The gunslinger leaned against the door between the room and the hall. He had woven the straps into the sort of carrier with which she was all too familiar, and it hung over his left shoulder.
Hung over his right was a leather sack filled with their new possessions and the remaining Orizas. Oy sat at Roland's feet, looking at her solemnly.
"You scared the living Jesus out of me, sai Deschain," she said.
"You've been crying."
"Isn't any of your nevermind if I have been or if I haven't."
"We'll feel better once we're out of here," he said. "Fedic's curdled."
She knew exacdy what he meant. The wind had kicked up fierce in the night, and when it screamed around the eaves of die hotel and the saloon next door, it had sounded to Susannah like the screams of children-wee ones so lost in time and space they would never find their way home.
"All right, but Roland-before we cross the street and go into that Dogan, I want your promise on one thing."
"What promise would you have?"
"If something looks like getting us-some monster out of the Devil's Arse or one from the todash between-lands-you put a bullet in my head before it happens. When it comes to yourself you can do whatever you want, but... what? What are you holding that out for?" It was one of his revolvers.
"Because I'm only really good with one of them these days.
And because I won't be the one to take your life. If you should decide to do it yourself, however-"
"Roland, your f**ked-up scruples never cease to amaze me," she said. Then she took the gun with one hand and pointed to the harness with the other. "As for that thing, if you think I'm gonna ride in it before I have to, you're crazy."
A faint smile touched his lips. "It's better when it's the two of us, isn't it?"
She sighed, then nodded. "A little bit, yeah, but far from perfect. Come on, big fella, let's blow this place. My ass is an ice-cube and the smell is killing my sinuses."
FIVE
He put her in the rolling office-chair once they were back in the Dogan and pushed her in it as far as the first set of stairs,
Susannah holding their gunna and the bag of Orizas in her lap.
At the stairs the gunslinger booted the chair over the edge and then stood with Susannah on his hip, both of them wincing at the crashing echoes as the chair tumbled over and over to the bottom.
"That's the end of that," she said when the echoes had finally ceased. 'You might as well have left it at the top for all the good it's going to do me now."
"We'll see," Roland said, starting down. 'You might be surprised."
"That thing ain't gonna work fo' shit an we bofe know it,"
Detta said. Oy uttered a short, sharp bark, as if to say That's right.
SIX
The chair did survive its tumble, however. And the next, as well. But when Roland hunkered to examine the poor battered thing after being pushed down a third (and extremely long) flight of stairs, one of the casters was bent badly out of true. It reminded him a little of how her abandoned wheelchair had looked when they'd come upon it after the battle with the Wolves on the East Road.
"There, now, dint I tell you?" she asked, and cackled.
"Reckon it's time to start to tin dat barge, Roland!"
He eyed her. "Can you make Detta go away?"
She looked at him, surprised, then used her memory to replay the last thing she had said. She flushed. 'Yes," she said in a remarkably small voice. "Say sorry, Roland."
He picked her up and got her settled into the harness.
Then they went on. As unpleasant as it was beneath the Dogan-as creepy as it was beneath the Dogan-Susannah was glad that they were putting Fedic behind them. Because that meant they were putting the rest of it behind them, too: Lud, the Callas, Thunderclap, Algul Siento; New York City and western Maine, as well. The castle of the Red King was ahead, but she didn't think they had to worry much about it, because its most celebrated occupant had run mad and decamped for the Dark Tower.
The extraneous was slipping away. They were closing in on the end of their long journey, and there was little else to worry about. That was good. And if she should happen to fall on her way to Roland's obsession? Well, if there was only darkness on the other side of existence (as she had for most of her adult life believed), then nothing was lost, as long as it wasn't todash darkness, a place filled with creeping monsters. And, hey! Perhaps there was an afterlife, a heaven, a reincarnation, maybe even a resurrection in the clearing at the end of the path. She liked that last idea, and had now seen enough wonders to believe it might be so. Perhaps Eddie and Jake would be waiting for her there, all bundled up and with the first down-drifting snowflakes of winter getting caught in their eyebrows: Mr. MERRY and Mr. CHRISTMAS, offering her hot chocolate. Mit schlag.
Hot chocolate in Central Park! What was the Dark Tower compared to that?