The gunslinger stood facing them.

Two

For what seemed a very long time looking was all he did. In each glazed and frightened eye he read the same thing. He had seen it many times before, and it was easy reading. These people were hungry. They’d fain buy something to eat, fill their restless bellies. He remembered the pieman who walked the streets of Gilead low-town in the hottest days of summer, and how his mother had called him seppe-sai on account of how sick such pies could make people. Seppe-sai meant the death-seller.

Aye,he thought, but I and my friends don’t charge.

At this thought, his face lit in a smile. It rolled years off his craggy map, and a sigh of nervous relief came from the crowd. He started as he had before: “We are well-met in the Calla, hear me, I beg.”

Silence.

“You have opened to us. We have opened to you. Is it not so?”

“Aye, gunslinger!” Vaughn Eisenhart called back. “ ’Tis!”

“Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?”

It was Henchick of the Manni who answered this time. “Aye, Roland, by the Book and say thankya. Y’are of Eld, White come to stand against Black.”

This time the crowd’s sigh was long. Somewhere near the back, a woman began to sob.

“Calla- folken,do you seek aid and succor of us?”

Eddie stiffened. This question had been asked of many individuals during their weeks in Calla Bryn Sturgis, but he thought to ask it here was extremely risky. What if they said no?

A moment later Eddie realized he needn’t have worried; in sizing up his audience, Roland was as shrewd as ever. Some did in fact say no—a smattering of Haycoxes, a peck of Tooks, and a small cluster of Telfords led the antis—but most of the folken roared out a hearty and immediate AYE, SAY THANKYA! A few others—Overholser was the most prominent—said nothing either way. Eddie thought that in most cases, this would have been the wisest move. The most politic move, anyway. But this wasn’t most cases; it was the most extraordinary moment of choice most of these people would ever face. If the Ka-Tet of Nineteen won against the Wolves, the people of this town would remember those who said no and those who said nothing. He wondered idly if Wayne Dale Overholser would still be the big farmer in these parts a year from now.

But then Roland opened the palaver, and Eddie turned his entire attention toward him. His admiring attention. Growing up where and how he had, Eddie had heard plenty of lies. Had told plenty himself, some of them very good ones. But by the time Roland reached the middle of his spiel, Eddie realized he had never been in the presence of a true genius of mendacity until this early evening in Calla Bryn Sturgis. And—

Eddie looked around, then nodded, satisfied.

And they were swallowing every word.