As they watched, a dark flying shape—perhaps it was the same one that had frightened them before—skimmed down toward the surface of the thinny. It snatched something out of the air—a bug? another, smaller, bird?—and then began to rise again. Before it could, a silvery arm of liquid rose from the canyon’s floor. For a moment that soupy, grinding grumble rose a notch, and became almost a voice. It snatched the bird out of the air and dragged it down. Greenish light, brief and unfocused, flashed across the surface of the thinny like electricity, and was gone.

The three boys stared at each other with frightened eyes.

Jump in, gunslinger, a voice suddenly called. It was the voice of the thinny; it was the voice of his father; it was also the voice of Marten the enchanter, Marten the seducer. Most terrible of all, it was his own voice.

Jump in and let all these cares cease. There is no love of girls to worry you here, and no mourning of lost mothers to weigh your child’s heart. Only the hum of the growing cavity at the center of the universe; only the punky sweetness of rotting flesh.

Come, gunslinger. Be a part of the thinny.

Dreamy-faced and blank-eyed, Alain began walking along the edge of the drop, his right boot so close to it that the heel puffed little clouds of dust over the chasm and sent clusters of pebbles down into it. Before he could get more than five steps, Roland grabbed him by the belt and yanked him roughly back.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Alain looked at him with sleepwalker’s eyes. They began to clear, but slowly. “I don’t... know, Roland.”

Below them, the thinny hummed and growled and sang. There was a sound, as well: an oozing, sludgy mutter.

“I know,” Cuthbert said. “I know where we’re all going. Back to the Bar K. Come on, let’s get out of here.” He looked pleadingly at Roland. “Please. It’s awful.”

“All right.”

But before he led them back to the path, he stepped to the edge and looked down at the smoky silver ooze below him. “Counting,” he said with a kind of clear defiance. “Counting one thinny.” Then, lowering his voice: “And be damned to you.”

3

Their composure returned as they rode back—the sea-breeze in their faces was wonderfully restorative after the dead and somehow baked smell of the canyon and the thinny.

As they rode up the Drop (on a long diagonal, so as to save the horses a little), Alain said: “What do we do next, Roland? Do you know?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

“Supper would be a start,” Cuthbert said brightly, and tapped the lookout’s hollow skull for emphasis.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Cuthbert agreed. “And I’ll tell you something, Roland—”

“Will, please. Now that we’re back on the Drop, let me be Will.”