“Look here at us, do ya, and say thankee,” Roland said. He held out his hands. Eddie and Susannah did the same. Eddie had caught three pottery shards. Susannah had five (and a shallow cut on the pad of one finger). Roland had snatched a full dozen pieces of falling shrapnel. It looked like almost enough to make a whole plate, were the pieces glued back together.

The six from the Calla stared, unbelieving. Benny the Kid still had his hands over his ears; now he lowered them slowly. He was looking at Jake as one might look at a ghost or an apparition from the sky.

“My… God,” Callahan said. “It’s like a trick in some old Wild West show.”

“It’s no trick,” Roland said, “never think it. It’s the Way of the Eld. We are of that an-tet, khef and ka, watch and warrant. Gunslingers, do ya. And now I’ll tell you what we will do.” His eyes sought Overholser’s. “What we will do, I say, for no man bids us. Yet I think nothing I say will discomfort you too badly. If mayhap it does—” Roland shrugged. If it does, too bad, that shrug said.

He dropped the pottery shards between his boots and dusted his hands.

“If those had been Wolves,” he said, “there would have been fifty-six left to trouble you instead of sixty. Four of them lying dead on the ground before you could draw a breath. Killed by a boy.” He gazed at Jake. “What you would call a boy, mayhap.” Roland paused. “We’re used to long odds.”

“The young fella’s a breathtaking shot, I’d grant ye,” said Slightman the Elder. “But there’s a difference between clay dishes and Wolves on horseback.”

“For you, sai, perhaps. Not for us. Not once the shooting starts. When the shooting starts, we kill what moves. Isn’t that why you sought us?”

“Suppose they can’t be shot?” Overholser asked. “Can’t be laid low by even the hardest of hard calibers?”

“Why do you waste time when time is short?” Roland asked evenly. “You know they can be killed or you never would have come out here to us in the first place. I didn’t ask, because the answer is self-evident.”

Overholser had once more flushed dark red. “Cry your pardon,” he said.