The Dark Tower - Stephen King [293]
He had now reached the snowbank marking the spot where Tower Road ended…or where it began, depending on your point of view and the direction you were traveling, Susannah supposed. He looked up at them, one eye bright as a bird’s, the other looking off into the white wastes with dull fascination.
“Long days and pleasant nights, yar, so say I, and anyone who’d say different, they ain’t here anyway, so who gives a good goddam what they say?” From his pocket he took what could only be a gumdrop and tossed it up. Oy grabbed it out of the air easily: Snap! and gone.
At this both Roland and Susannah laughed. It felt strange to laugh, but it was a good feeling, like finding something of value long after you were sure it was lost forever. Even Oy appeared to be grinning, and if the horse bothered him (it trumpeted again as they looked down on sai Collins from their snowbank perch), it didn’t show.
“I got a million questions for yer,” Collins said, “but I’ll start with just one: how in the hell are yers gonna get down offa that snowbank?”
Four
As it turned out, Susannah slid down, using their travois as a sled. She chose the place where the northwestern end of Odd’s Lane disappeared beneath the snow, because the embankment was a little shallower there. Her trip was short but not smooth. She hit a large and crusted snow-boulder three quarters of the way down, fell off the travois, and made the rest of her descent in a pair of gaudy somersaults, laughing wildly as she fell. The travois turned over—turned turtle, may it do ya—and spilled their gunna every whichway and hell to breakfast.
Roland and Oy came leaping down behind. Roland bent over her at once, clearly concerned, and Oy sniffed anxiously at her face, but Susannah was still laughing. So was the codger. Daddy Mose would have called his laughter “gay as old Dad’s hatband.”
“I’m fine, Roland—took worse tumbles off my Flexible Flyer when I was a kid, tell ya true.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Joe Collins agreed. He gave her a look with his good eye to make sure she was indeed all right, then began to pick up some of the scattered goods, leaning laboriously over on his stick, his fine white hair blowing around his rosy face.
“Nah, nah,” Roland said, reaching out to grasp his arm. “I’ll do that, thee’ll fall on thy thiddles.”
At this the old man roared with laughter, and Roland joined him willingly enough. From behind the cottage, the horse gave another loud whinny, as if protesting all this good humor.
“ ‘Fall on thy thiddles’! Man, that’s a good one! I don’t have the veriest clue under heaven what my thiddles are, yet it’s a good one! Ain’t it just!” He brushed the snow off Susannah’s hide coat while Roland quickly picked up the spilled goods and stacked them back on their makeshift sled. Oy helped, bringing several wrapped packages of meat in his jaws and dropping them on the back of the travois.
“That’s a smart little beastie!” Joe Collins said admiringly.
“He’s been a good trailmate,” Susannah agreed. She was now very glad they had stopped; would not have deprived herself of this good-natured old man’s acquaintance for worlds. She offered him her clumsily clad right hand. “I’m Susannah Dean—Susannah of New York. Daughter of Dan.”
He took her hand and shook it. His own hand was ungloved, and although the fingers were gnarled with