He didn’t spend much time looking at theguards, however. Once he had identified them for what they were, he let hisgaze go where it had wanted to be from the moment the ele-vaydor doors opened.There was a large black-and-white picture on the wall to his left. This was aphotograph (he had originally thought the word was fottergraf) aboutfive feet long and three wide, mounted without a frame, curved so cunningly tothe shape of the wall that it looked like a hole into some unnaturally stillreality. Three men in jeans and open-necked shirts sat on the top rail of afence, their boots hooked under the lowest rail. How many times, Rolandwondered, had he seen cowboys or pastorillas sitting just that way whilethey watched branding, roping, gelding, or the breaking of wild horses? Howmany times had he sat so himself, sometimes with one or more of his oldtet—Cuthbert, Alain, Jamie DeCurry—sitting to either side of him,as John Cullum and Aaron Deepneau sat flanking the black man with the gold-rimmedspectacles and the tiny white moustache? The remembering made him ache, andthis was no mere ache of the mind; his stomach clenched and his heart sped up.The three in the picture had been caught laughing at something, and the resultwas a kind of timeless perfection, one of those rare moments when men are gladto be what they are and where they are.

“The Founding Fathers,” Nancy said. Shesounded both amused and sad. “That photo was taken on an executive retreat in1986. Taos, New Mexico. Three city boys in cow country, how about that. Anddon’t they look like they’re having the time of their lives?”

“You say true,” Roland said.

“Do you know all three?”

Roland nodded. He knew them, all right,although he had never met Moses Carver, the man in the middle. Dan Holmes’spartner, Odetta Holmes’s godfather. In the picture he looked to be a robust andhealthy seventy, but surely by 1986 he had to be closer to eighty. Perhapseighty-five. Of course, Roland reminded himself, there was a wild card here:the marvelous thing he’d just seen in the lobby of this building. The rose wasno more a fountain of youth than the turtle in the little pocket park acrossthe street was the real Maturin, but did he think it had certain beneficentqualities? Yes he did. Certain healing qualities? Yes he did. Did he believethat the nine years of life Aaron Deepneau had gotten between 1977 and thetaking of this picture in 1986 had just been a matter of the Prim-replacingpills and medical treatments of the old people? No he did not. These threemen—Carver, Cullum, and Deepneau—had come together, almostmagically, to fight for the rose in their old age. Their tale, the gunslingerbelieved, would make a book in itself, very likely a fine and exciting one.What Roland believed was simplicity itself: the rose had shown its gratitude.

“When did they die?” he asked NancyDeepneau.

“John Cullum went first, in 1989,” shesaid. “Victim of a gunshot wound. He lasted twelve hours in the hospital, longenough for everyone to say goodbye. He was in New York for the annual boardmeeting. According to the NYPD, it was a streetside mugging gone bad. Webelieve he was killed by an agent of either Sombra or North CentralPositronics. Probably one of the can-toi. There were other attempts thatmissed.”

“Both Sombra and Positronics come to thesame thing,” said Roland. “They’re the agencies of the Crimson King in thisworld.”

“We know,” she said, then pointed to theman on the left side of the picture, the one she so strongly resembled. “UncleAaron lived until 1992. When you met him… in 1977?”

“Yes,” Roland said.

“In 1977, no one would have believed hecould live so long.”

“Did the fayen-folken kill him,too?”

“No, the cancer came back, that’s all. Hedied in his bed. I was there. The last thing he said was, ‘Tell Roland we didour best.’ And so I do tell you.”

“Thankee-sai.” He heard the roughness inhis voice and hoped she would mistake it for curtness. Many had done their bestfor him, was it not true? A great many, beginning with Susan Delgado, all thoseyears ago.

“Are you all right?” she asked in a low,sympathetic voice.

“Yes,” he said. “Fine. And Moses Carver?When did he pass?”

She raised her eyebrows, then laughed.

“What—?”

“Look for yourself!”

She pointed toward the glass doors. Nowapproaching them from the inside, passing the desk-minding woman who hadapparently been talking to herself, was a wizened man with fluffy fly-away hairand white eyebrows to match. His skin was dark, but the woman upon whose arm heleaned was even darker. He was tall—perhaps six-and-three, if the bendhad been taken out of his spine—but the woman was even taller, at leastsix-and-six. Her face was not beautiful but almost savagely handsome. The faceof a warrior.

The face of a gunslinger.

Nine

Had Moses Carver’s spine been straight, heand Roland would have been eye-to-eye. As it was, Carver needed to look upslightly, which he did by cocking his head, birdlike. He seemed incapable ofactually bending his neck; arthritis had locked it in place. His eyes werebrown, the whites so muddy it was difficult to tell where the irises ended, andthey were full of merry laughter behind their gold-rimmed spectacles. He stillhad the tiny white moustache.

“Roland of Gilead!” said he. “How I’velonged to meet you, sir! I b’lieve it’s what’s kept me alive so long after Johnand Aaron passed. Let loose of me a minute, Marian, let loose! There’ssomething I have to do!”

Marian Carver let go of him and looked atRoland. He didn’t hear her voice in his head and didn’t need to; what shewanted to tell him was clear in her eyes: Catch him if he falls, sai.

But the man Susannah had called Daddy Mosedidn’t fall. He put his loosely clenched, arthritic fist to his forehead, thenbent his right knee, taking all of his weight on his trembling right leg. “Hileyou last gunslinger, Roland Deschain out of Gilead, son of Steven and truedescendent of Arthur Eld. I, the last of what was called among ourselves theKa-Tet of the Rose, salute you.”

Roland put his own fisted hand to hisforehead and did more than make a leg; he went to his knee. “Hile Daddy Mose,godfather of Susannah, dinh of the Ka-Tet of the Rose, I salute you with myheart.”

“Thankee,” said the old man, and thenlaughed like a boy. “We’re well met in the House of the Rose! What was oncemeant to be the Grave of the Rose! Ha! Tell me we’re not! Can you?”

“Nay, for it would be a lie.”

“Speak it!” the old man cried, then utteredthat cheery go-to-hell laugh once again. “But I’m f’gettin my manners in myawe, gunslinger. This handsome stretch of woman standing beside me, it’d benatural for you to call her my granddaughter, ‘cause I was sem’ty in the yearshe was born, which was nineteen-and-sixty-nine. But the truth is”—But’natroof is was what reached Roland’s ear—“that sometimes the bestthings in life are started late, and having children”—Chirrun—“isone of’m, in my opinion. Which is a long-winded way of saying this is mydaughter, Marian Odetta Carver, President of the Tet Corporation since Istepped down in ‘97, at the age of ninety-eight. And do you think it wouldfrost some country-club balls, Roland, to know that this business, now worthjust about ten billion dollars, is run by a Negro?” His accent, growing deeperas his excitement and joy grew, turned the last into Dis bid’ness, now wuth jus‘bout tin binnion dolla, is run bah NEE-grow?

“Stop, Dad,” the tall woman beside himsaid. Her voice was kind but brooked no denial. “You’ll have that heart monitoryou wear sounding the alarm if you don’t, and this man’s time is short.”

“She run me like a ray’road!” the old mancried indignantly. At the same time he turned his head slightly and droppedRoland a wink of inexpressible slyness and good humor with the eye his daughtercould not see.