Now it’s twenty-three,Roland thought that evening as he sat behind Eisenhart’s Rocking B, listening to the boys shout and Oy bark. Back in Gilead, this sort of porch behind the main house, facing the barns and the fields, would have been called the work-stoop. Twenty-three days until the Wolves. And how many until Susannah foals?

A terrible idea concerning that had begun to form in his head. Suppose Mia, the new she inside Susannah’s skin, were to give birth to her monstrosity on the very day the Wolves appeared? One wouldn’t think that likely, but according to Eddie, coincidence had been cancelled. Roland thought he was probably right about that. Certainly there was no way to gauge the thing’s period of gestation. Even if it had been a human child, nine months might no longer be nine months. Time had grown soft.

“Boys!” Eisenhart bawled. “What in the name of the Man Jesus am I going to tell my wife if you kill yer sad selfs jumpin out of that barn?”

“We’re okay!” Benny Slightman called. “Andy won’t let us get hurt!” The boy, dressed in bib overalls and barefooted, was standing in the open bay of the barn, just above the carved letters which said ROCKING B . “Unless…do you really want us to stop, sai?”

Eisenhart glanced toward Roland, who saw Jake standing just behind Benny, impatiently waiting his chance to risk his bones. Jake was also dressed in bib overalls—a pair of his new friend’s, no doubt—and the look of them made Roland smile. Jake wasn’t the sort of boy you imagined in such clothes, somehow.

“It’s nil to me, one way or the other, if that’s what you want to know,” Roland said.

“Garn, then!” the rancher called. Then he turned his attention to the bits and pieces of hardware spread out on the boards. “What do’ee think? Will any of em shoot?”

Eisenhart had produced all three of his guns for Roland’s inspection. The best was the rifle the rancher had brought to town on the night Tian Jaffords had called the meeting. The other two were pistols of the sort Roland and his friends had called “barrel-shooters” as children, because of the oversized cylinders which had to be revolved with the side of the hand after each shot. Roland had disassembled Eisenhart’s shooting irons with no initial comment. Once again he had set out gun-oil, this time in a bowl instead of a saucer.

“I said—”

“I heard you, sai,” Roland said. “Your rifle is as good as I’ve seen this side of the great city. The barrel-shooters…” He shook his head. “That one with the nickel plating might fire. The other you might as well stick in the ground. Maybe it’ll grow something better.”