Diesel sloshed quietly over the loading dock and rippled along the old warped boards of the mercantile’s storeroom. John, aka Sai Yankee Flannel Shirt, gave Roland a questioning look. Roland responded by first shaking his head and then twirling his right hand again: more.

“Where’s the bookstore guy, Slick?” Andolini’s voice just as pleasant as before, but closer now. He’d crossed the road, then. Eddie put him just outside the store. Too bad diesel fuel wasn’t more explosive. “Where’s Tower? Give him to us and we’ll leave you and the other guy alone until next time.”

Sure, Eddie thought, and remembered something Susannah sometimes said (in her best growling Detta Walker voice) to indicate utter disbelief: Also I won’t come in yo’ mouth or get any in yo’ hair.

This ambush had been set up especially for visiting gunslingers, Eddie was almost sure of it. The bad boys might or might not know where Tower was (he trusted what came out of Jack Andolini’s mouth not at all), but someone had known to exactly which where and when the Unfound Door was going to deliver Eddie and Roland, and had passed that knowledge on to Balazar. You want the boy who embarrassed your boy, Mr. Balazar? The kid who peeled Jack Andolini and George Biondi off Tower before Tower had time to give in and give you what you wanted? Fine. Here’s where he’s going to show up. Him and one other. And by the way, here’s enough dough to buy an army of mercenaries in tu-tone shoes. Might not be enough, the kid’s hard and his buddy’s worse, but you might get lucky. Even if you don’t, even if the one named Roland gets away and leaves a bunch of dead guys behind … well, getting the kid’s a start. And there are always more gunnies, aren’t there? Sure. The world’s full of them. The worlds.

And what about Jake and Callahan? Had there been a reception party waiting for them, too, and had it been twenty-two years up the line from this when? The little poem on the fence surrounding the vacant lot suggested that, if they’d followed his wife, it had been—SUSANNAH-MIO, DIVIDED GIRL OF MINE, the poem had said. PARKED HER RIG IN THE DIXIE PIG IN THE YEAR OF ’99. And if there had been a reception party waiting, could they possibly still be alive?

Eddie clung to one idea: if any member of the ka-tet died—Susannah, Jake, Callahan, even Oy—he and Roland would know. If he was kidding himself about that, succumbing to some romantic fallacy, so be it.

THREE

Roland caught the eye of the man in the flannel shirt and drew the side of his hand across his throat. John nodded and let go of the oil-pump’s squeeze-handle at once. Chip, the store owner, was now standing beside the loading dock, and where his face wasn’t lathered with blood, he was looking decidedly gray. Roland thought he would pass out soon. No loss there.