The Stand:BOOK III(29)

"No I'm not. We made an agreement. We stood around Mother Abagail's deathbed and entered into it. It almost certainly meant our deaths, and we knew it. We understood the agreement. Now we're going to live up to it."

"Well, I want to, for Chrissake. I mean, it doesn't have to be Green River; we can get a station wagon, put him in the back, and go on-"

"We're supposed to walk," Ralph said. He pointed at Stu. "He can't walk."

"Right. Fine. He's got a broken leg. What do you propose we do? Shoot him like a horse?"

"Larry-" Stu began.

Before he could go on, Glen grabbed Larry's shirt and yanked him toward him. "Who are you trying to save?" His voice was cold and stern. "Stu, or yourself?"

Larry looked at him, mouth working.

"It's very simple," Glen said. "We can't stay …  and he can't go."

"I refuse to accept that," Larry whispered. His face was dead pale.

"It's a test," Ralph said suddenly. "That's what it is."

"A sanity test, maybe," Larry said.

"Vote," Stu said from the ground. "I vote you go on."

"Me too," Ralph said. "Stu, I'm sorry. But if God's gonna watch out for us, maybe he'll watch out for you, too-"

"I won't do it," Larry said.

"It's not Stu you're thinking of," Glen said. "You're trying to save something in yourself, I think. But this time it's right to go on, Larry. We have to."

Larry rubbed his mouth slowly with the back of his hand.

"Let's stay here tonight," he said. "Let's think this thing out."

"No," Stu said.

Ralph nodded. A look passed between him and Glen, and then Glen fished the bottle of "arthritis pills" out of his pocket and put it in Stu's hand. "These have a morphine base," he said. "More than three or four would probably be fatal." His eyes locked with Stu's. "Do you understand, East Texas?"

"Yeah. I get you."

"What are you talking about?" Larry cried. "Just what the hell are you suggesting?"

"Don't you know?" Ralph said with such utter contempt that for a moment Larry was silenced. Then it all rushed before him again with the nightmare speed of strangers' faces as you ride the whip at the carnival: pills, uppers, downers, cruisers. Rita. Turning her over in her sleeping bag and seeing that she was dead and stiff, green puke coming out of her mouth like a rancid party favor.

"No! " he yelled, and tried to snatch the bottle from Stu's hand.

Ralph grabbed him by the shoulders. Larry struggled.

"Let him go," Stu said. "I want to talk to him." Ralph still held on, looking at Stu uncertainly. "No, go on, let him go."

Ralph let go, but looked ready to spring again.

Stu said, "Come here, Larry. Hunker down."

Larry came over and hunkered by Stu. He looked miserably into Stu's face. "It's not right, man. When somebody falls down and breaks his leg, you don't …  you can't just walk off and let that person die. Don't you know that? Hey, man … " He touched Stu's face. "Please. Think."

Stu took Larry's hand and held it. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"No! No, but-"

"And do you think that people who are in their right minds have the right to decide for themselves what they want to do?"

"Oh, man," Larry said, and started to cry.

"Larry, you're not in this. I want you to go on. If you get out of Vegas, come back this way. Maybe God'll send a raven to feed me, you don't know. I read once in the funny-pages that a man can go seventy days without food, if he's got water."

"It's going to be winter before that here. You'll be dead of exposure in three days, even if you don't use the pills."

"That ain't up to you. You ain't in this part of it."

"Don't send me away, Stu."

Stu said grimly: "I'm sending you."

"This sucks," Larry said, and got to his feet. "What's Fran going to say to us? When she finds out we left you for the gophers and the buzzards?"

"She's not going to say anything if you don't get over there and fix his clock. Neither is Lucy. Or Dick Ellis. Or Brad. Or any of the others."

Larry said, "Okay. We'll go. But tomorrow. We'll camp here tonight, and maybe we'll have a dream …  something … "

"No dreams," Stu said gently. "No signs. It doesn't work like that. You'd stay one night and there'd be nothing and then you'd want to stay another night, and another night …  you got to go right now."

Larry walked away from them, head down, and stood with his back turned. "All right," he said at last in a voice almost too low to hear. "We'll do it your way. God help our souls."

Ralph came over to Stu and knelt down. "Can we get you anything, Stu?"

Stu smiled. "Yeah. Everything Gore Vidal ever wrote-those books about Lincoln and Aaron Burr and those guys. I always meant to read the suckers. Now it looks like I got the chance."

Ralph grinned crookedly. "Sorry, Stu. Looks like I'm tapped."

Stu squeezed his arm, and Ralph went away. Glen came over. He had also been crying, and when he sat down by Stu, he started leaking again.

"Come on, ya baby," Stu said. "I'll be okay."

"Larry's right. This is bad. Like something you'd do to a horse."

"You know it has to be done."

"I guess I do, but who really knows? How's that leg?"

"No pain at all, right now."

"Okay, you got the pills." Glen swiped his arm across his eyes. "Goodbye, East Texas. It's been pretty goddam good to know you."

Stu turned his head aside. "Don't say goodbye, Glen. Make it so long, it's better luck. You'll probably get halfway up that frigging bank and fall down here and we can spend the winter playing cribbage."

"It's not so long," Glen said. "I feel that, don't you?"

And because he did, Stu turned his face back to look at Glen. "Yeah, I do," he said, and then smiled a little. "But I will fear no evil, right?"

"Right!" Glen said. His voice dropped to a husky whisper. "Pull the plug if you have to, Stuart. Don't screw around."

"No."

"Goodbye, then."

"Goodbye, Glen."

The three of them drew together on the west side of the gully, and after a look back over his shoulder, Glen started to go up. Stu followed his progress up the side with growing alarm. He was moving casually, almost carelessly; hardly even glancing at his footing. The ground crumbled away beneath him once, then twice. Both times he grabbed nonchalantly for a handhold, and both times one just happened to be there. When he reached the top, Stu released his pent-up breath in a long, harsh sigh.

Ralph went next, and when he reached the top, Stu called Larry over one last time. He looked up into Larry's face and reflected that in its way it was remarkably like the late Harold Lauder's-remarkably still, the eyes watchful and a little wary. A face that gave away nothing but what it wanted to give away.

"You're in charge now," Stu said. "Can you handle it?"

"I don't know. I'll try."

"You'll be making the decisions."

"Will I? Looks like my first one was overruled." Now his eyes did give away an emotion: reproach.

"Yeah, but that's the only one that will be. Listen-his men are going to grab you."

"Yeah. I figure they will. They'll either grab us or shoot us from ambush like we were dogs."

"No, I think they'll grab you and take you to him. It'll happen in the next few days, I think. When you get to Vegas, keep your eyes open. Wait. It'll come."

"What, Stu? What'll come?"

"I don't know. Whatever we were sent for. Be ready. Know it when it comes."

"We'll be back for you, if we can. You know it."

"Yeah, okay."

Larry went up the bank quickly and joined the other two. They stood and waved down. Stu raised his hand in return. They left. And they never saw Stu Redman again.

                       
       
           



       Chapter 73

The three of them camped sixteen miles west of the place where they had left Stu. They had come to another washout, this one minor. The real reason they had made such poor mileage was because some of the heart seemed to have gone out of them. It was hard to tell if it was going to come back. Their feet seemed to weigh more. There was little conversation. Not one of them wanted to look into the face of another, for fear of seeing his own guilt mirrored there.

They camped at dark and built a scrub fire. There was water, but no food. Glen tamped the last of his tobacco into his pipe, and wondered suddenly if Stu had any cigarettes. The thought spoiled his own taste for tobacco, and he knocked his pipe out on a rock, absently kicking away the last of his Borkum Riff. When an owl hooted somewhere out in the darkness a few minutes later, he looked around.

"Say, where's Kojak?" he asked.

"Now, that's kinda funny, ain't it?" Ralph said. "I can't remember seeing him the last couple of hours at all."

Glen got to his feet. "Kojak!" he yelled. "Hey, Kojak! Kojak! " His voice echoed lonesomely away into the wastes. There was no answering bark. He sat down again, overcome with gloom. A soft sighing noise escaped him. Kojak had followed him almost all the way across the continent. Now he was gone. It was like a terrible omen.