“I will love thee forever, Susan,” he said. “Come whatever storms.”

She smiled. The upward movement of her cheeks spilled a pair of tears from her eyes. “Come whatever storms,” she agreed. She kissed him again, and they went inside.

6

The moon had begun to descend when a party of eight rode out beneath the arch with come in peace writ upon it in the Great Letters. Jonas and Reynolds were in the lead. Behind them came Rhea’s black wagon, drawn by a trotting pony that looked strong enough to go all night and half the next day. Jonas had wanted to give her a driver, but Rhea refused-“Never was an animal I didn’t get on with better than any man ever could,” she’d told him, and that seemed to be true. The reins lay limp in her lap; the pony worked smart without them. The other five men consisted of Hash Renfrew, Quint, and three of Renfrew’s best vaqueros.

Coral had wanted to come as well, but Jonas had different ideas. “If we’re killed, you can go on more or less as before,” he’d said. “There’ll be nothing to tie you to us.”

“Without ye, I’m not sure there’d be any reason to go on,” she said.

“Ar, quit that schoolgirl shit, it don’t become you. You’d find plenty of reasons to keep staggerin down the path, if you had to put your mind to it. If all goes well-as I expect it will-and you still want to be with me, ride out of here as soon as you get word of our success. There’s a town west of here in the Vi Castis Mountains. Ritzy. Go there on the fastest horse you can swing a leg over. You’ll be there ahead of us by days, no matter how smart we’re able to push along. Find a respectable inn that’ll take a woman on her own… if there is such a thing in Ritzy. Wait. When we get there with the tankers, you just fall into the column at my right hand. Have you got it?”

She had it. One woman in a thousand was Coral Thorin-sharp as Lord Satan, and able to fuck like Satan’s favorite harlot. Now if things only turned out to be as simple as he’d made them sound.

Jonas fell back until his horse was pacing alongside the black cart. The ball was out of its bag and lay in Rhea’s lap. “Anything?” he asked. He both hoped and dreaded to see that deep pink pulse inside it again.

“Nay. It’ll speak when it needs to, though-count on it.”

“Then what good are you, old woman?”

“Ye’ll know when the time comes,” Rhea said, looking at him with arrogance (and some fear as well, he was happy to see).

Jonas spurred his horse back to the head of the little column. He had decided to take the ball from Rhea at the slightest sign of trouble. In truth, it had already inserted its strange, addicting sweetness into his head; he thought about that single pink pulse of light he’d seen far too much.

Balls, he told himself. Battlesweat’s all I’ve got. Once this business is over, I’ll be my old self again.

Nice if true, but…

… but he had, in truth, begun to wonder.

Renfrew was now riding with Clay. Jonas nudged his horse in between them. His dicky leg was aching like a bastard; another bad sign.

“Lengyll?” he asked Renfrew.

“Putting together a good bunch,” Renfrew said, “don’t you fear Fran Lengyll. Thirty men.”

“Thirty! God Harry’s body, I told you I wanted forty! Forty at least!”

Renfrew measured him with a pale-eyed glance, then winced at a particularly vicious gust of the freshening wind. He pulled his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose. The vaqs riding behind had already done so. “How afraid of these three boys are you, Jonas?”

“Afraid for both of us, I guess, since you’re too stupid to know who they are or what they’re capable of.” He raised his own neckerchief, then forced his voice into a more reasonable timbre. It was best he do so; he needed these bumpkins yet awhile longer. Once the ball was turned over to Latigo, that might change. “Though mayhap we’ll never see them.”

“It’s likely they’re already thirty miles from here and riding west as fast as their horses’ll take em,” Renfrew agreed. “I’d give a crown to know how they got loose.”

What does it matter, you idiot? Jonas thought, but said nothing.

“As for Lengyll’s men, they’ll be the hardest boys he can lay hands on-if it comes to a fight, those thirty will fight like sixty.”

Jonas’s eyes briefly met Clay’s. I’ll believe it when I see it, Clay’s brief glance said, and Jonas knew again why he had always liked this one better than Roy Depape.

“How many armed?”

“With guns? Maybe half. They’ll be no more than an hour behind us.”

“Good.” At least their back door was covered. It would have to do. And he couldn’t wait to be rid of that thrice-cursed ball.

Oh? whispered a sly, half-mad voice from a place much deeper than his heart. Oh, can’t you?

Jonas ignored the voice until it stilled. Half an hour later, they turned off the road and onto the Drop. Several miles ahead, moving in the wind like a silver sea, was the Bad Grass.

7

Around the time that Jonas and his party were riding down the Drop, Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain were swinging up into their saddles. Susan and Sheemie stood by the doorway to the hut, holding hands and watching them solemnly.

“Thee’ll hear the explosions when the tankers go, and smell the smoke,” Roland said. “Even with the wind the wrong way, I think thee’ll smell it. Then, no more than an hour later, more smoke. There.” He pointed. “That’ll be the brush piled in front of the canyon’s mouth.”

“And if we don’t see those things?”

“Into the west. But thee will, Sue. I swear thee will.”

She stepped forward, put her hands on his thigh, and looked up at him in the latening moonlight. He bent; put his hand lightly against the back of her head; put his mouth on her mouth.

“Go thy course in safety,” Susan said as she drew back from him.

“Aye,” Sheemie added suddenly. “Stand and be true, all three.” He came forward himself and shyly touched Cuthbert’s boot.

Cuthbert reached down, took Sheemie’s hand, and shook it. “Take care of her, old boy.”

Sheemie nodded seriously. “I will.”

“Come on,” Roland said. He felt that if he looked at her solemn, upturned face again, he would cry. “Let’s go.”

They rode slowly away from the hut. Before the grass closed behind them, hiding it from view, he looked back a final time.

“Sue, I love thee.”

She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “Bird and bear and hare and fish,” she said.

The next time Roland saw her, she was caught inside the Wizard’s glass.

8

What Roland and his friends saw west of the Bad Grass had a harsh, lonely beauty. The wind was lifting great sheets of sand across the stony desert floor; the moonlight turned these into foot racing phantoms. At moments Hanging Rock was visible some two wheels distant, and the mouth of Eyebolt Canyon two wheels farther on. Sometimes both were gone, hidden by the dust. Behind them, the tall grass made a soughing, singing sound.

“How do you boys feel?” Roland asked. “All’s well?”

They nodded.

“There’s going to be a lot of shooting, I think.”

“We’ll remember the faces of our fathers,” Cuthbert said.

“Yes,” Roland agreed, almost absently. “We’ll remember them very well.” He stretched in the saddle. “The wind’s in our favor, not theirs- that’s one good thing. We’ll hear them coming. We must judge the size of the group. All right?”

They both nodded.

“If Jonas has still got his confidence, he’ll come soon, in a small party-whatever gunnies he can put together on short notice-and he’ll have the ball. In that case, we’ll ambush them, kill them all, and take the Wizard’s Rainbow.”

Alain and Cuthbert sat quiet, listening intently. The wind gusted, and Roland clapped a hand to his hat to keep it from flying off. “If he fears more trouble from us, I think he’s apt to come later on, and with a bigger party of riders. If that happens, we’ll let them pass… then, if the wind is our friend and keeps up, we’ll fall in behind them.”