It was late afternoon. Overhead, the clouds had thinned enough to turn a pallid blue that was almost the color of sky. The Overholser party had returned to their camp. Susannah and Jake had gone back along the forest road to pick more muffin-balls. After the big meal they’d packed away, none of them wanted anything heavier. Eddie sat on a log, whittling. Beside him sat Roland, with all their guns broken down and spread out before him on a piece of deerskin. He oiled the pieces one by one, holding each bolt and cylinder and barrel up to the daylight for a final look before setting it aside for reassembly.

“You told them it was out of their hands,” Eddie said, “but they didn’t ken that any more than they did the business about all those gray horses. And you didn’t press it.”

“Only would have distressed them,” Roland said. “There was a saying in Gilead: Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie said. “There was a saying in Brooklyn: You can’t get snot off a suede jacket.” He held up the object he was making. It would be a top, Roland thought, a toy for a baby. And again he wondered how much Eddie might know about the woman he lay down with each night. The women . Not on the top of his mind, but underneath. “If you decide we can help them, then we have to help them. That’s what Eld’s Way really boils down to, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Roland said.

“And if we can’t get any of them to stand with us, we stand alone.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Roland said. He had a saucer filled with light, sweet gun-oil. Now he dipped the corner of a chamois rag into it, picked up the spring-clip of Jake’s Ruger, and began to clean it. “Tian Jaffords would stand with us, come to that. Surely he has a friend or two who’d do the same regardless of what their meeting decides. In a pinch, there’s his wife.”

“And if we get them both killed, what about their kids? They have five. Also, I think there’s an old guy in the picture. One of em’s Grampy. They probably take care of him, too.”

Roland shrugged. A few months ago, Eddie would have mistaken that gesture—and the gunslinger’s expressionless face—for indifference. Now he knew better. Roland was as much a prisoner of his rules and traditions as Eddie had ever been of heroin.

“What if we get killed in this little town, screwing around with these Wolves?” Eddie asked. “Isn’t your last thought gonna be something like, ‘I can’t believe what a putz I was, throwing away my chance to get to the Dark Tower in order to take up for a bunch of snotnose brats.’ Or similar sentiments.”