As dusk ended and night deepened, Roland sat on the edge of the bandstand and watched the Calla- folkentuck into their great dinner. Every one of them knew it might be the last meal they’d ever eat together, that tomorrow night at this time their nice little town might lie in smoking ruins all about them, but still they were cheerful. And not, Roland thought, entirely for the sake of the children. There was great relief in finally deciding to do the right thing. Even when folk knew the price was apt to be high, that relief came. A kind of giddiness. Most of these people would sleep on the Green tonight with their children and grandchildren in the tent nearby, and here they would stay, their faces turned to the northeast of town, waiting for the outcome of the battle. There would be gunshots, they reckoned (it was a sound many of them had never heard), and then the dust-cloud that marked the Wolves would either dissipate, turn back the way it had come, or roll on toward town. If the last, the folken would scatter and wait for the burning to commence. When it was over, they would be refugees in their own place. Would they rebuild, if that was how the cards fell? Roland doubted it. With no children to build for—because the Wolves would take them all this time if they won, the gunslinger did not doubt it—there would be no reason. At the end of the next cycle, this place would be a ghost town.

“Cry your pardon, sai.”

Roland looked around. There stood Wayne Overholser, with his hat in his hands. Standing thus, he looked more like a wandering saddle-tramp down on his luck than the Calla’s big farmer. His eyes were large and somehow mournful.

“No need to cry my pardon when I’m still wearing the dayrider hat you gave me,” Roland said mildly.

“Yar, but…” Overholser trailed off, thought of how he wanted to go on, and then seemed to decide to fly straight at it. “Reuben Caverra was one of the fellas you meant to take to guard the children during the fight, wasn’t he?”

“Aye?”

“His gut busted this morning.” Overholser touched his own swelling belly about where his appendix might have been. “He lays home feverish and raving. He’ll likely die of the bloodmuck. Some get better, aye, but not many.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Roland said, trying to think who would be best to replace Caverra, a hulk of a man who had impressed Roland as not knowing much about fear and probably nothing at all about cowardice.

“Take me instea’, would ye?”

Roland eyed him.

“Please, gunslinger. I can’t stand aside. I thought I could—that I must—but I can’t. It’s making me sick.” And yes, Roland thought, he did look sick.

“Does your wife know, Wayne?”

“Aye.”

“And says aye?”

“She does.”