The only wildlife they saw were large blackbirds either flying against the southeastern horizon or gathered in a sort ofconvention atop the mesas. If the wind was right, Roland and Susannah couldhear their shrill, gabby conversation.

“You think those things’d be any good toeat?” Susannah asked the gunslinger once. The moon was almost gone and they hadreverted to traveling during the daytime so they could see any potentialhazards (on several occasions deep crevasses had crossed the path, and oncethey came upon a sinkhole that appeared to be bottomless).

“What do you think?” Roland askedher.

“Prob’ly not, but I wouldn’t mind tryin oneand finding out.” She paused. “What do you reckon they live on?”

Roland only shook his head. Here the pathwound through a fantastic petrified garden of needle-sharp rock formations.Further off, a hundred or more black, crowlike birds either circled aflat-topped mesa or sat on its edge looking in Roland and Susannah’s direction,like a beady-eyed panel of jurors.

“Maybe we ought to make a detour,” shesaid. “See if we can’t find out.”

“If we lost the path, we might not be ableto find it again,” Roland said.

“That’s bullshit! Oy would—”

“Susannah, I don’t want to hear any moreabout it!” He spoke in a sharply angry tone she had never heard before. Angry,yes, she had heard Roland angry many times. But there was a pettiness in this,a sulkiness that worried her. And frightened her a little, as well.

They went on in silence for the next halfan hour, Roland pulling Ho Fat’s Luxury Taxi and Susannah riding. Then thenarrow path (Badlands Avenue, she’d come to call it) tilted upward and shehopped down, catching up with him and then going along beside. For such foraysshe’d torn his Old Home Days tee-shirt in half and wore it wrapped around herhands. It protected her from sharp stones, and also warmed her fingers, atleast a little.

He glanced down at her, then back at thepath ahead. His lower lip was stuck out a bit and Susannah thought that surelyhe couldn’t know how absurdly willful that expression was—like athree-year-old who has been denied a trip to the beach. He couldn’t know andshe wouldn’t tell him. Later, maybe, when they could look back on thisnightmare and laugh. When they could no longer remember what, exactly, was soterrible about a night when the temperature was forty-one degrees and you layawake, shivering on the cold ground, watching the occasional meteor scrape coldfire across the sky, thinking Just a sweater, that’s all I need. Just asweater and I’d go along as happy as a parakeet at feeding time. Andwondering if there was enough hide on Oy to make them each a pair ofunderdrawers and if killing him might not actually be doing the poor littlebeastie a favor; he’d just been so sad since Jake passed into theclearing.

“Susannah,” Roland said. “I was sharp withyou just now, and I cry your pardon.”

“There’s no need,” she said.

“I think there is. We’ve enough problemswithout making problems between us. Without making resentments between us.”

She was quiet. Looking up at him as helooked off into the southeast, at the circling birds.

“Those rooks,” he said.

She was quiet, waiting.

“In my childhood, we sometimes called themGan’s Blackbirds. I told you and Eddie about how my friend Cuthbert and Ispread bread for the birds after the cook was hanged, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“They were birds exactly like those, namedCastle Rooks by some. Never Royal Rooks, though, for they were scavenger birds.You asked what yonder rooks live on. Could be they’re scavenging in the yardsand streets of his castle, now that he’s departed.”

“Le Casse Roi Russe, or Roi Rouge, orwhatever you call it.”

“Aye. I don’t say for sure, but…”

Roland didn’t finish and didn’t need to.After that she kept an eye on the birds, and yes, they seemed to be both comingand going from the southeast. The birds might mean that they were makingprogress after all. It wasn’t much, but enough to buoy her spirits for the restof that day and deep into another shivering rotten-cold night.

Six

The following morning, as they were eatinganother cold breakfast in another fireless camp (Roland had promised thattonight they would use some of the Sterno and have food that was at leastwarm), Susannah asked if she could look at the watch he had been given by theTet Corporation. Roland passed it over to her willingly enough. She looked longat the three siguls cut into the cover, especially the Tower with its ascendingspiral of windows. Then she opened it and looked inside. Without looking up atRoland she said, “Tell me again what they said to you.”

“They were passing on what one of theirgood-minds told them. An especially talented one, by their accounts, although Idon’t remember his name. According to him, the watch may stop when we near theDark Tower, or even begin to run backward.”

“Hard to imagine a Patek Philippe runningbackward,” she said. “According to this, it’s eight-sixteen AM or PM back inNew York. Here it looks about six-thirty AM, but I don’t guess that means much,one way or the other. How’re we supposed to know if this baby is running fastor slow?”

Roland had stopped storing goods in hisgunna and was considering her question. “Do you see the tiny hand at thebottom? The one that runs all by himself?”

“The second-hand, yes.”

“Tell me when he’s straight up.”

She looked at the second-hand racing aroundin its own circle, and when it was in the noon position, she said, “Right now.”

Roland was hunkered down, a position hecould accomplish easily now that the pain in his hip was gone. He closed hiseyes and wrapped his arms around his knees. Each breath he exhaled emerged in athin mist. Susannah tried not to look at this; it was as if the hated cold hadactually grown strong enough to appear before them, still ghostlike but visible.

“Roland, what’re you d—”

He raised a hand to her, palm out, notopening his eyes, and she hushed.

The second-hand hurried around its circle,first dipping down, then rising until it was straight up again. And when it hadarrived there—

Roland opened his eyes and said, “That’s aminute. A true minute, as I live beneath the Beam.”

Her mouth dropped open. “How in the name ofheaven did you do that?”

Roland shook his head. He didn’t know. Heonly knew that Cort had told them they must always be able to keep time intheir heads, because you couldn’t depend on watches, and a sundial was no goodon a cloudy day. Or at midnight, for that matter. One summer he had sent themout into the Baby Forest west of the castle night after uncomfortable night(and it was scary out there, too, at least when one was on one’s own, althoughof course none of them would ever have said so out loud, even to each other),until they could come back to the yard behind the Great Hall at the very minuteCort had specified. It was strange how that clock-in-the-head thing worked. Thething was, at first it didn’t. And didn’t. And didn’t. Down would come Cort’scallused hand, down it would come a-clout, and Cort would growl Arrr,maggot, back to the woods tomorrow night! You must like it out there! Butonce that headclock started ticking, it always seemed to run true. For awhileRoland had lost it, just as the world had lost its points of the compass, butnow it was back and that cheered him greatly.

“Did you count the minute?” she asked. “Mississippi-one,Mississippi-two, like that?”

He shook his head. “I just know. When aminute’s up, or an hour.”

“Bol-she-vecky!” she scoffed. “Youguessed!”

“If I’d guessed, would I have spoken afterexactly one revolution of the hand?”

“You mought got lucky,” Detta said, andeyed him shrewdly with one eye mostly closed, an expression Roland detested.(But never said so; that would only cause Detta to goad him with it on thoseoccasions when she peeked out.)