“All right,” said another voice. “Now you, son,”

“Be damned if I will!” Cuthbert’s voice wavered on the edge of hysteria

There was a thud and a muffled cry of pain. Roland turned around and saw Alain down on one knee, the heel of his left hand pressed against his forehead. Blood ran down his face.

“Ye want me to deal him another 'un?” Jake White asked. He had an old pistol in his hand, reversed so the butt was forward. “I can, you know; my arm is feeling wery limber for this early in the day.”

“No!” Cuthbert was twitching with horror and something like grief. Ranged behind him were three armed men, looking on with nervous avidity.

“Then be a good boy an' get yer hands behind yer.”

Cuthbert, still fighting tears, did as he was told. Esposas were put on him by Deputy Bridger. The other two men yanked Alain to his feet. He reeled a little, then stood firm as he was handcuffed. His eyes met Roland’s, and Al tried to smile. In some ways it was the worst moment of that terrible ambush morning. Roland nodded back and made himself a promise: he would never be taken like this again, not if he lived to be a thousand years old.

Lengyll was wearing a trailscarf instead of a string tie this morning, but Roland thought he was inside the same box-tail coat he’d worn to the Mayor’s welcoming party, all those weeks ago. Standing beside him, puffing with excitement, anxiety, and self-importance, was Sheriff Avery.

“Boys,” the Sheriff said, “ye’re arrested for transgressing the Barony. The specific charges are treason and murder.”

“Who did we murder?” Alain asked mildly, and one of the posse uttered a laugh either shocked or cynical, Roland couldn’t tell which.

“The Mayor and his Chancellor, as ye know quite well,” Avery said. “Now-”

“How can you do this?” Roland asked curiously. It was Lengyll to whom he spoke. “Mejis is your home place; I’ve seen the line of your fathers in the town cemetery. How can you do this to your home place, sai Lengyll?”

“I’ve no intention of standing out here and making palaver with ye,” Lengyll said. He glanced over Roland’s shoulder. “Alvarez! Get his horse! Boys as trig as this bunch should have no problem riding with their hands behind their-”

“No, tell me,” Roland interposed. “Don’t hold back, sai Lengyll- these are your friends you’ve come with, and not a one who isn’t inside your circle. How can you do it? Would you rape your own mother if you came upon her sleeping with her dress up?”

Lengyll’s mouth twitched-not with shame or embarrassment but momentary prudish distaste, and then the old rancher looked at Avery. “They teach em to talk pretty in Gilead, don’t they?”

Avery had a rifle. Now he stepped toward the handcuffed gunslinger with the butt raised. “I’ll teach 'im how to talk proper to a man of the gentry, so I will! Knock the teef straight out of his head, if you say aye, Fran!”

Lengyll held him back, looking tired. “Don’t be a fool. I don’t want to bring him back laying over a saddle unless he’s dead.”

Avery lowered his gun. Lengyll turned to Roland.

“Ye’re not going to live long enough to profit from advice, Dearborn,” he said, “but I’ll give'ee some, anyway: stick with the winners in this world. And know how the wind blows, so ye can tell when it changes direction.”

“You’ve forgotten the face of your father, you scurrying little maggot,” Cuthbert said clearly.

This got to Lengyll in a way Roland’s remark about his mother had not-it showed in the sudden bloom of color in his weathered cheeks.

“Get em mounted!” he said. “I want em locked up tight within the hour!”

5

Roland was boosted into Rusher’s saddle so hard he almost flew off on the other side-would have, if Dave Hollis had not been there to steady him and then to wedge Roland’s boot into the stirrup. Dave offered the gunslinger a nervous, half-embarrassed smile.

“I’m sorry to see you here,” Roland said gravely.

“It’s sorry I am to be here,” the deputy said. “If murder was your business, I wish you’d gotten to it sooner. And your friend shouldn’t have been so arrogant as to leave his calling-card.” He nodded toward Cuthbert.

Roland hadn’t the slightest idea what Deputy Dave was referring to, but it didn’t matter. It was just part of the frame, and none of these men believed much of it, Dave likely included. Although, Roland supposed, they would come to believe it in later years and tell it to their children and grandchildren as gospel. The glorious day they’d ridden with the posse and taken down the traitors.

The gunslinger used his knees to turn Rusher… and there, standing by the gate between the Bar K’s dooryard and the lane leading to the Great Road, was Jonas himself. He sat astride a deep-chested bay, wearing a green felt drover’s hat and an old gray duster. There was a rifle in the scabbard beside his right knee. The left side of the duster was pulled back to expose the butt of his revolver. Jonas’s white hair, untied today, lay over his shoulders.

He doffed his hat and held it out to Roland in courtly greeting. “A good game,” he said. “You played very well for someone who was taking his milk out of a tit not so long ago.”

“Old man,” Roland said, “you’ve lived too long.”

Jonas smiled. “You’d remedy that if you could, wouldn’t you? Yar, I reckon.” He flicked his eyes at Lengyll. “Get their toys, Fran. Look specially sharp for knives. They’ve got guns, but not with em. Yet I know a bit more about those shooting irons than they might think. And funny boy’s slingshot. Don’t forget that, for gods’ sake. He like to take Roy’s head off with it not so long ago.”

“Are you talking about the carrot-top?” Cuthbert asked. His horse was dancing under him; Bert swayed back and forth and from side to side like a circus rider to keep from tumbling off. “He never would have missed his head. His balls, maybe, but not his head.”

“Probably true,” Jonas agreed, watching as the spears and Roland’s shortbow were taken into custody. The slingshot was on the back of Cuthbert’s belt, tucked into a holster he had made for it himself. It was very well for Roy Depape that he hadn’t tried Bert, Roland knew-Bert could take a bird on the wing at sixty yards. A pouch holding steel shot hung at the boy’s left side. Bridger took it, as well.

While this was going on, Jonas fixed Roland with an amiable smile. “What’s your real name, brat? Fess up-no harm in telling now; you’re going to ride the handsome, and we both know it.”

Roland said nothing. Lengyll looked at Jonas, eyebrows raised. Jonas shrugged, then jerked his head in the direction of town. Lengyll nodded and poked Roland with one hard, chapped finger. “Come on, boy. Let’s ride.”

Roland squeezed Rusher’s sides; the horse trotted toward Jonas. And suddenly Roland knew something. As with all his best and truest intuitions, it came from nowhere and everywhere-absent at one second, all there and fully dressed at the next.

“Who sent you west, maggot?” he asked as he passed Jonas. “Couldn’t have been Cort-you’re too old. Was it his father?”

The look of slightly bored amusement left Jonas’s face-flew from his face, as if slapped away. For one amazing moment the man with the white hair was a child again: shocked, shamed, and hurt.

“Yes, Cort’s da-I see it in your eyes. And now you’re here, on the Clean Sea… except you’re really in the west. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west.”

Jonas’s gun was out and cocked in his hand with such speed that only Roland’s extraordinary eyes were capable of marking the movement. There was a murmur from the men behind them-partly shock, mostly awe.

“Jonas, don’t be a fool!” Lengyll snarled. “You ain’t killin em after we took the time and risk to hood em and tie their hooks, are ye?”