Second piece, kill my wife."
"That would be suicide."
"But she might do it. We have to go after her."
Surrender was an art Roland practiced rarely but with some skill on the few occasions in his life when it had been necessary. He took another look at Eddie Dean's pale, set face and practiced it now. "All right," he said, "but we'll have to be careful. She'll fight to keep from being taken. She'll kill, if it comes to that. You before any of us, mayhap."
"I know," Eddie said. His face was bleak. He looked up the path, but a quarter of a mile up, it hooked around to the south side of the bluff and out of sight. The path zigged back to their side just below the mouth of the cave. That stretch of the climb was deserted, but what did that prove? She could be anywhere. It crossed Eddie's mind that she might not even be up there at all, that the crashed chair might have been as much a red herring as the children's possessions Roland had had scattered along the arroyo path.
I won't believe that. There's a million ratholes in this part of the Calla, and if I believe that she could be in any of them ...
Callahan and Jake had caught up and stood there looking at Eddie.
"Come on," he said. "I don't care who she is, Roland. If four able-bodied men can't catch one no-legs lady, we ought to turn in our guns and call it a day."
Jake smiled wanly. "I'm touched. You just called me a man."
"Don't let it go to your head, Sunshine. Come on."