“Just pick me up if I go off on the other side,” he grunted, but of course he didn’t do any such thing. The horse stood steady, swaying just the slightest bit as Eddie stepped into the stirrup and then swung into the plain black ranchhand’s saddle.

Jake asked Benny if he had a poncho. The foreman’s son looked doubtfully up at the cloudy sky. “I really don’t think it’s going to rain,” he’d said. “It’s often like this for days around Reaptide—”

“I want it for Oy.” Perfectly calm, perfectly certain. He feels exactly like I do, Eddie thought. As if he’s done this a thousand times before.

The boy drew a rolled oilskin from one of his saddlebags and handed it to Jake, who thanked him, put it on, and then tucked Oy into the capacious pocket which ran across the front like a kangaroo’s pouch. There wasn’t a single protest from the bumbler, either. Eddie thought: If I told Jake I’d expected Oy to trot along behind us like a sheepdog, would he say, “He always rides like this”? No…but he might think it.

As they set off, Eddie realized what all this reminded him of: stories he’d heard of reincarnation. He had tried to shake the idea off, to reclaim the practical, tough-minded Brooklyn boy who had grown up in Henry Dean’s shadow, and wasn’t quite able to do it. The thought of reincarnation might have been less unsettling if it had come to him head-on, but it didn’t. What he thought was that he couldn’t be from Roland’s line, simply couldn’t. Not unless Arthur Eld had at some point stopped by Co-Op City, that was. Like maybe for a redhot and a piece of Dahlie Lundgren’s fried dough. Stupid to project such an idea from the ability to ride an obviously docile horse without lessons. Yet the idea came back at odd moments through the day, and had followed him down into sleep last night: the Eld. The line of the Eld.

Three

They nooned in the saddle, and while they were eating popkins and drinking cold coffee, Jake eased his mount in next to Roland’s. Oy peered at the gunslinger with bright eyes from the front pocket of the poncho. Jake was feeding the bumbler pieces of his popkin, and there were crumbs caught in Oy’s whiskers.

“Roland, may I speak to you as dinh?” Jake sounded slightly embarrassed.

“Of course.” Roland drank coffee and then looked at the boy, interested, all the while rocking contentedly back and forth in the saddle.

“Ben—that is, both Slightmans, but mostly the kid—asked if I’d come and stay with them. Out at the Rocking B.”

“Do you want to go?” Roland asked.