“You started when you heard the big farmer’s name. So did you, Eddie, although you concealed it better.”

“Sorry,” Jake said. “I have forgotten the face of—”

“Not even a bit have you,” Roland said. “Unless I have, as well. Because I’ve heard the name myself, and recently. I just can’t remember where.” Then, reluctantly: “I’m getting old.”

“It was in the bookstore,” Jake said. He took his pack, fiddled nervously with the straps, undid them. He flipped the pack open as he spoke. It was as if he had to make sure Charlie the Choo-Choo and Riddle-De-Dum were still there, still real. “The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. It’s so weird. Once it happened to me and once I watched it happen to me. That’d make a pretty good riddle all by itself.”

Roland made a rapid rotating gesture with his diminished right hand, telling him to go on and be quick.

“Mr. Tower introduced himself,” Jake said, “and then I did the same. Jake Chambers, I said. And he said—”

“ ‘Good handle, partner,’ ” Eddie broke in. “That’s what he said. Then he said Jake Chambers sounded like the name of the hero in a Western novel.”

“ ‘The guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, then moves on,’ ” Jake quoted. “And then he said, ‘Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe.’ ” He looked at Susannah and repeated it. “ Wayne D. Overholser. And if you tell me that’s a coincidence, Susannah…” He broke into a sunny, sudden grin. “I’ll tell you to kiss my white-boy ass.”

Susannah laughed. “No need of that, sass-box. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence. And when we meet Callahan’s farmer friend, I intend to ask him what his middle name is. I set my warrant that it’ll not only begin with D, it’ll be something like Dean or Dane, just four letters—” Her hand went back to the place below her breast. “This gas ! My! What I wouldn’t give for a roll of Tums or even a bottle of—” She broke off again. “Jake, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Jake was holding Charlie the Choo-Choo in his hands, and his face had gone dead white. His eyes were huge, shocked. Beside him, Oy whined uneasily. Roland leaned over to look, and his eyes also widened.

“Good gods,” he said.

Eddie and Susannah looked. The title was the same. The picture was the same: an anthropomorphic locomotive puffing up a hill, its cowcatcher wearing a grin, its headlight a cheerful eye. But the yellow letters across the bottom, Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans, were gone. There was no credit line there at all.

Jake turned the book and looked at the spine. It said Charlie the Choo-Choo and McCauley House, Publishers. Nothing else.