Roland nodded. “I want to thank you for taking me up to the cave, Henchick, and for telling me all thee knows.”

“I did what I had to,” Henchick said. “And you’ll do as’ee promise. Wont’chee?”

Roland of Gilead nodded. “Let God pick a winner.”

“Aye, so we do say. Ye speak as if ye knew us, once upon a season.” He paused, eyeing Roland with a certain sour shrewdness. “Or is it just makin up to me that ye does? For anyone who’s ever read the Good Book can thee and thou till the crows fly home.”

“Does thee ask if I play the toady, up here where there’s no one to hear us but them?” Roland nodded toward the babbling darkness. “Thou knows better, I hope, for if thee doesn’t, thee’s a fool.”

The old man considered, then put out his gnarled, long-fingered hand. “Do’ee well, Roland. ’Tis a good name, and a fair.”

Roland put out his right hand. And when the old man took it and squeezed it, he felt the first deep twinge of pain where he wanted to feel it least.

No, not yet. Where I’d feel it least is in the other one. The one that’s still whole.

“Mayhap this time the Wolves’ll kill us all,” said Henchick.

“Perhaps so.”

“Yet still, perhaps we’re well-met.”

“Perhaps we are,” the gunslinger replied.

Chapter IX

The Priest’s Tale Concluded (Unfound)

One

“Beds’re ready,” Rosalita Munoz said when they got back.

Eddie was so tired that he believed she’d said something else entirely— Time to weed the garden,perhaps, or There’s fifty or sixty more people’d like t’meet ye waitin up to the church . After all, who spoke of beds at three in the afternoon?

“Huh?” Susannah asked blearily. “What-say, hon? Didn’t quite catch it.”

“Beds’re ready,” the Pere’s woman of work repeated. “You two’ll go where ye slept night before last; young soh’s to have the Pere’s bed. And the bumbler can go in with ye, Jake, if ye’d like; Pere said for me to tell’ee so. He’d be here to tell you himself, but it’s his afternoon for sick-rounds. He takes the Communion to em.” She said this last with unmistakable pride.

“Beds,” Eddie said. He couldn’t quite get the sense of this. He looked around, as if to confirm that it was still midafternoon, the sun still shining brightly. “Beds?”

“Pere saw’ee at the store,” Rosalita amplified, “and thought ye’d want naps after talking to all those people.”