“Rosa, what is it?”

“It’s your lady,” Rosa said. “Susannah.”

“What of her?” Roland asked. Frowning, he looked around. He didn’t see Susannah, couldn’t remember when he had last seen her. When he’d given Jake the cigarette? That long ago? He thought so. “Where is she?”

“That’s just it,” Rosa said. “I don’t know. So I peeked into the waggon she came in, thinking that perhaps she’d gone in there to rest. That perhaps she felt faint or gut-sick, do ya. But she’s not there. And Roland…her chair is gone.”

“Gods!” Roland snarled, and slammed his fist against his leg. “Oh, gods !”

Rosalita took a step back from him, alarmed.

“Where’s Eddie?” Roland asked.

She pointed. Eddie was so deep in a cluster of admiring men and women that Roland didn’t think he would have seen him, but for the child riding on his shoulders; it was Heddon Jaffords, an enormous grin on his face.

“Are you sure you want to disturb him?” Rosa asked timidly. “May be she’s just gone off a bit, to pull herself back together.”

Gone off a bit,Roland thought. He could feel a blackness filling his heart. His sinking heart. She’d gone off a bit, all right. And he knew who had stepped in to take her place. Their attention had wandered in the aftermath of the fight…Jake’s grief…the congratulations of the folken …the confusion and the joy and the singing…but that was no excuse.

“Gunslingers!”he roared, and the jubilant crowd quieted at once. Had he cared to look, he could have seen the fear that lay just beneath their relief and adulation. It would not have been new to him; they were always afraid of those who came wearing the hard calibers. What they wanted of such when the shooting was done was to give them a final meal, perhaps a final gratitude-fuck, then send them on their way and pick up their own peaceful farming-tools once more.

Well,Roland thought, we’ll be going soon enough. In fact, one of us has gone already. Gods!

“Gunslingers, to me! To me!”

Eddie reached Roland first. He looked around. “Where’s Susannah?” he asked.

Roland pointed into the stony wasteland of bluffs and arroyos, then elevated his finger until it was pointing at a black hole just below the skyline. “I think there,” he said.

All the color had drained out of Eddie Dean’s face. “That’s Doorway Cave you’re pointing at,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

Roland nodded.

“But the ball…Black Thirteen…she wouldn’t even go near it when it was in Callahan’s church—”

“No,” Roland said. “ Susannahwouldn’t. But she’s not in charge anymore.”

“Mia?” Jake asked.

“Yes.” Roland studied the high hole with his faded eyes. “Mia’s gone to have her baby. She’s gone to have her chap.”