Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [160]
“Andy’d rip it to pieces,” Eisenhart said. He spoke with a species of gloomy satisfaction.
“Fast, is he?” Roland asked.
“Yer-bugger,” Slightman said. “Don’t look it, do he, all tall and gangly like he is? But aye, he can move like greased lightning when he wants to. Faster than any rock-cat. We believe he must run on ant-nomics.”
“Very likely,” Roland said absently.
“Never mind that,” Eisenhart said, “but listen, Ben—why d’you suppose it is that Andy won’t talk about the Wolves?”
“His programming—”
“Aye, but it’s as Roland pointed out to us just before’ee came in—and we should have seen it for ourselves long before this—if the Old People set him a-going and then the Old People died out or moved on…long before the Wolves showed themselves…do you see the problem?”
Slightman the Elder nodded, then put his glasses back on. “Must have been something like the Wolves in the elden days, don’t you think? Enough like em so Andy can’t tell em apart. It’s all I can figure.”
Is it really? Roland thought.
He produced the Tavery twins’ map, opened it, and tapped an arroyo in the hill country northeast of town. It wound its way deeper and deeper into those hills before ending in one of the Calla’s old garnet mines. This one was a shaft that went thirty feet into a hillside and then stopped. The place wasn’t really much like Eyebolt Canyon in Mejis (there was no thinny in the arroyo, for one thing), but there was one crucial similarity: both were dead ends. And, Roland knew, a man will try to take service again from that which has served him once. That he should pick this arroyo, this dead-end mineshaft, for his ambush of the Wolves made perfect sense. To Eddie, to Susannah, to the Eisenharts, and now to the Eisenharts’ foreman. It would make sense to Sarey Adams and Rosalita Munoz. It would make sense to the Old Fella. He would disclose this much of his plan to others, and it would make sense to them, as well.
And if things were left out? If some of what he said was a lie?
If the Wolves got wind of the lie and believed it?
That would be good, wouldn’t it? Good if they lunged and snapped in the right direction, but at the wrong thing?
Yes, but I’ll need to trust someone with the whole truth eventually. Who?
Not Susannah, because Susannah was now two again, and he didn’t trust the other one.
Not Eddie, because Eddie might let something crucial slip to Susannah, and then Mia would know.
Not Jake, because Jake had become fast friends with Benny Slightman.
He was on his own again, and this condition had never felt more lonely to him.
“Look,” he said, tapping the arroyo. “Here’s a place you might think of, Slightman. Easy to get in, not so easy to get back out. Suppose we were to take all the children of a certain age and tuck them away safe in this little bit of a mine?”
He saw understanding begin to dawn in Slightman’s eyes. Something else, too. Hope, maybe.
“If we hide the children, they know where,” Eisenhart said. “It’s as if they smell em, like ogres in a kid’s cradle-story.”
“So I’m told,” Roland said. “What I suggest is that we could use that.”
“Make em bait, you mean. Gunslinger, that’s hard.”
Roland, who had no intention of putting the Calla’s children in the abandoned garnet mine—or anywhere near it—nodded his head. “Hard world sometimes, Eisenhart.”
“Say thankya,” Eisenhart replied, but his face was grim. He touched the map. “Could work. Aye, could work…if ye could suck all the Wolves in.”
Wherever the children wind up, I’ll need help putting them there, Roland thought. There’ll have to be people who know where to go and what to do. A plan. But not yet. For now I can play the game I’m playing. It’s like Castles. Because someone’s hiding.
Did he know that? He did not.