Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

"My father gave me this," he said absently. "It's the only thing I have now, other than the ruins of my younger face, that I had when I rode into Mejis with my ka-mates all those years ago."

They looked at it with awe, sharing the same thought: if what the gunslinger said was true, the little leather bag had to be hundreds of years old. Roland opened it, looked in, nodded. "Susannah, hold out your hands."

She did. Into her cupped palms he poured perhaps ten pieces of silver, emptying the bag.

"Eddie, hold out yours."

"Uh, Roland, I think the cupboard's bare."

"Hold out your hands."

Eddie shrugged and did so. Roland tipped the bag over them and poured out a dozen gold pieces, emptying the bag.

"Jake?"

Jake held out his hands. From the pocket in the front of the poncho, Oy looked on with interest. This time the bag disgorged half a dozen bright gemstones before it was empty. Susannah gasped.

"They're but garnets," Roland said, almost apologetically. "A fair medium of exchange out here, from what they say. They won't buy much, but they will buy a boy's needs, I think."

"Cool!" Jake was grinning broadly. "Say thankya! Big-big!"

They looked at the empty sack with silent wonder, and Roland smiled. "Most of the magic I once knew or had access to is gone, but you see a little lingers. Like soaked leaves in the bottom of a teapot."

"Is there even more stuff inside? "Jake asked.

"No. In time, there might be. It's a grow-bag." Roland returned the ancient leather sack to his purse, came out with the fresh supply of tobacco Callahan had given him, and rolled a smoke. "Go in the store. Buy what you fancy. A few shirts, perhaps-and one for me, if it does ya; I could use one. Then you'll go out on the porch and take your ease, as town folk do. Sai Took won't care much for it, there's nothing he'd like to see so well as our backs going east toward Thunderclap, but he'll not shoo you off."

"Like to see him try," Eddie grunted, and touched the butt of Roland's gun.

"You won't need that," Roland said. "Custom alone will keep him behind his counter, minding his till. That, and the temper of the town."

"It's going our way, isn't it?" Susannah said.

"Yes, Susannah. If you asked them straight on, as I asked sai Jaffords, they'd not answer, so it's best not to ask, not yet. But yes. They mean to fight. Or to let us fight for them. Which can't be held against them. Fighting for those who can't fight for themselves is our job."

Eddie opened his mouth to tell Roland what Gran-pere had told him, then closed it again. Roland hadn't asked him, although that had been the reason he had sent them to the Jaffordses'. Nor, he realized, had Susannah asked him. She hadn't mentioned his conversation with old Jamie at all.

"Will you ask Henchick what you asked Mrs. Jaffords?" Jake asked.

"Yes," Roland said. "Him I'll ask."

'Because you know what he'll say."

Roland nodded and smiled again. This was not a smile that held any comfort; it was as cold as sunlight on snow. "A gunslinger never asks that question until he knows what the answer will be," he said. "We meet at the Pere's house for the evening meal. If all goes well, I'll be there just when the sun comes a-horizon. Are you all well? Eddie? Jake?" A slight pause. "Susannah?"

They all nodded. Oy nodded, too.

"Then until evening. Do ya fine, and may the sun never fall in your eyes."

He gigged his horse and turned off on the neglected little road leading north. They watched him go until he was out of sight, and as always when he was gone and they were on their own, the three of them shared a complex feeling that was part fear, part loneliness, and part nervous pride.

They rode on toward town with their horses a little closer together.

"Nayyup, nayyup, don'tchee bring that dairty bumble-beast in 'ere, don'tchee never!" Eben Took cried from his place behind the counter. He had a high, almost womanish voice; it scratched the dozy quiet of the mercantile like splinters of glass. He was pointing at Oy, who was peering from the front pocket of Jake's poncho. A dozen desultory shoppers, most of them women dressed in homespun, turned to look.

Two farm workers, dressed in plain brown shirts, dirty white pants, and zoris, had been standing at the counter. They backed away in a hurry, as if expecting the two outworlders carrying guns to immediately slap leather and blow sai Took all the way to Calla Boot Hill.

"Yessir," Jake said mildly. "Sorry." He lifted Oy from the pocket of the poncho and set him down on the sunny porch, just outside the door. "Stay, boy."

"Oy stay," the bumbler said, and curled his clockspring of a tail around his haunches.

Jake rejoined his friends and they made their way into the store. To Susannah, it smelled like ones she'd been in during her time in Mississippi: a mingled aroma of salted meat, leather, spice, coffee, mothballs, and aged cozenry. Beside the counter was a large wooden barrel with the top slid partway aside and a pair of tongs hanging on a nail nearby. From the keg came the strong and tearful smell of pickles in brine.

"No credit!" Took cried in that same shrill, annoying voice. "Ah en't ever give credit to no one from away and Ah never will! Say true! Say thankya!"

Susannah grasped Eddie's hand and gave it a warning squeeze. Eddie shook it off impatiently, but when he spoke, his voice was as mild as Jake's had been. "Say thankya, sai Took, we'd not ask it." And recalled something he'd heard from Pere Callahan: "Never in life."

There was a murmur of approval from some of those in the store. None of them was any longer making even the slightest pretense of shopping. Took flushed. Susannah took Eddie's hand again and this time gave him a smile to go with the squeeze.

At first they shopped in silence, but before they finished, several people-all of whom had been at the Pavilion two nights before-said hello and asked (timidly) how they did. All three said they did fine. They got shirts, including two for Roland, denim pants, underwear singlets, and three sets of shor'boots which looked ugly but serviceable. Jake got a bag of candy, picking it out by pointing while Took put it in a bag of woven grass with grudging and disagreeable slowness. When he tried to buy a sack of tobacco and some rolling papers for Roland, Took refused him with all too evident pleasure. "Nayyup, nayyup, Ah'll not sell smokeweed to a boy. Never have done."

"Good idea, too," Eddie said. "One step below devil grass, and the Surgeon General says thankya. But you'll sell it to me, won't you, sai? Our dinh enjoys a smoke in the evening, while he's planning out new ways to help folks in need."

There were a few titters at this. The store had begun to fill up quite amazingly. They were playing to a real audience now, and Eddie didn't mind a bit. Took was coming off as a shithead, which wasn't surprising. Took clearly was a shithead.

"Never seen no one dance a better commala than he did!" a man called from one of the aisles, and there were murmurs of assent.

"Say thankya," Eddie said. "I'll pass it on."

"And your lady sings well," said another.

Susannah dropped a skirtless curtsy. She finished her own shopping by pushing the lid a little further off the pickle barrel and dipping out an enormous specimen with the tongs. Eddie leaned close and said, "I might have gotten something that green from my nose once, but I can't really remember."

"Don't be grotesque, dear one," Susannah replied, smiling sweetly all the while.

Eddie and Jake were content to let her assume responsibility for the dickering, which Susannah did with relish. Took tried his very best to overcharge her for their gunna, but Eddie had an idea this wasn't aimed at them specifically but was just part of what Eben Took saw as his job (or perhaps his sacred calling). Certainly he was smart enough to gauge the temperature of his clientele, for he had pretty much laid off nagging them by the time the trading was finished. This did not keep him from ringing their coins on a special square of metal which seemed reserved for that sole purpose, and holding Jake's garnets up to the light and rejecting one of them (which looked like all the others, so far as Eddie,Jake, and Susannah could see).