“I don’t lie and I don’t say for certain,” Roland replied. “If I’ve given anyone the idea that I know all the answers when less than a season ago I didn’t even know the Wolves existed, I cry your pardon. But let me tell you a story before I bid you goodnight. When I was a boy in Gilead, before the coming of the Good Man and the great burning that followed, there was a tree farm out to the east o’ barony.”

“Whoever heard of farming trees ?” someone called derisively.

Roland smiled and nodded. “Perhaps not ordinary trees, or even ironwoods, but these were blossies, a wonderful light wood, yet strong. The best wood for boats that ever was. A piece cut thin nearly floats in the air. They grew over a thousand acres of land, tens of thousands of blosswood trees in neat rows, all overseen by the barony forester. And the rule, never even bent, let alone broken, was this: take two, plant three.”

“Aye,” Eisenhart said. “ ’Tis much the same with stock, and with threaded stock the advice is to keep four for every one ye sell or kill. Not that many could afford to do so.”

Roland’s eyes roamed the crowd. “During the summer season I turned ten, a plague fell on the blosswood forest. Spiders spun white webs over the upper branches of some, and those trees died from their tops down, rotting as they went, falling of their own weight long before the plague could get to the roots. The forester saw what was happening, and ordered all the good trees cut down at once. To save the wood while it was still worth saving, do you see? There was no more take two and plant three, because the rule no longer made any sense. The following summer, the blossy woods east of Gilead was gone.”

Utter silence from the folken . The day had drained down to a premature dusk. The torches hissed. Not an eye stirred from the gunslinger’s face.

“Here in the Calla, the Wolves harvest babies. And needn’t even go to the work of planting em, because—hear me—that’s the way it is with men and women. Even the children know. ‘Daddy’s no fool, when he plants the rice commala, Mommy knows just what to do.’ ”

A murmur from the folken.

“The Wolves take, then wait. Take…and wait. It’s worked fine for them, because men and women always plant new babies, no matter what else befalls. But now comes a new thing. Now comes plague.”

Took began, “Aye, say true, ye’re a plague all r—” Then someone knocked the hat off his head. Eben Took whirled, looked for the culprit, and saw fifty unfriendly faces. He snatched up his hat, held it to his breast, and said no more.