by Stephen King
“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.”
Cuthbert began to grin. “Oh Roland,” he said. “Your father would be proud. Only fourteen, but cozy as the devil!”
“Fifteen come next moonrise,” Roland said seriously. “If we do it this way, we may have to kill their drogue riders. Watch my signals, all right?”
“We’re going to cross to Hanging Rock as part of their party?” Alain asked. He had always been a step or two behind Cuthbert, but Roland didn’t mind; sometimes reliability was better than quickness. “Is that it?”
“If the cards fall that way, yes.”
“If they’ve got the pink ball with em, you’d better hope it doesn’t give us away,” Alain said.
Cuthbert looked surprised. Roland bit his lip, thinking that sometimes Alain was plenty quick. Certainly he had come up with this unpleasant little idea ahead of Bert… ahead of Roland, too.
“We’ve got a lot to hope for this morn
ing, but we’ll play our cards as they come off the top of the pack.”
They dismounted and sat by their horses there on the edge of the grass, saying little. Roland watched the silver clouds of dust racing each other across the desert floor and thought of Susan. He imagined them married, living in a freehold somewhere south of Gilead. By then Farson would have been defeated, the world’s strange decline reversed (the childish part of him simply assumed that making an end to John Farson would somehow see to that), and his gunslinging days would be over. Less than a year it had been since he had won the right to carry the six-shooters he wore on his hips-and to carry his father’s great revolvers when Steven Deschain decided to pass them on-and already he was tired of them. Susan’s kisses had softened his heart and quickened him, somehow; had made another life possible. A better one, perhaps. One with a house, and kiddies, and-
“They’re coming,” Alain said, snapping Roland out of his reverie.
The gunslinger stood up, Rusher’s reins in one fist. Cuthbert stood tensely nearby. “Large party or small? Does thee… do you know?”
Alain stood facing southeast, hands held out with the palms up. Beyond his shoulder, Roland saw Old Star just about to slip below the horizon. Only an hour until dawn, then.
“I can’t tell yet,” Alain said.
“Can you at least tell if the ball-”
“No. Shut up, Roland, let me listen!”
Roland and Cuthbert stood and watched Alain anxiously, at the same time straining their ears to hear the hooves of horses, the creak of wheels, or the murmur of men on the passing wind. Time spun out. The wind, rather than dropping as Old Star disappeared and dawn approached, blew more fiercely than ever. Roland looked at Cuthbert, who had taken out his slingshot and was playing nervously with the pull. Bert raised one shoulder in a shrug.
“It’s a small party,” Alain said suddenly. “Can either of you touch them?”
They shook their heads.
“No more than ten, maybe only six.”
“Gods!” Roland murmured, and pumped a fist at the sky. He couldn’t help it. “And the ball?”
“I can’t touch it,” Alain said. He sounded almost as though he were sleeping himself. “But it’s with them, don’t you think?”
Roland did. A small party of six or eight, probably travelling with the ball. It was perfect.
“Be ready, boys,” he said. “We’re going to take them.”
9
Jonas’s party made good time down the Drop and into the Bad Grass. The guide-stars were brilliant in the autumn sky, and Renfrew knew them all. He had a click-line to measure between the two he called The Twins, and he stopped the group briefly every twenty minutes or so to use it. Jonas hadn’t the slightest doubt the old cowboy would bring them out of the tall grass pointed straight at Hanging Rock.
Then, about an hour after they’d entered the Bad Grass, Quint rode up beside him. “That old lady, she want to see you, sai. She say it’s important.”
“Do she, now?” Jonas asked.
“Aye.” Quint lowered his voice. “That ball she got on her lap all glowy.”
“Is that so? I tell you what. Quint-keep my old trail-buddies company while I see what’s what.” He dropped back until he was pacing beside the black cart. Rhea raised her face to him, and for a moment, washed as it was in the pink light, he thought it the face of a young girl.
“So,” she said. “Here y’are, big boy. I thought ye’d show up pretty smart.” She cackled, and as her face broke into its sour lines of laughter, Jonas again saw her as she really was-all but sucked dry by the thing in her lap. Then he looked down at it himself… and was lost. He could feel that pink glow radiating into all the deepest passages and hollows of his mind, lighting them up in a way they’d never been lit up before. Even Coral, at her dirty busiest, couldn’t light him up that way.
“Ye like it, don’t ye?” she half-laughed, half-crooned. “Aye, so ye do, so would anyone, such a pretty glam it is! But what do ye see, sai Jonas?”
Leaning over, holding to the saddle-horn with one hand, his long hair hanging down in a sheaf, Jonas looked deeply into the ball. At first he saw only that luscious, labial pink, and then it began to draw apart. Now he saw a hut surrounded by tall grass. The sort of hut only a hermit could love. The door-it was painted a peeling but still bright red-stood open. And sitting there on the stone stoop with her hands in her lap, her blankets on the ground at her feet, and her unbound hair around her shoulders was…
“I’ll be damned!” Jonas whispered. He had now leaned so far out of the saddle that he looked like a trick rider in a circus show, and his eyes seemed to have disappeared; there were only sockets of pink light where they had been.
Rhea cackled delightedly. “Aye, it’s Thorin’s gilly that never was! Dearborn’s lovergirl!” Her cackling stopped abruptly. “Lovergirl of the young proddy who killed my Ermot. And he’ll pay for it, aye, so he will. Look closer, sai Jonas! Look closer!”
He did. Everything was clear now, and he thought he should have seen it earlier.
Everything this girl’s aunt had feared had been true. Rhea had known, although why she hadn’t told anyone the girl had been screwing one of the In-World boys, Jonas didn’t know. And Susan had done more than just screw Will Dearborn; she’d helped him escape, him and his trail-mates, and she might well have killed two lawmen for him, into the bargain.
The figure in the ball swam closer. Watching that made him feel a little dizzy, but it was a pleasant dizziness. Beyond the girl was the hut, faintly lit by a lamp which had been turned down to the barest core of flame. At first Jonas thought someone was sleeping in one comer, but on second glance he decided it was only a heap of hides that looked vaguely human.
“Do’ee spy the boys?” Rhea asked, seemingly from a great distance. “Do’ee spy em, m'lord sai?”
“No,” he said, his own voice seeming to come from that same distant place. His eyes were pinned to the ball. He could feel its light baking deeper and deeper into his brain. It was a good feeling, like a hot fire on a cold night. “She’s alone. Looks as if she’s waiting.”
“Aye.” Rhea gestured above the ball-a curt dusting-off movement of the hands-and the pink light was gone. Jonas gave a low, protesting cry, but no matter; the ball was dark again. He wanted to stretch his hands out and tell her to make the light return-to beg her, if necessary-and held himself back by pure force of will. He was rewarded by a slow return of his wits. It helped to remind himself that Rhea’s gestures were as meaningless as the puppets in a Pinch and Jilly show. The ball did what it wanted, not what she wanted.
Meanwhile, the ugly old woman was looking at him with eyes that were perversely shrewd and clear. “Waiting for what, do’ee suppose?” she asked.
There was only one thing she could be waiting for. Jonas thought with rising alarm. The boys. The three beardless sons of bitches from In-World. And if they weren’t with her, they might well be up ahead, doing their own waiting.
Waiting for him. Possibly even waiting for-
“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll only speak once, and you best answer true. Do they know about that thing? Do those three boys know about the Rainbow?”
Her eyes shifted away from his. It was answer enough in one way, but not in another. She had had things her way all too long up there on her hill; she had to know who was boss down here. He leaned over again and grabbed her shoulder. It was horrible-like grabbing a bare bone that somehow still lived-but he made himself hold on all the same. And squeeze. She moaned and wriggled, but he held on.
“Tell me, you old bitch! Run your fucking gob!”
“They might know of it,” she whined. “The girl might’ve seen something the night she came to be-am-, let go, ye’re killing me!”
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.” He took another longing glance at the ball, then sat up straight in the saddle, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called: “Clay! Hold up!” As Reynolds and Renfrew reined back,
Jonas raised a hand to halt the vaqs behind him.
The wind whispered through the grass, bending it, rippling it, whipping up eddies of sweet smell. Jonas stared ahead into the dark, even though he knew it was fruitless to look for them. They could be anywhere, and Jonas didn’t like the odds in an ambush. Not one bit.
He rode to where Clay and Renfrew were waiting. Renfrew looked impatient. “What’s the problem? Dawn’ll be breaking soon. We ought to get a move-on.”
“Do you know the huts in the Bad Grass?”
“Aye, most. Why-”
“Do you know one with a red door?”
Renfrew nodded and pointed northish. “Old Soony’s place. He had some sort of religious conversion-a dream or a vision or something. That’s when he painted the door of his hut red. He’s gone to the Manni-folk these last five years.” He no longer asked why, at least; he had seen something on Jonas’s face that had shut up his questions.
Jonas raised his hand, looked at the blue coffin tattooed there for a second, then turned and called for Quint. “You’re in charge,” Jonas told him.
Quint’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. “Me?”
“Yar. But you’re not going on-there’s been a change of plan.”
“What-”
“Listen and don’t open your mouth again unless there’s something you don’t understand. Get that damned black cart turned around. Put your men around it and hie on back the way we came. Join up with Lengyll and his men. Tell them Jonas says wait where you find em until he and Reynolds and Renfrew come. Clear?”
Quint nodded. He looked bewildered but said nothing.
“Good. Get about it. And tell the witch to put her toy back in its bag.” Jonas passed a hand over his brow. Fingers which had rarely shaken before had now picked up a minute tremble. “It’s distracting.”
Quint started away, then looked back when Jonas called his name.
“I think those In-World boys are out here, Quint. Probably ahead of where we are now, but if they’re back the way you’re going, they’ll probably set on you.”