puzzled by a world he could not quite understand, were clear and full of joy.
"BEAM SAYS THANKYA!" he cried to the empty room.
He looked around, as happy as Ebenezer Scrooge discovering that the spirits have done it all in one night, and ran for the door with his slippers crunching on the broken glass. One sharp spear of glass pierced his foot-carrying his death on its tip, had he but known it, say sorry, say Discordia-but in his joy he didn't even feel it. He dashed into the hall and then down the stairs.
On the second floor landing, Sheemie came upon an elderly female Breaker named Belle O'Rourke, grabbed her, shook her.
"BEAM SAYS THANKYA!" he hollered into her dazed and uncomprehending face. "BEAM SAYS ALL MAY YET BE WELL! NOT TOO LATE! JUST IN TIME!"
He rushed on to spread the glad news (glad to him, anyway), and-
On Main Street, Roland looked first at Eddie Dean, then at Jake Chambers. "They're coming, and this is where we have to take them. Wait for my command, then stand and be true."
EIGHTEEN
First to appear were three Breakers, running full out with their arms raised. They crossed Main Street that way, never seeing Eddie, who was in the box-office of the Gem (he'd knocked out the glass on all three sides with the sandalwood grip of the gun which had once been Roland's), or Jake (sitting inside an engineless Ford sedan parked in front of the Pleasantville Bake Shoppe), or Roland himself (behind a mannequin in the window of Gay Paree Fashions).
They reached the other sidewalk and looked around, bewildered.
Go, Roland thought at them. Go on and get out of here, take the alley, get away while you can.
"Come on!" one of them shouted, and they ran down the alley between the drug store and the bookshop. Another appeared, then two more, then the first of the guards, a hume with a pistol raised to the side of his frightened, wide-eyed face. Roland sighted him... and then held his fire.
More of the Devar personnel began to appear, running into Main Street from between the buildings. They spread themselves wide apart. As Roland had hoped and expected, they were trying to flank their charges and channel them. Trying to keep the retreat from turning into a rout.
"Form two lines!" a taheen with a raven's head was shouting in a buzzing, out-of-breath voice. "Form two lines and keep em between, for your fathers' sakes!"
One of the others, a redheaded taheen with his shirttail out, yelled: "What about the fence, Jakli? What if they run on the fence?"
"Can't do nothing about that, Cag, just-"
A shrieking Breaker tried to run past the raven before he could finish, and the raven-Jakli-gave him such a mighty push that the poor fellow went sprawling in the middle of the street. "Stay together, you maggots!" he snarled. "Run if ee will, but keep some fucking order about it!" As if there could be any order in this, Roland thought (and not without satisfaction)
Then, to the redhead, the one called Jakli shouted: "Let one or two of em fry-the rest'll see and stop!"
It would complicate things if either Eddie or Jake started shooting at this point, but neither did. The three gunslingers watched from their places of concealment as a species of order rose from the chaos. More guards appeared. Jakli and the redhead directed them into the two lines, which was now a corridor running from one side of the street to the other. A few Breakers got past them before the corridor was fully formed, but only a few.
A new taheen appeared, this one with the head of a weasel, and took over for the one called Jakli. He pounded a couple of running Breakers on the back, actually hurrying them up.
From south of Main Street came a bewildered shout: "Fence is cut!" And then another: "I think the guards are dead!" This latter cry was followed by a howl of horror, and Roland knew as surely as if he had seen it that some unlucky Breaker had just come upon a severed watchman's head in the grass.
The terrified babble on the heels of this hadn't run itself out.
when Dinky Earnshaw and Ted Brautigan appeared from between the bakery and the shoe store, so close to Jake's hiding place that he could have reached out the window of his car and touched them. Ted had been winged. His right shirtsleeve had turned red from the elbow down, but he was moving-with