“Aye, aye, we’ll be there early,” Avery agreed. “These two and six more good men. Fran Lengyll’s asked to go along, and he’s got a machine-gun.” Avery spoke this last with ringing pride, as if he himself had invented the machine-gun. Then he looked at Depape slyly. “What about you, coffin-hand? Want to go along? Won’t take me more’n an eyeblink to deputize ye.”

“I have another chore. Reynolds, too.” Depape smiled. “There’s plenty of work for all of us, Sheriff—after all, it’s Reaping.”

11

That afternoon, Susan and Roland met at the hut in the Bad Grass. She told him about the book with the torn-out pages, and Roland showed her what he’d left in the hut’s north corner, secreted beneath a mouldering pile of skins.

She looked first at this, then at him with wide and frightened eyes. “What’s wrong? What does thee suspect is wrong?”

He shook his head. Nothing was wrong... not that he could tell, anyway. And yet he had felt a strong need to do what he’d done, to leave what he’d left. It wasn’t the touch, nothing like it, but only intuition.

“I think everything is all right... or as right as things can be when the odds may turn out fifty of them for each of us. Susan, our only chance is to take them by surprise. You’re not going to risk that, are you? Not planning to go to Lengyll, waving your father’s stockline book around?”

She shook her head. If Lengyll had done what she now suspected, he’d get his payback two days from now. There would be reaping, all right. Reaping aplenty. But this... this frightened her, and she said so.

“Listen.” Roland took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I’m only trying to be careful. If things go badly—and they could—you’re the one most likely to get away clean. You and Sheemie. If that happens, Susan, you—thee—must come here and take my guns. Take them west to Gilead. Find my father. He’ll know thee are who thee says by what thee shows. Tell him what happened here. That’s all.”

“If anything happens to thee, Roland, I won’t be able to do anything. Except die.”

His hands were still on her face. Now he used them to make her head shake slowly, from side to side. “You won’t die,” he said. There was a coldness in his voice and eyes that struck her not with fear but awe. She thought of his blood—of how old it must be, and how cold it must sometimes flow. “Not with this job undone. Promise me.”

“I... I promise, Roland. I do.”

“Tell me aloud what you promise.”

“I’ll come here. Get yer guns. Take them to yer da. Tell him what happened.”