"We're not leaving them," Jake said. He leaned down and grabbed Francine Tavery by the shoulders. He yanked her into a sitting position, moslyy to get her off her brother so Frank could breathe. Her head lolled back, her hair streaming like dark silk.

Her eyelids fluttered, showing glabrous white beneath. Without thinking, Jake slapped her. And hard.

"Ow! Ow!" Her eyes flew open, blue and beautiful and shocked.

"Get up!" Jake shouted. "Get off him!"

How much time had passed? How still everything was, now that the children had gone back to the road! Not a single bird cried out, not even a rustic. He waited for Roland to whistle again, but Roland didn't. And really, why would he? They were on their own now.

Francine rolled aside, then staggered to her feet. "Help him… please, sai, I beg…"

"Benny. We have to get his foot out of the hole." Benny dropped to one knee on the other side of the awkwardly sprawled boy. His face was still pale, but his lips were pressed together in a tight straight line that Jake found encouraging. "Take his shoulder."

Benny grasped Frank Tavery's right shoulder. Jake took the left. Their eyes met across die unconscious boy's body. Jake nodded.

"Now."

They pulled together. Frank Tavery's eyes flew open-they were as blue and as beautiful as his sister's-and he uttered a scream so high it was soundless. But his foot did not come free.

It was stuck deep.

Now a gray-green shape was resolving itself out of the dust-cloud and they could hear the drumming of many hooves on hardpan. The three Calla women were in the hide. Only Roland, Eddie, and Susannah still remained in the ditch, the men standing, Susannah kneeling with her strong thighs spread. They stared across the road and up the arroyo path. The path was still empty.

"I heard something," Susannah said. "I think one of em's hurt."

"Fuck it, Roland, I'm going after them," Eddie said.

"Is that what Jake wants or what you want?" Roland asked.

Eddie flushed. He had heard Jake in his head-not the exact words, but the gist-and he supposed Roland had, too.

"There's a hundred kids down there and only four over there," Roland said. "Get under cover, Eddie. You too, Susannah."

"What about you?" Eddie asked.

Roland pulled in a deep breath, let it out. "I'll help if I can."

"You're not going after him, are you?" Eddie looked at Roland with mounting disbelief. "You're really not."

Roland glanced toward the dust-cloud and the gray-green cluster beneath it, which would resolve itself into individual horses and riders in less than a minute. Riders with snarling wolf faces framed in green hoods. They weren't riding toward the river so much as they were swooping down on it.

"No," Roland said. "Can't. Get under cover."

Eddie stood where he was a moment longer, hand on the butt of the big revolver, pale face working. Then, without a word, he turned from Roland and grasped Susannah's arm. He knelt beside her, then slid into the hole. Now there was only Roland, the big revolver slung low on his left hip, looking across the road at the empty arroyo path.

Benny Slightman was a well-built lad, but he couldn't move the chunk of rock holding the Tavery boy's foot. Jake saw that on the first pull. His mind (his cold, cold mind) tried to judge the weight of the imprisoned boy against the weight of the imprisoning stone. He guessed the stone weighed more.

"Francine."

She looked at him from eyes which were now wet and a little blinded by shock.

"You love him?" Jake asked.

"Aye, with all my heart!"

He is your heart, Jake thought. Good. "Then help us. Pull him as hard as you can when I say. Never mind if he screams, pull him anyway."

She nodded as if she understood. Jake hoped she did.

"If we can't get him out this time, we'll have to leave him."

"I'll never!" she shouted.

It was no time for argument. Jake joined Benny beside the flat white rock. Beyond its jagged edge, Frank's bloody shin disappeared into a black hole. The boy was fully awake now, and gasping. His left eye rolled in terror. The right one was buried in a sheet of blood. A flap of scalp was hanging over his ear.

"We're going to lift the rock and you're going to pull him out," Jake told Francine. "On three. You ready?"

When she nodded, her hair fell across her face in a curtain. She made no attempt to get it out of the way, only seized her brother beneath the armpits.

"Francie, don't hurt me," he moaned.

"Shut up," she said.

"One," Jake said. "You pull this fucker, Benny, even if it pops your balls. You hear me?"

"Yer-bugger, just count."

"Two. Three"

They pulled, crying out at the strain. The rock moved. Francine yanked her brother backward with all her force, also crying out.

Frank Tavery's scream as his foot came free was loudest of all.

Roland heard hoarse cries of effort, overtopped by a scream of pure agony. Something had happened over there, and Jake had done something about it. The question was, had it been enough to put right whatever had gone wrong?

Spray flew in the morning light as the Wolves plunged into the Whye and began galloping across on their gray horses. Roland could see them clearly now, coming in waves of five and six, spurring their mounts. He put the number at sixty. On the far side of the river, they'd disappear beneath the shoulder of a grass-covered bluff. Then they'd reappear, less than a mile away.

They would disappear one last time, behind one final hill-all of them, if they stayed bunched up as they were now-and that would be the last chance for Jake to come, for all of them to get under cover.

He stared up the path, willing the children to appear-willing Jake to appear-but the path remained empty.

Wolves streaming up the west bank of the river now, their horses casting off showers of droplets which glittered in the morning sun like gold. Clods of earth and sprays of sand flew. Now the hoofbeats were an approaching thunder.

Jake took one shoulder, Benny the other. They carried Frank Tavery down the path that way, plunging ahead with reckless speed, hardly even looking down at the tumbles of rock. Francine ran just behind them.

They came around the final curve, and Jake felt a surge of gladness when he saw Roland in the ditch opposite, still Roland, standing watch with his good left hand on the butt of his gun and his hat tipped back from his brow.

"It's my brother!" Francine was shouting at him. "He fell down! He got his foot caught in a hole!"

Roland suddenly dropped out of sight.

Francine looked around, not frightened, exactly, but uncomprehending. "What-?"

"Wait," Jake said, because that was all he knew to say. He had no other ideas. If that was true of the gunslinger as well, they'd probably die here.

"My ankle… burning," Frank Tavery gasped.

"Shut up," Jake said.

Benny laughed. It was shock-laughter, but it was also real laughter. Jake looked at him around the sobbing, bleeding Frank Tavery… and winked. Benny winked back. And, just like that, they were friends again.