had replaced his shoes with a pair of deerskin moccasins, and he felt the jolt all the way up to his knee. The rat gave a rusty, ratcheting squeal, tumbled over and over in the dirt, and came to rest on its back. Eddie could see what looked like a dozen stubby mechanical legs pistoning up and down. Each was tipped with a sharp steel claw. These claws twirled around and around on gimbals the size of pencil-erasers.
A steel rod poked out of the robot’s midsection and flipped the gadget upright again. Eddie brought Roland’s revolver down, ignoring a momentary impulse to steady it with his free hand. That might be the way cops in his own world were taught to shoot, but it wasn’t the way it was done here. When you forget the gun is there, when it feels like you’re shooting with your finger, Roland had told them, then you’ll be somewhere near home.
Eddie pulled the trigger. The tiny radar-dish, which had begun to turn again in an effort to find the enemies, disappeared in a blue flash. The rat made a choked noise—Cloop!—and fell dead on its side.
Eddie turned with his heart jackhammering in his chest. He couldn’t remember being this furious since he realized that Roland meant to keep him in his world until his goddamned Tower was won or lost . . . probably until they were all worm-chow, in other words.
He levelled the empty gun at Roland’s heart and spoke in a thick voice he hardly recognized as his own. “If there was a round left in this, you could stop worrying about your fucking Tower right now.”
“Stop it, Eddie!” Susannah said sharply.
He looked at her. “It was going for you, Susannah, and it meant to turn you into ground chuck.”
“But it didn’t get me. You got it, Eddie. You got it.”
“No thanks to him.” Eddie made as if to re-holster the gun and then realized, to his further disgust, that he had nothing to put it in. Susannah was wearing the holster. “Him and his lessons. Him and his goddam lessons.” He turned to Roland. “I tell you, for two cents—”
Roland’s mildly interested expression suddenly changed. His eyes shifted to a point over Eddie’s left shoulder. “DOWN!” he shouted.
Eddie didn’t ask questions. His rage and confusion were wiped from his mind immediately. He dropped, and as he did, he saw the gunslinger’s left hand blur down to his side. My God, he thought, still falling, he CAN’T be that fast, no one can be that fast, I’m not bad but Susannah makes me look slow and he makes Susannah look like a turtle trying to walk uphill on a piece of glass—
Something passed just over his head, something that squealed at him in mechanical rage and pulled out a tuft of his hair. Then the gunslinger was shooting from the hip, three fast shots like thunder-cracks, and the squealing stopped. A creature which looked to Eddie like a large mechanical bat thudded to earth between the place where Eddie now lay and the one where Susannah knelt beside Roland. One of its jointed, rust-speckled wings thumped the ground once, weakly, as if angry at the missed chance, and then became still.
Roland crossed to Eddie, walking easy in his old sprung boots. He extended a hand. Eddie took it and let Roland help him to his feet. The wind had been knocked out of him and he found he couldn’t talk. Probably just as well . . . seems like every time I open my mouth I stick my goddam foot into it.
“Eddie! You all right?” Susannah was crossing the clearing to where he stood with his head bent and his hands planted on his upper thighs, trying to breathe.
“Yeah.” The word came out in a croak. He straightened up with an effort. “Just got a little haircut.”
“It was in a tree,” Roland said mildly. “I didn’t see it myself, at first. The light gets tricky this time of day.” He paused and then went on in that same mild voice: “She was never in any danger, Eddie.”
Eddie nodded his head. Roland, he now realized, could almost have eaten a hamburger and drunk a milkshake before beginning his draw. He was that fast.
“All right. Let’s just say I disapprove of your teaching techniques, okay? I’m not going to apologize, though, so if you’re waiting for one, you can stop now.”
Roland bent, picked Susannah up, and began to brush her off. He did this