Tian looked at him, startled. Eddie nodded, unsmiling: you heard me. He was twenty-five, already a year older than Cuthbert Allgood on his last day at Jericho Hill, but in this day’s failing light he could have passed for a man of fifty. One of harsh certainty.

“If he’s seen a dead Wolf, we need to debrief him.”

“I don’t kennit, Eddie.”

“Yeah, but I think you ken my point just fine. Whatever you’ve got against him, put it aside. If we settle up with the Wolves, you have my permission to bump him into the fireplace or push him off the goddam roof. But for now, keep your sore ass to yourself. Okay?”

Tian nodded. He stood looking out across his troublesome north field, the one he called Son of a Bitch, with his hands in his pockets. When he studied it so, his expression was one of troubled greed.

“Do you think his story about killing a Wolf is so much hot air? If you really do, I won’t waste my time.”

Grudgingly, Tian said: “I’m more apt to believe that ’un than most of the others.”

“Why?”

“Well, he were tellin it ever since I were old enough to listen, and that ’un never changes much. Also…” Tian’s next words squeezed down, as if he were speaking them through gritted teeth. “My Gran-pere never had no shortage of thorn and bark. If anyone would have had guts enough to go out on the East Road and stand against the Wolves—not to mention enough trum to get others to go with him—I’d bet my money on Jamie Jaffords.”

“Trum?”

Tian thought about how to explain it. “If’ee was to stick your head in a rock-cat’s mouth, that’d take courage, wouldn’t it?”

It would take idiocy was what Eddie thought, but he nodded.

“If ’ee was the sort of man could convince someone else to stick his head in a rock-cat’s mouth, that’d make you trum. Your dinh’s trum, ain’t he?”

Eddie remembered some of the stuff Roland had gotten him to do, and nodded. Roland was trum, all right. He was trum as hell. Eddie was sure the gunslinger’s old mates would have said the same.

“Aye,” Tian said, turning his gaze back to his field. “In any case, if ye’d get something halfway sensible out of the old man, I’d wait until after supper. He brightens a bit once he’s had his rations and half a pint of graf. And make sure my wife’s sitting right beside you, where he can get an eyeful. I ’magine he’d try to have a good deal more than his eye on her, were he a younger man.” His face had darkened again.

Eddie clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, he’s not younger. You are. So lighten up, all right?”