At first everything went according to plan and they called it ka. When things began going wrong and the dying started, they called that ka, too. Ka, the gunslinger could have told them, was often the last thing you had to rise above.

Roland had explained to the children what he wanted of them while still on the common, under the flaring torches. Now, with daylight brightening (but the sun still waiting in the wings), they took their places perfectly, lining up in the road from oldest to youngest, each pair of twins holding hands. The buckas were parked on the left side of the road, their offside wheels just above the ditch. The only gap was where the track into the arroyo country split off from East Road. Standing beside the children in a stretched line were the minders, their number now swelled to well over a dozen with the addition of Tian, Pere Callahan, Slightman, and Wayne Overholser. Across from them, positioned in a line above the righthand ditch, were Eddie, Susannah, Rosa, Margaret Eisenhart, and Tian's wife, Zalia. Each of the women wore a silk-lined reed sack filled with plates. Stacked in the ditch below and behind them were boxes containing more Orizas. There were two hundred plates in all.

Eddie glanced across the river. Still no dust. Susannah gave him a nervous smile, which he returned in kind. This was the hard part-the scary part. Later, he knew, the red fog would wrap him up and carry him away. Now he was too aware. What he was aware of most was that right now they were as helpless and vulnerable as a turtle without its shell.

Jake came hustling up the line of children, carrying the box of collected odds and ends: hair ribbons, a teething infant's comfort-chewy, a whistle whittled from a yew-stick, an old shoe with most of the sole gone, a mateless sock. There were perhaps two dozen similar items.

"Benny Slightman!" Roland barked. "Frank Tavery! Francine Tavery! To me!"

"Here, now!" Benny Slightman's father said, immediately alarmed. "What're you calling my son out of line f-"

"To do his duty, just as you'll do yours," Roland said. "Not another word."

The four children he had called appeared before him. The Taverys were flushed and out of breath, eyes shining, still holding hands.

"Listen, now, and make me repeat not a single word," Roland said. Benny and the Taverys leaned forward anxiously. Although clearly impatient to be off, Jake was less anxious; he knew this part, and most of what would follow. What Roland hoped would follow.

Roland spoke to the children, but loud enough for the strung-out line of child-minders to hear, too. "You're to go up the path," he said, "and every few feet you leave something, as if 'twere dropped on a hard, fast march. And I expect you four to make a hard, fast march. Don't run, but just below it. Mind your footing. Go to where the path branches-that's half a mile- and no farther. D'you ken? Not one step farther."

They nodded eagerly. Roland switched his gaze to the adults standing tensely behind them.

"These four get a two-minute start. Then the rest of the twins go, oldest first, youngest last. They won't be going far; the last pairs will hardly get off the road." Roland raised his voice to a commanding shout. "Children! When you hear this, come back! Come to me a-hurry! " Roland put the first two fingers of his left hand into the corners of his mouth and blew a whistle so piercing that several children put their hands to their ears.

Annabelle Javier said, "Sai, if you mean for the children to hide in one of the caves, why would you call them back?"

"Because they're not going into the caves," Roland said. "They're going down there." He pointed east. "Lady Oriza is going to take care of the children. They're going to hide in the rice, just this side of the river." They all looked where he pointed, and so it was they all saw the dust at the same time.

The Wolves were coming.

"Our company's on the way, sugarpie," Susannah said.

Roland nodded, then turned to Jake. "Go on, Jake. Just as I say."

Jake pulled a double handful of stuff from the box and handed it to the Tavery twins. Then he jumped the lefthand ditch, graceful as a deer, and started up the arroyo track with Benny beside him. Frank and Francine were right behind; as Roland watched, Francine let a little hat fall from her hand.

"All right," Overholser said. "I ken some of it, do ya. The Wolves'll see the cast-offs and be even surer the kids are up there. But why send the rest of em north at all, gunslinger? Why not just march em down to the rice right now?"

"Because we have to assume the Wolves can smell the track of prey as well as real Wolves," Roland said. He raised his voice again. "Children, up the path! Oldest first! Hold the hand of your partner and don't let go! Come back at my whistle!"

The children started off, helped into the ditch by Callahan, Sarey Adams, the Javiers, and Ben Slightman. All the adults looked anxious; only Benny's Da' looked mistrustful, as well.

"The Wolves will start in because they've reason to believe the children are up there," Roland said, "but they're not fools, Wayne. They'll look for sign and we'll give it to em. If they smell-and I'd bet this town's last rice crop that they do- they'll have scent as well as dropped shoes and ribbons to look at. After the smell of the main group stops, that of the four I sent first will carry on yet awhile farther. It may suck em in deeper, or it may not. By then it shouldn't matter."

"But-"

Roland ignored him. He turned toward his little band of fighters. They would be seven in all. It's a good number, he told himself. A number of power. He looked beyond them at the dust-cloud. It rose higher than any of the remaining seminon dust-devils, and was moving with horrible speed. Yet for the time being, Roland thought they were all right.

"Listen and hear." It was Zalia, Margaret, and Rosa to whom he was speaking. The members of his own ka-tet already knew this part, had since old Jamie whispered his long-held secret into Eddie's ear on the Jaffordses' porch. "The Wolves are neither men nor monsters; they're robots."

"Robots! "Overholser shouted, but with surprise rather than disbelief.

"Aye, and of a kind my ka-tet has seen before," Roland said. He was thinking of a certain clearing where the great bear's final surviving retainers had chased each other in an endless worry-circle. "They wear hoods to conceal tiny twirling things on top of their heads. They're probably this wide and this long." Roland showed them a height of about two inches and a length of about five. "It's what Molly Doolin hit and snapped off with her dish, once upon a time. She hit by accident. We'll hit a-purpose."

"Thinking-caps," Eddie said. "Their connection to the outside world. Without em, they're as dead as dogshit."

"Aim here." Roland held his right hand an inch above the crown of his head.

"But the chests… the gills in the chests…" Margaret began, sounding utterly bewildered.

"Bullshit now and ever was," Roland said. "Aim at the tops of the hoods."

"Someday," Tian said, "I'm going to know why there had to be so much buggering bullshit."

"I hope there is a someday," Roland said. The last of the children-the youngest ones-were just starting up the path, obediently holding hands. The eldest would be perhaps an eighth of a mile up, Jake's quartet at least an eighth of a mile beyond that. It would have to be enough. Roland turned his attention to the child-minders.

"Now they come back," he said. "Take them across the ditch and through the corn in two side-by-side rows." He cocked a thumb over his shoulder without looking. "Do I have to tell you how important it is that the corn-plants not be disturbed, especially close to the road, where the Wolves can see?"