King's fault... If it was King's fault, what? Take revenge on him? It was a gunslinger's thought; it was also a stupid thought, like the idea of taking revenge on God.
"But we're stuck with it," Jake finished.
"Aye. That wouldn't stop me from kicking his yellow, lazy ass if I got the chance, though."
Jake burst out laughing at that, and the gunslinger smiled.
Then Roland got to his feet with a grimace, both hands planted on the ball of his right hip. "Bugger," he growled.
"Hurts bad, huh?"
"Never mind my aches and mollies. Come with me. I'll show you something more interesting."
Roland, limping slightly, led Jake to where the path curled around the flank of the lumpy little mountain, presumably bound for the top. Here the gunslinger tried to hunker, grimaced, and settled to one knee, instead. He pointed to the ground with his right hand. "What do you see?"
Jake also dropped to one knee. The ground was littered with pebbles and fallen chunks of rock. Some of this talus had been disturbed, leaving marks in the scree. Beyond the spot where they knelt side by side, two branches of what Jake thought was a mesquite bush had been broken off. He bent forward and smelled the thin and acrid aroma of the sap. Then he examined the marks in the scree again. There were several of them, narrow and not too deep. If they were tracks, they certainly weren't human tracks. Or those of a desert-dog, either.
"Do you know what made these?" Jake asked. "If you do, just say it-don't make me arm-rassle you for it."
Roland gave him a brief grin. "Follow them a little. See what you find."
Jake rose and walked slowly along the marks, bent over at the waist like a boy with a stomach-ache. The scratches in the talus went around a boulder. There was dust on the stone, and scratches in the dust-as if something bristly had brushed against the boulder on its way by.
There were also a couple of stiff black hairs.
Jake picked one of these up, then immediately opened his fingers and blew it off his skin, shivering with revulsion as he did it. Roland watched this keenly.
"You look like a goose just walked over your grave."
"It's awful!" Jake heard a faint stutter in his voice. "Oh God, what was it? What was w-watching us?"
"The one Mia called Mordred." Roland's voice hadn't changed, but Jake found he could hardly bring himself to look into the gunslinger's eyes; they were that bleak. "The chap she says I fathered."
"He was here? In the night?"
Roland nodded.
"Listening...?"Jake couldn't finish.
Roland could. "Listening to our palaver and our plans, aye,
I think so. And Ted's tale as well."
"But you don't know for sure. Those marks could be anything."
Yet the only thing Jake could think of in connection with those marks, now that he'd heard Susannah's tale, were the legs of a monster spider.
"Go thee a little further," Roland said.
Jake looked at him questioningly, and Roland nodded. The wind blew, bringing them the Muzak from the prison compound
(now he thought it was "Bridge Over Troubled Water"),
also bringing the distant sound of thunder, like rolling bones.
"What-"
"Follow," Roland said, nodding to the stony talus on the slope of the path.
Jake did, knowing this was another lesson-with Roland you were always in school. Even when you were in the shadow of death there were lessons to be learned.
On the far side of the boulder, the path carried on straight for about thirty yards before curving out of sight once more. On this straight stretch, those dash-marks were very clear. Groups of three on one side, groups of four on the other.
"She said she shot off one of its legs," Jake said.
"So she did."
Jake tried to visualize a seven-legged spider as big as a human baby and couldn't do it. Suspected he didn't want to do it.
Beyond the next curve there was a desiccated corpse in the path. Jake was pretty sure it had been flayed open, but it was hard to tell. There were no innards, no blood, no buzzing flies.
Just a lump of dirty, dusty stuff that vaguely-very vaguely-resembled something canine.
Oy approached, sniffed, then lifted his leg and pissed on the remains. He returned to Jake's side with the air of one who has concluded some important piece of business.
"That was our visitor's dinner last night," Roland said.
Jake was looking around. "Is he watching us now? What do you think?"
Roland said, "I think growing boys need their rest."