"Ye must ken we have no way of knowing y'are who you say y'are," Slightman said, rather apologetically. "My family had no books growing up, and there's none out at the ranch - I'm foreman of Eisenhart's Rocking B - except for the stockline books, but growing up I heard as many tales of Gilead and gunslingers and Arthur Eld as any other boy... heard of Jericho Hill and such blood-and-thunder tales of pretend... but I never heard of a gunslinger missing two of his fingers, or a brown-skinned woman gunslinger, or one who won't be old enough to shave for years yet."
His son looked shocked, and in an agony of embarrassment as well. Slightman looked rather embarrassed himself, but pushed on.
"I cry your pardon if what I say offends, indeed I do - "
"Hear him, hear him well," Overholser rumbled. Eddie was starting to think that if the man's jaw jutted out much further, it would snap clean off.
" - but any decision we make will have long echoes. Ye must see it's so. If we make the wrong one, it could mean the death of our town, and all in it."
"I can't believe what I'm hearing!" Tian Jaffords cried indignantly. "Do you think 'ese're a fraud? Good gods, man, have'ee not looked at him? Do'ee not have - "
His wife grasped his arm hard enough to pinch white marks into his farmer's tan with the tips of her fingers. Tian looked at her and fell quiet, though his lips were pressed together tightly.
Somewhere in the distance, a crow called and a rustie answered in its slightly shriller voice. Then all was silent. One by one they turned to Roland of Gilead to see how he would reply.
FIVE
It was always the same, and it made him tired. They wanted help, but they also wanted references. A parade of witnesses, if they could get them. They wanted rescue without risk, just to close their eyes and be saved.
Roland rocked slowly back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. Then he nodded to himself and raised his head. "Jake," he said. "Come to me."
Jake glanced at Benny, his new friend, then got up and walked across to Roland. Oy walked at his heel, as always.
"Andy," Roland said.
"Sai?"
"Bring me four of the plates we ate from." As Andy did this,
Roland spoke to Overholser: "You're going to lose some crockery. When gunslingers come to town, sai, things get broken. It's a simple fact of life."
"Roland, I don't think we need - "
"Hush now," Roland said, and although his voice was gentle, Overholser hushed at once. "You've told your tale; now we tell ours."
Andy's shadow fell over Roland. The gunslinger looked up and took the plates, which hadn't been rinsed and still gleamed with grease. Then he turned to Jake, where a remarkable change had taken place. Sitting with Benny the Kid, watching Oy do his small clever tricks and grinning with pride, Jake had looked like any other boy of twelve - carefree and full of the old Dick, likely as not Now the smile had fallen away and it was hard to tell just what his age might have been. His blue eyes looked into Roland's, which were of almost the same shade. Beneath his shoulder, the Ruger Jake had taken from his father's desk in another life hung in its docker's clutch. The trigger was secured with a rawhide loop which Jake now loosened without looking. It took only a single tug.
"Say your lesson, Jake, son of Elmer, and be true."
Roland half-expected either Eddie or Susannah to interfere, but neither did. He looked at them. Their faces were as cold and grave as Jake's. Good.
Jake's voice was also without expression, but the words came out hard and sure.
"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand - "
"I don't see what this - " Overholser began.
"Shut up," Susannah said, and pointed a finger at him.
Jake seemed not to have heard. His eyes never left Roland's. The boy's right hand lay on his upper chest, the fingers spread. "He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father."
Jake paused. Drew in breath. And let it out speaking.
"I kill with my heart."
"Kill these," Roland remarked, and with no more warning than that, slung all four of the plates high into the air. They rose, spinning and separating, black shapes against the white sky.
Jake's hand, the one resting on his chest, became a blur. It pulled the Ruger from the docker's clutch, swung it up, and began pulling the trigger while Roland's hand was still in the air. The plates did not seem to explode one after the other but rather all at once. The pieces rained down on the clearing. A few fell into the fire, puffing up ash and sparks. One or two clanged off Andy's steel head.
Roland snatched upward, open hands moving in a blur. Although he had given them no command, Eddie and Susannah did the same, did it even while the visitors from Calla Bryn Sturgis cringed, shocked by the loudness of the gunfire. And the speed of the shots.
"Look here at us, do ya, and say thankee," Roland said. He held out his hands. Eddie and Susannah did the same. Eddie had caught three pottery shards. Susannah had five (and a shallow cut on the pad of one finger). Roland had snatched a full dozen pieces of falling shrapnel. It looked like almost enough to make a whole plate, were the pieces glued back together.