and the gunslinger had gone in a direction that might have been north, headed back to finish what they had begun.
THREE
They flushed out another fourteen guards in the next three hours, most of them humes. Roland surprised Jake-a little-by only killing the two who shot at them from behind the fire engine that had crashed with one wheel stuck in the cellar bulkhead. The rest he disarmed and then gave parole, telling them that any Devar-Toi guards still in the compound when the late-afternoon change-of-shifts horn blew would be shot out of hand.
"But where will we go?" asked a taheen with a snowy-white rooster's head below a great floppy-red coxcomb (he reminded Jake a little of Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon character).
Roland shook his head. "I care not where you fetch," he said, "as long as you're not here when the next horn blows, kennit.
You've done hell's work here, but hell's shut, and I mean to see it will never open this particular set of doors again."
"What do you mean?" asked the rooster-taheen, almost timidly, but Roland wouldn't say, had only told the creature to pass on the message to any others he might run across.
Most of the remaining taheen and can-toi left Algul Siento in pairs and triplets, going without argument and nervously looking back over their shoulders every few moments. Jake thought they were right to be afraid, because his dinh's face that day had been abstract with thought and terrible with grief.
Eddie Dean lay on his deathbed, and Roland of Gilead would not bear crossing.
"What are you going to do to the place?" Jake asked after the afternoon horn had blown. They were making their way past the smoking husk of Damli House (where the robot firemen had posted signs every twenty feet reading OFF-LIMITS PENDING FIRE DEPT. INVESTIGATION), on their way to see Eddie.
Roland only shook his head, not answering the question.
On the Mall, Jake spied six Breakers standing in a circle, holding hands. They looked like folks having a seance. Sheemie was there, and Ted, and Dani Rostov; there also was a young woman, an older one, and a stout, bankerly-looking man.
Beyond, lying with their feet sticking out under blankets, was a line of the nearly fifty guards who had died during the brief action.
"Do you know what they're doing?" Jake asked, meaning the seance-folken-the ones behind them were just being dead, a job that would occupy them from now on.
Roland glanced toward the circle of Breakers briefly. "Yes."
"What?"
"Not now," said the gunslinger. "Now we're going to pay our respects to Eddie. You're going to need all the serenity you can manage, and that means emptying your mind."
FOUR
Now, sitting with Oy outside the empty Clover Tavern with its neon beer-signs and silent jukebox, Jake reflected on how right Roland had been, and how grateful Jake himself had been when, after forty-five minutes or so, the gunslinger had looked at him, seen his terrible distress, and excused him from the room where Eddie lingered, giving up his vitality an inch at a time, leaving the imprint of his remarkable will on every last inch of his life's tapestry.
The litter-bearing party Ted Brautigan had organized had borne the young gunslinger to Corbett Hall, where he was laid in the spacious bedroom of the first-floor proctor's suite.
The litter-bearers lingered in the dormitory's courtyard, and as the afternoon wore on, the rest of the Breakers joined them.
When Roland and Jake arrived, a pudgy red-haired woman stepped into Roland's way.
Lady, I wouldn't do that,]ake had thought. Not this afternoon.
In spite of the day's alarums and excursions, this woman-who'd looked to Jake like the Lifetime President of his mother's garden club-had found time to put on a fairly heavy coat of makeup: powder, rouge, and lipstick as red as the side of a Devar fire engine. She introduced herself as Grace Rumbelow (formerly of Aldershot, Hampshire, England) and demanded to know what was going to happen next-where they would go, what they would do, who would take care of them. The same questions the rooster-headed taheen had asked, in other words.
"For we have been taken care of," said Grace Rumbelow in ringing tones (Jake had been fascinated with how she said
"been," so it rhymed with "seen"), "and are in no position, at least for the time being, to care for ourselves."
There were calls of agreement at this.
Roland looked her up and down, and something in his face had robbed the lady of her measured indignation. "Get out of my road," said the