“Fuh-fuh-five,” Depape said, laughing so hard he was hiccupping. “Sih-sih-six!”

Rhea climbed back up, flopped onto the cantboard again with all the grace of a dying fish, and peered around at them, wall-eyed and sneering.

“I curse ye all!” she screamed. It cut through them, stilling their laughter even as the cart bounced toward the edge of the trampled clearing. “Every last one of ye! Ye… and ye… and ye!” Her crooked finger pointed last at Jonas. “Thief! Miserable thief!”

As though it was yours, Jonas marveled (although “Mine!” was the first word to occur to him, once he had taken possession of it). As though such a wonder could ever belong to a back-country reader of rooster-guts such as you.

The cart bounced its way into the Bad Grass, the pony pulling hard with its ears laid back; the old woman’s screams served to drive it better than any whip could have done. The black slipped into the green. They saw the cart flicker like a conjurer’s trick, and then it was gone. For a long time yet, however, they heard her shrieking her curses, calling death down upon them beneath the Demon Moon.

15

“Go on,” Jonas told Clay Reynolds. “Take our Sunbeam back. And if you want to stop on the way and make some use of her, why, be my guest.” He glanced at Susan as he said this, to see what effect it might be having, but he was disappointed-she looked dazed, as if the last blow Renfrew had dealt her had scrambled her brains, at least temporarily. “Just make sure she gets to Coral at the end of all the fun.” “I will. Any message for sai Thorin?”

“Tell her to keep the wench someplace safe until she hears from me. And… why don’t you stay with her. Clay? Coral, I mean-come tomorrow, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about this 'un anymore, but Coral… ride with her to Ritzy when she goes. Be her escort, like.”

Reynolds nodded. Better and better. Seafront it would be, and that was fine. He might like a little taste of the girl once he got her there, but not on the way. Not under the ghostly-full daytime Demon Moon. “Go on, then. Get started.”

Reynolds led her across the clearing, aiming for a point well away from the bent swath of grass where Rhea had made her exit. Susan rode silently, downcast eyes fixed on her bound wrists.

Jonas turned to face his men. “The three young fellows from In-World have broken their way out of jail, with that haughty young bitch’s help,” he said, pointing at Susan’s departing back.

There was a low, growling murmur from the men. That “Will Dearborn” and his friends were free they had known; that sai Delgado had helped them escape they had not… and it was perhaps just as well for her that Reynolds was at that moment leading her into the Bad Grass and out of sight.

“Never mind!” Jonas shouted, pulling their attention back to him. He reached out a stealthy hand and caressed the curve at the bottom of the drawstring bag. Just touching the ball made him feel as if he could do anything, and with one hand tied behind his back, at that.

“Never mind her, and never mind them!” His eyes moved from Lengyll to Wertner to Croydon to Brian Hookey to Roy Depape. “We’re close to forty men, going to join another hundred and fifty. They’re three, and not one a day over sixteen. Are you afraid of three little boys?”

“No!” they cried.

“If we run on em, my cullies, what will we do?”

“KILL THEM!” The shout so loud that it sent rooks rising up into the morning sun, cawing their displeasure as they commenced the hunt for more peaceful surroundings.

Jonas was satisfied. His hand was still on the sweet curve of the ball, and he could feel it pouring strength into him. Pink strength, he thought, and grinned.

“Come on, boys. I want those tankers in the woods west of Eyebolt before the home folks light their Reap-Night Bonfire.”

16

Sheemie, crouched down in the grass and peering into the clearing, was nearly run over by Rhea’s black wagon; the screaming, gibbering witch passed so close to him that he could smell her sour skin and dirty hair. If she had looked down, she couldn’t have missed seeing him and undoubtedly would have turned him into a bird or a bumbler or maybe even a mosquito.

The boy saw Jonas pass custody of Susan to the one in the cloak, and began working his way around the edge of the clearing. He heard Jonas haranguing the men (many of whom Sheemie knew; it shamed him to know how many Mejis cowboys were doing that bad Coffin Hunter’s bidding), but paid no attention to what he was saying. Sheemie froze in place as they mounted up, momentarily scared they would come in his direction, but they rode the other way, west. The clearing emptied almost as if by magic… except it wasn’t entirely empty. Caprichoso had been left behind, his lead trailing on the beaten grass. Capi looked after the departing riders, brayed once-as if to tell them they could all go to hell-then turned and made eye-contact with Sheemie, who was peering out into the clearing. The mule flicked his ears at the boy, then tried to graze. He lipped the Bad Grass a single time, raised his head, and brayed at Sheemie, as if to say this was all the inn-boy’s fault.

Sheemie stared thoughtfully at Caprichoso, thinking of how much easier it was to ride than to walk. Gods, yes… but that second bray decided him against it. The mule might give one of his disgusted cries at the wrong time and alert the man who had Susan.

“You’ll find your way home, I reckon,” Sheemie said. “So long, pal. So long, good old Capi. See you farther down the path.”

He found the path made by Susan and Reynolds, and began to trot after them once more.

17

“They’re coming again,” Alain said a moment before Roland sensed it himself-a brief flicker in his head like pink lightning. “All of them.”

Roland hunkered in front of Cuthbert. Cuthbert looked back at him without even a suggestion of his usual foolish good humor.

“Much of it’s on you,” Roland said, then tapped the slingshot. “And on that.”

“I know.”

“How much have you got in the armory?”

“Almost four dozen steel balls.” Bert held up a cotton bag which had, in more settled times, held his father’s tobacco. “Plus assorted fireworks in my saddlebag.”

“How many big-bangers?”

“Enough, Roland.” Unsmiling. With the laughter gone from them, he had the hollow eyes of just one more killer. “Enough.”

Roland ran a hand down the front of the serape he wore, letting his palm reacquaint itself with the rough weave. He looked at Cuthbert’s, then at Alain’s, telling himself again that it could work, yes, as long as they held their nerve and didn’t let themselves think of it in terms of three against forty or fifty, it could work.

“The ones out at Hanging Rock will hear the shooting once it starts, won’t they?” Al asked.

Roland nodded. “With the wind blowing from us to them, there’s no doubt of that.”

“We’ll have to move fast, then.”

“We’ll go as best we can.” Roland thought of standing between the tangled green hedges behind the Great Hall, David the hawk on his arm and a sweat of terror trickling down his back. I think you die today, he had told the hawk, and he had told it true. Yet he himself had lived, and passed his test, and walked out of the testing corridor facing east. Today it was Cuthbert and Alain’s turn to be tested-not in Gilead, in the traditional place of proving behind the Great Hall, but here in Mejis, on the edge of the Bad Grass, in the desert, and in the canyon. Eyebolt Canyon.

“Prove or die,” Alain said, as if reading the run of the gunslinger’s thoughts. “That’s what it comes down to.”

“Yes. That’s what it always comes down to, in the end. How long before they get here, do you think?”