Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [58]
Really, she had never felt finer in her life.
Three
Callahan came first. Behind him were two men, one who looked about thirty and another who looked to Susannah nearly twice that. The older man had heavy cheeks that would be jowls in another five years or so, and lines carving their courses from the sides of his nose down to his chin. “I-want lines,” her father would have called them (and Dan Holmes had had a pretty good set of his own). The younger man wore a battered sombrero, the older a clean white Stetson that made Susannah want to smile—it looked like the kind of hat the good guy would wear in an old black-and-white Western movie. Still, she guessed a lid like that didn’t come cheap, and she thought the man wearing it had to be Wayne Overholser. “The big farmer,” Roland had called him. The one that had to be convinced, according to Callahan.
But not by us, Susannah thought, which was sort of a relief. The tight mouth, the shrewd eyes, and most of all those deep-carved lines (there was another slashed vertically into his brow, just above the eyes) suggested sai Overholser would be a pain in the ass when it came to convincing.
Just behind these two—specifically behind the younger of the two—there came a tall, handsome woman, probably not black but nonetheless nearly as dark-skinned as Susannah herself. Bringing up the rear was an earnest-looking man in spectacles and farmer’s clothes and a likely-looking boy probably two or three years older than Jake. The resemblance between this pair was impossible to miss; they had to be Slightman the Elder and Younger.
Boy may be older than Jake in years, she thought, but he’s got a soft look about him, all the same. True, but not necessarily a bad thing. Jake had seen far too much for a boy not yet in his teens. Done too much, as well.
Overholser looked at their guns (Roland and Eddie each wore one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips; the .44 Ruger from New York City hung under Jake’s arm in what Roland called a docker’s clutch), then at Roland. He made a perfunctory salute, his half-closed fist skimming somewhere at least close to his forehead. There was no bow. If Roland was offended by this, it didn’t show on his face. Nothing showed on his face but polite interest.
“Hile, gunslinger,” the man who had been walking beside Overholser said, and this one actually dropped to one knee, with his head down and his brow resting on his fist. “I am Tian Jaffords, son of Luke. This lady is my wife, Zalia.”
“Hile,” Roland said. “Let me be Roland to you, if it suits. May your days be long upon the earth, sai Jaffords.”
“Tian. Please. And may you and your friends have twice the—”
“I’m Overholser,” the man in the white Stetson broke in brusquely. “We’ve come to meet you—you and your friends—at the request of Callahan and young Jaffords. I’d pass the formalities and get down to business as soon as possible, do ya take no offense, I beg.”
“Ask pardon but that’s not quite how it is,” Jaffords said. “There was a meeting, and the men of the Calla voted—”
Overholser broke in again. He was, Susannah thought, just that kind of man. She doubted he was even aware he was doing it. “The town, yes. The Calla. I’ve come along with every wish to do right by my town and my neighbors, but this is a busy time for me, none busier—”
“Charyou tree,” Roland said mildly, and although Susannah knew a deeper meaning for this phrase, one that made her back prickle, Overholser’s eyes lit up. She had her first inkling then of how this day was going to go.
“Come reap, yessir, say thankee.” Off to one side, Callahan was gazing into the woods with a kind of studied patience. Behind Overholser, Tian Jaffords and his wife exchanged an embarrassed glance. The Slightmans only waited and watched. “You understand that much, anyway.”
“In Gilead we were surrounded by farms and freeholds,” Roland said. “I got my share of hay and corn in barn. Aye,