“Best we spread ourselves around. Let as many as possible get a good look at us. Time is short. Decisions must be made.” All of which was true, but there was more, and Eisenhart probably knew it. He was shrewder than Overholser. He was also dead set against standing up to the Wolves—at least so far. This didn’t keep Roland from liking the man, who was big and honest and possessed of an earthy countryman’s sense of humor. Roland thought he might come around, if he could be shown they had a chance to win.

On their way out to the Rocking B, they had visited half a dozen smallhold farms along the river, where rice was the main crop. Eisenhart had performed the introductions good-naturedly enough. At each stop Roland had asked the two questions he had asked the previous night, at the Pavilion: Will you open to us, if we open to you? Do you see us for what we are, and accept us for what we do? All of them had answered yes. Eisenhart had also answered yes. But Roland knew better than to ask the third question of any. There was no need to, not yet. They still had over three weeks.

“We bide, gunslinger,” Eisenhart said. “Even in the face of the Wolves, we bide. Once there was Gilead and now there’s Gilead nummore—none knows better’n you—but still we bide. If we stand against the Wolves, all that may change. To you and yours, what happens along the Crescent might not mean s’much as a fart in a high wind one way or t’other. If ye win and survive, you’ll move along. If ye lose and die, we have nowhere to go.”

“But—”

Eisenhart raised his hand. “Hear me, I beg. Would’ee hear me?”

Roland nodded, resigned to it. And for him to speak was probably for the best. Beyond them, the boys were running back into the barn for another leap. Soon the coming dark would put an end to their game. The gunslinger wondered how Eddie and Susannah were making out. Had they spoken to Tian’s Gran-pere yet? And if so, had he told them anything of value?

“Suppose they send fifty or even sixty, as they have before, many and many-a? And suppose we wipe them out? And then, suppose that a week or a month later, after you’re gone, they send five hundred against us?”

Roland considered the question. As he was doing so, Margaret Eisenhart joined them. She was a slim woman, fortyish, small-breasted, dressed in jeans and a shirt of gray silk. Her hair, pulled back in a bun against her neck, was black threaded with white. One hand hid beneath her apron.