"Keep em coming, pal," Eddie said hoarsely, and made a come on, man gesture with both hands. He sounded as if he might have been speaking through a throatful of tears. "Just keep em coming."
"Perhaps another time," Callahan said gently. "Another time we may sit and have our own palaver about the old places and ways of saying. Baseball, if it do ya. Now, though, time is short."
"In more ways than you know, maybe," Roland said. "What would you have of us, sai Callahan? And now you must speak to the point, for I've told you in every way I can that we are not wanderers your friends may interview, then hire or not as they do their farmhands or saddle-tramps."
"For now I ask only that you stay where you are and let me bring them to you," he said. "There's Tian Jaffords, who's really responsible for us being out here, and his wife, Zalia. There's Overholser, the one who most needs to be convinced that we need you."
"We won't convince him or anyone," Roland said.
"I understand," Callahan said hastily. "Yes, you've made that perfectly clear. And there's Ben Slightman and his boy, Benny. Ben the Younger is an odd case. His sister died four years ago, when she and Benny were both ten. No one knows if that makes Ben the Younger a twin or a singleton." He stopped abruptly. "I've wandered. I'm sorry."
Roland gestured with an open palm to show it was all right.
"You make me nervous, hear me I beg."
"You don't need to beg us nothing, sugar," Susannah said.
Callahan smiled. "It's only the way we speak. In the Calla, when you meet someone, you may say, 'How from head to feet, do ya, I beg?' And the answer, 'I do fine, no rust, tell the gods thankee-sai.' You haven't heard this?"
They shook their heads. Although some of the words were familiar, the overall expressions only underlined the fact that they had come to somewhere else, a place where talk was strange and customs perhaps stranger.
"What matters," Callahan said, "is that the borderlands are terrified of creatures called the Wolves, who come out of Thunderclap once a generation and steal the children. There's more to it, but that's the crux. Tian Jaffords, who stands to lose not just one child this time but two, says no more, the time has come to stand and fight. Others - men like Overholser - say doing that would be disaster. I think Overholser and those like him would have carried the day, but your coming has changed things." He leaned forward earnestly. "Wayne Overholser isn't a bad man, just a frightened man. He's the biggest farmer in the Calla, and so he has more to lose than some of the rest. But if he could be convinced that we might drive the Wolves off... that we could actually win against them... I believe he might also stand and fight."
"I told you - " Roland began.
"You don't convince," Callahan broke in. "Yes, I understand. I do. But if they see you, hear you speak, and then convince themselves... ?"
Roland shrugged. "There'll be water if God wills it, we say."
Callahan nodded. "They say it in the Calla, too. May I move on to another, related matter?"
Roland raised his hands slightly - as if, Eddie thought, to tell Callahan it was his nickel.
For a moment the man with the scar on his brow said nothing. When he did speak, his voice had dropped. Eddie had to lean forward to hear him. "I have something. Something you want. That you may need. It has reached out to you already, I think."
"Why do you say so?" Roland asked.
Callahan wet his lips and then spoke a single word: "Todash."
NINE
"What about it?" Roland asked. "What about todash?"
"Haven't you gone?" Callahan looked momentarily unsure of himself. "Haven't any of you gone?"
"Say we have," Roland said. "What's that to you, and to your problem in this place you call the Calla?"
Callahan sighed. Although it was still early in the day, he looked tired. "This is harder than I thought it would be," he said, "and by quite a lot. You are considerably more - what's the word? - trig, I suppose. More trig than I expected."
"You expected to find nothing but saddle-tramps with fast hands and empty heads, isn't that about the size of it?" Susannah asked. She sounded angry. "Well, joke's on you, honeybunch. Anyway, we may be tramps, but we got no saddles. No need for saddles with no horses."
"We've brought you horses," Callahan said, and that was enough. Roland didn't understand everything, but he thought he now had enough to clarify the situation quite a bit. Callahan had known they were coming, known how many they were, known they were walking instead of riding. Some of those things could have been passed on by spies, but not all. And todash... knowing that some or all of them had gone todash...
"As for empty heads, we may not be the brightest four on the planet, but - " She broke off suddenly, wincing. Her hands went to her stomach.