The lessons which are remembered the longest, Roland knew, are always the ones that are self-taught.īut what had always been the most important lesson was still most important: how to shoot and how to hit what you shot at every time. Today Eddie had stayed behind, and the gunslinger was not put out of countenance by this. The gunslinger's body healed itself while Eddie and Susannah learned the things the gunslinger had to teach them: how to shoot, to hunt, to gut and clean what they had killed how to first stretch, then tan and cure the hides of those kills how to use as much as it was possible to use so that no part of the animal was wasted how to find north by Old Star or south by Old Mother how to listen to the forest in which they now found themselves, sixty miles or more northeast of the Western Sea. The days had passed with their own sweet similarity. Today Roland and Susannah had come to a clearing less than a mile from the camp in the woods which had been home to them for almost two months now. Both she and Eddie learned fast.Īs he had suspected, both were born gunslingers. He had corrected her at first simply by watching her aim and dry-fire at the targets he had set up. Roland had been shooting for more years than the beautiful brown-skinned woman in the wheelchair would believe. and the longer the wait, the greater the weight.Īt first there had been no need for live ammunition, anyway. Those gods might not punish at once, but sooner or later the penance would have to be paid. Roland had been raised, first by his father and then by Cort, his greatest teacher, to believe this, and so he still believed. But having ammu-nition in plenty did not mean it could be wasted quite the contrary, in fact. They had plenty of live rounds Roland had brought back better than three hundred from the world where Eddie and Susannah Dean had lived their lives up until the time of their drawing. and her first time on the draw from the holster Roland had rigged for her. IT WAS HER THIRD time with live ammunition. JAKE: FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST? I ? BEAR AND BONE

The waste lands king