They weren’t. Overholser, the Jaffords, and the Slightmans had no idea what a mono was, in fact. (Callahan, who had been to Disneyland as a teenager, did.) The trains which brought the children back were hauled by plain old locomotives ( hopefully none of them named Charlie,Eddie thought), driverless and attached to one or perhaps two open flatcars. The children were huddled on these. When they arrived they were usually crying with fear (from sunburns as well, if the weather west of Thunderclap was hot and clear), covered with food and their own drying shit, and dehydrated into the bargain. There was no station at the railhead, although Overholser opined there might have been, centuries before. Once the children had been offloaded, teams of horses were used to pull the short trains from the rusty railhead. It occurred to Eddie that they could figure out the number of times the Wolves had come by counting the number of junked engines, sort of like figuring out the age of a tree by counting the rings on the stump.

“How long a trip for them, would you guess?” Roland asked. “Judging from their condition when they arrive?”

Overholser looked at Slightman, then at Tian and Zalia. “Two days? Three?”

They shrugged and nodded.

“Two or three days,” Overholser said to Roland, speaking with more confidence than was perhaps warranted, judging from the looks of the others. “Long enough for sunburns, and to eat most of the rations they’re left—”

“Or paint themselves with em,” Slightman grunted.

“—but not long enough to die of exposure,” Overholser finished. “If ye’d judge from that how far they were taken from the Calla, all I can say is I wish’ee joy of the riddle, for no one knows what speed the train draws when it’s crossing the plains. It comes slow and stately enough to the far side of the river, but that means little.”

“No,” Roland agreed, “it doesn’t.” He considered. “Twenty-seven days left?”

“Twenty-six now,” Callahan said quietly.

“One thing, Roland,” Overholser said. He spoke apologetically, but his jaw was jutting. Eddie thought he’d backslid to the kind of guy you could dislike on sight. If you had a problem with authority figures, that was, and Eddie always had.

Roland raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“We haven’t said yes.” Overholser glanced at Slightman the Elder, as if for support, and Slightman nodded agreement.