She cackled and stared at him with meanly merry eyes, but the gunslinger saw fear hidden far back in those eyes. She was afraid of him. Afraid because he was The Really Bad Man.
Why was he The Really Bad Man? Maybe because, on some deeper level, she sensed what he knew about her.
“Almos’ got you, graymeat,” she said. “Almos’ got you that time.” And cackled, witchlike.
“Hold her head,” the gunslinger said evenly. “She bites like a weasel.”
Eddie held it while the gunslinger carefully wiped the wound clean. It wasn’t wide and didn’t look deep, but the gunslinger took no chances; he walked slowly down to the water, soaked the piece of shirting in the salt water, and then came back.
She began to scream as he approached.
“Doan you be touchin me wid dat thing! Doan you be touchin me wid no water from where them poison things come from! Git it away! Git it away!”
“Hold her head,” Roland said in the same even voice. She was whipping it from side to side. “I don’t want to take any chances.”
Eddie held it . . . and squeezed it when she tried to shake free. She saw he meant business and immediately became still, showing no more fear of the damp rag. It had been only sham, after all.
She smiled at Roland as he bathed the cut, carefully washing out the last clinging particles of grit.
“In fact, you look mo than jest tuckered out,” Detta observed. “You look sick, graymeat. I don’t think you ready fo no long trip. I don’t think you ready fo nuthin like dat.”
Eddie examined the chair’s rudimentary controls. It had an emergency handbrake which locked both wheels. Detta had worked her right hand over there, had waited patiently until she thought Eddie was going fast enough, and then she had yanked the brake, purposely spilling herself over. Why? To slow them down, that was all. There was no reason to do such a thing, but a woman like Detta, Eddie thought, needed no reasons. A woman like Detta was perfectly willing to do such things out of sheer meanness.
Roland loosened her bonds a bit so the blood could flow more freely, then tied her hand firmly away from the brake.
“That be all right, Mister Man,” Detta said, offering him a bright smile filled with too many teeth. “That be all right jest the same. There be other ways to slow you boys down. All sorts of ways.”
“Let’s go,” the gunslinger said tonelessly.
“You all right, man?” Eddie asked. The gunslinger looked very pale.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
They started up the beach again.
10
The gunslinger insisted on pushing for an hour, and Eddie gave way to him reluctantly. Roland got her through the first sandtrap, but Eddie had to pitch in and help get the wheelchair out of the second. The gunslinger was gasping for air, sweat standing out on his forehead in large beads.
Eddie let him go on a little further, and Roland was quite adept at weaving his way around the places where the sand was loose enough to bog the wheels, but the chair finally became mired again and Eddie could bear only a few moments of watching Roland struggle to push it free, gasping, chest heaving, while the witch （for so Eddie had come to think of her） howled with laughter and actually threw her body backwards in the chair to make the task that much more difficult—and then he shouldered the gunslinger aside and heaved the chair out of the sand with one angry lurching lunge. The chair tottered and now he saw/sensed her shifting forward as much as the ropes would allow, doing this with a weird prescience at the exactly proper moment, trying to topple herself again.
Roland threw his weight on the back of the chair next to Eddie’s and it settled back.
Detta looked around and gave them a wink of such obscene conspiracy that Eddie felt his arms crawl up in gooseflesh.