4

They escaped Citgo with ringing ears and slightly singed around the edges but not really hurt, Sheemie riding double behind Cuthbert and Caprichoso clattering after, at the end of his long lead.

It was Susan who came up with the place they should go, and like most solutions, it seemed completely obvious… once someone had thought of it. And so, not long after Reaping Eve had become Reaping Mom, the five of them came to the hut in the Bad Grass where Susan and Roland had on several occasions met to make love.

Cuthbert and Alain unrolled blankets, then sat on them to examine the guns they had liberated from the Sheriff’s office. They had also found Bert’s slingshot.

“These’re hard calibers,” Alain said, holding one up with the cylinder sprung and peering one-eyed down the barrel. “If they don’t throw too high or wide, Roland, I think we can do some business with them.”

“I wish we had that rancher’s machine-gun,” Cuthbert said wistfully.

“You know what Cort would say about a gun like that?” Roland asked, and Cuthbert burst out laughing. So did Alain.

“Who’s Cort?” Susan asked.

“The tough man Eldred Jonas only thinks he is,” Alain said. “He was our teacher.”

Roland suggested that they catch an hour or two of sleep-the next day was apt to be difficult. That it might also be their last was something he didn’t feel he had to say.

“Alain, are you listening?”

Alain, who knew perfectly well that Roland wasn’t speaking of his ears or his attention-span, nodded.

“Do you hear anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep at it.”

“I will… but I can’t promise anything. The touch is flukey. You know that as well as I do.”

“Just keep trying.”

Sheemie had carefully spread two blankets in the comer next to his proclaimed best friend. “He’s Roland… and he’s Alain… who are you, good old Arthur Heath? Who are you really?”

“Cuthbert’s my name.” He stuck out his hand. “Cuthbert Allgood. How do y'do, and how do y'do, and how do y'do again?”

Sheemie shook the offered hand, then began giggling. It was a cheerful, unexpected sound, and made them all smile. Smiling hurt Roland a little, and he guessed that if he could see his own face, he’d observe a pretty good bum from being so close to the exploding derricks.

“Key-youth-bert,” Sheemie said, giggling. “Oh my! Key-youth-bert, that’s a funny name, no wonder you’re such a funny fellow. Key-youth-bert, oh-aha-ha-ha, that’s a pip, a real pip!”

Cuthbert smiled and nodded. “Can I kill him now, Roland, if we don’t need him any longer?”

“Save him a bit, why don’t you?” Roland said, then turned to Susan, his own smile fading. “Will thee walk out with me a bit, Sue? I’d talk to thee.”

She looked up at him, trying to read his face. “All right.” She held out her hand. Roland took it, they walked into the moonlight together, and beneath its light, Susan felt dread take hold of her heart.

5

They walked out in silence, through sweet-smelling grass that tasted good to cows and horses even as it was expanding in their bellies, first bloating and then killing them. It was high-at least a foot taller than Roland’s head-and still green as summer. Children sometimes got lost in the Bad Grass and died there, but Susan had never feared to be here with Roland, even when there were no sky-markers to steer by; his sense of direction was uncannily perfect.

“Sue, thee disobeyed me in the matter of the guns,” he said at last.

She looked at him, smiling, half-amused and half-angry. “Does thee wish to be back in thy cell, then? Thee and thy friends?”

“No, of course not. Such bravery!” He held her close and kissed her. When he drew back, they were both breathing hard. He took her by the arms and looked into her eyes. “But thee mustn’t disobey me this time.”

She looked at him steadily, saying nothing.

“Thee knows,” he said. “Thee knows what I’d tell thee.”

“Aye, perhaps.”

“Say. Better you than me, maybe.”

“I’m to stay at the hut while you and the others go. Sheemie and I are to stay.”

He nodded. “Will you? Will thee?”

She thought of how unfamiliar and wretched Roland’s gun had felt in her hand as she held it beneath the serape; of the wide, unbelieving look in Dave’s eyes as the bullet she’d fired into his chest flung him backward; of how the first time she’d tried to shoot Sheriff Avery, the bullet had only succeeded in setting her own clothing afire, although he had been right there in front of her. They didn’t have a gun for her (unless she took one of Roland’s), she couldn’t use one very well in any case… and, more important, she didn’t want to use one. Under those circumstances, and with Sheemie to think about, too, it was best she just stay out of the way.

Roland was waiting patiently. She nodded. “Sheemie and I’ll wait for thee. It’s my promise.”

He smiled, relieved.

“Now pay me back with honesty, Roland.”

“If I can.”

She looked up at the moon, shuddered at the ill-omened face she saw, and looked back at Roland. “What chance thee’ll come back to me?”

He thought about this very carefully, still holding to her arms. “Far better than Jonas thinks,” he said at last. “We’ll wait at the edge of the Bad Grass and should be able to mark his coming well enough.”

“Aye, the herd o’ horses I saw-”

“He may come without the horses,” Roland said, not knowing how well he had matched Jonas’s thinking, “but his folk will make noise even if they come without the herd. If there’s enough of them, we’ll see them, as well-they’ll cut a line through the grass like a part in hair.”

Susan nodded. She had seen this many times from the Drop-the mysterious parting of the Bad Grass as groups of men rode through it.

“If they’re looking for thee, Roland? If Jonas sends scouts ahead?”

“I doubt he’ll bother.” Roland shrugged. “If they do, why, we’ll kill them. Silent, if we can. Killing’s what we were trained to do; we’ll do it.”

She turned her hands over, and now she was gripping his arms instead of the other way around. She looked impatient and afraid. “Thee hasn’t answered my question. What chance I’ll see thee back?”

He thought it over. “Even toss,” he said at last.

She closed her eyes as if struck, drew in a breath, let it out, opened her eyes again. “Bad,” she said, “yet maybe not as bad as I thought. And if thee doesn’t come back? Sheemie and I go west, as thee said before?”

“Aye, to Gilead. There’ll be a place of safety and respect for you there, dear, no matter what… but it’s especially important that you go if you don’t hear the tankers explode. Thee knows that, doesn’t thee?”

“To warn yer people-thy ka-tet.”

Roland nodded.

“I’ll warn them, no fear. And keep Sheemie safe, too. He’s as much the reason we’ve got this far as anything I’ve done.”

Roland was counting on Sheemie for more than she knew. If he and Bert and Alain were killed, it was Sheemie who would stabilize her, give her reason to go on.

“When does thee leave?” Susan asked. “Do we have time to make love?”

“We have time, but perhaps it’s best we don’t,” he said. “It’s going to be hard enough to leave thee again without. Unless you really want to… “His eyes half-pleaded with her to say yes.

“Let’s just go back and lie down a bit,” she said, and took his hand. For a moment it trembled on her lips to tell him that she was kindled with his child, but at the last moment she kept silent. There was enough for him to think about without that added, mayhap… and she didn’t want to pass such happy news beneath such an ugly moon. It would surely be bad luck.

They walked back through high grass that was already springing together along their path. Outside the hut, he turned her toward him, put his hands on her cheeks, and softly kissed her again.