Once gas had been released and The Outsider had succumbed, Travis could simply
open one of the doors, vent the barn, enter with the Uzi carbine, and kill the
beast where it lay unconscious. At worst, even if the time taken airing out the
building gave The Outsider a chance to regain consciousness, it would still be
groggy and disoriented and easily dispatched.
When they had ascertained that everything in the barn was as it should be,
Travis and Einstein returned to the yard behind the house. The December day was
cool but windless. The forest surrounding the property was preternaturally
still. The trees stood motionless under a low sky of slate-colored clouds.
Travis said, “Is The Outsider still coming?”
With a quick wag of the tail, Einstein said, Yes.
“Is it close?”
Einstein sniffed the clean, winter-crisp air. He padded across the yard to the
perimeter of the northern woods and sniffed again, cocked his head, peered
intently into the trees. He repeated this ritual at the southern end of the
property.
Travis had the feeling that Einstein was not actually employing his eyes, ears,
and nose in search of The Outsider. He had some way of monitoring The Outsider
that was far different from the means by which he would track a cougar or
squirrel. Travis perceived that the dog was employing an inexplicable sixth
sense—call it psychic or at least quasi-psychic. The retriever’s use of its
ordinary senses was probably either the trigger by which it engaged that psychic
ability—or mere habit.
At last, Einstein returned to him and whined curiously.
“Is it close?” Travis asked.
Einstein sniffed the air and surveyed the gloom of the encircling forest, as if
he could not decide on an answer.
“Einstein? Is something wrong?”
Finally, the retriever barked once: No.
“Is The Outsider getting close?”
A hesitation. Then: No.
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
“Really sure?”
Yes.
At the house, as Travis opened the door, Einstein turned away from him, padded
across the back porch, and stood at the top of the wooden steps, taking one
final look around at the yard and at the peaceful, shadowed, soundless forest.
Then, with a faint shiver, he followed Travis inside.
Throughout the inspection of the defenses during the afternoon, Einstein had
been more affectionate than usual, rubbing against Travis’s legs a great deal,
nuzzling, seeking by one means or another to be petted or patted or scratched.
That evening, as they watched television, then played a three-way game of
Scrabble on the living-room floor, the dog continued to seek attention. He kept
putting his head in Nora’s lap, then in Travis’s. He seemed as if he would be
content to be stroked and have his ears gently scratched until next summer.
From the day of their first encounter in the Santa Ana foothills, Einstein had
gone through spells of purely doggy behavior, when it was hard to believe that
he was, in his own way, as intelligent as a man. Tonight, he was in one of those
moods again. In spite of his cleverness at Scrabble—in which his score was
second only to Nora’s, and in which he took devilish pleasure forming words that
made sly references to her as yet unnoticeable pregnancy— he was nonetheless,
this night, more of a dog than not.
Nora and Travis chose to finish the evening with a little light reading—
detective stories—but Einstein did not want them to bother inserting a book in
his page-turning machine. Instead, he lay on the floor in front of Nora’s
armchair and went instantly to sleep.
“He still seems a little draggy,” she said to Travis.
“He ate all his dinner, though. And we did have a long day.”
The dog’s breathing, as it slept, was normal, and Travis was not worried.
Actually, he was feeling better about their future than he had for some time.
The inspection of their defenses had given him renewed confidence in their
preparations, and he believed they would be able to handle The Outsider when it
arrived. And thanks to Garrison Dilworth’s courage and dedication to their
cause, the government had been stymied, perhaps for good, in its efforts to
track them down. Nora was painting again with great enthusiasm, and Travis had