(no subject)
Wyoming is full of ghosts.
Cheyenne and Arapaho, by plague and John Chivington's men at Sand Creek. Victims of the Johnson County War, after the Indian Wars were over. Mining accidents. People in wrecks -- planes, trains, and automobiles. Snowmobiles. Some people freeze to death; some people get drunk and do things they shouldn't. Some people get dragged to death, tied to fences, left for dead. From the broad avenues of Laramie to the Tetons up by Jackson Hole, it's difficult to forget that where you are can and will kill you if you don't pay attention, if you make the wrong decision at the wrong time.
Coming north across the state line, coming out of Weld County, Colorado, the air shimmers if you look at it too long. Roland keeps his ears cocked for any warbling sound -- anything that might imply to him that he's in danger of slipping into a thinny, into the todash darkness where the monsters lie.
He hears nothing but the wind.
After he crests a rise in the broad, wide landscape, he spies a windmill. Means water, in country like this. He brings the horse to the pool fifteen minutes later, dismounts, lets the horse drink. It's a good horse -- a horse meant for work. He fills his own skins and ties them on the saddle, and turns around to look at the land.
It's still dark, and it's cold -- not cold enough to freeze, he knows, and he is grateful for this. His luck might not hold in a few days; he has to keep moving.
So he swings back in the saddle and he moves along.
Closer to sunrise train tracks swing east and west. One more time he swings down, crouches.
Sees wolf tracks, barely there, in the dust.
Roland Deschain goes west, past a derelict train station, into a town on a horse. Four in the morning and he goes unnoticed. There's a honky-tonk outside of town without any cars in the parking lot, and he can hear music coming from the closed doors:
I'm standing here in Nashville with Norman's Nashville blues
So come on you good time rounders listening to my sound
And drink a round to Nashville before they tear it down
It's a woman's voice; it raises the hair on the back of his neck. In the distance, beyond the stars, the mountains are a mere suggestion on the horizon.
The reins are in his right hand. Roland reaches up with his left, grasps the jade lion hanging from his neck.
The music stops.
His eyes blaze.
One more line, warbling (unlike a thinny, but wailing, all the same) out of the honky tonk: I crack the codes, I crack the codes that end the war.
Roland smiles.
And Roland Deschain, half a ghost himself, rides on.
Cheyenne and Arapaho, by plague and John Chivington's men at Sand Creek. Victims of the Johnson County War, after the Indian Wars were over. Mining accidents. People in wrecks -- planes, trains, and automobiles. Snowmobiles. Some people freeze to death; some people get drunk and do things they shouldn't. Some people get dragged to death, tied to fences, left for dead. From the broad avenues of Laramie to the Tetons up by Jackson Hole, it's difficult to forget that where you are can and will kill you if you don't pay attention, if you make the wrong decision at the wrong time.
Coming north across the state line, coming out of Weld County, Colorado, the air shimmers if you look at it too long. Roland keeps his ears cocked for any warbling sound -- anything that might imply to him that he's in danger of slipping into a thinny, into the todash darkness where the monsters lie.
He hears nothing but the wind.
After he crests a rise in the broad, wide landscape, he spies a windmill. Means water, in country like this. He brings the horse to the pool fifteen minutes later, dismounts, lets the horse drink. It's a good horse -- a horse meant for work. He fills his own skins and ties them on the saddle, and turns around to look at the land.
It's still dark, and it's cold -- not cold enough to freeze, he knows, and he is grateful for this. His luck might not hold in a few days; he has to keep moving.
So he swings back in the saddle and he moves along.
Closer to sunrise train tracks swing east and west. One more time he swings down, crouches.
Sees wolf tracks, barely there, in the dust.
Roland Deschain goes west, past a derelict train station, into a town on a horse. Four in the morning and he goes unnoticed. There's a honky-tonk outside of town without any cars in the parking lot, and he can hear music coming from the closed doors:
I'm standing here in Nashville with Norman's Nashville blues
So come on you good time rounders listening to my sound
And drink a round to Nashville before they tear it down
It's a woman's voice; it raises the hair on the back of his neck. In the distance, beyond the stars, the mountains are a mere suggestion on the horizon.
The reins are in his right hand. Roland reaches up with his left, grasps the jade lion hanging from his neck.
The music stops.
His eyes blaze.
One more line, warbling (unlike a thinny, but wailing, all the same) out of the honky tonk: I crack the codes, I crack the codes that end the war.
Roland smiles.
And Roland Deschain, half a ghost himself, rides on.