“We can do that,” Roland said, getting up himself. There was pain, but not a great deal of it. Rosalita’s cat-oil was something to write home about. “Just tell me two things before we go.”

“If I can, gunslinger, and do’ee fine.”

“They of the signs: did you see them in your travels?”

Callahan nodded slowly. “Aye, gunslinger, so I did.” He looked at Eddie and Susannah. “Have you ever seen a color photo of people—one taken with a flash—where everyone’s eyes are red?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said.

“Their eyes are like that. Crimson eyes. And your second question, Roland?”

“Are they the Wolves, Pere? These low men? These soldiers of the Crimson King? Are they the Wolves?”

Callahan hesitated a long time before replying. “I can’t say for sure,” he said at last. “Not a hundred per cent, kennit. But I don’t think so. Yet certainly they’re kidnappers, although it’s not just children they take.” He thought over what he’d said. “Wolves of a kind, perhaps.” He hesitated, thought it over some more, then said it again: “Aye, Wolves of a kind.”

Chapter IV

The Priest’s Tale Continued (Highways in Hiding)

One

The walk from the back yard of the rectory to the front door of Our Lady of Serenity was a short one, taking no more than five minutes. That was surely not enough time for the Old Fella to tell them about the years he had spent on the bum before seeing a news story in the Sacramento Bee which had brought him back to New York in 1981, and yet the three gunslingers heard the entire tale, nevertheless. Roland suspected that Eddie and Susannah knew what this meant as well as he did: when they moved on from Calla Bryn Sturgis—always assuming they didn’t die here—there was every likelihood that Donald Callahan would be moving on with them. This was not just storytelling but khef, the sharing of water. And, leaving the touch, which was a different matter, to one side, khef could only be shared by those whom destiny had welded together for good or for ill. By those who were ka-tet.

Callahan said, “Do you know how folks say, ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto?’ ”

“The phrase has some vague resonance for us, sugar, yes,” Susannah said dryly.

“Does it? Yes, I see just looking at you that it does. Perhaps you’ll tell me your own story someday. I have an idea it would put mine to shame. In any case, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore as I approached the far end of the footbridge. And it seemed that I wasn’t entering New Jersey, either. At least not the one I’d always expected to find on the other side of the Hudson. There was a newspaper crumpled against the”

Two

footrail of the bridge— which seems completely deserted except for him, although vehicle traffic on the big suspension bridge to his left is heavy and constant— and Callahan bends to pick it up. The cool wind blowing along the river ruffles his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair.