Susannah had gone into the house with Zalia. When they came out, Susannah was wearing not one reed pouch, but two. They hung to her hips on a pair of woven straps. There was another strap, too, Eddie saw, running around her waist and holding the pouches snug. Like holster tie-downs.

“That’s quite the hookup, say thankya,” Diego Adams remarked.

“Susannah thought it up,” Zalia said as Susannah got into her wheelchair. “She calls it a docker’s clutch.”

It wasn’t, Eddie thought, not quite, but it was close. He felt an admiring smile lift the corners of his mouth, and saw a similar one on Roland’s. And Jake’s. By God, even Oy appeared to be grinning.

“Will it draw water, that’s what I wonder,” Bucky Javier said. That such a question should even be asked, Eddie thought, only emphasized the difference between the gunslingers and the Calla- folken. Eddie and his mates had known from first look what the hookup was and how it would work. Javier, however, was a smallhold farmer, and as such, saw the world in a very different way.

You need us,Eddie thought toward the little cluster of men standing on the porch—the farmers in their dirty white pants, Adams in his chaps and manure-splattered shor’boots. Boy, do you ever.

Susannah wheeled to the front of the porch and folded her stumps beneath her so she appeared almost to be standing in her chair. Eddie knew how much this posture hurt her, but no discomfort showed on her face. Roland, meanwhile, was looking down into the pouches she wore. There were four dishes in each, plain things with no pattern on them. Practice-dishes.

Zalia walked across to the barn. Although Roland and Eddie had noted the blanket tacked up there as soon as they arrived, the others noticed it for the first time when Zalia pulled it down. Drawn in chalk on the barnboards was the outline of a man—or a manlike being—with a frozen grin on his face and the suggestion of a cloak fluttering out behind him. This wasn’t work of the quality produced by the Tavery twins, nowhere near, but those on the porch recognized a Wolf when they saw one. The older children oohed softly. The Estradas and the Javiers applauded, but looked apprehensive even as they did so, like people who fear they may be whistling up the devil. Andy complimented the artist (“whoever she may be,” he added archly), and Gran-pere told him again to shut his trap. Then he called out that the Wolves he’d seen were quite a spot bigger. His voice was shrill with excitement.

“Well, I drew it to man-size,” Zalia said (she had actually drawn it to husband -size). “If the real thing turns out to make a bigger target, all to the good. Hear me, I beg.” This last came out uncertainly, almost as a question.

Roland nodded. “We say thankya.”