Then she brushed the hair back from the side of Eddie’s face and kissed the hollow of his temple. The tenderness in that gesture told the gunslinger all he needed to know. It was safe to sleep. He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

Chapter IV

Palaver

One

When Roland woke in the morning, Susannah was still asleep but Eddie and Jake were up. Eddie had built a small new fire on the gray bones of the old one. He and the boy sat close to it for the warmth, eating what Eddie called gunslinger burritos. They looked both excited and worried.

“Roland,” Eddie said, “I think we need to talk. Something happened to us last night—”

“I know,” Roland said. “I saw. You went todash.”

“Todash?” Jake asked. “What’s that?”

Roland started to tell them, then shook his head. “If we’re going to palaver, Eddie, you’d better wake Susannah up. That way we won’t have to double back over the first part.” He glanced south. “And hopefully our new friends won’t interrupt us until we’ve had our talk. They’re none of this.” But already he was wondering about that.

He watched with more than ordinary interest as Eddie shook Susannah awake, quite sure but by no means positive that it would be Susannah who opened her eyes. It was. She sat up, stretched, ran her fingers through her tight curls. “What’s your problem, honeychile? I was good for another hour, at least.”

“We need to talk, Suze,” Eddie said.

“All you want, but not quite yet,” she said. “ God,but I’m stiff.”

“Sleeping on hard ground’ll do it every time,” Eddie said.

Not to mention hunting naked in the bogs and damps,Roland thought.

“Pour me some water, sug.” She held out her palms, and Eddie filled them with water from one of the skins. She dashed this over her cheeks and into her eyes, gave out a little shivery cry, and said, “Cold.”

“Old!” Oy said.

“Not yet,” she told the bumbler, “but you give me a few more months like the last few, and I will be. Roland, you Mid-World folks know about coffee, right?”

Roland nodded. “From the plantations of the Outer Arc. Down south.”

“If we come across some, we’ll hook it, won’t we? You promise me, now.”

“I promise,” Roland said.

Susannah, meanwhile, was studying Eddie. “What’s going on? You boys don’t look so good.”

“More dreams,” Eddie said.

“Me too,” Jake said.

“Not dreams,” the gunslinger said. “Susannah, how did you sleep?”

She looked at him candidly. Roland did not sense even the shadow of a lie in her answer. “Like a rock, as I usually do. One thing all this traveling is good for—you can throw your damn Nembutal away.”

“What’s this toadish thing, Roland?” Eddie asked.