Vaughn Eisenhart’s foreman was very pale, but he took off his spectacles and met Roland’s gaze. The gunslinger ascribed no special courage to this. Surely Slightman the Elder had had time to take Roland’s measure and knew that he must look the gunslinger in the eye if he was to have any hope at all, little as he might like to do it.
“Yar, I know,” Slightman said. His voice was steady, at least so far. “Know what? That you know.”
“Have since we took your pard, I suppose,” Roland said. The word was deliberately sarcastic (sarcasm was the only form of humor Roland truly understood), and Slightman winced at it: pard. Your pard. But he nodded, eyes still steady on Roland’s.
“I had to figure that if you knew about Andy, you knew about me. Although he’d never have peached on me.
Such wasn’t in his programming.” At last it was too much and he could bear the eye-contact no longer. He looked down, biting his lip. “Mostly I knew because of Jake.”
Roland wasn’t able to keep the surprise out of his face.
“He changed. He didn’t mean to, not as trig as he is—and as brave—but he did. Not toward me, toward my boy. Over the last week, week and a half. Benny was only… well, puzzled, I guess you’d say. He felt something but didn’t know what it was. I did. It was like your boy didn’t want to be around him anymore. I asked myself what could do that. The answer seemed pretty clear. Clear as short beer, do ya.”
Roland was falling behind Overholser’s waggon. He flicked the reins over the backs of his own team. They moved a little faster. From behind them came the quiet sound of the children, some talking now but most snoring, and the muted jingle of trace. He’d asked Jake to collect up a small box of children’s possessions, and had seen the boy doing it. He was a good boy who never put off a chore. This morning he wore a dayrider hat to keep the sun out of his eyes, and his father’s gun. He rode on the seat of the eleventh waggon, with one of the Estrada men. He guessed that Slightman had a good boy, too, which had gone far toward making this the mess that it was.
“Jake was at the Dogan one night when you and Andy were there, passing on news of your neighbors,”
Roland said. On the seat beside him, Slightman winced like a man who has just been punched in the belly.
“There,” he said. “Yes, I could almost sense… or thought I could…” A longer pause, and then: ” Fuck.”
Roland looked east. A little brighter over there now, but still no dust. Which was good. Once the dust appeared, the Wolves would come in a rush. Their gray horses would be fast. Continuing on, speaking almost idly, Roland asked the other question. If Slightman answered in the negative, he wouldn’t live to see the coming of the Wolves no matter how fast their gray horses rode.
“If you’d found him, Slightman—if you’d found my boy— would you have killed him?”
Slightman put his spectacles back on as he struggled with it. Roland couldn’t tell if he understood the importance of the question or not. He waited to see if the father of Jake’s friend would live or die. He’d have to decide quickly; they were approaching the place where the waggons would stop and the children would get down.
The man at last raised his head and met Roland’s eyes again. He opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t. The fact of the matter was clear enough: he could answer the gunslinger’s question, or he could look into the gunslinger’s face, but he could not do both at the same time.
Dropping his gaze back to the splintery wood between his feet, Slightman said: “Yes, I reckon we would have
killed him.” A pause. A nod. When he moved his head a tear fell from one eye and splashed on the wood of the peak-seat’s floor. “Yar, what else?” Now he looked up; now he could meet Roland’s eyes again, and when he did he saw his fate had been decided. “Make it quick,” said he, “and don’t let me boy see it happen. Beg ya please.”
Roland flapped the reins over the mules’ backs again. Then he said: “I won’t be the one to stop your miserable breath.”
Slightman’s breath did stop. Telling the gunslinger that yes, he would have killed a twelve-year-old boy to protect his secret, his face had had a kind of strained nobility. Now it wore hope instead, and hope made it ugly. Nearly grotesque. Then he let his breath out in a ragged sigh and said, “You’re fooling with me. A-teasing me. You’re going to kill me, all right. Why would you not?”
“A coward judges all he sees by what he is,” Roland remarked. “I’d not kill you unless I had to, Slightman, because I love my own boy. You must understand that much, don’t you? To love a boy?”
“Yar.” Slightman lowered his head again and began to rub the back of his sunburned neck. The neck he must have thought would end this day packed in dirt.
“But you have to understand something. For your own good and Benny’s as much as ours. If the Wolves win, you will die. That much you can be sure of. ‘Take it to the bank,’ Eddie and Susannah say.”
Slightman was looking at him again, eyes narrowed behind his specs.
“Hear me well, Slightman, and take understanding from what I say. We’re not going to be where the Wolves think we’re going to be, and neither are the kiddies. Win or lose, this time they’re going to leave some bodies behind. And win or lose, they’ll know they were misled. Who was there in Calla Bryn Sturgis to mislead them? Only two. Andy and Ben Slightman. Andy’s shut down, gone beyond the reach of their vengeance.” He gave Slightman a smile that was as cold as the earth’s north end. “But you’re not. Nor the only one you care for in your poor excuse for a heart.”
Slightman sat considering this. It was clearly a new idea to him, but once he saw the logic of it, it was undeniable.
“They’ll likely think you switched sides a-purpose,” Roland said, “but even if you could convince them it was an accident, they’d kill you just the same. And your son, as well. For vengeance.”
A red stain had seeped into the man’s cheeks as the gunslinger spoke —roses of shame, Roland supposed—
but as he considered the probability of his son’s murder at the hands of the Wolves, he grew white once more.
Or perhaps it was the thought of Benny being taken east that did it—being taken east and roont. “I’m sorry,”
he said. “Sorry for what I’ve done.”
“Balls to your sorry,” Roland said. “Ka works and the world moves on.”
Slightman made no reply.
“I’m disposed to send you with the kids, just as I said I would,” Roland told him. “If things go as I hope, you won’t see a single moment’s action. If things don’t go as I hope, you want to remember Sarey Adams is boss of that shooting match, and if I talk to her after, you want to hope that she says you did everything you were told to do.” When this met with only more silence from Slightman, the gunslinger spoke sharply. “Tell me you understand, gods damn you. I want to hear “Yes, Roland, I ken.'”
“Yes, Roland, I ken very well.” There was a pause. “If we do win, will the folken find out, do’ee reckon? Find out about… me?”
“Not from Andy, they won’t,” Roland said. “His blabber’s done. And not from me, if you do as you now promise. Not from my ka-tet, either. Not out of respect for you, but out of respect for Jake Chambers. And if the Wolves fall into the trap I’ve laid them, why would the folken ever suspect another traitor?” He measured Slightman with his cool eyes. “They’re innocent folk. Trusting. As ye know. Certainly ye used it.”
The flush came back. Slightman looked down at the floor of the peak-seat again. Roland looked up and saw the place he was looking for now less than a quarter of a mile ahead. Good. There was still no dust-cloud on the eastern horizon, but he could feel it gathering in his mind. The Wolves were coming, oh yes. Somewhere across the river they had dismounted their train and mounted their horses and were riding like hell. And from it, he had no doubt.
“I did it for my son,” Slightman said. “Andy came to me and said they would surely take him. Somewhere over there, Roland—” He pointed east, toward Thunderclap. “Somewhere over there are poor creatures called Breakers. Prisoners. Andy says they’re telepaths and psychokinetics, and although I ken neither word, I know they’re to do with the mind. The Breakers are human, and they eat what we eat to nourish their bodies, but they need other food, special food, to nourish whatever it is that makes them special.”