'We've got a saying in my world,' Eddie said. ' 'That guy could sell Frigidaires to the Eskimos.' That's the saying.'
'What does it mean?'
'It means go pound sand.'
The gunslinger looked at him for a long time and then nodded. 'You mean to stay. All right. As Detta she's safer from … from whatever wildlife there may be around here … than she would have been as Odetta, and you'd be safer away from her—at least for the time being—but I can see how it is. I don't like it, but I've no time to argue with a fool.'
'Does that mean,' Eddie asked politely, 'that no one ever tried to argue with you about this Dark Tower you're so set on getting to?'
Roland smiled tiredly. 'A great many did, as a matter of fact. I suppose that's why I recognize you'll not be moved. One fool knows another. At any rate, I'm too weak to catch you, you're obviously too wary to let me coax you close enough to grab you, and time's grown too short to argue. All I can do is go and hope for the best. I'm going to tell you one last time before I do go, and hear me, Eddie:
Then Roland did something that made Eddie ashamed of all his doubts (although no less solidly set in his own decision): he flicked open the cylinder of the revolver with a practiced flick of his wrist, dumped all the loads, and replaced them with fresh loads from the loops closest to the buckles. He snapped the cylinder back into place with another flick of his wrist.
'No time to clean the machine now,' he said, 'but 'twont matter, I reckon. Now catch, and catch clean— don't dirty the machine any more than it is already. There aren't many machines left in my world that work anymore.'
He threw the gun across the space between them. In his anxiety, Eddie almost
The gunslinger got out of the wheelchair, almost fell when it slid backward under his pushing hands, then tottered to the door. He grasped its knob; in
Roland looked back at Eddie, his blue bullshooter's eyes gleaming out of a face which was ghastly pale.
16
Detta watched all of this from her hiding place with hungrily gleaming eyes.
17
'Remember, Eddie,' he said in a hoarse voice, and then stepped forward. His body collapsed at the edge of the doorway, as if it had struck a stone wall instead of empty space.
Eddie felt an almost insatiable urge to go to the doorway, to look through and see where—and to what
Suddenly, scanning the empty brown hills, Eddie was scared.
Nothing up there was moving.
Nothing he could
He sensed her all the same.
Not Odetta; the gunslinger was right about that.
It was Detta he sensed.
He swallowed and heard a click in his throat.
Yes. But never in his life had he felt such a deadly need for sleep. It would take him soon enough; if he didn't give in willingly, sleep would rape him.
And while he slept, Detta would come.
Detta.
Eddie fought the weariness, looked at the unmoving hills with eyes which felt swollen and heavy, and wondered how long it might be before Roland came back with the third—The Pusher, whoever he or she was.
'Odetta?' he called without much hope.
Only silence answered, and for Eddie the time of waiting began.
CHAPTER 1
BITTER MEDICINE
1
When the gunslinger entered Eddie, Eddie had experienced a moment of nausea and he had had a sense of being
Jack Mort didn't feel a thing.
He was too intent on the boy.
He had been watching the boy for the last two weeks.
Today he was going to push him.