Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

"And the other outsiders come to steal their children," Callahan concluded. He pointed to the left, where a long wooden building seemed to take up almost half the high street. Eddie counted not two hitching rails or four, but eight. Long ones. "Took's General Store, may it do ya fine," Callahan said, with what might have been sarcasm.

They reached the Pavilion. Eddie later put the number present at seven or eight hundred, but when he first saw them- a mass of hats and bonnets and boots and work-roughened hands beneath the long red light of that day's evening sun-the crowd seemed enormous, untellable.

They will throw shit at us , he thought. Throw shit at us and yell "Charyou tree." The idea was ridiculous but also strong.

The Calla-folk moved back on two sides, creating an aisle of green grass which led to a raised wooden platform. Ringing the Pavilion were torches caught in iron cages. At that point, they still all flared a quite ordinary yellow. Eddie's nose caught the strong reek of oil.

Overholser dismounted. So did the others of his party. Eddie, Susannah, and Jake looked at Roland. Roland sat as he was for a moment, leaning slightly forward, one arm cast across the pommel of his saddle, seeming lost in his own thoughts. Then he took off his hat and held it out to the crowd. He tapped his throat three times. The crowd murmured. In appreciation or surprise? Eddie couldn't tell. Not anger, though, definitely not anger, and that was good. The gunslinger lifted one booted foot across the saddle and lightly dismounted. Eddie left his horse more carefully, aware of all the eyes on him. He'd put on Susannah's harness earlier, and now he stood next to her mount, back-to. She slipped into the harness with the ease of long practice. The crowd murmured again when they saw her legs were missing from just above the knees.

Overholser started briskly up the path, shaking a few hands along the way. Callahan walked directly behind him, occasionally sketching the sign of the cross in the air. Other hands reached out of the crowd to secure the horses. Roland, Eddie, and Jake walked three abreast. Oy was still in the wide front pocket of the poncho Benny had loaned Jake, looking about with interest.

Eddie realized he could actually smell the crowd-sweat and hair and sunburned skin and the occasional splash of what the characters in the Western movies usually called (with contempt similar to Callahan's for the lake-boat marts) "foo-foo water." He could also smell food: pork and beef, fresh bread, frying onions, coffee and graf. His stomach rumbled, yet he wasn't hungry. No, not really hungry. The idea that the path they were walking would disappear and these people would close in on them wouldn't leave his mind. They were so quiet! Somewhere close by he could hear the first nightjars and whippoor-wills tuning up for evening.

Overholser and Callahan mounted the platform. Eddie was alarmed to see that none of the others of the party which had ridden out to meet them did. Roland walked up the three broad wooden steps without hesitation, however. Eddie followed, conscious that his knees were a little weak.

"You all right?" Susannah murmured in his ear.

"So far."

To the left of the platform was a round stage with seven men on it, all dressed in white shirts, blue jeans, and sashes. Eddie recognized the instruments they were holding, and although the mandolin and banjo made him think their music would probably be of the shitkicking variety, the sight of them was still reassuring. They didn't hire bands to play at human sacrifices, did they? Maybe just a drummer or two, to wind up the spectators.

Eddie turned to face the crowd with Susannah on his back. He was dismayed to see that the aisle that had begun where the high street ended was indeed gone now. Faces tilted up to look at him. Women and men, old and young. No expression on those faces, and no children among them. These were faces that spent most of their time out in the sun and had the cracks to prove it. That sense of foreboding would not leave him.

Overholser stopped beside a plain wooden table. On it was a large billowy feather. The farmer took it and held it up. The crowd, quiet to begin with, now fell into a silence so disquietingly deep that Eddie could hear the rattling rales in some old party's chest as he or she breathed.

"Put me down, Eddie," Susannah said quietly. He didn't like to, but he did.

"I'm Wayne Overholser of Seven-Mile Farm," Overholser said, stepping to the edge of the stage with the feather held before him. "Hear me now, I beg."

"We say thankee-sai," they murmured.

Overholser turned and held one hand out to Roland and his tet, standing there in their travel-stained clothes (Susannah didn't stand, exactly, but rested between Eddie and Jake on her haunches and one propped hand). Eddie thought he had never felt himself studied more eagerly.

"We men of the Calla heard Tian Jaffords, George Telford, Diego Adams, and all others who would speak at the Gathering Hall," Overholser said. "There I did speak myself. 'They'll come and take the children,' I said, meaning the Wolves, a'course, 'then they'll leave us alone again for a generation or more. So 'tis, so it's been, I say leave it alone.' I think now those words were mayhap a little hasty."

A murmur from the crowd, soft as a breeze.

"At this same meeting we heard Pere Callahan say there were gunslingers north of us."

Another murmur. This one was a little louder. Gunslingers… Mid-World… Gilead .

"It was taken among us that a party should go and see. These are the folk we found, do ya. They claim to be… what Pere Callahan said they were." Overholser now looked uncomfortable. Almost as if he were suppressing a fart. Eddie had seen this expression before, mostly on TV, when politicians faced with some fact they couldn't squirm around were forced to backtrack. "They claim to be of the gone world. Which is to say…"

Go on, Wayne , Eddie thought, get it out. You can do it .

"… which is to say of Eld's line."

"Gods be praised!" some woman shrieked. "Gods've sent em to save our babbies, so they have!"

There were shushing sounds. Overholser waited for quiet with a pained look on his face, then went on. "They can speak for themselves-and must-but I've seen enough to believe they may be able to help us with our problem. They carry good guns-you see em-and they can use em. Set my watch and warrant on it, and say thankya."

This time the murmur from the crowd was louder, and Eddie sensed goodwill in it. He relaxed a little.

"All right, then, let em stand before'ee one by one, that ye might hear their voices and see their faces very well. This is their dinh." He lifted a hand to Roland.

The gunslinger stepped forward. The red sun set his left cheek on fire; the right was painted yellow with torchglow. He put out one leg. The thunk of the worn bootheel on the boards was very clear in the silence; Eddie for no reason thought of a fist knocking on a coffintop. He bowed deeply, open palms held out to them. "Roland of Gilead, son of Steven," he said. "The Line of Eld."

They sighed.

"May we be well-met." He stepped back, and glanced at Eddie.

This part he could do. "Eddie Dean of New York," he said. "Son of Wendell." At least that's what Ma always claimed , he thought. And then, unaware he was going to say it: "The Line of Eld. The ka-tet of Nineteen."

He stepped back, and Susannah moved forward to the edge of the platform. Back straight, looking out at them calmly, she said, "I am Susannah Dean, wife of Eddie, daughter of Dan, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of Nineteen, may we be well-met and do ya fine." She curtsied, holding out her pretend skirts.

At this there was both laughter and applause.