Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,317

of a town called Oakley into a killing-zone. Six of the ten in the gang were killed outright. The rest were hung. Reynolds was one of those. This was less than a year later, during the time of Wide Earth.” He paused, then said: “One of those shot dead in the killing-zone was Coral Thorin. She had become Reynolds’s woman; rode and killed with the rest of them.”

They went on in silence for a bit. In the distance, the thinny warbled its endless song. Jake suddenly ran ahead to a parked camper. A note had been left under the wiper blade on the driver’s side. By standing on his toes, he was just able to reach it. He scanned it, frowning.

“What does it say?” Eddie asked.

Jake handed it over. Eddie looked, then passed it to Susannah, who read it in turn and gave it to Roland. He looked, then shook his head. “I can make out only a few words—old woman, dark man. What does the rest say? Read it to me.”

Jake took it back. “ ‘The old woman from the dreams is in Nebraska. Her name is Abagail.’ ” He paused. “Then, down here, it says, ‘The dark man is in the west. Maybe Vegas.’ ”

Jake looked up at the gunslinger, the note fluttering in his hand, his face puzzled and uneasy. But Roland was looking toward the palace which shimmered across the highway—the palace that was not in the west but in the east, the palace that was light, not dark.

“In the west,” Roland said. “Dark man, Dark Tower, and always in the west.”

“Nebraska’s west of here, too,” Susannah said hesitantly. “I don’t know if that matters, this Abagail person, but . . .”

“I think she’s part of another story,” Roland said.

“But a story close to this one,” Eddie put in. “Next door, maybe. Close enough to swap sugar for salt . . . or start arguments.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Roland said, “and we may have business with the ‘old woman’ and the ‘dark man’ yet . . . but today our business is east. Come on.”

They began walking again.

5

“What about Sheemie?” Jake asked after awhile.

Roland laughed, partly in surprise at the question, partly in pleased remembrance. “He followed us. It couldn’t have been easy for him, and it must have been damned scary in places—there were wheels and wheels of wild country between Mejis and Gilead, and plenty of wild folks, too. Worse than just folks, mayhap. But ka was with him, and he showed up in time for Year’s End Fair. He and that damned mule.”

“Capi,” Jake said.

“Appy,” Oy repeated, padding along at Jake’s heel.

“When we went in search of the Tower, I and my friends, Sheemie was with us. As a sort of squire, I suppose you’d say. He . . .” But Roland trailed off, biting at his lip, and of that he would say no more.

“Cordelia?” Susannah asked. “The crazy aunt?”

“Dead before the bonfire had burned down to embers. It might have been a heart-storm, or a brain-storm—what Eddie calls a stroke.”

“Perhaps it was shame,” Susannah said. “Or horror at what she’d done.”

“It may have been,” Roland said. “Waking to the truth when it’s too late is a terrible thing. I know that very well.”

“Something up there,” Jake said, pointing at a long stretch of road from which the cars had been cleared. “Do you see?”

Roland did—with his eyes he seemed to see everything—but it was another fifteen minutes or so before Susannah began to pick up the small black specks ahead in the road. She was quite sure she knew what they were, although what she thought was less vision than intuition. Ten minutes after that, she was sure.

They were shoes. Six pairs of shoes placed neatly in a line across the eastbound lanes of Interstate 70.

CHAPTER II

SHOES IN THE ROAD

1

They reached the shoes at mid-morning. Beyond them, clearer now, stood the glass palace. It glimmered a delicate green shade, like the reflection of a lily pad in still water. There were shining gates in front of it; red pennons snapped from its towers in a light breeze.

The shoes were also red.

Susannah’s impression that there were six pairs was understandable but wrong—there were actually four pairs and one quartet. This latter—four dark red booties made of supple leather—was undoubtedly meant for the four-footed member of their ka-tet. Roland picked one of them up and felt inside it. He didn’t know how many bumblers had worn shoes in the history of the world,