He ain’t goan know nuthin. He be too busy gittin his medicine. Gittin hisself laid, too, for all I know.

The alien voice did not respond, but the seed of doubt had been planted. She had heard them talking when they thought she was asleep. The Really Bad Man needed to do something. She didn’t know what it was. Had something to do with a tower was all Detta knew. Could be the Really Bad Man thought this tower was full of gold or jewels or something like that. He said he needed her and Eddie and some other one to get there, and Detta guessed maybe he did. Why else would these doors be here?

If it was magic and she killed Eddie, he might know. If she killed his way to the tower, she thought she might be killing the only thing graymeat mahfah was living for. And if he knew he had nothing to live for, mahfah might do anything, because the mahfah wouldn’t give a bug-turd for nothin no more.

The idea of what might happen if the Really Bad Man came back like that made Detta shiver.

But if she couldn’t kill Eddie, what was she going to do? She could take the gun while Eddie was asleep, but when the Really Bad Man came back, could she handle both of them?

She just didn’t know.

Her eyes touched on the wheelchair, started to move away, then moved back again, fast. There was a deep pocket in the leather backrest. Poking out of this was a curl of the rope they had used to tie her into the chair.

Looking at it, she understood how she could do everything.

Detta changed course and began to crawl toward the gunslinger’s inert body. She meant to take what she needed from the knapsack he called his “purse,” then get the rope, fast as she could . . . but for a moment she was held frozen by the door.

Like Eddie, she interpreted what she was seeing in terms of the movies . . . only this looked more like some TV crime show. The setting was a drug-store. She was seeing a druggist who looked scared silly, and Detta didn’t blame him. There was a gun pointing straight into the druggist’s face. The druggist was saying something, but his voice was distant, distorted, as if heard through sound-baffles. She couldn’t tell what it was. She couldn’t see who was holding the gun, either, but then, she didn’t really need to see the stick-up man, did she? She knew who it was, sho.

It was the Really Bad Man.

Might not look like him over there, might look like some tubby little sack of shit, might even look like a brother, but inside it be him, sho. Didn’t take him long to find another gun, did it? I bet it never does. You get movin, Detta Walker.

She opened Roland’s purse, and the faint, nostalgic aroma of tobacco long hoarded but now long gone drifted out. In one way it was very much like a lady’s purse, filled with what looked like so much random rickrack at first glance . . . but a closer look showed you the travelling gear of a man prepared for almost any contingency.