Moses Carver was smiling. "In our world, Roland, giving a man a gold watch has a special significance."
"What would that be?" Roland asked. He held the watch-easily die finest timepiece he'd ever had in his life-up to his ear and listened to the precise and delicate ticking of its machinery.
"That his work is done and it's time for him to go fishing or play with his grandchildren," Nancy Deepneau said. "But we gave it to you for a different reason. May it count the hours to your goal and tell you when you near it."
"How can it do that?"
"We have one exceptional good-mind fellow in New Mexico,"
Marian said. "His name is Fred Towne. He sees a great deal and is rarely if ever mistaken. This watch is a Patek Philippe,
Roland. It cost nineteen thousand dollars, and the makers guarantee a full refund of the price if it's ever fast or slow. It needs no winding, for it runs on a battery-not made by North Central Positronics or any subsidiary thereof, I can assure you-that will last a hundred years. According to Fred, when you near the Dark Tower, the watch may nevertheless stop."
"Or begin to run backward," Nancy said. "Watch for it."
Moses Carver said, "I believe you will, won't you?"
"Aye," Roland agreed. He put the watch carefully in one pocket (after another long look at the carvings on the golden cover) and the box in another. "I will watch diis watch very well."
"You must watch for something else, too," Marian said.
"Mordred."
Roland waited.
"We have reason to believe that he's murdered the one you called Walter." She paused. "And I see that does not surprise you. May I ask why?"
"Walter's finally left my dreams, just as the ache has left my hip and my head," Roland said. "The last time he visited them was in Calla Bryn Sturgis, the night of the Beamquake." He would not tell them how terrible those dreams had been, dreams in which he wandered, lost and alone, down a dank castle corridor with cobwebs brushing his face; the scuttering sound of something approaching from the darkness behind him
(or perhaps above him), and, just before waking up, the gleam of red eyes and a whispered, inhuman voice: "Father."
They were looking at him grimly. At last Marian said:
"Beware him, Roland. Fred Towne, the fellow I mentioned, says
"Mordred be a-hungry.' He says that's a literal hunger. Fred's a brave man, but he's afraid of your... your enemy."
My son, why don't you say it? Roland thought, but believed he knew. She withheld out of care for his feelings.
Moses Carver stood and set his cane beside his daughter's desk. "I have one more thing for you," he said, "on'y it was yours all along-yours to carry and lay down when you get to where you're bound."
Roland was honesdy perplexed, and more perplexed still when the old man began to slowly unbutton his shirt down the front. Marian made as if to help him and he motioned her away brusquely. Beneath his dress-shirt was an old man's strap-style undershirt, what the gunslinger thought of as a slinkum.
Beneath it was a shape that Roland recognized at once, and his heart seemed to stop in his chest. For a moment he was cast back to die cabin on the lake-Beckhardt's cabin, Eddie by his side-and heard his own words: Put Auntie's cross around your neck, and when you meet with sai Carver, show it to him. It may go a long way toward convincing him you 're on the straight. But first...
The cross was now on a chain of fine gold links. Moses Carver pulled it free of his slinkum by this, looked at it for a moment, looked up at Roland widi a little smile on his lips, then down at the cross again. He blew upon it. Faint and faint, raising the hair on the gunslinger's arms, came Susannah's voice:
"We buried Pimsey under the apple tree..."
Then it was gone. For a moment there was nothing, and Carver, frowning now, drew in breath to blow again. There was no need. Before he could, John Cullum's Yankee drawl arose, not from the cross itself, but seemingly from the air just above it.
"We done our best, partner"-paaa't-nuh-"and I hope 'twas good enough. Now, I always knew this was on loan to me, and here it is, back where it belongs. You know where it finishes up, I... "Here the words, which had been fading ever since here it is, became inaudible even to Roland's keen ears. Yet he had heard enough. He took Aunt Talitha's cross, which he had promised to lay at the foot of the Dark Tower, and donned it once more. It had come back to him, and why would it not have done? Was ka not a wheel?
"I thank you, sai Carver," he said. "For myself, for my ka-tet that was, and on behalf of the woman who gave it to me."
"Don't thank me," Moses Carver said. "ThankJohnny Cullum.
He give it to me on his deathbed. That man had some hard bark on him."
"I-" Roland began, and for a moment could say no more.