Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [99]
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