Roland removed his holstered gun and cartridge belt. He handed them down to Susannah, who took them and strapped on the belt high at the waist. The cloth of her shirt pulled tight when she did it, and for a moment Eddie thought her breasts looked bigger. Then he dismissed it as a trick of the light

The torches were orange. Roland stood in their light, gunless and as slim-hipped as a boy. For a moment he only looked out over the silent, watching faces, and Eddie felt Jake's hand, cold and small, creep into his own. There was no need for the boy to say what he was thinking, because Eddie was thinking it himself. Never had he seen a man who looked so lonely, so far from the run of human life with its fellowship and warmth. To see him here, in this place of fiesta (for it was a fiesta, no matter how desperate the business that lay behind it might be), only underlined the truth of him: he was the last. There was no other. If Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy were of his line, they were only a distant shoot, far from the trunk. Afterthoughts, almost. Roland, however… Roland…

Hush, Eddie thought. You don't want to think about such things. Not tonight.

Slowly, Roland crossed his arms over his chest, narrow and tight, so he could lay the palm of his right hand on his left cheek and the palm of his left hand on his right cheek. This meant zilch to Eddie, but the reaction from the seven hundred or so Calla-folk was immediate: a jubilant, approving roar that went far beyond mere applause. Eddie remembered a Rolling Stones concert he'd been to. The crowd had made that same sound when the Stones' drummer, Charlie Watts, began to tap his cowbell in a syncopated rhythm that could only mean "Honky Tonk Woman."

Roland stood as he was, arms crossed, palms on cheeks, until they quieted. "We are well-met in the Calla," he said. "Hear me, I beg."

"We say thankee! " they roared. And "Hear you very well!"

Roland nodded and smiled. "But I and my friends have been far and we have much yet to do and see. Now while we bide, will you open to us if we open to you?"

Eddie felt a chill. He felt Jake's hand tighten on his own. It's the first of the questions, he thought.

Before the thought was completed, they had roared their answer: "Aye, and thankee!"

"Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?"

There goes the second one, Eddie thought, and now it was him squeezing Jake's hand. He saw Telford and the one named Diego Adams exchange a dismayed, knowing look. The look of men suddenly realizing that the deal is going down right in front of them and they are helpless to do anything about it. Too late, boys, Eddie thought.

"Gunslingers!" someone shouted. "Gunslingers fair and true, say thankee! Say thankee in God's name!"

Roars of approval. A thunder of shouts and applause. Cries of thankee and aye and even yer-bugger.

As they quieted, Eddie waited for him to ask the last question, the most important one: Do you seek aid and succor?

Roland didn't ask it. He said merely, "We'd go our way for tonight, and put down our heads, for we're tired. But I'd give'ee one final song and a little step-toe before we leave, so I would, for I believe you know both."

A jubilant roar of agreement met this. They knew it, all right.

"I know it myself, and love it," said Roland of Gilead. "I know it of old, and never expected to hear 'The Rice Song' again from any lips, least of all from my own. I am older now, so I am, and not so limber as I once was. Cry your pardon for the steps I get wrong-"

"Gunslinger, we say thankee!" a woman called. "Such joy we feel, aye!"

"And do I not feel the same?" the gunslinger asked gently. "Do I not give you joy from my joy, and water I carried with the strength of my arm and my heart?"

"Give you to eat of the green-crop," they chanted as one, and Eddie felt his back prickle and his eyes tear up.

"Oh my God," Jake sighed. "He knows so much…"

"Give you joy of the rice," Roland said.

He stood for a moment longer in the orange glow, as if gathering his strength, and then he began to dance something that was caught between a jig and a tap routine. It was slow at first, very slow, heel and toe, heel and toe. Again and again his bootheels made that fist-on-coffintop sound, but now it had rhythm. Just rhythm at first, and then, as the gunslinger's feet began to pick up speed, it was more than rhythm: it became a kind of jive. That was the only word Eddie could think of, the only one that seemed to fit.

Susannah rolled up to them. Her eyes were huge, her smile amazed. She clasped her hands tightly between her breasts. "Oh, Eddie!" she breathed. "Did you know he could do this? Did you have any slightest idea?"

"No," Eddie said. "No idea."

Faster moved the gunslinger's feet in their battered and broken old boots. Then faster still. The rhythm becoming clearer and clearer, and Jake suddenly realized he knew that beat. Knew it from the first time he'd gone todash in New York. Before meeting Eddie, a young black man with Walkman earphones on his head had strolled past him, bopping his sandaled feet and going "Cha-da-ba, cha-da-fow!" under his breath. And that was the rhythm Roland was beating out on the bandstand, each Bow! accomplished by a forward kick of the leg and a hard skip of the heel on wood.

Around them, people began to clap. Not on the beat, but on the off-beat. They were starting to sway. Those women wearing skirts held them out and swirled them. The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy. Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel: the ecstasy of perfect recognition.

Sweat began to gleam on Roland's face. He lowered his crossed arms and started clapping. When he did, the Calla-folken began to chant one word over and over on the beat: "Come!… Come!… Come!… Come! It occurred to Jake that this was the word some kids used for jizz, and he suddenly doubted if that was mere coincidence.

Of course it's not. Like the black guy bopping to that same beat. It's all the Beam, and it's all nineteen.

"Come!… Come!… Come!"

Eddie and Susannah had joined in. Benny had joined in. Jake abandoned thought and did the same.

In the end, Eddie had no real idea what the words to "The Rice Song" might have been. Not because of the dialect, not in Roland's case, but because they spilled out too fast to follow. Once, on TV, he'd heard a tobacco auctioneer in South Carolina. This was like that. There were hard rhymes, soft rhymes, off-rhymes, even rape-rhymes-words that didn't rhyme at all but were forced to for a moment within the borders of the song. It wasn't a song, not really; it was like a chant, or some delirious streetcorner hip-hop. That was the closest Eddie could come. And all the while, Roland's feet pounded out their entrancing rhythm on the boards; all the while the crowd clapped and chanted Come, come, come, come.

What Eddie could pick out went like this:

Come-come-commala

Rice come a-falla

I-sissa 'ay a-bralla

Dey come a-folla

Down come a-rivva

Or-i-za we kivva

Rice be a green-o

See all we seen-o

Seen-o the green-o

Come-come-commala!

Come-come-commala

Rice come a-falla

Deep inna walla