by Stephen King
Tian raised a feeble hand and managed an even more feeble smile. He felt like a character in a silly festival play, saved at the last moment by some improbable supernatural intervention.
"I know a bit about cowardice," Callahan said, turning to the men on the benches. "I have personal experience, you might say. I know how one cowardly decision leads to another...and another...and another...until it’s too late to turn around, too late to change. Mr. Telford, I assure you the tree of which young Mr. Jaffords spoke is not make-believe. The Calla is in dire danger. Your souls are in danger."
"Hail Mary, full of grace," said someone on the left side of the room, "the Lord is with thee. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, J—"
"Bag it," Callahan snapped. "Save it for Sunday." His eyes, blue sparks in their deep hollows, studied them. "For this night, never mind God and Mary and the Man Jesus. Never mind the sneetches and light-sticks of the Wolves, either. You must fight. You’re the men of the Calla, are you not? Then act like men. Stop behaving like dogs crawling on their bellies to lick the boots of a cruel master."
Overholser went dark red at that, and began to stand. Diego Adams grabbed his arm and spoke in his ear. For a moment Overholser remained as he was, frozen in a kind of crouch, and then he sat back down. Adams stood up.
"Sounds good, padrone," Adams said in his heavy accent. "Sounds brave. Yet there are still a few questions, mayhap. Haycox asked one of em. How can ranchers and farmers stand against armed killers out of the west?"
"By hiring armed killers of our own," Callahan replied.
There was a moment of utter, amazed silence. It was almost as if the Old Fella had lapsed into another language. At last Diego Adams said—cautiously, "I don’t understand."
"Of course you don’t," the Old Fella said. "So listen and gain wisdom. Rancher Adams and all of you, listen and gain wisdom. Not six days’ ride northeast of us, and bound southwest along the Path of the Beam, come three gunslingers and one ’prentice." He smiled at their amazement—their utter and complete amazement. Then he turned to Tian. "The ’prentice isn’t much older than your Heddon and Hedda, but he’s already as quick as a snake and as deadly as a scorpion. The others are quicker and deadlier by far. You want hard calibers? They’re at hand. I set my watch and warrant on it."
This time Overholser made it all the way to his feet. His face burned as if with a fever. His great pod of a belly trembled. "What children’s goodnight story is this?" he asked. "If there ever were such men, they passed out of existence with Gilead. And Gilead has been dust in the wind for a thousand years."
There were no mutterings of support or dispute. No mutterings of any kind. The crowd was still frozen, caught in the reverberation of that one mythic word: gunslingers.
"You’re wrong," Callahan said, "but we don’t need to fight over it. We can go and see for ourselves. A small party will do, I think. Jaffords here...myself...and what about you, Overholser? Want to come?"
"There ain’t no gunslingers!" Overholser roared.
Behind him, Jorge Estrada stood up. "Pere Callahan, God’s grace on you—"
"—and you, Jorge."
"—but even if there were gunslingers, how could three stand against forty or sixty? And not forty or sixty normal men, but forty or sixty Wolves?"
"Hear him, he speaks sense!" Eben Took, the storekeeper’s son, called out.
"And why would they fight for us?" Estrada continued. "We make it from year to year, but not much more. What could we offer them, beyond a few hot meals? And what man agrees to die for his dinner?"
"Hear him, hear him!" Telford, Overholser, and Eisenhart cried in unison. Others stamped rhythmically up and down on the boards.
The Old Fella waited until the stomping had quit, and then said: "I have books in the Rectory. Half a dozen."
Although most of them knew this, the thought of books—all that paper—still provoked a general sigh of wonder.
"According to one of them, gunslingers were forbidden to take reward. Supposedly because they descend from the line of Arthur Eld."
"The Eld! The Eld!" the Manni whispered, and several raised fists into the air with the first and fourth fingers raised. Hook em horns, the Old Fella thought. Go, Texas. He managed to stifle a laugh, but not the smile that rose on his lips.
"Are ye speaking of hardcases who wander the land, doing good deeds?" Telford asked in a gently mocking voice. "Surely you’re too old for such tales, Pere."
"Not hardcases," Callahan said patiently, "gunslingers."
"How do you know, Pere?" Tian heard himself ask. "And how can three men stand against the Wolves?"
One of the gunslingers was actually a woman, but Callahan saw no need to muddy the waters further (although an impish part of him wanted to, just the same). "I know because I know," he said. "As for how three may stand against many—three and an apprentice, actually—that’s a question for their dinh. We’ll ask him. And they wouldn’t be fighting just for their dinners, you know. Not at all."
"What else, then?" Bucky Javier asked.
Callahan knew they were there because he had seen them. He had seen them because the thing under the church floor had awakened. They would want the thing under the floor, and that was good because the Old Fella, who had once run from a town called Jerusalem’s Lot in another world, wanted to be rid of it. If he wasn’t rid of it soon, it would kill him.
Ka had come to Calla Bryn Sturgis. Ka like a wind.
"In time, Mr. Javier," Callahan said. "All in good time, sai."
Meantime, a whisper had begun in the Gathering Hall. It slipped along the benches like from mouth to mouth, a breeze of hope and fear.
Gunslingers.
Gunslingers to the east, come out of Mid-World.
And it was true, God help them. Arthur Eld’s last deadly children, moving toward Calla Bryn Sturgis along the Path of the Beam. Ka like a wind.
"Time to be men," Pere Callahan told them. Beneath the scar on his forehead, his eyes burned like lamps. Yet his tone was not without compassion. "Time to stand up, gentlemen. Time to stand and be true."
