There was only one extra bedroom, so Roland bunked in with Callahan. Eddie and Susannah were thus afforded a sort of rough honeymoon: their first night together by themselves, in a bed and under a roof. They were not too tired to take advantage of it. Afterward, Susannah passed immediately into sleep. Eddie lay awake a little while. Hesitantly, he sent his mind out in the direction of Callahan’s tidy little church, trying to touch the thing that lay within. Probably a bad idea, but he couldn’t resist at least trying. There was nothing. Or rather, a nothing in front of a something.

I could wake it up,Eddie thought. I really think I could.

Yes, and someone with an infected tooth could rap it with a hammer, but why would you?

We’ll have to wake it up eventually. I think we’re going to need it.

Perhaps, but that was for another day. It was time to let this one go.

Yet for awhile Eddie was incapable of doing that. Images flashed in his mind, like bits of broken mirror in bright sunlight. The Calla, lying spread out below them beneath the cloudy sky, the Devar-Tete Whye a gray ribbon. The green beds at its edge: rice come a-falla. Jake and Benny Slightman looking at each other and laughing without a word passed between them to account for it. The aisle of green grass between the high street and the Pavilion. The torches changing color. Oy, bowing and speaking ( Eld! Thankee!) with perfect clarity. Susannah singing: “I’ve known sorrow all my days.”

Yet what he remembered most clearly was Roland standing slim and gunless on the boards with his arms crossed at the chest and his hands pressed against his cheeks; those faded blue eyes looking out at the folken . Roland asking questions, two of three. And then the sound of his boots on the boards, slow at first, then speeding up. Faster and faster, until they were a blur in the torchlight. Clapping. Sweating. Smiling. Yet his eyes didn’t smile, not those blue bombardier’s eyes; they were as cold as ever.

Yet how he had danced! Great God, how he had danced in the light of the torches.

Come-come-commala, rice come a-falla,Eddie thought.

Beside him, Susannah moaned in some dream.

Eddie turned to her. Slipped his hand beneath her arm so he could cup her breast. His last thought was for Jake. They had better take care of him out at that ranch. If they didn’t, they were going to be one sorry-ass bunch of cowpunchers.

Eddie slept. There were no dreams. And beneath them as the night latened and the moon set, this borderland world turned like a dying clock.

Chapter II

Dry Twist

One