The others ran back toward the water even faster. It seemed they had lost their appet.i.te.

Meanwhile, Eddie was strangling.

Roland fumbled at the rope digging a deep furrow into his neck. He could see Eddie's face melting slowly from purple to black. Eddie's strugglings were weakening.

Then his hands were pushed away by stronger ones.

"I'll take care of it." There was a knife in her hand... his his knife. knife.

Take care of what? he thought as his consciousness faded. what? he thought as his consciousness faded. What is it you'll take care of, now that we're both at your mercy? What is it you'll take care of, now that we're both at your mercy?

"Who are you?" he husked, as darkness deeper than night began to take him down.

"I am three women," he heard her say, and it was as if she were speaking to him from the top of a deep well into which he was falling. "I who was; I who had no right to be but was; I am the woman who you have saved.

"I thank you, gunslinger."

She kissed him, he knew that, but for a long time after, Roland knew only darkness.

FINAL SHUFFLE.

final shuffle

1.

For the first time in what seemed like a thousand years, the gunslinger was not thinking about the Dark Tower. He thought only about the deer which had come down to the pool in the woodland clearing.

He sighted over the fallen log with his left hand.

Meat, he thought, and fired as saliva squirted warmly into his mouth. he thought, and fired as saliva squirted warmly into his mouth.

Missed, he thought in the millisecond following the shot. he thought in the millisecond following the shot. It's gone. All my skill... gone. It's gone. All my skill... gone.

The deer fell dead at the edge of the pool.

Soon the Tower would fill him again, but now he only blessed what G.o.ds there were that his aim was still true, and thought of meat, and meat, and meat. He re-holstered the gun-the only one he wore now-and climbed over the log behind which he had patiently lain as late afternoon drew down to dusk, waiting for something big enough to eat to come to the pool.

I am getting well, he thought with some amazement as he drew his knife. he thought with some amazement as he drew his knife. I am really getting well. I am really getting well.

He didn't see the woman standing behind him, watching with a.s.sessing brown eyes.

2.

They had eaten nothing but lobster-meat and had drunk nothing but brackish stream water for six days following the confrontation at the end of the beach. Roland remembered very little of that time; he had been raving, delirious. He sometimes called Eddie Alain, sometimes Cuthbert, and always he called the woman Susan.

His fever had abated little by little, and they began the laborious trek into the hills. Eddie pushed the woman in the chair some of the time, and sometimes Roland rode in it while Eddie carried her piggyback, her arms locked loosely around his neck. Most of the time the way made it impossible for either to ride, and that made the going slow. Roland knew how exhausted Eddie was. The woman knew, too, but Eddie never complained.

They had food; during the days when Roland lay between life and death, smoking with fever, reeling and railing of times long past and people long dead, Eddie and the woman killed again and again and again. Bye and bye the lobstrosities began staying away from their part of the beach, but by then they had plenty of meat, and when they at last got into an area where weeds and s.l.u.tgra.s.s grew, all three of them ate compulsively of it. They were starved for greens, any greens. And, little by little, the sores on their skins began to fade. Some of the gra.s.s was bitter, some sweet, but they ate no matter what the taste... except once.

The gunslinger had wakened from a tired doze and seen the woman yanking at a handful of gra.s.s he recognized all too well.

"No! Not that!" he croaked. "Never that! Mark it, and remember it! Never that!"

She looked at him for a long moment and put it aside without asking for an explanation.

The gunslinger lay back, cold with the closeness of it. Some of the other gra.s.ses might kill them, but what the woman had pulled would d.a.m.n her. It had been devil-weed.

The Keflex had brought on explosions in his bowels, and he knew Eddie had been worried about that, but eating the gra.s.ses had controlled it.

Eventually they had reached real woods, and the sound of the Western Sea diminished to a dull drone they heard only when the wind was right.

And now... meat. meat.

3.

The gunslinger reached the deer and tried to gut it with the knife held between the third and fourth fingers of his right hand. No good. His fingers weren't strong enough. He switched the knife to his stupid hand, and managed a clumsy cut from the deer's groin to its chest. The knife let out the steaming blood before it could congeal in the meat and spoil it... but it was still a bad cut. A puking child could have done better.

You are going to learn to be smart, he told his left hand, and prepared to cut again, deeper. he told his left hand, and prepared to cut again, deeper.

Two brown hands closed over his one and took the knife.

Roland looked around.

"I'll do it," Susannah said.

"Have you ever?"

"No, but you'll tell me how."

"All right."

"Meat," she said, and smiled at him.

"Yes," he said, and smiled back. "Meat."

"What's happening?" Eddie called. "I heard a shot."

"Thanksgiving in the making!" she called back. "Come help!"

Later they ate like two kings and a queen, and as the gunslinger drowsed toward sleep, looking up at the stars, feeling the clean coolness in this upland air, he thought that this was the closest he had come to contentment in too many years to count.

He slept. And dreamed.

4.

It was the Tower. The Dark Tower.

It stood on the horizon of a vast plain the color of blood in the violent setting of a dying sun. He couldn't see the stairs which spiraled up and up and up within its brick sh.e.l.l, but he could see the windows which spiraled up along that staircase's way, and saw the ghosts of all the people he had ever known pa.s.s through them. Up and up they marched, and an arid wind brought him the sound of voices calling his name.

Roland... come... Roland... come... come... come...

"I come," he whispered, and awoke sitting bolt upright, sweating and shivering as if the fever still held his flesh.

"Roland?"

Eddie.

"Yes."

"Bad dream?"

"Bad. Good. Dark. Dark."

"The Tower?"

"Yes."

They looked toward Susannah, but she slept on, undisturbed. Once there had been a woman named Odetta Susannah Holmes; later, there had been another named Detta Susannah Walker. Now there was a third: Susannah Dean.

Roland loved her because she would fight and never give in; he feared for her because he knew he would sacrifice her-Eddie as well-without a question or a look back.

For the Tower.

The G.o.d-d.a.m.ned Tower.

"Time for a pill," Eddie said.

"I don't want them anymore."

"Take it and shut up."

Roland swallowed it with cold stream-water from one of the skins, then burped. He didn't mind. It was a meaty meaty burp. burp.

Eddie asked, "Do you know where we're going?"

"To the Tower."

"Well, yeah," Eddie said, "but that's like me being some ignoramus from Texas without a road-map saying he's going to Achin' a.s.shole, Alaska. Where is it? Which direction?"

"Bring me my purse."

Eddie did. Susannah stirred and Eddie paused, his face red planes and black shadows in the dying embers of the campfire. When she rested easy again, he came back to Roland.

Roland rummaged in the purse, heavy now with sh.e.l.ls from that other world. It was short enough work to find what he wanted in what remained of his life.

The jawbone.

The jawbone of the man in black.

"We'll stay here awhile," he said, "and I'll get well."

"You'll know when you are?"

Roland smiled a little. The shakes were abating, the sweat drying in the cool night breeze. But still, in his mind, he saw those figures, those knights and friends and lovers and enemies of old, circling up and up, seen briefly in those windows and then gone; he saw the shadow of the Tower in which they were pent struck black and long across a plain of blood and death and merciless trial.

"I won't," he said, and nodded at Susannah. "But won't," he said, and nodded at Susannah. "But she she will." will."

"And then?"

Roland held up the jawbone of Walter. "This once spoke."

He looked at Eddie.

"It will speak again."

"It's dangerous." Eddie's voice was flat.

"Yes."