41
   SUDDEN WHITE LIGHT FLOODED the hallway of The Mansion; hailstones struck the walls and bounced up from the broken boards of the floor. Jake heard confused shouts, then saw the gunslinger come through. He seemed to leap through, as if he had come from above. His arms were held far out in front of him, the tips of the fingers locked.
   Jake felt his feet slide into the doorkeeper's mouth.
   "Roland!" he shrieked. "Roland, help me!"
   The gunslinger's hands parted and his arms were immediately thrown wide. He staggered backward. Jake felt serrated teeth touch his skin, ready to tear flesh and grind bone, and then something huge rushed over his head like a gust of wind. A moment later the teeth were gone. The hand which had pinned his legs together relaxed. He heard an unearthly shriek of pain and surprise begin to issue from the doorkeeper's dusty throat, and then it was muffled, crammed back.
   Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet.
   "You came!" Jake shouted. "You really came!"
   "I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came."
   As the doorkeeper roared again, Jake burst into tears of relief and terror. Now the house sounded like a ship foundering in a heavy sea. Chunks of wood and plaster fell all around them. Roland swept Jake into his arms and ran for the door. The plaster hand, groping wildly, struck one of his booted feet and spun him into the wall, which again tried to bite. Roland pushed forward, turned, and drew his gun. He fired twice into the aimlessly thrashing hand, vaporizing one of the crude plaster fingers. Behind them, the face of the doorkeeper had gone from white to a dingy purplish-black, as if it were choking on something—something which had been fleeing so rapidly that it had entered the monster's mouth and jammed in its gullet before it realized what it was doing.
   Roland turned again and ran through the doorway. Although there was now no visible barrier, he was stopped cold for a moment, as if an unseen meshwork had been drawn across the chair.
   Then he felt Eddie's hands in his hair and he was yanked not for­ward but upward

42
   THEY EMERGED INTO WET air and slackening hail like babies being born. Eddie was the midwife, as die gunslinger had told him he must be. He was sprawled forward on his chest and belly, his arms out of sight in the doorway, his hands clutching fistfuls of Roland's hair.
   "Suze! Help me!"
   She wriggled forward, reached through, and groped a hand under Roland's chin. He came up to her with his head cocked backward and his lips parted in a snarl of pain and effort.
   Eddie felt a tearing sensation and one of his hands came free holding a thick lock of the gunslinger's gray-streaked hair. "He's slipping!"
   "This motherfucker... ain't... nowhere!" Susannah gasped, and gave a terrific wrench, as if she meant to snap Roland's neck.
   Two small hands shot out of the doorway in the center of the circle and clutched one of the edges. Freed of Jake's weight, Roland got an elbow up, and a moment later he was boosting himself out. As he did it, Eddie grabbed Jake's wrists and hauled him up.
   Jake rolled onto his back and lay there, panting.
   Eddie turned to Susannah, took her in his arms, and began to rain kisses on her forehead, cheeks, and neck. He was laughing and crying at the same time. She clung to him, breathing hard... but there was a small, satisfied smile on her lips and one hand slipped over Eddie's wet hair in slow, contented strokes.
   From below them came a cauldron of black sounds: squeals, grunts, thuds, crashes.
   Roland crawled away from the hole with his head down. His hair stood up in a wild wad. Threads of blood trickled down his cheeks. "Shut it!" he gasped at Eddie. "Shut it, for your father's sake!"
   Eddie got the door moving, and those vast, unseen hinges did the rest. The door fell with a gigantic, toneless bang, cutting off all sound from below. As Eddie watched, the lines that had marked its edges faded back to smudged marks in the dirt. The doorknob lost its dimension and was once more only a circle he'd drawn with a stick. Where the keyhole had been there was only a crude shape with a chunk of wood sticking out of it, like the hilt of a sword from a stone.
   Susannah went to Jake and pulled him gently to a sitting position. "You all right, sugar?"
   He looked at her dazedly. "Yes, I think so. Where is he? The gunslinger? There's something I have to ask him."
   "I'm here, Jake," Roland said. He got to his feet, drunk-walked over to Jake, and hunkered beside him. He touched the boy's smooth cheek almost unbelievingly.
   "You won't let me drop this time?"
   "No," Roland said. "Not this time, not ever again." But in the deep­est darkness of his heart, he thought of the Tower and wondered.

43
   THE HAIL CHANGED TO a hard, driving rain, but Eddie could see gleams of blue sky behind the unravelling clouds in the north. The storm was going to end soon, but in the meantime, they were going to get drenched.
   He found he didn't mind. He could not remember when he had felt so calm, so at peace with himself, so utterly drained. This mad adven­ture wasn't over yet—he suspected, in fact, that it had barely begun— but today they had won a big one.
   "Su/e?" He pushed her hair away from her face and looked into her dark eyes. "Are you okay? Did it hurt you?"
   "Hurt me a little, but I'm okay. I think that bitch Detta Walker is still the undefeated Roadhouse Champeen, demon or no demon."
   "What's that mean?"
   She grinned impishly. "Not much, not anymore... thank God. How about you, Eddie? All right?"
   Eddie listened for Henry's voice and didn't hear it. He had an idea that Henry's voice might be gone for good. "Even better than that," he said, and, laughing, folded her into his arms again. Over her shoulder he could see what was left of the door: only a few faint lines and angles. Soon the rain would wash those away, too.

44
   "WHAT's YOUR NAME?" JAKE asked the woman whose legs stopped just above the knee. He was suddenly aware that he had lost his pants in his struggle to escape the doorkeeper, and he pulled the tail of his shirt down over his underwear. There wasn't very much left of her dress, either, as far as that went.
   "Susannah Dean," she said. "I already know your name."
   "Susannah," Jake said thoughtfully. "I don't suppose your father owns a railroad company, does he?"
   She looked astonished for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. "Why, no, sugar! He was a dentist who went and invented a few things and got rich. What makes you ask a thing like that?"
   Jake didn't answer. He had turned his attention to Eddie. The terror had already left his face, and his eyes had regained that cool, assessing look which Roland remembered so well from the way station.
   "Hi, Jake," Eddie said. "Good to see you, man."
   "Hi," Jake said. "I met you earlier today, but you were a lot younger then."
   "I was a lot younger ten minutes ago. Are you okay?"
   "Yes," Jake said. "Some scratches, that's all." He looked around. "You haven't found the train yet." This was not a question.
   Eddie and Susannah exchanged puzzled looks, but Roland only shook his head. "No train."
   "Are your voices gone?"
   Roland nodded. "All gone. Yours?"
   "Gone. I'm all together again. We both are."
   They looked at the same instant, with the same impulse. As Roland swept Jake into his arms, the boy's unnatural self-possession broke and he began to cry—it was the exhausted, relieved weeping of a child who has been lost long, suffered much, and is finally safe again. As Roland's arms closed about his waist, Jake's own arms slipped about the gunslinger’s neck and gripped like hoops of steel.
   "I'll never leave you again," Roland said, and now his own tears came. "I swear to you on the names of all my fathers: I'll never leave you again."
   Yet his heart, that silent, watchful, lifelong prisoner of ka, received the words of this promise not just with wonder but with doubt.

BOOK TWO

LUD A HEAP OF BROKEN IMAGES

• IV •TOWN AND KA-TET
   
1
   FOUR DAYS AFTER EDDIE had yanked him through the doorway between worlds, minus his original pair of pants and his sneakers but still in possession of his pack and his life, Jake awoke with something warm and wet nuzzling at his face.
   If he had come around to such a sensation on any of the three previous mornings, he undoubtedly would have wakened his companions with his screams, for he had been feverish and his sleep had been haunted by nightmares of the plaster-man. In these dreams his pants did not slide free, the doorkeeper kept its grip, and it tucked him into its unspeakable mouth, where its teeth came down like the bars guarding a castle keep. Jake awoke from these dreams shuddering and moaning helplessly.
   The fever had been caused by the spider-bite on the back of his neck. When Roland examined it on the second day and found it worse instead of better, he had conferred briefly with Eddie and had then given Jake a pink pill. "You'll want to take four of these every day for at least a week," he said.
   Jake had gazed at it doubtfully. "What is it?"
   "Cheflet," Roland said, then looked disgustedly at Eddie. "You tell him. I still can't say it."
   "Keflex. You can trust it, Jake; it came from a government-approved pharmacy in good old New York . Roland swallowed a bunch of it, and he's as healthy as a horse. Looks a little like one, too, as you can see."
   Jake was astonished. "How did you get medicine in New York ?"
   "That's a long story," the gunslinger said. "You'll hear all of it in time, but for now just take the pill."
   Jake did. The response was both quick and satisfying. The angry red swelling around the bite began to fade in twenty-four hours, and now the fever was gone as well.
   The warm thing nuzzled again and Jake sat up with a jerk, his eyes flying open.
   The creature which had been licking his cheek took two hasty steps backward. It was a billy-bumbler, but Jake didn't know that; he had never seen one before now. It was skinnier than the ones Roland's party had seen earlier, and its black– and gray-striped fur was matted and mangy. There was a clot of old dried blood on one flank. Its gold-ringed black eyes looked at Jake anxiously; its hindquarters switched hopefully back and forth. Jake relaxed. He supposed there were exceptions to the rule, but he had an idea that something wagging its tail—or trying to—was probably not too dangerous.
   It was just past first light, probably around five-thirty in the morning. Jake could peg it no closer than that because his digital Seiko no longer worked … or rather, was working in an extremely eccentric way. When he had first glanced at it after coming through, the Seiko claimed it was 98:71:65, a time which did not, so far as Jake knew, exist. A longer look showed him that the watch was now running backward. If it had been doing this at a steady rate, he supposed it might still have been of some use, but it wasn't. It would unwind its numbers at what seemed like the right speed for awhile (Jake verified this by saying the word "Mississippi" between each number), and then the readout would either stop entirely for ten or twenty seconds—making him think the watch had finally given up the ghost—or a bunch of numbers would blur by all at once.
   He had mentioned this odd behavior to Roland and had shown him the watch, thinking it would amaze him, but Roland examined it closely for only a moment or two before nodding in a dismissive way and telling Jake it was an interesting clock, but as a rule no timepiece did very good work these days. So the Seiko was useless, but Jake still found himself loath to throw it away... because, he supposed, it was a piece of his old life, and there were only a few of those left.
   Right now the Seiko claimed it was sixty-two minutes past forty on a Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday in both December and March.
   The morning was extremely foggy; beyond a radius of fifty or sixty feet, the world simply disappeared. If this day was like the previous three, the sun would show up as a faint white circle in another two hours or so, and by nine-thirty the day would be clear and hot. Jake looked around and saw his travelling companions (he didn't quite dare call them friends, at least not yet) asleep beneath their hide blankets—Roland close by, Eddie and Susannah a larger hump on the far side of the dead campfire.
   He once more turned his attention to the animal which had awak­ened him. It looked like a combination raccoon and woodchuck, with a dash of dachshund thrown in for good measure.
   "How you doin, boy?" he asked softly.
   "Oy!" the billy-bumbler replied at once, still looking at him anx­iously. Its voice was low and deep, almost a bark; the voice of an English footballer with a bad cold in his throat.
   Jake recoiled, surprised. The billy-bumbler, startled by the quick movement, took several further steps backward, seemed about to flee, and then held its ground. Its hindquarters wagged back and forth more strenuously than ever, and its gold-black eyes continued to regard Jake nervously. The whiskers on its snout trembled.
   "This one remembers men," a voice remarked at Jake's shoulder. He looked around and saw Roland squatting just behind him with his forearms resting on his thighs and his long hands dangling between his knees. He was looking at the animal with a great deal more interest than he had shown in Jake's watch.
   "What is it?" Jake asked softly. He did not want to startle it away; he was enchanted. "Its eyes are beautiful!"
   "Billy-bumbler," Roland said.
   "Umber!" the creature ejaculated, and retreated another step.
   "It talks!"
   "Not really. Bumblers just repeat what they hear—or used to. I haven't heard one do it in years. This fellow looks almost starved. Proba­bly came to forage."
   "He was licking my face. Can I feed it?"
   "We'll never get rid of it if you do," Roland said, then smiled a little and snapped his fingers. "Hey! Billy!"
   The creature mimicked the sound of the snapping fingers somehow; it sounded as if it were clucking its tongue against the roof of its mouth. "Ay!" it called in its hoarse voice. "Ay, Illy!" Now its ragged hindquarters were positively gagging back and forth.
   "Go ahead and give it a bite. I knew an old groom once who said a good bumbler is good luck. This looks like a good one."
   "Yes," Jake agreed. "It does."
   "Once they were tame, and every barony had half a dozen roaming around the castle or manor-house. They weren't good for much except amusing the children and keeping the rat population down. They can be quite faithful—or were in the old days—although I never heard of one that would remain as loyal as a good dog. The wild ones are scavengers. Not dangerous, but a pain in the ass."
   "Ass!" cried the bumbler. Its anxious eyes continued to flick back and forth between Jake and the gunslinger.
   Jake reached into his pack, slowly, afraid to startle the creature, and drew out the remains of a gunslinger burrito. He tossed it toward the billy-bumbler. The bumbler flinched back and then turned with a small, childlike cry, exposing its furry corkscrew tail. Jake felt sure it would run, but it stopped, looking doubtfully back over its shoulder.
   "Come on," Jake said. "Eat it, boy."
   "Oy," the bumbler muttered, but it didn't move.
   "Give it time," Roland said. "It'll come, I think."
   The bumbler stretched forward, revealing a long and surprisingly graceful neck. Its slender black nose twitched as it sniffed the food. At last it trotted forward, and Jake noticed it was limping a little. The bum­bler sniffed the burrito, then used one paw to separate the chunk of deermeat from the leaf. It carried out this operation with a delicacy that was oddly solemn. Once the meat was clear of the leaf, the bumbler wolfed it in a single bite, then looked up at Jake. "Oy!" it said, and when Jake laughed, it shrank away again.
   "That's a skinny one," Eddie said sleepily from behind them. At the sound of his voice, the bumbler immediately turned and was gone into the mist.
   "You scared it away!" Jake accused.
   "Jeez, I'm sorry," Eddie said. He ran a hand through his sleep-corkscrewed hair. "If I'd known it was one of your close personal friends, Jake, I would have dragged out the goddam coffee-cake."
   Roland clapped Jake briefly on the shoulder. "It'll be back."
   "Are you sure?"
   "If something doesn't kill it, yes. We fed it, didn't we?"
   Before Jake could reply, the sound of the drums began again. This was the third morning they had heard them, and twice the sound had come to them as afternoon slipped down toward evening: a faint, toneless thudding from the direction of the city. The sound was clearer this morn­ing, if no more comprehensible. Jake hated it. It was as if, somewhere out in that thick and featureless blanket of morning mist, the heart of some big animal was beating.
   "You still don't have any idea what that is, Roland?" Susannah asked. She had slipped on her shift, tied back her hair, and was now folding the blankets beneath which she and Eddie had slept.
   "No. But I'm sure vve'll find out."
   "How reassuring," Eddie said sourly.
   Roland got to his feet. "Come on. Let's not waste the day."
 

2
   THE FOG BEGAN TO unravel after they had been on the road for an hour or so. They took turns pushing Susannah's chair, and it jolted unhappily along, for the road was now mined with large, rough cobblestones. By midmorning the day was fair, hot, and cloudless; the city skyline stood out clearly on the southeastern horizon. To Jake it didn't look much different from the skyline of New York, although he thought these build­ings might not be as high. If the place had fallen apart, as most things in Roland's world apparently had, you certainly couldn't tell it from here. Like Eddie, Jake had begun to entertain the unspoken hope that they might find help there … or at least a good hot meal.
   To their left, thirty or forty miles away, they could see the broad sweep of the Send River . Birds circled above it in large flocks. Every now and then one would fold its wings and drop like a stone, probably on a fishing expedition. The road and the river were moving slowly toward one another, although the junction point could not yet be seen.
   They could see more buildings ahead. Most looked like farms, and all appeared deserted. Some of them had fallen down, but these wrecks seemed to be the work of time rather than violence, furthering Eddie's and Jake's hopes of what they might find in the city—hopes each had kept strictly within himself, lest the others scoff. Small herds of shaggy beasts grazed their way across the plains. They kept well away from the road except to cross, and this they did quickly, at a gallop, like packs of small children afraid of traffic. They looked like bison to Jake... except he saw several which had two heads. He mentioned this to the gunslinger and Roland nodded.
   "Muties."
   "Like under the mountains?" Jake heard the fear in his own voice and knew the gunslinger must, also, but he was helpless to keep it out. He remembered that endless nightmare journey on the handcart very well.
   "I think that here the mutant strains are being bred out. The things we found under the mountains were still getting worse."
   "What about up there?" Jake pointed toward the city. "Will there be mutants there, or—" He found it was as close as he could come to voicing his hope.
   Roland shrugged. "I don't know, Jake. I'd tell you if I did."
   They were passing an empty building—almost surely a farmhouse— that had been partially burnt. But that amid have been lighting, Jake thought, and wondered which it was he was trying to do—explain to himself or fool himself.
   Roland, perhaps reading his mind, put an arm around Jake's shoul­ders. "No use even trying to guess, Jake," he said. "Whatever happened here happened long ago." He pointed. "That over there was probably a corral. Now it's just a few sticks poking out of the grass."
   "The world has moved on, right?"
   Roland nodded.
   "What about the people? Did they go to the city, do you think?"
   "Some may have," Roland said. "Some are still around."
   "What?" Susannah jerked around to look at him, startled.
   Roland nodded. "We've been watched the last couple of days. There aren't a lot of folk denning in these old buildings, but there are some. There'll be more as we get closer to civilization." He paused. "Or what used to be civilization."
   "How do you know they're there?" Jake asked.
   "Smelled them. Seen a few gardens hidden behind banks of weeds grown purposely to hide the crops. And at least one working windmill way back in a grove of trees. Mostly, though, it's just a feeling... like shade on your face instead of sunshine. It'll come to you three in time, I imagine."
   "Do you think they're dangerous?" Susannah asked. They were approaching a large, ramshackle building that might once have been a storage shed or an abandoned country market, and she eyed it uneasily, her hand dropping to the butt of the gun she wore on her chest.
   "Will a strange dog bite?" the gunslinger countered.
   "What's that mean?" Eddie asked. "I hate it when you start up with your Zen Buddhist shit, Roland."
   "It means I don't know," Roland said. "Who is this man Zen Bud­dhist? Is he wise like me?"
   Eddie looked at Roland for a long, long time before deciding the gunslinger was making one of his rare jokes. "Ah, get outta here," he said. He saw one corner of Roland's mouth twitch before he turned away. As Eddie started to push Susannah's chair again, something else caught his eye. "Hey, Jake!" he called. "I think you made a friend!"
   Jake looked around, and a big grin overspread his face. Forty yards to the rear, the scrawny billy-bumbler was limping industriously after them, sniffing at the weeds which grew between the crumbling cobbles of the Great Road .

   

3
   SOME HOURS LATER ROLAND called a halt and told them to be ready.
   "For what?" Eddie asked.
   Roland glanced at him. "Anything."
   It was perhaps three o'clock in the afternoon. They were standing at a point where the Great Road crested a long, rolling drumlin which ran diagonally across the plain like a wrinkle in the world's biggest bed­spread. Below and beyond, the road ran through the first real town they had seen. It looked deserted, but Eddie had not forgotten the conversa­tion that morning. Roland's question—Will a strange dog bite?—no longer seemed quite so Zenny.
   "Jake?"
   "What?"
   Eddie nodded to the butt of the Ruger, which protruded from the waistband of Jake's bluejeans—the extra pair he had tucked into his pack before leaving home. "Do you want me to carry that?"
   Jake glanced at Roland. The gunslinger only shrugged, as if to say It's your choice.
   "Okay." Jake handed it over. He unshouldered his pack, rummaged through it, and brought out the loaded clip. He could remember reaching behind the hanging files in one of his father's desk drawers to get it, but all that seemed to have occurred a long, long time ago. These days, thinking about his life in New York and his career as a student at Piper was like looking into the wrong end of a telescope.
   Eddie took the clip, examined it, rammed it home, checked the safety, then stuck the Ruger in his own belt.
   "Listen closely and heed me well," Roland said. "If there are people, they'll likely be old and much more frightened of us than we are of them. The younger folk will be long gone. It's unlikely that those left will have firearms—in fact, ours may be the first guns many of them have ever seen, except maybe for a picture or two in the old books. Make no threatening gestures. And the childhood rule is a good one: speak only when spoken to."
   "What about bows and arrows?" Susannah asked.
   "Yes, they may have those. Spears and clubs, as well."
   "Don't forget rocks," Eddie said bleakly, looking down at the cluster of wooden buildings. The place looked like a ghost-town, but who knew for sure? "And if they're hard up for rocks, there's always the cobbles from the road."
   "Yes, there's always something," Roland agreed. "But we'll start no trouble ourselves—is that clear?"
   They nodded.
   "Maybe it would be easier to detour around." Susannah said.
   Roland nodded, eyes never leaving the simple geography ahead. Another road crossed the Great Road at the center of the town, making the dilapidated buildings look like a target centered in the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle. "It would, but we won't. Detouring's a bad habit that's easy to get into. It's always better to go straight on, unless there's a good visible reason not to. I see no reason not to here. And if there are people, well, that might be a good thing. We could do with a little palaver."
   Susannah reflected that Roland seemed different now, and she didn't think it was simply because the voices in his mind had ceased. This is the way he was when he still had wars to fight and men to lead and his old friends around him, she thought. How he was before the world moved on and he moved on with it, chasing that man Walter. This is how he was before the Big Empty turned him inward on himself and made him strange.
   "They might know what those drum sounds are," Jake suggested.
   Roland nodded again. "Anything they know—particularly about the city—would come in handy, but there's no need to think ahead too much about people who may not even be there."
   "Tell you what," Susannah said, "I wouldn't come out if I saw us. Four people, three of them armed? We probably look like a gang of those old-time outlaws in your stories, Roland—what do you call them?"
   "Harriers." His left hand dropped to the sandalwood grip of his remaining revolver and he pulled it a little way out of the holster. "But no harrier ever born carried one of these, and if there are old-timers in yon village, they'll know it. Let's go."
   Jake glanced behind them and saw the bumbler lying in the road with his muzzle between his short front paws, watching them closely. "Oy!" Jake called.
   "Oy!" the bumbler echoed, and scrambled to its feet at once.
   They started down the shallow knoll toward the town with Oy trot­ting along behind them.

4
   Two BUILDINGS ON THE outskirts had been burned; the rest of the town appeared dusty but intact. They passed an abandoned livery stable on the left, a building that might have been a market on the right, and then they were in the town proper—such as it was. There were perhaps a dozen rickety buildings standing on either side of the road. Alleys ran between some of them. The other road, this one a dirt track mostly overgrown with plains grass, ran northeast to southwest.
   Susannah looked at its northeast arm and thought: Once there were barges on the river, and somewhere down that road there was a landing, and probably another shacky little town, mostly saloons and cribs, built up around it. That was the last point of trade before the barges went on down to the city. The wagons came through this place going to that place and then back again. How long ago was that?
   She didn't know—but a long time, from the look of this place.
   Somewhere a rusty hinge squalled monotonously. Somewhere else one shutter clapped lonesomely to and fro in the plains wind.
   There were hitching rails, most of them broken, in front of the buildings. Once there had been board sidewalks, but now most of the boards were gone and grass grew up through the holes where they had been. The signs on the buildings were faded, but some were still read­able, written in a bastardized form of English which was, she supposed, what Roland called the low speech. FOOD AND GRAIN, one said, and she guessed that might mean feed and grain. On the false front next to it, below a crude drawing of a plains-buffalo lying in the grass, were the words REST EAT DRINK. Under the sign, batwing doors hung crookedly, moving a little in the wind.
   "Is that a saloon?" She didn't know exactly why she was whispering, only that she couldn't have spoken in a normal tone of voice. It would have been like playing "Clinch Mountain Breakdown" on the banjo at a funeral.
   "It was," Roland said. He didn't whisper, but his voice was low-pitched and thoughtful. Jake was walking close by his side, looking around nervously. Behind them, Oy had closed up his distance to ten yards. He trotted quickly, head swinging from side to side like a pendulum as he examined the buildings.
   Now Susannah began to feel it: that sensation of being watched. It was exactly as Roland had said it would be, a feeling sunshine had been replaced by shade.
   "There are people, aren't there?" she whispered.
   Roland nodded.
   Standing on the northeast corner of the crossroads was a building with another sign she recognized: HOSTEL, it said, and COTTS. Except for a church with a tilted steeple up ahead, it was the tallest building in town—three stories. She glanced up in time to see a white blur, surely a face, draw away from one of the glassless windows. Suddenly she wanted to get out of here. Roland was setting a slow, deliberate pace, however, and she supposed she knew why. Hurrying might give the watchers the impression that they were scared .. . and that they could be taken. All the same—
   At the crossroads the intersecting streets widened out, creating a town square which had been overrun by grass and weeds. In the center was an eroded stone marker. Above it, a metal box hung on a sagging length of rusty cable.
   Roland, with Jake by his side, walked toward the marker. Eddie pushed Susannah's chair after. Grass whispered in its spokes and the wind tickled a lock of hair against her cheek. Further along the street, the shutter banged and the hinge squealed. She shivered and brushed the hair away.
   "I wish he'd hurry up," Eddie said in a low voice. "This place gives me the creeps."
   Susannah nodded. She looked around the square and again she could almost see how it must have been on market-day—the sidewalks thronged with people, a few of them town ladies with their baskets over their arms, most of them waggoners and roughly-dressed bargemen (she did not know why she was so sure of the barges and bargemen, but she was); the wagons passing through the town square, the ones on the unpaved road raising choking clouds of yellow dust as the drivers flogged their carthorses
   (oxen they were oxen)
   along. She could see those carts, dusty swatches of canvas tied down over bales of cloth on some and pyramids of tarred barrels on others; could see the oxen, double-yoked and straining patiently, flicking their ears at the flies buzzing around their huge heads; could hear voices, and laughter, and the piano in the saloon pounding out a lively tune like "Buffalo Gals" or "Darlin' Katy."
   It's as if I lived here in another life, she thought.
   The gunslinger bent over the inscription on the marker. " Great Road," he read. "Lud, one hundred and sixty wheels."
   "Wheels?" Jake asked.
   "An old form of measurement."
   "Have you heard of Lud?" Eddie asked.
   "Perhaps," the gunslinger said. "When I was very small."
   "It rhymes with crud," Eddie said. "Maybe not such a good sign."
   Jake was examining the east side of the stone. " River Road . It's written funny, but that's what it says."
   Eddie looked at the west side of the marker. "It says Jimtown, forty wheels. Isn't that the birthplace of Wayne Newton, Roland?"
   Roland looked at him blankly.
   "Shet ma mouf," Eddie said, and rolled his eyes.
   On the southwest corner of the square was the town's only stone building—a squat, dusty cube with rusty bars on the windows. Combina­tion county jail and courthouse, Susannah thought. She had seen similar ones down south; add a few slant parking spaces in front and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Something had been daubed across the facade of the building in fading yellow paint. She could read it, and although she couldn't understand it, it made her more anxious than ever to get out of this town. PUBES DIE, it said.
   "Roland!" When she had his attention, she pointed at the graffito. "What does that mean?"
   He read it, then shook his head. "Don't know."
   She looked around again. The square now seemed smaller, and the buildings seemed to be leaning over them. "Can we get out of here?"
   "Soon." He bent down and pried a small chunk of cobble out of the roadbed. He bounced it thoughtfully in his left hand as he looked up at the metal box which hung over the marker. He cocked his arm and Susannah realized, an instant too late, what he meant to do.
   "No, Roland!" she cried, then cringed back at the sound of her own horrified voice.
   He took no notice of her but fired the stone upward. His aim was as true as ever, and it struck the box dead center with a hollow, metallic bang. There was a whir of clockwork from within, and a rusty green flag unfolded from a slot in the side. When it locked in place, a bell rang briskly. Written in large black letters on the side of the flag was the word GO.
   "I'll be damned," Eddie said. "It's a Keystone Kops traffic-light. If you hit it again, does it say STOP?"
   "We have company," Roland said quietly, and pointed toward the building Susannah thought of as the county courthouse. A man and a woman had emerged from it and were descending the stone steps. You win the kewpie doll, Roland, Susannah thought. They're older n God, the both of em.
   The man was wearing bib overalls and a huge straw sombrero. The woman walked with one hand clamped on his naked sunburned shoulder. She wore homespun and a poke bonnet, and as they drew closer to the marker, Susannah saw she was blind, and that the accident which had taken her sight must have been exceedingly horrible. Where her eyes had been there were now only two shallow sockets filled with scar-tissue. She looked both terrified and confused.
   "Be they harriers, Si?" she cried in a cracked, quavering voice. "You'll have us killed yet, I'll warrant!"
   "Shut up, Mercy," he replied. Like the woman, he spoke with a thick accent Susannah could barely understand. "They ain't harriers, not these. There's a Pube with em, I told you that—ain't no harrier ever been travellin’ with a Pube."
   Blind or not, she tried to pull away from him. He cursed and caught her arm. "Quit it, Mercy! Quit it, I say! You'll fall down and do y'self evil, dammit!"
   "We mean you no harm," the gunslinger called. He used the High Speech, and at the sound of it the man's eyes lit up with incredulity. The woman turned back, swinging her blind face in their direction.
   "A gunslinger!" the man cried. His voice cracked and wavered with excitement. " 'Fore God! I knew it were! I knew!"
   He began to run across the square toward them, pulling the woman after. She stumbled along helplessly, and Susannah waited for the inevita­ble moment when she must fall. But the man fell first, going heavily to his knees, and she sprawled painfully beside him on the cobbles of the Great Road .

5
   JAKE FELT SOMETHING FURRY against his ankle and looked down. Oy was crouched beside him, looking more anxious than ever. Jake reached down and cautiously stroked his head, as much to receive comfort as to give it. Its fur was silky, incredibly soft. For a moment he thought the bumbler was going to run, but it only looked up at him, licked his hand, and then looked back at the two new people. The man was trying to help the woman to her feet and not succeeding very well. Her head craned this way and that in avid confusion.
   The man named Si had cut his palms on the cobblestones, but he took no notice. He gave up trying to help the woman, swept off his sombrero, and held it over his chest. To Jake the hat looked as big as a bushel basket. "We bid ye welcome, gunslinger!" he cried. "Welcome indeed! I thought all your land had perished from the earth, so I did!"
   "I thank you for your welcome," Roland said in the High Speech. He put his hands gently on the blind woman's upper arms. She cringed for a moment, then relaxed and allowed him to help her up. "Put on your hat, old-timer. The sun is hot."
   He did, then just stood there, looking at Roland with shining eyes. After a moment or two, Jake realized what that shine was. Si was crying.
   "A gunslinger! I told you, Mercy! I seen the shooting-iron and told you!"
   "No harriers?" she asked, as if unable to believe it. "Are you sure they ain't harriers, Si?"
   Roland turned to Eddie. "Make sure of the safety and then give her Jake's gun."
   Eddie pulled the Ruger from his waistband, checked the safety, and then put it gingerly in the blind woman's hands. She gasped, almost dropped it, then ran her hands over it wonderingly. She turned the empty sockets where her eyes had been up to the man. "A gun!" she whispered. "My sainted hat!"
   "Ay, some kind," the old man replied dismissively, taking it from her and giving it back to Eddie, "but the gunslinger's got a real one, and there's a woman got another. She's got a brown skin, too, like my da' said the people of Garlan had."
   Oy gave his shrill, whistling bark. Jake turned and saw more people coming up the street—five or six in all. Like Si and Mercy, they were all old, and one of them, a woman hobbling over a cane like a witch in a fairy-tale, looked positively ancient. As they neared, Jake realized that two of the men were identical twins. Long white hair spilled over the shoulders of their patched homespun shirts. Their skin was as white as fine linen, and their eyes were pink. Albinos, he thought.
   The crone appeared to be their leader. She hobbled toward Roland's party on her cane, staring at them with gimlet eyes as green as emeralds. Her toothless mouth was tucked deeply into itself. The hem of the old shawl she wore fluttered in the prairie breeze. Her eyes settled upon Roland.
   "Hail, gunslinger! Well met!" She spoke the High Speech herself, and, like Eddie and Susannah, Jake understood the words perfectly, although he guessed they would have been gibberish to him in his own world. "Welcome to River Crossing!"
   The gunslinger had removed his own hat, and now he bowed to her, tapping his throat three times, rapidly, with his diminished right hand. "Thankee-sai, Old Mother."
   She cackled freely at this and Eddie suddenly realized Roland had at the same time made a joke and paid a compliment. The thought which had already occurred to Susannah now came to him: This is how he was... and this is what he did. Part of it, anyway.
   "Gunslinger ye may be, but below your clothes you're but another foolish man," she said, lapsing into low speech.
   Roland bowed again. "Beauty has always made me foolish, mother."
   This time she positively cawed laughter. Oy shrank against Jake's leg. One of the albino twins rushed forward to catch the ancient as she rocked backward within her dusty cracked shoes. She caught her balance on her own, however, and made an imperious shooing gesture with one hand. The albino retreated.
   "Be ye on a quest, gunslinger?" Her green eyes gleamed shrewdly at him; the puckered pocket of her mouth worked in and out.
   "Ay," Roland said. "We go in search of the Dark Tower ."
   The others only looked puzzled, but the old woman recoiled and forked the sign of the evil eye—not at them, Jake realized, but to the southeast, along the path of the Beam.
   "I'm sorry to hear it!" she cried. "For no one who ever went in search of that black dog ever came back! So said my grandfather, and his grandfather before him! Not ary one!"
   "Ka," the gunslinger said patiently, as if this explained everything... and, Jake was coming to realize, to Roland it did.
   "Ay," she agreed, "black dog ka! Well-a-well; ye'll do as ye're called, and live along your path, and die when it comes to the clearing in the trees. Will ye break bread with us before you push on, gunslinger? You and your band of knights?"
   Roland bowed again. "It has been long and long since we have broken bread in company other than our own, Old Mother. We cannot stay long, but yes—we'll eat your food with thanks and pleasure."
   The old woman turned to the others. She spoke in a cracked and ringing voice—yet it was the words she spoke and not the tone in which they were spoken that sent chills racing down Jake's back: "Behold ye, the return of the White! After evil ways and evil days, the White comes again! Be of good heart and hold up your heads, for ye have lived to see the wheel of ka begin to turn once more!"

6
   THE OLD WOMAN, WHOSE name was Aunt Talitha, led them through the town square and to the church with the leaning spire—it was The Church of the Blood Everlasting, according to the faded board on the run-to-riot lawn. Written over the words, in green paint that had faded to a ghost, was another message: DEATH TO GRAYS.
   She led them through the ruined church, hobbling rapidly along the center aisle past the splintered and overturned pews, down a short flight of stairs, and into a kitchen so different from the ruin above that Susan­nah blinked in surprise. Here everything was neat as a pin. The wooden floor was very old, but it had been faithfully oiled and glowed with its own serene inner light. The black cookstove took up one whole corner. It was immaculate, and the wood stacked in the brick alcove next to it looked both well-chosen and well-seasoned.
   Their party had been joined by three more senior citizens, two women and a man who limped along on a crutch and a wooden leg. Two of the women went to the cupboards and began to make themselves busy; a third opened the belly of the stove and struck a long sulphur match to the wood already laid neatly within; a fourth opened another door and went down a short set of narrow steps into what looked like a cold-pantry. Aunt Talitha, meanwhile, led the rest of them into a spacious entry at the rear of the church building. She waved her cane at two trestle tables which had been stored there under a clean but ragged dropcoth, and the two elderly albinos immediately went over and began to wrestle with one of them.
   "Come on, Jake," Eddie said. "Let's lend a hand."
   "Nawp!" Aunt Talitha said briskly. "We may be old, but we don't need comp'ny to lend a hand! Not yet, youngster!"
   "Leave them be," Roland said.
   "Old fools'll rupture themselves," Eddie muttered, but he followed the others, leaving the old men to their chosen table.
   Susannah gasped as Eddie lifted her from her chair and carried her through the back door. This wasn't a lawn but a showplace, with beds of flowers blazing like torches in the soft green grass. She saw some she recognized—marigolds and zinnias and phlox—but many others were strange to her. As she watched, a horsefly landed on a bright blue petal... which at once folded over it and rolled up tight.
   "Wow!" Eddie said, staring around. " Busch Gardens !"
   Si said, "This is the one place we keep the way it was in the old days, before the world moved on. And we keep it hidden from those who ride through—Pubes, Grays, harriers. They'd bum it if they knew... and kill us for keeping such a place. They hate anything nice—all of em. It's the one thing all those bastards have in common."
   The blind woman tugged his arm to shush him.
   "No riders these days," the old man with the wooden leg said. "Not for a long time now. They keep closer in to the city. Guess they find all they need to keep em well right there."
   The albino twins struggled out with the table. One of the old women followed them, urging them to hurry up and get the hell out of her way. She held a stoneware pitcher in each hand.
   "Sit ye down, gunslinger!" Aunt Talitha cried, sweeping her hand at the grass. "Sit ye down, all!"
   Susannah could smell a hundred conflicting perfumes. They made her feel dazed and unreal, as if this was a dream she was having. She could hardly believe this strange little pocket of Eden, carefully hidden behind the crumbling facade of the dead town.
   Another woman came out with a tray of glasses. They were mismatched but spotless, twinkling in the sun like fine crystal. She held the tray out first to Roland, then to Aunt Talitha, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake at the last. As each took a glass, the first woman poured a dark golden liquid into it.
   Roland leaned over to Jake, who was sitting tailor-fashion near an oval bed of bright green flowers with Oy at his side. He murmured: "Drink only enough to be polite, Jake, or we'll be carrying you out of town—this is graf —strong apple-beer."
   Jake nodded.
   Talitha held up her glass, and when Roland followed suit, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake did the same.
   "What about the others?" Eddie whispered to Roland.
   "They'll be served after the voluntary. Now be quiet."
   "Will ye set us on with a word, gunslinger?" Aunt Talitha asked.
   The gunslinger got to his feet, his glass upraised in his hand. He lowered his head, as if in thought. The few remaining residents of River Crossing watched him respectfully and, Jake thought, a little fearfully. At last he raised his head again. "Will you drink to the earth, and to the days which have passed upon it?" he asked. His voice was hoarse,' trembling with emotion. "Will you drink to the fullness which was, and to friends who have passed on? Will you drink to good company, well met? Will these things set us on, Old Mother?"
   She was weeping, Jake saw, but her face broke into a smile of radiant happiness all the same... and for a moment she was almost young. Jake looked at her with wonder and sudden, dawning happiness. For the first time since Eddie had hauled him through the door, he felt the shadow of the doorkeeper truly leave his heart.
   "Ay, gunslinger!" she said. "Fair spoken! They'll set us on by the league, so they shall!" She tilted her glass up and drank it at a draught. When the glass was empty, Roland emptied his own. Eddie and Susannah also drank, although less deeply.
   Jake tasted his own drink, and was surprised to find he liked it— the brew was not bitter, as he had expected, but both sweet and tart, like cider. He could feel the effects almost at once, however, and he put the glass carefully aside. Oy sniffed at it, then drew back, and dropped his muzzle on Jake's ankle.
   Around them, the little company of old people—the last residents of River Crossing—were applauding. Most, like Aunt Talitha, were weeping openly. And now other glasses—not so fine but wholly serviceable—were passed around. The party began, and a fine party it was on that long summer's afternoon beneath the wide prairie sky.